14 DAY TRIAL // Where to start? In the past week, Electronic Arts unleashed a virtual barrage of videogame-related news, mostly regarding upcoming releases, while I signed up for the Dawn of War II beta and posted one article each day about my experience with it.
Monday started off with the unveiling of the Achievement list for Street Fighter IV, the latest and greatest fighting game from Capcom. We're not the ones to play a game simply to fill Gamerscores with points, but some of the Achievements listed there are pretty interesting and mesh with the overall feeling of Street Fighter IV. Meanwhile, Blizzard tried to calm gamers who were fretting about the price charged for the three installments of StarCraft II. It seems that the first game, which is set to arrive in 2008, will be full priced, while the expansion campaigns for the Protoss and the Zerg will cost only a fraction of that.
On Tuesday, I discovered the joy of people dropping out of games after having beaten them to a pulp in Dawn of War II, while also discovering that the game is shaping up to be pretty good. Ubisoft also chose this day to disappoint PC gamers by telling them that no DLC for Prince of Persia would arrive on their platform. All the love goes to those playing on consoles.
Wednesday was the day when Electronic Arts infuriated a whole lot of Sims fans by saying that The Sims 3 would only be arriving on June 2, three months later than originally thought. The bad news is that EA didn't even offer an explanation or even an apology for the delay, which is hoped to increase the profile of Sims 3. Meanwhile, Andrei Dobra spent one hour with X-Blades, a very over the top hack and slash title featuring a very orange looking main character.
On Thursday, I discovered the pleasure of being pawned in Dawn of War II as I repeatedly experienced what I call the Scout Gambit. It involves Scouts, Dreadnoughts and a lot of stealth and I hate it. It also seems that those playing MMOs in Australia should try out some disguise as a classic catch-22 prevents those from being sold legally in the country.
Finally, on Friday, Valve offered details on the coming DLC for Left 4 Dead, which includes a new game mode, Versus for all the campaigns and, more importantly, a complete SDK that can be used by modders to create new campaigns for the zombie shooter. Also, we got to spend one whole hour crashing and burning in the new Ultimate box version Burnout Paradise on the PC. It seems to be much more fun than on consoles.
At the weekend, we're set to play some more Dawn of War II and Burnout and refresh ourselves for another week of gaming news set to begin next Monday.