The Evening Report, February 22, 2013: The Witness PS4 Exclusivity, Dead Space 3 DLC and Jimmy Fallon’s Killzone: Shadow Fall Fail

The Evening Report, February 22, 2013: The Witness PS4 Exclusivity, Dead Space 3 DLC and Jimmy Fallon’s Killzone: Shadow Fall Fail

Jimmy Fallon Sucks at Killzone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rGlu3e9kdks

Whatever you think of Jimmy Fallon (I personally don’t care for him) you must admit it’s great the way he shows off video games to a mainstream audience without a hint of derision.

What is worth deriding, however, is his actual skill with those games. I’m not sure if Fallon ever had any sort of “street cred” with the hardcore game-playing crowd, but if ever he did it’s surely gone now.

[Source: Game Informer]

Dead Space 3 Get Dee-Ell-See

dead space 3

We’ve known for a little while now that Dead Space 3 would be seeing new content next month. However, those eagle-eyed kids over at Joystiq noticed a tweet on the official Dead Space Twitter account claiming a March 3rd release date.

The tweet has since been deleted, and when pressed for further information Joystiq was told EA had “not announced a specific release date in March for Dead Space 3 Awakened.” That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not coming in the first week of March. It could, in fact, just mean someone with access to the Twitter feed has a set of itchy keyboard fingers.

[Source: Joystiq]

Jonathon Blow Explains The Witness’ PS4 Exclusivity

Braid creator Jonathon Blow went a long way towards explaining the PlayStation 4 exclusivity of his new game, The Witness.

First, “exclusivity” in this case is a rather relative term. The game will be a timed, console exclusive for the PS4. That means there’s nothing stopping Blow and the gang from releasing the game simultaneously for Sony’s console, PC and mobile devices, simply that you wont’ be seeing it on the Wii U or whatever-the-next-Xbox-is-called around the same time.

Also, it seems that no money actually changed hands between Blow and Sony. The exclusivity was the result of a small team only having the time to make the game for one system at a time and a healthy relationship with Sony leading up to the announcement of the new console.

The part that really sticks out about the developer’s post, however, is the way he talks about Microsoft. According to him, he’s heard absolutely nothing about the new Xbox that hasn’t been leaked to the internet through the media. One would think the man partially responsible for legitimizing Xbox Live Arcade would be privy to something by now.

[Source: The Witness official website]

Steve’s Game of the Week

I had significant doubts about Fire Emblem: Awakening when I first started playing it. I still do, in fact. The game does an absolutely comical job of explaining to you why the franchise is so special.

Thankfully — for both the game’s sake and mine — the lovely hordes of Twitter were there to pick up the slack. Once things like character relationships, class changes, stat inheritance and second tier characters were explained to me I found myself falling quietly in love with the game.

the relationship aspect is doing a decent job of scratching my long-untended Persona itch, even though the story is a bunch of ineffectual fantasy nonsense. I’m still not totally sold on the automatic counter system, but now that the story has thrown more ranged units my way I’m beginning to understand how it factors into strategy.

My main complaint right now is that the difficulty has leveled off pretty drastically. I seem to only feel a real challenge when cutting down each baddie in one hit gets so dull that I push my units too far ahead. I actually find myself missing the one-wrong-step-and-you’re-dead tension from the earlier encounters.

In retrospect, it actually sounds like I’m pretty down on the game. I’m not. It’s gorgeous, reasonably deep and the relationship aspect is like water to a man dying of thirst. It’s a shame Fire Emblem games seem perpetually difficult to find in the West, or I’d likely go back and play some of the earlier entries.