EA and BioWare planning gratis downloadable goods for latest dark fantasy RPG a la last year's Origins, Mass Effect 2.
Electronic Arts has incentivized gamers to purchase its games new in a number of ways in the past year, with examples including beta access codes and gated online play. One of the more popular ways has been the carrot that is free downloadable content, and EA has employed it in games such as Mass Effect 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Medal of Honor.
The publisher plans to continue this strategy with BioWare's Dragon Age II. Speaking to GameSpot, an EA representative confirmed that BioWare's dark fantasy role-playing game will feature post-release add-on content in a vein similar to Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins.
Dragon Age II's getting free DLC.
With the original Dragon Age, BioWare packed in the Blood Armor chest piece, as well as The Stone Prisoner add-on with new copies of the game. The quest pack, which cost used-game purchasers $15, added a stone golem character to the player's party from the beginning of the game, unlocking numerous story options.
Mass Effect 2's Cerberus Network operated as an in-game content-delivery and news channel that was available free of charge for those who bought new copies of the game. (Those who picked up a used copy of the game could purchase access for $15.) Through it, BioWare supplemented its paid DLC with free add-ons that included new weapons, items, quests, and the Hammerhead hover tank.
Dragon Age II will be available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on March 8.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
The Apprentice Review
t’s an obvious question: why is a site like this covering The Apprentice? If you’re asking it, I can’t give you an answer that you’ll appreciate, but I’ll go for it anyway.
It’s, basically, the one reality show (perhaps outside of The Mole in the States) that we’ve ever got massively interested in, not least the various international flavours of it. And while it’s, inevitably, decreasingly about business and more about people trying to get on the telly, we’ve found ourselves writing about it for the past few years, and feel compelled to carry on.
And from the off, the writers this year (and you’re not telling us there isn’t a writer involved somewhere) have pulled a terrific wheeze, by changing the name of the main character. It thus robs us of the terribly unfunny phonetic spelling of Sralan Sugar, but we’ll try and think up something equally unwitty for Lord Sugar. Hopefully, his title will change as the years roll on. Baron Sugar? King Sugar? The end game here offers many opportunities.
The opening episode, then. It’s never particularly great. Inevitably, it has to focus on one or two people who instantly stand out as not going to last a few weeks, and generally chucks out the one who stands the least chance of gracing the cover of Heat magazine. Or the toff. Or both.
You do get Lord Sugar banging out lines in his introduction, set to be replayed 12 further times throughout the series, that surely he should have called bullshit on. “You all look good on paper”, the old growler muttered. “But so does fish and chips”. Yikes.
Still, the people here, at least the ones allowed in front of the camera for episode one, were the usual bunch of egos. “My first word wasn’t mummy, it was money!” chipped in one idiot, surely unprepared for the life of YouTube ridicule that faces him from this point on. “Everything I touch turns to sold”, piped up another. Sheesh. They should write Lord Sugar’s lines for him next year.
So then. After the women’s team decided to name themselves after, er, a failed moon mission, Team Apollo, the men came up with Synergy, the kind of bullshit word invented for Powerpoint presentations and nothing else. And with the task being sausages to sell (it was clearly a vegetarian’s special), Apollo picked Joanna as their project manager, while Synergy plumped for Dan.
It’s, basically, the one reality show (perhaps outside of The Mole in the States) that we’ve ever got massively interested in, not least the various international flavours of it. And while it’s, inevitably, decreasingly about business and more about people trying to get on the telly, we’ve found ourselves writing about it for the past few years, and feel compelled to carry on.
And from the off, the writers this year (and you’re not telling us there isn’t a writer involved somewhere) have pulled a terrific wheeze, by changing the name of the main character. It thus robs us of the terribly unfunny phonetic spelling of Sralan Sugar, but we’ll try and think up something equally unwitty for Lord Sugar. Hopefully, his title will change as the years roll on. Baron Sugar? King Sugar? The end game here offers many opportunities.
The opening episode, then. It’s never particularly great. Inevitably, it has to focus on one or two people who instantly stand out as not going to last a few weeks, and generally chucks out the one who stands the least chance of gracing the cover of Heat magazine. Or the toff. Or both.
You do get Lord Sugar banging out lines in his introduction, set to be replayed 12 further times throughout the series, that surely he should have called bullshit on. “You all look good on paper”, the old growler muttered. “But so does fish and chips”. Yikes.
Still, the people here, at least the ones allowed in front of the camera for episode one, were the usual bunch of egos. “My first word wasn’t mummy, it was money!” chipped in one idiot, surely unprepared for the life of YouTube ridicule that faces him from this point on. “Everything I touch turns to sold”, piped up another. Sheesh. They should write Lord Sugar’s lines for him next year.
So then. After the women’s team decided to name themselves after, er, a failed moon mission, Team Apollo, the men came up with Synergy, the kind of bullshit word invented for Powerpoint presentations and nothing else. And with the task being sausages to sell (it was clearly a vegetarian’s special), Apollo picked Joanna as their project manager, while Synergy plumped for Dan.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Secritariat Movie Review
The story of the most dominant racehorse of all time does not easily fit into the standard inspirational sports flick mold. Such films typically require its protagonists to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, be they competitive (Hoosiers), personal (The Natural), societal (Ali), or some combination of all three (Remember the Titans). But by all accounts, the greatest challenges to Secretariat capturing of the 1973 Triple Crown were not rival horses — indeed, Secretariat had no true rival — but a pair of slow starts and an abscess. And abscesses — apologies to dermatologists — simply aren’t all that effective as dramatic devices.
Lacking most of the vital ingredients of the traditional underdog movie formula, Disney’s Secretariat is forced to synthesize them. Its screenplay, written by Mike Rich and based rather loosely on the book Secretariat: The Making of a Champion by William Nack, adopts a conventional save-the-farm framework: When her parents pass away within months of each other, Denver housewife Penny Tweedy (Diane Lane) is advised to sell off her family’s Virginia-based Meadow Stables, a beautiful but unprofitable horse-breeding enterprise, in order to pay the onerous inheritance taxes levied by the state. But Penny, her deceased father’s hackneyed horse-inspired counsel fresh in her mind (“You’ve got to run your own race,” etc. etc.) is loath to depart with such a cherished heirloom. So she concocts a scheme just idiotic enough to work, betting the farm — literally — that her new horse, Big Red, in whom she has an almost Messianic faith, will win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont races in succession.
Of course Big Red, under the stage name Secretariat, goes on to do just that, but only after the film subjects us to nearly two hours of manufactured melodrama. Lane, grasping all-too conspicuously for awards consideration, treats every line as if it were the St. Crispin’s Day speech. Her character, Penny, exhibits a hair-trigger sensitivity to the sounds of skeptics and naysayers, bursting forth with a polite rebuke and a stern sermon for anyone who dares doubt her crusade, from the trash-talking owner of a rival horse to her annoyingly pragmatic husband (Dylan Walsh).
Lane isn’t alone in her grandiosity. The entire production reeks of it, as director Randall Wallace lines the story with fetid chunks of overwrought Oscar bait, like so many droppings in an untended stable, even using Old Testament quotations and gospel music to endow Penny’s quest with biblical significance. John Malkovich is kind enough to inject some mirth into the heavy-handed proceedings, hamming it up as Secretariat’s trainer, Lucien Laurin, a French-Canadian curmudgeon with an odd sartorial palette. It’s not enough, however, to alleviate the discomfort of witnessing the film's quasi-Sambo depiction of Secretariat’s famed groom, Eddie Sweat (Nelsan Ellis), which reaches its cringeworthy zenith when Sweat runs out to the track on the eve of the Belmont Stakes and exclaims, to no one in particular, that “Big Red done eat his breakfast this mornin’!!!” Bagger Vance would be proud. Whether or not Ellis’ portrayal of Sweat’s cadence and mannerisms is accurate (and for all I know it may well be), the character is too thinly drawn to register as anything more than an amiable, simple-minded servant.
Lacking most of the vital ingredients of the traditional underdog movie formula, Disney’s Secretariat is forced to synthesize them. Its screenplay, written by Mike Rich and based rather loosely on the book Secretariat: The Making of a Champion by William Nack, adopts a conventional save-the-farm framework: When her parents pass away within months of each other, Denver housewife Penny Tweedy (Diane Lane) is advised to sell off her family’s Virginia-based Meadow Stables, a beautiful but unprofitable horse-breeding enterprise, in order to pay the onerous inheritance taxes levied by the state. But Penny, her deceased father’s hackneyed horse-inspired counsel fresh in her mind (“You’ve got to run your own race,” etc. etc.) is loath to depart with such a cherished heirloom. So she concocts a scheme just idiotic enough to work, betting the farm — literally — that her new horse, Big Red, in whom she has an almost Messianic faith, will win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont races in succession.
Of course Big Red, under the stage name Secretariat, goes on to do just that, but only after the film subjects us to nearly two hours of manufactured melodrama. Lane, grasping all-too conspicuously for awards consideration, treats every line as if it were the St. Crispin’s Day speech. Her character, Penny, exhibits a hair-trigger sensitivity to the sounds of skeptics and naysayers, bursting forth with a polite rebuke and a stern sermon for anyone who dares doubt her crusade, from the trash-talking owner of a rival horse to her annoyingly pragmatic husband (Dylan Walsh).
Lane isn’t alone in her grandiosity. The entire production reeks of it, as director Randall Wallace lines the story with fetid chunks of overwrought Oscar bait, like so many droppings in an untended stable, even using Old Testament quotations and gospel music to endow Penny’s quest with biblical significance. John Malkovich is kind enough to inject some mirth into the heavy-handed proceedings, hamming it up as Secretariat’s trainer, Lucien Laurin, a French-Canadian curmudgeon with an odd sartorial palette. It’s not enough, however, to alleviate the discomfort of witnessing the film's quasi-Sambo depiction of Secretariat’s famed groom, Eddie Sweat (Nelsan Ellis), which reaches its cringeworthy zenith when Sweat runs out to the track on the eve of the Belmont Stakes and exclaims, to no one in particular, that “Big Red done eat his breakfast this mornin’!!!” Bagger Vance would be proud. Whether or not Ellis’ portrayal of Sweat’s cadence and mannerisms is accurate (and for all I know it may well be), the character is too thinly drawn to register as anything more than an amiable, simple-minded servant.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
New Shoes Fashion Styles
As the season changes, so do the trends in shoes and what you witness is the change that fashion undergoes. Shoes come up with the constant reinvention because of the hard work put in by top notch designers to give you the trends that will be fashion mantras of tomorrow.
When you look at the trend of boots with fringes you know that this is one trend that is going to endure far longer than a season. Therefore, investing in this pair of boots is going to be worth your while. The fringe boots are utterly fashionable to wear and will certainly keep you ahead of the curve of your friends. It seems to be everywhere, the bohemian fringe be it on the hairstyle, the jackets, handbags and now boots of course.
They look uber cool when they are put on the best of designer footwear. There are several brands that have come up with these shoes and if you are sick and tired of the ubiquitous plain leather boots and booties for winter, then here is the perfect option that you have. This is your chance to go ahead and encase your feet in warmth and elegant fashion trend.
There are some innovative shoes that have a removable fringe therein you can get two designs for the price of one. You can wear your shoes with or without the fringe. The new pair of fringed boots from Jimmy Choo is certainly a head turner. You will fall in love with not only the fringe on them but also the top cuff detailing of the star grommets. As if one layer of fringe wasn’t footcandish enough you will find two layers of fringe on these fabulous pair of shoes.
When you look at the trend of boots with fringes you know that this is one trend that is going to endure far longer than a season. Therefore, investing in this pair of boots is going to be worth your while. The fringe boots are utterly fashionable to wear and will certainly keep you ahead of the curve of your friends. It seems to be everywhere, the bohemian fringe be it on the hairstyle, the jackets, handbags and now boots of course.
They look uber cool when they are put on the best of designer footwear. There are several brands that have come up with these shoes and if you are sick and tired of the ubiquitous plain leather boots and booties for winter, then here is the perfect option that you have. This is your chance to go ahead and encase your feet in warmth and elegant fashion trend.
There are some innovative shoes that have a removable fringe therein you can get two designs for the price of one. You can wear your shoes with or without the fringe. The new pair of fringed boots from Jimmy Choo is certainly a head turner. You will fall in love with not only the fringe on them but also the top cuff detailing of the star grommets. As if one layer of fringe wasn’t footcandish enough you will find two layers of fringe on these fabulous pair of shoes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)