Nofuture.org.uk

I last played DMC4 over 2 years ago, but having now cut back on the number of new games I buy due to exploitative DLC practices I’m returning to the world of Dante & Nero to finish what I started; and it’s not easy going so far. When I left I was hacking and slashing merrily through mission 6 on Son of Sparda difficulty, when I got back into the game yesterday I couldn’t even work out how to use the Exceed Gauge without a helping hand from the internet.

Written walkthrough at Mahalo

• Mission 01: Birds of a Feather
• Mission 02: La Porte De L’Enfer
• Mission 03: Fortuna Castle
• Mission 04: Cold Blooded
• Mission 05: Trisagion
• Mission 06: Resurrection
• Mission 07: The She-Viper
• Mission 08: Profession of Faith
• Mission 09: For You
• Mission 10: Wrapped in Glory
• Mission 11: The Ninth Circle
• Mission 12: A New Beginning
• Mission 13: The Devil Returns
• Mission 14: The Forest of Ruin
• Mission 15: Fortuna Castle
• Mission 16: Inferno
• Mission 17: Adagio For Strings
• Mission 18: The Destroyer
• Mission 19: The Successor
• Mission 20: La Vita Nuova
• Secret Missions

Son of Sparda Walkthrough on YouTube

I really wish this was how it went down, rather than another company taking advantage of the increasingly retarded buying habits of gamers. I don’t mind that the idiots are being swindled out their money with these extortionate prices, however occasionally there’s content that I’d like to buy if the prices weren’t so unreasonable, and their idiocy is keeping the prices too high for me to justify.

Take the Modern Warfare Stimulus Package; £10 for 5 maps, the entire game was available for £26 from the Supermarkets when first released. Even at the full retail price of £40 it’s impossible to justify the £15 price tag. Of course you don’t need to look much further than the Xbox Avatar Marketplace for conclusive proof of the insanity of DLC pricing. £7 to equip your Avatar with a Lightsaber and the Dark Lord Armour. It’s no wonder that Avatar Rewards are nearly non-existent

I can just imagine the scene at home that led to this post on the Xbox.com forums:

Son: Dad, I was banned from Xbox Live.
Father: Why, what did you do?
Son: Nuffin’, they didn’t even tell me what it was for!
Father: Right, I’ll sort them out. Don’t you worry

Not many father’s (I presume it’s the father anyway) get to hear the words “Your son was exposing himself on camera in Uno” I’d bet, and can you imagine the awkwardness at home afterward. To tell mum, or not to tell mum

2K Games Announces XCOM® – Suspense and Mystery-Filled First-Person Shooter from Creators of BioShock® 2

Award-winning developers set their sights on re-imagining the suspense, tension and fear of one of gaming’s most beloved franchises only on Xbox 360 and Windows PC

New York, NY – April 14, 2010– 2K Games announced today that XCOM®,the re-imagining of one of gaming’s most storied and beloved franchises,is currently in development at 2K Marin, the studio behind the multi-million unit selling BioShock® 2.Currently in development exclusively for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows PC, XCOM combines the strategic core of the groundbreaking franchise with a suspense-filled narrative and distills it into a tense and unique first-person shooter experience.

…

Just wait a god-damned minute. Did I read that right? XCOM. First. Person. Shooter. Nerf Now has it spot on!

Assessments

When you begin assessing a player (0% assessed), the game generates two values:

• An initial offset, which can be +/-40 PA from the player’s actual Potential Ability (on a scale of 1-200).
• A final offset, which can +/- up to 40PA, depending on the manager’s Judging Potential level.

Assessment Offset

• With NO Judging Potential skill, your final offset can be +/- 40PA.
• With JP1, it can be up to +/- 37 (92.5% of 40, 7.5% more accurate)
• With JP2, it can be up to +/- 34 (85% of 40, 15% more accurate)
• With JP3, it can be up to +/- 31 (77.5% of 40, 22.5% more accurate)
• With JP4, it can be up to +/- 25 (62.5% of 40, 37.5% more accurate)
• With JP5, it can be up to +/- 10 (25% of 40, 75% more accurate)

Partial Assessments

• At 0% assessed, you see the rough offset.
• At 25% assessed, you see the value 25% of the way between the two offsets.
• At 50% assessed, you see the value 50% of the way between the two.
• At 100% assessed, you see the final offset.

What we don’t know is how the assessed PA maps into the 1-5 scale seen in game.

I calculate the break even points for the learning skills as:

• level 1: 400k points learned ~ 10 days learning to have more points in the category than if you hadn’t learned anything
• level 1-2: 610k points learned ~ 16 days learning to have more points in the category than if you had only learned level 1
• level 1-3: 960k points learned ~ 24 days learning to have more points in the category than if you had only learned level 1 & 2 only
• level 1-4: 2.6m points learned ~ 65 days learning to have more points in the category than if you had only learned level 1,2 & 3
• level 1-5: 4m points learned ~ 90 days learning to have more points in the category than if you had only learned level 1,2,3 & 4

As long as you’re planning to stay in the game long term, the best way to catch up with everyone is to work out how many points you plan to spend in a category and invest in the relevant level of the learning skill on day 1. All the number

MCV today released the results of a survey into salaries in the gaming industry. Perhaps naively I figured there’d be big money in developing video-games, however I got a surprise when I read that the average salary for those working in development is only £31,964. I know my work isn’t directly comparable to the gaming industry, but at the end of the day it’s the same skill set, and the final deliverable is still a piece of software — so I’m officially better than average, and a bit less disgruntled about my own job despite no meaningful pay rise for the past 2 years.

Depressingly, people in “marketing and publishing” reported that they earned £12,500 more, on average, than those in development jobs — I’m definitely in the wrong profession.

Good marketing doesn’t make a good product, but that’s the world we live in — style over substance. Why invest in making something of such high quality that people will want it when it’s easier to convince people they want it through marketing. Just take a look at all the biggest selling products these days – Wii, iPod, X-Factor winners — perfect examples of style over substance!

This is one of the funniest sketches I have ever seen, be that on TV, YouTube or on stage. It’s content like this that justifies the existence of the crap that makes up the other 99% of YouTube – CollegeHumor.com:The Tetris God

msxbox-world have an excellent guide to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on their forums. It’s come in very handy helping me pick up the harder to find Holocrons in the game. Also, there’s some video walkthroughs available on RoosterTeeth — If a picture is worth a thousand words then these Achievement Hunter videos must be worth at least £12.99:

• Level 1
• Level 2
• Level 3
• Levels 4 & 5
• Level 6
• Levels 7
• Level 8
• Level 9

I spent a lot of time playing Team Fortress 2 over the Summer, however I think Valve missed a trick not licensing A. A. Milne’s Pooh for this game as illustrated by this comic from F@nboy$: