We spend a while this morning in the Bethesda booth getting our hands on all they had on show.

After a Destructoid reader asked if the supposed release of Doom II onto the Xbox Live Marketplace was still going to happen, Destructoid probed Bethesda about it and got a rather vague but at the very least positive response.

“It’s still in the cards,” VP of Public Relations and Marketing Pete Hines told Destructoid. He continued: “[We] just can’t give you a date just yet when it will be out.”

That almost sounds like they had put this to one side and being asked about it brought it back up again. Hopefully Bethesda will get to work sharpish and release the aging title because I’d definitely buy it, if only to relive the good old days of videogaming.

It was available to play at PAX Prime last year and IGN‘s hands-on with it described it as having “aged gracefully”. Which is my pet peeve against classic videogames relieved slightly.

Typically, when a franchise does well, people are excited for anything and everything to come out about it. With      things like Star Wars, books and games that went beyond the canon established in the movies are alright, at least watchable in some serious tone.

Crossovers for videogames though, like any of the Uwe Boll Films, the Resident Evil movies, and whatever other example you can possibly throw at me would have arguably been better off not being made. This is where Bethesda’s most recent action taken with the Fallout franchise comes in.

While I really like the Fallout games, I’m not too sure how a TV show or a Movie about the series would go. Sure, it could be the next Firefly (in terms of being awesome, not getting  canceled really shortly into its run), but it could also be massively bad, like the Super Mario Bros. or anything Uwe Boll has shat out in the nature of a “videogame” movie.

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Gamasutra reported that a court has denied Fallout 3 creator Bethesda a block on the developer Interplay from working on an MMO based on the Fallout series. The original suit filed in September of this year contested Interplay’s sale of the original Fallout games, as well as delays to the online version.

Bethesda bought the Fallout franchise in 2007 from Interplay (the original developers of Fallout) and then licensed it back to Interplay to enable them create the Fallout MMO. Bethesda claim that Interplay have not kept with the obligations that were part of that deal, namely taking too long for production to start.

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Linux users typically get the short end of the stick when it comes to gaming, sometimes even more so than Mac users (unless you count the fact that they have Wine, a Windows Compatibility Layer application).  Native Ports of games are few and far between, and one of the few developers that actually seemed to care about Linux gaming in the past has decided to not port their newest game, Rage, to Linux.

As a Linux user and advocate, I find this very disheartening.  I don’t really use Linux for gaming anyway (I dual boot Fedora 10 and Windows Vista for that), it’s still nice to hear about games coming to the open-source platform, as it’s a great audience and community, and I think id is making a big mistake by not making Rage native to Linux.

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Shod-dy
-Adjective

1. Of poor quality or craft
2. Made of inferior materials
3. Full of fail

The second and most recent Fallout 3 DLC titled The Pitt has been pulled from the Xbox Live marketplace a mere day after its release. The decision was made due to many complaints of the download being full of game-breaking glitches such as freezing, mapping errors and boundary problems.

I personally have had no interaction with any Fallout DLC and so have not experienced the rage that many of the faultless gamers will have endured. The Pitt is priced at 800MS points ($10), and I for one like to have my content to be at least in a functioning form before I am charged for it. Fallout is already host to a plethora of smaller glitches, this is the last thing it needs.

The DLC is already up and ready for re-download. But if I were you, I’d wait and let other gamers be the testers. At least one Fallout wiki contributor (and, one assumes, avid Fallout fan) seems to be experiencing game freezing still.

Bethesda’s statement:

We are continuing to look into the issues people are experiencing with The Pitt for Xbox 360. As of now it looks like the file for the English version on Xbox Live was somehow corrupted. We are currently working with Microsoft to remove the existing file off of Live to prevent any further downloads. Our plan is to replace it with a new file as soon as possible. We hope to have another update for you shortly.

Via: GamesIndustry.biz

PS: One might say that The Pitt is… in the pits. Ho ho ho.

I finished Far Cry 2 last week and needed something to ease my lust for more gaming so I went and bought myself the very highly acclaimed Fallout 3. From gameplay footage and talking to friends, I got the impression it could go either way with me.

I went into the game with a (relatively) open yet cynical mind. I knew the animation would annoy me and that the RPG-ish elements might get tedious, but sadly it’s neither of these parts that is really starting to frustrate me.

It’s the bugs. Not the critters that roam the Wasteland, but the game breaking, annoying as hell, “aww crap I’m stuck in the scenery” bugs. For a game so polished in every regard, I was very, very surprised to have to be reloading my last save within literally 30 minuets of loading up the game. I went to sit my G.O.A.T. exam to determine the type of person I am (very cunningly disguised character customisation), sat down and was stuck. The test didn’t start and I wasn’t allowed to stand up.

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Oops. Just a few short days ago, Bethesda’s Pete Hines had an interview with ShackNews where he said a few things he may come to regret.

Shack News: [...] What kind of copy protection will be included on the PC version of Fallout 3?

Pete Hines: Pretty similar to what we did for Oblivion, which was–we basically don’t do any–we do the mildest form possible.

Now, not wanting to call anybody out, but it has come to light that the game is shipping with SecuROM 7, not exactly mild by any stretch. But it gets worse, as the Bethesda forums have started making some rather unnerving mutterings.

the person on the phone informed me that you have to uninstall any cd writing programs or image programs like nero, roxio, sonic, alcohol, daemon tools etc and only have the default windows cd writer on your computer…Saying that securom recognizes these as piracy tools basically. They also said if this doesn’t work then you have to contact securom yourself about the issue.

The error you get basically calls you a criminal, and Bethesda are apparently helpless to stop it. Still, at least there are instructions on how to (hopefully) fix the problem. Let’s just hope nobody notices this slight oversight in what should be an awesome gaming experience.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the situation is still rather unclear, and that nobody is complaining about the number of installs this time. It may well be the case that the only people having problems at the moment are (rightly so) people with pirated copies.

Via: reddit