This week on Hit or Miss: Blizzard figures out how to fleece people in World of Warcraft and get away with it; Shigeru Miyamoto hints his next project may be about adorable kitties; Halo: Reach screens leak to the net and look exactly like a Halo game; and it becomes clearer than ever that Modern Warfare 2 is loading up on Juggernaut Perks, because at this point I’m pretty sure not even John McClane himself could take this unrelenting force down.
Use Real Money to Buy Digital WoW Companions
Listen. If at this point you’re still playing WoW and you’re still obsessed enough to pay real money for stupid virtual companionship, you have no one to blame for this insanity but yourself. Yourself — and I suppose also your enablers.
But if you have a lot of enablers, obviously that means no one loves you enough to bother going through the trouble to organize an intervention, and let’s be honest, that’s probably your fault too. Look at you, for cripes sake. Who could ever love a WoW addict? Especially one insane enough to pay real money for fake companionship, which sounds to me like the sort of scam you’d pull on schizophrenics?
…I’m sorry, what’s that? Half the money for one of these stupid things goes to charity, making it difficult to make fun of this? Damn. That’s some evil genius-level shit. Is it by chance a stupid fake virtual charity benefiting digital homeless?
…Make-a-Wish foundation, huh. Are you sure there isn’t anything about this that I can express smug outrage toward? No?
You win this round, Blizzard…
Cats are better than dogs. I submit this is a verifiable fact. 1) Cats purr, which is adorable. 2) They clean themselves so you don’t have to. 3) They can literally communicate that they like you. Yes, there are some dogs that can bark “I love you” — or “I rorve roo” to be more accurate — but a dog that’s been trained to do this might as well be barking “I rorve rerorists” for all it knows.
I admit that as a cat owner I’m a little biased. But I’m still happy to see Jet Moto is apparently giving kitties some attention, perhaps even in his next sure-to-be-insane-but-still-make-ass-tons-of-money project, even if he provided absolutely no details on what this project will be and he might be joking about the cat part.
Based on Miyamoto’s last few projects, though, I’m choosing to hope his next game will involve a space traveler using the power of exercise to martial an army of ravenous kittens that occasionally need to be pet through a touch screen. And if there’s a God, also Kitty Wigs.
First Halo Reach Images Leaked!
And they look…THEY LOOK…like every other Halo game! WOW!
OK, OK…yes, these are blurry images of monitors playing the game, we have no idea how early a state the game is in, and a few images tell us nothing about what the finished game will ultimately play like. But even accepting all of these qualifiers, can I really be the only one getting sick as hell of the standard Halo aesthetic?
How come a game set in space, and that can take place on any kind of planet the creators dream of, somehow always seems to predominantly occur across rocky/hilly exteriors with random grey structures or grayish/brownish interiors with winding corridors and ramps? Seriously, every Halo game has the winding corridors and ramps level.
More than anything, this just makes me hope Reach will indeed be Bungie’s last Halo game. I fear we’ve, ahem, reached (damn I’m awesome) the unavoidable realm of diminishing returns with this series, and these poor bastards have earned the right to make something other than Halo by now.
My suggestion: Get your asses back down in your dungeon and make me a new Myth game.
Modern Warfare 2 is Invincible
Seriously, holy shit. Have you been keeping up with just how much bad press Modern Warfare 2 has been getting? This week alone, a number of digital retailers announced they’re boycotting the game due to its integration of Steamworks, and in an online chat with gamers, Infinity Ward revealed the PC version’s multiplayer would be capped at 18 players and would not feature a console command, among other potential annoyances.
Meanwhile, leaked footage of a sequence where (SPOILERSSSSSSSSSS) the player takes control of a terrorist is spurring calls to ban the game in Australia, and we all already know about the dedicated server hoopla. And just what kind of irreversible damage has all this negative publicity caused for what was supposed to be the best-selling game of the year?
It caused it to shatter the record for most pre-orders ever at GameStop.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will not sugarcoat it. Modern Warfare 2 cannot be stopped. It is self-sustaining now. I’m pretty sure North Korea leader Kim Jong-il could reveal he partially helped fund this game, and it’ll still outsell the Bible. Seriously, if you don’t want to get swine flu, start wearing a cough mask made out of Modern Warfare 2.
So Nintendo of America President and Maneater Reggie Fils-Aime, I know you’re just acting out your “in your face” and “bring it on” persona when you say New Super Mario Bros. Wii will outsell Modern Warfare 2 on the 360, but this is one occasion when you should have kept your mouth shut. Because once Activision CEO Bobby Kotick uses his Modern Warfare 2 riches to install himself strongman and despot of the world, don’t be surprised if you’re one of the first to be forced into domed death battles for his arbitrary amusement.