After the South Korean Game Rating Board rated an alleged new Metal Gear Solid bundle titled Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection a few days back, Konami opted to not beat around the bush and confirm that the collection is indeed coming. The borderline all-encompassing collection will include the core titles Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty HD, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater HD, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD, and the Trophy-enabled version of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. If that wasn't sweet enough, they went ahead and threw in Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions and two graphic novels done by Ashley Woods. Now that's a hell of a fine way to celebrate 25 years if you ask me.
Bank of America, the runner-up to this year's Worst Company in America poll, was notorious for horrendous customer service and was even sued by the friggin' federal government. That's a pretty bad year for any company and despite their terrible performance, videogame mega-publisher EA still managed to suck in the majority of the votes (around 78 percent!) in the duel between the two. This makes it the second consecutive year that EA has been voted as America's most hated company among voters this year -- now that's just...impressive?
Each month the NPD releases information on what the top-selling games of the month are. Unfortunately, they never factor in the slowly growing digital downloadable numbers. We have to rely on and hope that a game's publisher will release the information on how well a game sold digitally and this rarely happens. Thankfully, we've gotten a nice little update on how the digital side of game sales is faring -- it's nice to know that the digital numbers aren't being completely ignored.
As soon as the trailer for the mysterious and seemingly new IP, The Phantom Pain, was revealed during last year's Spike Video Game Awards, many gamers called it a bluff and hypothesized that The Phantom Pain was actually Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain or at least another installment in the revered franchise. It was allegedly being developed by a Swedish-based developer called Moby Dick Studios and to be published by Konami. Fast forward to GDC 2013 and to the non-surprise of many, The Phantom Pain is indeed the fifth installment of Metal Gear Solid.
Telltale's The Walking Dead: The Game games snuck up on everybody and became an absolute critical darling, garnering a considerable amount of awards that included several game of the year awards. While you might say that The Walking Dead brand cancels out the game's indie cred, the gameplay screams otherwise. This isn't a first-person or third-person shooter, it's an old-school point-and-click adventure that's all about the narrative. It wants to evoke some of the darkest emotions out of the player and titles like this usually don't see the success that Telltale has seen. Fortunately, The Walking Dead isn't done infecting consumers through as many platforms as possible, adding the Playstation Vita to its arsenal.
In both the digital and retail world, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm has managed to successfully Zerg-rush a little over 1 million PC/Mac users in a 48 hour time window. Heart of the Swarm is the first expansion to StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (which managed to sell 1.5 million in the same time window), putting you in the shoes (does the Queen of Blades even wear shoes?) of Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of all things Zerg. Essentially, Kerrigan's just really pissed off at this guy Mengsk for abandoning her during a mission that took place in the first StarCraft that made her who she is now. So, naturally, all she wants to do is get even -- as in bring the millions of Zerg forces down on his head.
Is there a service out there that thrives off only 1,600 users? If there is, just know that OnLive, a game-streaming service, couldn't be anymore envious. This god-awful statistic popped up after OnLive founder and president, Steve Perlman, stepped down. Oh, and let's not forget that at least half of the staff was reportedly laid off and that OnLive supposedly filed for bankruptcy around the same time Perlman left. All of this hit the fan around August of last year, seemingly dooming OnLive yet the company still survives today, servers and all. Now, the current chairman of OnLive is saying this was all a misinterpretation.
Remember when Square-Enix Chief Technology Officer, Shinji Hashimoto, revealed at the Playstation 4 reveal that we should be excited for E3 (hell, he practically begged us to be)? That his company has another Final Fantasy game cooking away for the next-gen? Well, according to an unknown source that has allegedly leaked intel to VGLeaks, perhaps this game is actually an upcoming exclusive to the PS4 -- namely, Final Fantasy XV.
During the Black Hat security conference in Amsterdam, an attack was demonstrated on EA's infamous Origins service (think of it as the company's Steam). The fact that an estimation of 40 million accounts could be in danger is obviously alarming but what's even more distressing is how long it took to execute the attack -- it only took seconds.
Who could forget that insatiable thirst to double the speed limit after watching The Fast and the Furious back in 2001? Firebrand Games (NASCAR Unleashed) apparently has't forgotten their lust for speed. According to a listing by EB Games that has since been taken down, a tie-in game to the upcoming Fast & Furious 6 is currently in the making. The Nintendo Wii U will allegedly receive the game on May 15th, with the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 following suit on May 22nd.
