‘Killzone: Shadow Fall’ Lets You Kill Helghast Your Way

To this point, the Killzone games have been as blunt as their title; go in, blast the Helghast, repeat. As a result, they've been easy to dismiss if you like a bit more strategy in your bullet-spraying. Something Sony has taken personally, apparently, since now you can pretty much kill the way you want to.

At least that's the thrust of this fifteen minute video, showing four different approaches to missions, from the meatheaded "charge in with a shotgun" to the elegant "surprise them with a silenced weapon." It's actually surprisingly appealing how well these levels are laid out, but see for yourself...

One touch that's undeniably great is being able to mix and match approaches as needed, or as you feel like. Want to blow up some walls and kill your targets through the drywall? You can, even if this does raise the question of why we have intergalactic travel and are sticking with gypsum as a construction material. Want to sneak around like the specter of death? That works too.

True, it's not particularly ground-breaking overall; it actually comes off a bit like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and the slo-mo button and the X-ray vision tropes are getting a little stale. But it's nice to see a series at least make an effort to shake things up instead of just essentially being a rail shooter. It'll be interesting to see how other franchises approach the new hardware as we get closer to the "launch window" for both consoles.

The BastardCast vs. Bad Van Damme, Bad Playstation Plans and, General Badassery

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This week on The Bastardcast, Jason and Jeremy trick Badass Digest’s Evan Saathoff into coming on the show and then they talk about Universal Soldier, the best and worst of Jean-Claude Van Damme‘s time on this earth.

Also on the show: Nic Cage bought a pyramid for which to die in, Mark Hamill is going to talk to somebody official about being in Star Wars someday, Kevin Smith wants to teach stoners how to read, and Batman is more hazardous to young boys than a [insert stock catholicism joke here]

Jason and Jeremy also try to form words about the unholy joining of Michael Bay and Megan Fox for a movie about Turtles that may be Teenage Ninjas and Sony’s big invisible video game system is revealed… we think.

The Bastardcast: We’d eat a person if the circumstances demanded it.

The PC Master Race Is Hilariously Offended Over ‘Diablo III’ Coming To Consoles

Diablo III did not do well in our reviews. But the fact that it’s coming to PS3 and PS4 is a pretty big deal, making Blizzard yet another company that de facto treats the PC as another console platform.

You’d think, of course, that being available as a PC exclusive for coming up on a year now, PC gamers would be satisfied.

You’d be wrong.

Kotaku excerpts a now sadly-deleted conspiracy theory from a Battle.Net forum member that Diablo III was, like, totally meant for consoles from the start, you guys. And it’s simultaneously funny and kind of sad, watching angry Diablo fans pile up to roar about how it’s not fair that, uh, er, PS3 owners will get to pay $60 to play a year old game using a control method it wasn’t designed for. We’ve included a few rebuttals.

Diablo 3 was setup to be a console game.

The reason only 4 players are allowed into a game is for 4 controllers.

Honestly, if this game actually has four-player local multiplayer, that would be a great thing. We rank it roughly as likely as Kate Upton asking any of the Gamma Squad crew out for burgers.

The reason the quests make you walk in a linear closed circuit as opposed to big open worlds, is to keep your buds next to you on the same screen.

Oh, yeah, because Diablo III presents such vivid graphical challenges. Come on, guy, it looks good but it doesn’t look THAT good.

The reason for no skill points or complicated number crunching? To make console players happy.

Yeah, console players hate number crunching, especially those Final Fantasy jocks. Notice that an ongoing theme here is that console players are stupid.

The reason you have 4-5 skills on your bar at once? Very easy to use an Xbox/Ps3 controller to use skills.

This actually we think he has a point. We’re skeptical that this was always the intent, but it does line up pretty well.

The reason no runes / complicated item mechanics exists. Simply wouldn’t be fun for console gamers.

Or, you know, Blizzard wants you to sell crap at the Real Money Auction House. But a for-profit company? Wanting to make money? That’s cah-ray-zee!

The reason you can’t host a named game? Auto join for console users.

Again, he has a point here, although we suspect Blizzard had different reasons for this. Namely if somebody decided to name their game “C***F**” or something, Blizzard would have to shut down the entire game down.

The reason for achievements in game? It’s popular among console / COD fans.

I know somebody who doesn’t use Steam!

The reason for passive skills? Perks like Call of Duty uses. Everyone unlocks perks and uses their favorite ones.

Having played the game, this isn’t console-specific. It’s pretty clearly a gameplay choice designed to make the game more accessible.

PC gamers are just beta testing for the console release so it wont be full of bugs. That’s how ActiBlizz intends to make the real money.

First of all, PC development and console development are… slightly different. Secondly, Diablo III sold 12 million copies on PC alone. That’s $720 million retail before you factor in the Real Money Auction House. More to the point, those are big numbers for any game. If you look on a console by console basis, moving five million copies on any one platform is usually enough to get you into the top twenty best sellers of all time. Call of Duty sells twenty million or so, but that’s across all platforms. By any reasonable standard, Diablo is potentially a much bigger franchise.

Don’t get us wrong: Diablo III for consoles was pretty obviously in the cards, because Blizzard likes money, and the way modern-day game development works, the more platforms you put a game on, the more money you make. There’s an excellent reason the PS4 is, in the broad strokes, a gaming PC in terms of specs, and by all accounts, the Next Xbox is similar: It will save third parties on development costs because they can make the game for PC, then tune it to the consoles.

But it also seems unlikely this was the plan from the start. While there’s a lot that’s terrible about Diablo III, mostly with its abusive always-on DRM policy and oddly out-of-touch handling of its community, it is first and foremost a game built around the mouse.

Honestly, to make the game remotely playable on consoles, and it seems unlikely this won’t be headed to the Xbox 360, Blizzard is going to have to engage in major changes. We’ll be curious to see what those are.

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