Video Games: PC, PSP, PS3, xBox, and Wii Gaming News

So I bought SimCity – Limited Edition on Amazon for $40 after the $20 promo credit (great deal, eh!?) and tried to play it last night–it wouldn’t even let me join the tutorial. Today I tried again, with the following hilarious results. It looks like those (currently) 1,135 1-star reviews on Amazon are well deserved, despite reassurances from EA on twitter that everything is well and good:

@SimCity: We are working on the servers 24/7 – expect performance fluctuations. Our fans are our number one priority. Thank you for your patience.

First it wouldn’t let me connect to the server:

Then it lost its connection (North America East):

Then we go into the “blank loading screen, failure, retry” loop:

Finally it loads the tutorial!

Only to fail on the “click on the feedback balloon” quest, probably lost connection yet again. I’d hate to be in my real city and lose hours of play at this point … and I am only 5m in!

Trying to go back to the main screen, just blackness

Is anyone having a good experience with this at all?

How slow is your BF3 update? Mine’s coming down at nearly 2 MB/s, but the thing is huge! A whopping 4GB, there’s a few cool new things in the patch:

• Performance improvements
• Better spawn protection
• Nerf for G3 and SCAR-H 7.62mm, buffs for 9mm and p90
• Totally redone squad mechanism

Do you think Half Life: Episode Three will ever get a real Valve release date? Given their track record of releasing original games (Counterstrike, Day of Defeat, Dota [not released by them], etc) and then refurbishing them with new better versions (Counterstrike:Source, DoD2, Dota 2), it’s possible they simple cannot make an “Episode Three” of anything!

Game developer Gearbox Software shocked the PAX Penny Arcade Expo conference when they announced that they would be developing the perpetually delayed Duke Nukem’ Forever. According to the press release, the title will launch in 2011 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

2K Games and Gearbox Software announced today that forever is nearly here, as Duke Nukem Forever® will officially make its long-awaited debut for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC in calendar 2011. Duke Nukem, the interactive entertainment industry’s most irreverent and quoted character of all time, will bring his signature brand of babe-lovin’, cigar-smoking, beer-chugging and ass-kicking action as he once again saves the Earth and our babes from hordes of invading aliens.

Check out Pikimal’s visit to the DNF booth, and these reviews. Joystiq in their Duke Nukem Forever preview says “after 13 years in development, and then being pronounced dead, Gearbox has performed something of a miracle here.” The bad boys at Destructoid confess that “Duke Nukem Forever is something special indeed. Tits and pigs and kicking eyes like footballs conspire to make this a serious game of the show contender for me.” And Kotaku calls it “the king returned as if through a time machine.”

Check out this gameplay video on YouTube:

PS: did you know you can pre-order Duke Nukem Forever? Wow!

If you see a big, black screen when you start Borderlands (mine was bought via Steam), you’re probably running specs like mine and have recently upgraded your computer:

Windows 7 (win7) x64 bit
Intel i7 processor
ATI 4850 graphics card

Here’s a couple tips that got me going:

• Try adding -w 1024 -h 768 to the startup shortcut. It could be your new/old resolutions don’t match, so force it to a standard one and then change it in-game!
• Right click on the desktop shortcut, go to “compatibility” and pick Win XP SP3. Also check the “run as administrator” box.

Now try again and you should be in business!