Week in Review: Gaming News

March 30, 2010 - By Erin Stuelke

All I have to say is a lot of stuff happened last week in the gaming world. I had so many news stories to choose from, that I didn’t know where to start. I picked a few I was interested in, a few I thought were silly or fun and a few that seem important for all gamers out there. Hopefully there’s at least one thing worth getting you in the gaming mood.

But first, a moment of silence. Voice actor Robert Culp died last week at the age of 79. He voiced character of Dr. Breen in Valve’s Half-Life 2.

As far as everything else that’s been going on, take a peek peek after the break.

EA Doing Away with DRM? Say it ain’t so! Okay, it ain’t so. The Escapist’s Andy Chalk does a great job at explaining why it actually isn’t so, even though EA emphatically says, “First thing to be clear about, Command & Conquer 4 has NO DRM. Zip, zero, zilch, none.” Unfortunately, he has a different definition of DRM than we gamers do.
But at least Ubisoft is apologizing for their DRM. It appears they’re trying to make up for their Assassin’s Creed 2 DRM nightmare by offering free games to those players affected.
In better news, another Persona JRPG in the works! This bit of news is near and dear to my heart. I am a big fan of the Shin Megami Tensei Japanese RPG series and now developer Atlus is making preparations for the fifth installment of the Persona series. If you’ve never played any Persona games, do it now. I’ll wait.

Nintendo Goes 3D…3DS, that is. And they’re planning on demoing the new handheld at this year’s E3 in June. James Cameron goes 3D and now everyone’s doing it!
Star Trek: Online updated. And it’s cheaper until April 2nd. Have you been hesitant to try out Star Trek: Online because of mixed reviews? Well, it’s been updated and you can now purchase it on Steam for 33% less. Some of the new features include new lifetime subscriber perks, PvP updates, new “Off-Duty” casual attire as well as new haircuts, a new Klingon ship and more…
Start making your BlizzCon plans! Blizzard announced its upcoming 2010 BlizzCon set for October. Get ready for lots of WoW cosplay, developer panels, hands-on gaming, tournaments, and a lot more not-yet-announced fun.
Casual “gaming” game cards? Zynga, maker of FarmVille and Mafia Wars, started offering game cards for sale at retail stores like GameStop. But…those “games” are free, right? Yes, but now you can purchase online currency to buy extras not normally (or easily) attainable by the non-paying player. (Yes, I put “gaming” and “games” in quotes. Yes, I used to play Zynga games. I just can’t consider them real games no matter how hard I try. However, here‘s an interesting article on why the gaming industry should embrace games like FarmVille.)
Just one more reason to stop buying from GameStop. Just as much as I can’t consider Zynga games real games, I give GameStop second chances. But more and more news keeps floating around about their shady business practices. The most recent of which is a lawsuit against the game retailer’s deceptive advertising of free DLC content with used games, when the publishers, in reality, require an extra fee for the DLC content if the game is used.