There was a lot of big news this week, much of it overshadowed by the (re)launch of the SimCity brand after taking a hiatus for a decade. Eidos and Square Enix' Thief for next-generation consoles and PC was announced and the first part of the Tropes vs Women in Games goes online. However, none of those compare to the SimCity launch fiasco that lasted the entire week and has been a pang in the side of EA ever since. These stories and more in this March 9th, 2013 edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap.
Sunday
Planet Explorers Joins Steam Greenlight Create, build, explore and have fun in one of the most creative games coming out for PC.
Assassin's Creed 4 Screenshots Deep Sea Dive, Battle on Ships Ubisoft release more screenshots of the next-gen Assassin's Creed.
4Chan Awards List Mass Effect 3, Diablo 3, War Z As Worst Games Of The Year This here got people quite riled up and you'll need to check it out to see why.
Strategizer Art of Defense Amps Up RTS, Tower Defense Genre A cool new RTS-TD game that takes the bigger-is-better approach.
Apeiron Project Takes Page out of Donnie Darko Creepy rabbit and everything.
Monday
Gears of War Judgment Has Two Campaigns Because one just wasn't enough...and because the game is just a re-skin job and they could afford to do so.
Skyrim Patch 1.9 Removes Level Cap, Adds Legendary Difficulty Grow stronger my child...grow stronger!
Tecmo Koei Canadian Studio Shutting Down Because Mobile Games Didn't Sell Well, that's a bit of a piss in someone's pop can. I wonder if everyone still believes mobile gaming is the future?
Mythical Pokemon Meloetta Now Available At GameStop Well that's one way to keep GameStop in operation.
Sonic Dash Racing To iOS Sega really wants to expand Sonic with very not-so-good mobile games.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out Shadows Announced Activision has another chance at another licensed brand to churn out something noteworthy.
Crysis 3 Wii U Had to Die Says Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli keeps on running his mouth, but this time it actually sounds like it wasn't Crytek's fault.
Tuesday
Assassin's Creed 4 Story Details Announced, Additional Screenshots Released Learn more about Eddy and his pirate, sea-faring ways.
Killer Technology, MSI Announce Gaming Motherboard With Killer Ethernet Game hard or go home with some really kick butt gaming gear.
Arma 3 Alpha Access Available Via Steam Pre-Orders Get in on the game early with pre-orders.
Zombie Tycoon 2 Arrives For PS3, PS Vita April 30th A new indie title makes its way onto Sony's platforms later next month.
Age of Wushu Release Date Set For April April 10th, to be exact. You can sign up right now to get in on the beta.
Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition Skin Pack 4 Features Borderlands Characters The gang from the first Borderlands make an appearance in Minecraft on the Xbox Live Arcade.
Game Mods Get Hit With DMCA Notice From Six Strikes Policy All heil the totalitariat society of interconnected data streaming.
SimCity Now Available; Always-On DRM Causes Major Launch Day Issues If you can afford not to have a laggy crappy experience, good for you.
Tomb Raider Review: Lara Is Back And She Brought Bland Multiplayer With Her Despite the shortcomings of a shoehorned multiplayer experience, the rest of the game seems to have shaped up quite nicely.
War Dogg Brings Snoop Dog Fighting Game To Xbox 360, PS3, iOS Yeah, because obviously we haven't been getting enough rapper-based video games since Wu-Tang Clan: Shaolin Style or 50 Cent: Bulletproof.
Thief 4 Is Just Plain 'Ole Thief And it's coming to next-gen consoles. Hooray!
Dead Space 4 Has Not Been Canceled, Says EA The game they never announced isn't being canned.
Tomb Raider Caves & Cliffs DLC Coming To Xbox 360 First Well isn't this not much of a surprise. MS pays to be first...as usual.
Steam Box Prototypes To Begin Testing In A Few Months Consumer tests that is...we won't know whether they'll be ready to ship until this fall.
Mini Ninjas Dashes Onto iOS, Celebrates With Square Enix Games Sale One of the more underrated Square Enix titles makes its way onto Apple's mobile smartphones.
Torment Tides: Numenera Hits Kickstarter Goal inXile Entertainment doesn't waste a whole lot of time and manages to get their project Kickstarted rather quickly.
Subway Surfers Retains 25 Million DAUs Using Development Platform A new way to make mobile games could be the key to success.
Thursday
Lost Planet 3 Release Date Set For June Capcom follows up the good news with a brand new trailer.
EA Backtracks: Only Mobile Games Will Have Microtransactions They don't want their words twisted around and stuff anymore. Too bad for them since whatever they think they're telling their investors is the same thing that gamers will hear about...eventually.
Company of Heroes 2 Hits The Battlefield This June Despite THQ dissolving into nothingness, Relic's CoH 2 is still scheduled to launch this year.
Natural Select 2 Stolen Steam Keys Cause Trouble For Unknown Worlds Thankfully the indie dev was able to fix and recover from the issue.
Total War Designer Says Next-Gen Consoles Won't Kill PC Games Well let's hope not. It would be a shame given all the awesome exclusive PC titles inbound this year and next year.
Tropes Vs Women in Video Games Part 1 Discusses Damsels in Distress The woman who caused such a ruckus throughout 2012 has released the first part of her documentary.
Unreal Engine 4 SDK Now Available For PS4 Designers can start designing PS4 titles using the Unreal Engine 4. Get to crackin'!
SimCity Removed From Amazon Over DRM Issues Amazon has gone and done a pro-consumer thing...making up for all the fail that was ignored with Diablo III.
Dogs of War Online Hits PC Online Battle Arena Q2 A new multiplayer battle arena game is in development and planned for release later this year.
Friday
Painkiller Hell & Damnation Mod Kit Now Available Design maps, weapons, models and more for Painkiller.
DRM Makes Developers Look Greedy, Says Just Cause 2 Dev Well obviously, there's no reason for always-on...there's no benefit for consumers.
PlayStation 4 Gets Middleware Support From Geomerics Advanced lighting solutions from Geomerics will be available for PS4.
SimCity Adding Servers To Fix Launch Issues At least EA isn't sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
DayZ Standalone Latest Development Video Discusses Inventory Pathfinding Changes No longer will you need to deal with the inventory from Hades.
Battlefield 4 Announcement Coming March 26th? EA has been teasing the announcement for ages so maybe now it's finally arriving.
StarDrive Beta Launches On Steam The 4X Space Strategy game has a public beta taking place on Steam at this very moment.
Dance Central DLC Drops Final Beat This Month The final DLC before they finally call it quits for Dance Central.
EA Officially Halts SimCity Refunds; Polygon Drops Review Score Even Lower I'll just say this and then move on because there's nothing else worth saying about this other than: fail.
Saturday
PlayStation 4 To Get The Most Advance AI With Xaitment Enhanced AI and pathfinding routines will be coming to the PS4.
Richard Garriot's Shroud of the Avatar RPG Hits Kickstarter After a few missteps, the man behind Ultima makes a return to the game making space.
Xfire Celebrates 10th Anniversary With Automated Tournament Organizer Find paid-tournaments easily with the new Xfire organizer.
Daylight Unreal Engine 4 Game Gets First Screenshots Zombie Studios' next-gen game gets its first set of screenshots.
Defiance Gets DLC Season Pass Syfy and Trion has an entire season of DLC lined up for the upcoming MMO.
SimCity Refunds Denied By EA, Service Rep Threatens Origin Account Ban In an unbelievable turn of events, EA actually threatens to ban an account if they go through with a manual refund via a chargeback.
Borderlands 2 Sixth Character Teased by Gearbox Have we put the Xeno-Gate conspiracy behind us? If so, you might want to get excited for the newest Borderlands 2 character. Assuming all is forgiven with Randy Pitchford.
SimCity DRM Inspires Petition, Dragon Age 3 Boycott Oh boy, those pitchforks and torches has actually turned into a rally against the landlord. Bravo gamers, bravo.
That wraps up this edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap. We leave you here with a cool trailer for Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons for the PS3, which you can check out below.
The Holiday Sequel Talk Is At An Absolute Frenzy, And Now Kate Winslet Has Even Weighed In
After Stranger Things Season 5 Wrapped, Millie Bobby Brown, Sadie Sink And More Posted Heartfelt Tributes That Have Me Reaching For Tissues
As Julie Chrisley Seeks To Appeal Her Prison Resentencing, She Doesn’t Hold Back When Addressing A Judge
