News Round-up

The geek rage abates, the holiday frenzy begins, and, soon, you’ll be rocking the Beastie Boys at the bus stop — all after the break.

Hype of the Week

Dragon Age: Origins (Xbox, Playstation, PC) looks freakin’ sweet. It’s an RPG set in a D&D-like world, and brought to you by Bioware, the people who created some of the greatest RPGs of all time (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect).

The well of videos is deep.

It’s another three weeks until its release on November 3rd, but to chum the waters, Bioware has released a 300+ meg character creator.

(Is it a trend? Gearbox also released a character calculator for their upcoming RPG / shooter, Borderlands.)

Geek Rage Abates

Okay, so, as far as I can follow it… Valve, one of the world’s greatest game production companies, made a zombie-hunting game that nearly everybody adored, called Left 4 Dead (89 at Metacritic).

It was successful, and they announced a sequel (unsurprisingly, Left 4 Dead 2, in stores November 18th).

Then a small group of players — who clearly have entitlement issues — thought, ‘whoa! I just paid for the first one, and now they’ve announced a sequel! I’m getting screwed here!’ Then they started a boycott.

Time passed. There was whining like a little girl and, I’m guessing, stamping of feet. Valve did what it was going to do anyway — which was release some extra content for the original Left 4 Dead.

And now, three weeks from the release date of Left 4 Dead 2, after rewriting their original manifesto, the geeks declared victory.

Here’s the announcement of the end of their boycott, a self-proclaimed ‘indelible mark upon the future of this industry.’

Dorks.

Rock Band, Daniel Johnston come to the iPhone

Next week, EA Mobile will ship Rock Band for the iPhone and iPod Touch. 20 songs will be available at launch, including tracks from the Beastie Boys, Foo Fighters, and Motorhead. TouchArcade has a preview, a video, and a full track list. (In a related article, MSNBC says that music games are changing our relationship with music for the better.)

Hi, How are You, an iPhone game based on the work of songwriter Daniel Johnston was reviewed by the New York Times. Worth a buck, they said, but don’t pay more.

GameStop Executive Unloads $60 Million in Stock

Leonard Riggio, chairman of the board at Barnes & Noble and director at GameStop, has sold 2.3 million shares of GameStop for $60.2 million.

Could be he needed the cash.

Could be he figured out that electronic distribution will eventually kill his company. (Hi, Blockbuster!)

Riggio still has 9.1 million shares in the game retailer.

New Release of the Week

This week you can pick between the Indiana-Jones-like awesomeness of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves / PS3 (97 at Metacritic) or the tribute to heavy metal that is the Jack-Black-infused Brutal Legend / Xbox or PS3 (84 at Metacritic) .

We talked about how Uncharted 2 was causing spontaneous nerdgasms last week.

Here’s what Brutal Legend looks like:

Here’s the Eurogamer review of Brutal Legend, and here’s the G4TV review.

a $379 replica of WoW’s Frostmourne sword?

BioBreak ran this great round-up of ‘10 Examples of Extreme World of Warcraft Merchandising.’

Thanks for reading, and tell your friends! … “Geek Rage” image courtesy of debaird.