Gamescom 2012: Days 2 and 3

It seems like most of the action at Gamescom happened on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Not much has caught my eye over the past couple of days, but there were a couple of highlights.

• Verge/Polygon: Stolen Gamescom Divinity PCs
  This is why we can't have nice things.
• Verge/Polygon: Anno Online screenshots
  As I said earlier in the week, I've never played any of the Anno games, but I'm always a fan of simulation and city-building games.
• PCGB: GTX 660 Ti Review Roundup
  Nvidia unleashed the 660 Ti yesterday, and I threw together a post after reading some reviews.
• PCGB: WoW MoP Cinematic
  Blizzard unveiled the Mists of Pandaria cinematic yesterday. I may not play WoW any more, but they do a damn good job with these things.
• PCGB: Ubisoft Dollar Game Deals
  Ubisoft released their Steam-clone Uplay platform yesterday and are trying to pimp it out by practically giving away games. HAWX 2, From Dust, Silent Hunter 5, and Driver: San Francisco are a buck apiece til Sunday with a different game on sale daily.
• Verge/Polygon: Dead Space 3 screenshots
  I still need to plow through my Steam backlog to get to Dead Space 1 and 2, so it might be 2014 until I get to this one.

Ubisoft Gamescom Daily $1 Deals

Ubisoft has some of the worst DRM known to man, but a deal is a deal. The Uplay store has a different game available for $1 each day from Thursday to Sunday to celebrate Gamescom.

• Thursday: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2
• Friday: From Dust
• Saturday: Silent Hunter 5
• Sunday: Driver: San Francisco

I picked up HAWX 2 for a buck even though it's supposedly not the best; it's always looked interesting despite the reviews and for a dollar I really don't care what anyone else thinks. I'm on the fence about From Dust, as from what I've heard it's a really interesting game marred by a terrible porting job. The Silent Hunter series is new to me and I'll probably pass on Saturday's offering. Driver: San Francisco definitely looks like the best game of the bunch - it actually has positive ratings on Metacritic - so for $1 it's a no-brainer. My OCD side hates buying games on their own individual DRM platforms outside of Steam, but if I get anything more than 10 minutes of enjoyment out of these games it'll be worth it.

Check out the deals here: http://uplay.ubi.com/en-US/events/gamescom

WoW Mists of Pandaria Cinematic

Blizzard released the Mists of Pandaria opening cinematic today at Gamescom. While I don't play WoW any more, I've got to admit that the guys at Blizzard know what they're doing when it comes to cinematics.

Mists of Pandaria will be released on September 25th.

Gamescom 2012: Day 1

Today was the official start of Gamescom, even though a bunch of stuff happened yesterday (Day 0?). Once again, Verge/Polygon has a continuously-updating news post here that is a good source for news as it happens.

A few things caught my eye today, and I'll definitely be keeping track of these games over the next few months.

• Command and Conquer goes F2P - http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/08/command-conquer-series-pivots-into-a-free-to-play-future/
  I've never played C&C, which probably makes me a terrible person. I've dabbled in RTS stuff in the past, but Starcraft 2 got me into the genre in a big way. You can sign up for the upcoming beta test here.
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon F2P - http://ghost-recon.ubi.com/ghost-recon-online/en-US/home/
  F2P shooters are almost universally terrible - the gunplay never feels right to me. Even bigger name freebies like BF:Heroes and TF2 were a letdown. I don't have a lot of faith in this one, but considering I haven't spent more than 1-2 months with a shooter since CoD4, I'm trying to remain optimistic.
• Anno Online introduces F2P game - http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/15/3244159/anno-online-announced-from-ubisoft
  Apparently today was F2P day. As with C&C, I've never played an Anno game, though I almost bought Anno 2070 during the Steam sale. I'm still extremely cautious about F2P games since most of them are more pay-to-win than free-to-play, so we'll see what happens.
• SC2: Heart of the Swarm Beta incoming - http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/15/3244544/starcraft-2-heart-of-the-swarm-beta-invites/in/3005796
  After the disaster that was Brink I swore that I'd never preorder another game, ever. I still preordered HotS. While SC2 and I have had an on-again-off-again relationship over the past couple of years, I keep coming back every few months. It's the only game on the horizon that I feel confident enough to pay full price to play.

Gamescom 2012: Day 0

Gamescom is "the world's largest trade fair and event highlight for interactive games and entertainment," according to the Gamescom website. The event runs from the 15th to the 19th.

As is the case with almost every major gaming show, a couple of companies jump the gun and have presentations a day or two early. Today sees press conferences by Capcom, EA, and Sony. Tomorrow, Activision/Treyarch show off Black Ops 2 Multiplayer, and Blizzard unveils the Mists of Pandaria opening cinematic on Thursday. Nvidia is also set to unveil the GTX 660 Ti on Thursday.

Verge/Polygon has a "StoryStream" post that they're updating live throughout the day with Gamescom information. The two updates that caught my eye so far are details about Dead Space 3 and the new SimCity. I bought both Dead Space and Dead Space 2 last year during the Amazon and Steam holiday sales, but I haven't played through either of them yet. I should probably get on that. As far as SimCity goes, I've been kind of itching to get my hands on a new SimCity game for a while now. I played the crap out of SimCity 2000 back in the early-to-mid 90's despite not really knowing what was going on since I was 9 or 10 at the time. The last SimCity game (SimCity 4) came out in 2003, which means we're ridiculously overdue for another installment - Maxis focused more on the Sims and Spore, neither of which I really got into. The big news from today revealed that there will be cross-platform play between Mac and PC and that there will be a PC beta that you can sign up for starting tomorrow. The site just started working for me a couple of minutes ago - the beta signup didn't work, but here's the link: http://www.simcity.com/en_US/beta/info

There should be a lot of interesting stuff coming in the next couple of days. Verge/Polygon has a good overview of the entire event that you can find here - stay tuned.