February began with the return of some classic characters, namely ToeJam & Earl, and we spoke to co-creator Gregg Johnson about their return and revival. Of course, that game’s Kickstarter was just the start of development, but there’s less explanation as to why Sony told us the Powers TV series would be coming to Europe “soon”, when the show still hasn’t arrived to this day. Thankfully for racing fans, the announced Project CARS delay was only for a few weeks, and it did eventually come out later in the year.
The rumour mill suggested both Rock Band and Guitar Hero would return (correct), a new Tron game was in development (incorrect, at least so far), and that Fallout 4 would be at E3 (correct).
The Order: 1886 landed on the shelves of all good and evil video game stores this month but reviews were mixed, with our own Blair giving it a fairly respectable 7/10. One of the biggest disappointments of the year came in the form of Super Stardust Ultra, which was nothing more than a HD version of the PS3 game, whilst monsters ruled with Evolve and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate scoring 7/10 and 9/10 respectively. Meanwhile, the Battlefield Hardline beta launched on consoles and was met with excitement by some and derision by others.
The big industry news was the sale of Sony Online Entertainment, which was quickly rebranded as the Daybreak Game Company and announced that it would be developing for Xbox One as well as PlayStation 4. Sony also released a huge list of games they expected to hit the various PlayStation platforms this year including Shadow of the Beast and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. Sounds like that all worked out to plan then.
After the botched handling of the Godus Kickstarter the internet finally got the better of Peter Molyenux and he announced that he would focus on game development and never give an interview again. “I think people are just sick of hearing from me,” he said. “They’ve been sick of hearing from me for so many years now. You know, we’re done,” he told the Guardian before giving further interviews saying he was not giving any more interviews to a couple of other game sites. Still, he seems to have kept to his promise as we’ve not heard a peep from him in the last few months.
You lot were commenting like mad during February and had plenty to say when pollsters Nielsen posted the results of their survey that found the top reason for choosing PS4 over Xbox One was the resolution. Aran’s blog about Sony’s security woes also attracted a load of comments, as did Sony’s non-committal stance regarding the PlayStation Plus version of Driveclub.
In the entertainment news, American author Harper Lee had a bit of a clear out and discovered a long lost a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, Vanilla Ice was arrested for burglary in Florida, Spock died, and Madonna fell arse over tit at the Brits.
The actual news was a lot more depressing, with the so-called Islamic State and Boko Haram killing hundreds of people, a gunman shooting six people including children in Douglasville, Georgia, a swine flu epidemic in India, and huge swathes of the United States locked in an icy grip with record snow falls.
Talking of the weather, it wasn’t too bad back here in the UK during February. It was mostly dry with plenty of sunshine and the odd wintery shower up on the hills of Scotland.
In summary, February wasn’t as bad a January and at least had the decency to be quite short.
Lyts1985
Whatever happened to Blair? He just seemed to disappear over night…