July began with the usual PlayStation Plus freebies and the inclusion of the insanely popular Rocket League, while geeks squeaked with delight as Doctor Who joined Lego Dimensions, and no one was even slightly surprised when the Wii U version of Project CARS was cancelled.
The Rumour Mill suggested Wii U exclusive Zombi would be heading to PS4 and Xbox One (correct), and XCOM heading to Vita (still waiting for an official announcement, but almost certainly correct).
July was also a scandalous month which found Deep Silver completely dropping Yaeger from development of Dead Island 2, with no news on if anyone has taken over development since. The Konami/Kojima ruckus continued with Kojima’s name being wiped from all the Metal Gear V promotional art, and PC owners were also up in arms when their version of Batman: Arkham Knight was rather broken on launch.
The internet also got annoyed with Microsoft and Square Enix when they wouldn’t reveal when the PC and PlayStation 4 versions of Rise of the Tomb Raider would be released, and Hulk Hogan was dropped from WWE 2K16 after a video surfaced that showed him being racist.
Jim wrote an interesting feature about the death of the action-platform genre, Adam scored pun of the year his headline GAME’s Splatoon Stock Squidnapped Pre-Launch and we were introduced to the nightmare inducing Dropsy the Clown.
It turned out that the trailer didn’t represent the game at all, and Dropsy really was a lovely clown who wanted to give hugs, rather than a psychopath ready to butcher your nearest and dearest.
We reviewed The Legend Of Kay Anniversary (7/10), Godzilla (5/10), Rocket League (9/10), F1 2015 (7/10), and bull fighting game Toro, which scored a miserable 3/10. We also discovered that Disney Infinity 2.0 was almost delayed due to moths. Yes, the fluttery things that love to fly into light bulbs.
Disney Interactive’s vice president of production John Vignocchi explained:
The container ship had probably 500 of those railroad cars on them and Infinity was in there, but one of the other containers on the ship contained Asian gypsy moths.
They had to take the entire ship and put it back out to sea to do the whole fumigation of it. It was like, “Oh goodness, some of our starter packs are going to be late to certain retailers. What are we going to do? It’s Asian gypsy moths? What is an Asian gypsy moth? Do they eat babies?”
In the news, Greece held a referendum and 61% of voters backed Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras call to vote “no” on the proposed budget cuts by creditors. We also saw Iran sign an agreement to limit nuclear production so that sanctions could be lifted, the Chinese stock market collapsed, and Novak Djokovic defeated Roger Federer to claim the men’s singles title at Wimbledon.
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta was charged with several counts of corruption in a long-running investigation, whilst the UK had a more old fashioned scandal when 69 year old Lord Sewel was filmed snorting cocaine of a prostitute’s breasts whilst wearing a lacy orange bra. The media went into overdrive on that story, but who hasn’t snuffed some class A off someone’s boobs whilst wearing the latest designs from Victoria’s Secret?
Tawainese news had a field day animating the story, adding Chun Li from Street Fighter, Thomas the Tank Engine, Saddam Hussein, and the Queen, who sports a nifty jet pack and bazooka combo. What a lovely way to end the month!
Starman
That was quite a month for scandals!