Norway Massacre Culprit blames Warcraft and Warfare
After the two attacks carried out by a militant extremist in Norway that claimed the lives of almost 100 innocent people, some retailers have removed copies of World of Warcraft and Call of Duty from their shelves for the time being. This is due to their ties to the killer’s manifesto; a 1,500 page diary in which the accused claimed that he used ‘Modern Warfare 2’ as a ‘training simulation’ and ‘World of Warcraft’ as a useful cover story to explain the attacks.
“I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game,” he wrote, under “Andrew Berwick” (an Anglicization of his Norwegian name). “It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest games this year. … I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else. I’ve still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations.”
With ‘World of Warcraft’ he claims it provided the perfect cover story for his isolation, claiming he was hooked on the game as an excuse to not even answer his phone for prolonged periods of time in plotting his terrorist attacks.
“You will be amazed on how much you can do undetected while blaming this game,” he claims. “If your planning requires you to travel, say that you are visiting one of your WoW friends, or better yet, a girl from your “guild” (who lives in another country). No further questions will be raised if you present these arguments.”
Despite this some retailers have refused to remove the games from their shelves for the individuals actions, company representatives claiming “We have never seen any research that games alone have led to such incidents,”
Diablo III Get Rich Auction House
Players of Diablo III will soon get the chance to make real money by playing the game, thanks to it’s Auction House, a new in-game feature that will allow players to buy and sell loot for not just in-game currency but for real money. This is just one of the changes coming to the next Diablo title and Battle.net.
Another change is one that requires players to be online in order to play the game, something that Blizzard claims should improve the overall multiplayer experience as well as cut down on hacks and cheating, although it does mean that if you have no internet access you cannot play the game.
Sweet Teeth
Coming soon from Grasshopper Manufacture and Suda 51, who brought you ‘No More Heroes’ is ‘Lollipop Chainsaw’, a game that centres around ‘Juliet Starling’, a blonde cheerleader who wielding a chainsaw will be facing off against hordes of zombies with her boyfriend (who just so happens to be a disembodied head) at San Romero High School where Juliet formerly cheered. Oh, and the enemy zombies are controlled by a group of rock and roll lords. Caught your attention yet?
The game looks to be a hack and slash game, much like ‘No More Heroes’, and is being scripted by James Gunn, who brought us movies such as Tromeo and Juliet, Slither and Dawn of the Dead.
No definitive release date has been announced, but we do know it’s supposed to be sometime in 2012, and that Warner Bros. International will be publishing the game outside of Japan.
Official Site: http://lollipopchainsaw.com/
3DS just got cheaper!
Earlier this week Nintendo announced that it would be dropping the price of the 3DS console from $250 to $170. If you’re one of the many people who already owns one and paid full price for it, don’t fret! Nintendo has also launched the Ambassador program to try and make up for it.
So what is the Nintendo 3DS Ambassador program? It entitles members to download 20 games from the Nintendo eShop for free. Half of these are NES games, the other half Game Boy Advance titles. So what do you need to do? You need to sign on to the eShop before August 12th when the price drop happens. With this done your system should be signed up for the program.
FF Type-0 Trailer
Final Fantasy Type-0, formerly Agito XIII has a new trailer, this one depicting gameplay and introduces many of the characters to us, good and bad. Set to be released in Japan in October this PSP release has no confirmed European or US date as of yet.
