A gigantic mess involving credit cards, unauthorized charges, chargebacks and an unresponsive company has suspended the accounts of many unwitting World of Warcraft players.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened: first, the accounts were suspended because of “a chargeback filed against the account’s past payments.” For those not in the know, that is when a credit card company forcibly returns disputed funds to a person claiming unauthorized use. But here’s the problem, neither the players were claiming the charges were unauthorized, and further, many didn’t even know they were doing business with the company that applied it, PaymentOne.
PaymentOne does provide a system that bills a user’s ISP for his or her Warcraft accounts, but those who had used it say they last did so a year ago and canceled the accounts. Nevertheless, they’re still running a negative balance with Blizzard, which suspended the accounts. At least they’re willing to take calls about resolving the situation; PaymentOne is said not to be taking calls, hanging up on people, or placing them on infinite hold. Ars Technica, which first reported the controversy, says “A quick Google search shows this isn’t the first time that allegations of fraud and unexpected charges have been leveled against the company.”
The tower defense genre (as we have said many times) is a crowded one. Add another entry to the list of tower defense games. However, this one is different. Revenge of the Titans is an RTS/TD hybrid where the enemies attack you in an entirely free-form way. Something of a cross between Harvest and traditional TD games, it has interesting features such as indirect upgrading, resource gathering, and mazing. For example, you can place batteries next to a tower to increase its damage, or a scanner to increase its range. The trailer shows off some of these features as well as the high quality of production. Definitely keep an eye on this one!
Amid accusations of “lazy developers,” id responded to the “ruckus” via its Rage-centric Twitter account today, noting that the developer is “committed to ensuring that gamers on all platforms have a great RAGE experience.” Edge’s online arm also added to the story, appending comments from Carmack saying “We expect this to be 60 hertz on every supported platform.”
Sure, developers may still be having trouble getting the best out of their PlayStation 3 versions of games—a complaint we still hear from those at the development level—but it sounds like id feels it will overcome.
The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Tekken 6 pack in the console-exclusive bonuses that will have us frantically unlocking each superfluous addition, like these overly ornate costumes for Lars Alexandersson and Zafina.
If you’re in a crap neighborhood where smash-and-grab burglaries are a problem, maybe this thing saves your 360 even if the rest of your stuff’s stolen. Chances are, you got ripped off just buying it.
This first-ever Security Kit is $29.95 worth of common stuff you can buy at a hardware store for a lot cheaper, plus one custom-fit bracket. That attaches, naturally, in the back near the fan, which is just another thing to terrorize your RRoD-paranoid mind if you don’t have a Jasper board.
It does not, of course, protect your hard drive, your $150 Tournament Edition Street Fighter stick, your full set of Rock Band instruments – you get the idea. In fact, here’s a better one: Spend the dough on renter’s insurance. Protect Your Xbox 360 with Security Kit [360Sync via Joystiq]
Novalogic‘s release of Delta Force Xtreme 2 earlier this year was the first new all new game from the action developer in several years. While the game is already available in both retail stores and via download, it looks like retailer GameStop will be shipping an extra special version of the game to stores later next month.
A new listing on the Gamestop site said that their special edition of the game will come with three exclusive multiplayer maps. It will also come with six months of “Gold” service on Novalogic’s Novaworld multiplayer online network. We are not sure exactly how much that’s worth but anything with “Gold” in the title must be good. The special edition ships to Gamestop stores on August 18.
The Nintendo DSi tour bus is hitting this weekend’s Retro in Roscoe street festival in Chicago, bringing the high-tech glory of handheld gaming to a celebration of art and antiques.
In addition to providing a bus full of playable DSi units, the press release says that the Mobile Tour bus is “interactive.” If this means they let you honk the bus’s horn, awesome. If they’re just talking about the DSi being interactive, lame.
The press release continues:
With help from on-site Nintendo ambassadors, consumers can use Nintendo DSi to take and manipulate photos, tweak sound recordings and enjoy a wide variety of games. Visitors can print their original souvenir photos on the bus or store them online and download them from home.
Wonder if and how much they’ll charge for that?
If you’re in Chicago this weekend and plan on hitting the festival, look for the DSi tour bus at Roscoe and Leavitt, near the Four Treys Car Show.
Pixus is a game all about color. A full-featured browser-based puzzle game, Pixus revolves around removing blocks of colors from the field until nothing is left. The sound is snazzy and the gameplay is simple and addicting, which makes this an excellent game to play while on a coffee or smoke break. All it requires is a computer with Flash installed.
The goal of Pixus, as stated before, is to remove blocks of color from the field by colliding them with blocks of the same color. You do this by drawing on the screen, which then sends blocks upward into the target. A block will pass through and destroy any blocks of the same color, and will be destroyed if it touches a block of a different color.
The PlayStation Portable port of LittleBigPlanet may be expanding its downloadable content offerings with the addition of “purchased levels,” as spied in the most recent playable version of the game.
Siliconera spotted the menu option during a recent playtest of the PSP game, a choice that sits alongside “story levels” and “downloaded levels.” Clearly, “purchased” and “downloaded” could easily overlap, but Sony may be setting us up for more pay-to-play content.
Not that that’s such a bad thing. There are plenty of Sackboy costumes and accessories up for sale, but little in the way of professionally created LittleBigPlanet levels. Media Molecule‘s Alex Evans recently discussed the option of selling some of that downloadable content to owners of a possible LittleBigPlanet 2, but didn’t provide much in the way of specifics.
Hey, if it means getting LBP levels on par with the Metal Gear Solid-themed releases, we’re all for it. Let’s start making better use of those Team ICO costumes, ‘kay?
Xbox Live’s “Summer of Arcade” kicked off with some serious heat, courtesy of Twisted Pixel‘s ‘Splosion Man, an original side-scrolling platformer that lets the player do one thing: explode. Or ‘splode, as they say.
That’s what our fiery hero does, blowing himself up to jump, bounce off walls, ignite exploding barrels, and turn enemies into piles of meat. Every face button on the Xbox is mapped to ‘splode, with the controller’s right bumper performing a suicidal reset, which ‘Splosion Man can use should he ever get stuck. That never happened in my playthrough of the Xbox Live Arcade game, a fast paced sprint and ‘splode escape from an underground science facility that’s an incredible 50 levels long.
Should you fire up a download of ‘Splosion Man, or is this one-mechanic pony a dud?
Loved Rapid Fire Fun:‘Splosion Man can be a thrilling roller coaster ride of chained explosions, requiring expert platforming skills, lightning quick reflexes, and many, many deaths. It can be frustrating at times, as it’s nearly impossible to know when or where one should ‘splode to make the next jump, with dangerous pools of toxic waste and hovering platforms sometimes annoyingly out of view. But Twisted Pixel transitions the player from death to rebirth in a flash, with amazingly fast reload times, lessening the pain of re-re-repeating a level.
Dynamite Presentation: The titular ‘Splosion Man is awesome to behold, a gangly matchstick of a man with a permanent grin on his flaming face. His running animation is always changing, always clearly insane, which makes just watching our heroic platform jumper a treat. Catchy music and amusing character design—enemies burst into a rain of hams and steaks—make ‘Splosion Man easy on the eyes, if ultimately a bit repetitive. There’s even a great visual pay-off/punishment for using the “Way Of The Coward,” the level-skipping option one will be presented with upon too many deaths.
Hated Hangs From The Ledge Of Greatness: And boy can ‘Splosion Man become repetitive. There’s very little variety to the game’s visual design, with the game’s 50 levels split up by a tiny collection of bosses, characters we’d much rather forget than ever revisit. The game’s brand of humor can quickly become grating, especially when one’s banging their head against a particularly tricky section—that missile launching, eye-beam firing, catchphrase spewing dullard of a boss, for example. ‘Splosion Man also suffers from some camera quirks—it pulls out too far at times and angles oddly at others—that are responsible for some eye-rolling deaths.
Like Twisted Pixel’s previous Xbox Live Arcade entry The Maw, ‘Splosion Man is a very good game that just narrowly misses the mark of greatness. It’s priced lower than what it offers, which is a very capable platformer from an increasingly impressive developer. There’s plenty of replay value here, thanks to a great multiplayer mode and time-based challenges.
With the exception of a few annoying personality quirks, ‘Splosion Man is one of the best game’s XBLA has to offer. Certainly one of the most original, even if all you do is explode.
‘Splosion Man was developed by Twisted Pixel Games, released on July 22 for Xbox Live Arcade. Retails for 800 Microsoft Points ($10 USD). Played single player game to completion, tested multiplayer.
A gigantic mess involving credit cards, unauthorized charges, chargebacks and an unresponsive company has suspended the accounts of many unwitting World of Warcraft players.
If you’re in a crap neighborhood where smash-and-grab burglaries are a problem, maybe this thing saves your 360 even if the rest of your stuff’s stolen. Chances are, you got ripped off just buying it.
