Welcome to the first Weekly Wrap-Up of the New Year. We here at BagoGames hope everyone had a great holiday season and a fantastic new year. Welcome to the Weekly Wrap-Up. Below is a brief summary, but for the full stories simply click on the hyperlink. Let us know if you agree with our top five. If you have suggestions for future Weekly Wrap-Ups, feel free to email me at jeremy.tyler@bagogames.com.
Enjoy!
Number 5
Metacritic Reveals Worst Games of 2012
Earlier this week we reported on the best games and, arguably, the console that had the best time during 2012 so it only seems fit to reveal what Metacritic rated as the games in 2012 which were terrible by any stretch of the imagination. Courtesy of Kotaku, we have the list for the six main platforms, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, PC, PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS. For a full lust of each platforms worst titles, simply follow the link in the title.
Number 4
Metacritic Reveals The Top 10 Games Of 2012
Metacritic, the online bank of review scores which mash together scores from publications across the internet to determine an average for each and every game released, have revealed the top 10 rated games of 2012 among other interesting information. The top ten games of 2012 (in regards to any platform) all received a metascore of 91-95. Upon looking at the list you may notice, some games featured twice in the top ten due to being slightly unique in their appearance/gameplay features on one platform compared to the other.
Number 3
Father Hires In-Game “Hitmen” To Try To Make Son Get A Job
Recently a story has surfaced online regarding a man named Mr. Feng who decided that instead of sending his son (who is just playing video games and not even trying to get a job) to an addiction camp of some sort or stripping him of his rights to access the internet or to his PC that he would simply hire online “hitmen” to try and stop his son playing. Mr. Feng’s son, Ziao Feng, 23, was addicted to online role playing games and achieved poor grades in school due to his gaming habits and whenever he did manage to get a job he would leave soon after due to not finding one which he enjoyed. This was after his son left a software development company after three months. Nobody knows how or where Mr. Feng found the online hitmen it is known that they would hunt Xiao Feng down on his favorite online game due to them being a much higher level than Xiao Feng.
Number 2
THQ No Longer Listed on NASDAQ Stock Exchange
After THQ filed for Bankruptcy last month and later made a deal with Clearlake Capital, the company predicted that they would be delisted from NASDAQ in the next several days. That seems to have happened over the Christmas break, as the company is now using THQIQ as their trading symbol. Gamasutra details that THQ will be trading in Over-the Counter Markets (OTC), which trade over the phone instead of on an actual trading floor, until the bankruptcy deal has been looked over and given the go ahead. While all this is going on, THQ will continue to work as normal.
Number 1
Used Game Blocker Patented by Sony
At first glance, this looks like a new, albeit slightly unwanted, feature of Sony’s next-gen console. Or, it could just be Sony patenting their ideas and hardware so that other people can’t use it without their knowing. Which is worse? At any rate, it seems like Sony filed this patent back in Sept of last year, but was only recently published for the world to see. NeoGAF caught this one, because those guys never seem to miss anything when it counts. The patent details a process in which individual games are tagged with information regarding whether or not they’ve been bought and played before. The game system itself would be able to check these tags and, should things not add-up properly (different user ID w/ a used game that’s been tagged), the game could be blocked. Potentially causing frustration, heartache and the sale of more ‘new’ games.
If you missed out on the big news items this week, you can check out our weekly podcast and get an audio update of this week’s madness from our podcasting team. Listen to us as we talk about some things seriously and a few other things not so much. We guarantee this episode will make you shake your fist at times and nod your head at others. And finally, check out The Interview with Q, hosted by Matthew Quinlan.
