File this one under cool and unexpected news…
Apparently Konami has chosen "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" by They Might Be Giants to be included in the latest Dance Dance Revolution title, set to be released on the 15th for the XBox.
The video is also included. That should make for some interesting dancing.
This probably won’t receive a lot of attention, because Valve has already received more than enough over the past two years. But, there is an important question raised in the wake of the somewhat disappointing announcement.
The question isn’t "Well, what did you expect?" Valve has a reputation to live up to, sure.
At stake here is the idea of episodic content for Source that Valve proposed shortly after the launch of Half-Life 2. The notion was that an episode would take perhaps three or four months to produce, and would be followed by another in a short time span. This isn’t going to happen. We might be seeing the first SiN episode pop up by Christmastime, but Valve is holding on to Aftermath very tightly.
On the other hand, this is Valve we’re talking about. Come next spring, we will have an incredibly polished first episode to look forward to. Valve understands the value of impression, and Valve certainly has never let us down there. After all, we are all witness to what an extra year contributed to HL2.
I hope we don’t see a lot of fuss made over this minor delay. Yes, Valve will do what it feels is best for its product. We cannot do anything to influence this. The least we can do is not attack them; Valve has never known a commercial failure, but they may be the most loved and hated game developer operating today.
I got my preorder of F.E.A.R. a couple weeks ago, and have spent some quality time with it. I loved it, and am very happy to see the positive reviews that are still popping up here and there.
I decided to hold off on picking up Quake 4 until the prices settle a bit. The reviews are mixed and for some reason the hype wasn’t very strong with this title. Despite the lukewarm acceptance of the game, I will be picking it up eventually as I am a Quake fan deep down in there somewhere.
Today the F.E.A.R. multiplayer demo was released. I took some time to play it, and was very impressed. It plays great and the graphics are quite nice as well. Sometime I’ll do a more in-depth analysis, but that time is not now. I liked it.
In fact, I’ve preordered the director’s cut version. It will be mine!
It’s hilarious because I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a real game or what.