The Week in Review

On this week’s edition RapeLay gets a man fired, and Pokémon are revealed.

Next Call of Duty Will Have Dedicated Servers

Call of Duty: Black Ops probably isn’t going to match the sales of Modern Warfare 2, but it does have something that MewTwo doesn’t: dedicated servers. In a move certain to endear him to the PC gaming community, Treyarch boss Mark Lamia said that he couldn’t think of any reason not to include dedicated servers, saying he thought they were “excellent”. (link)

BioWare Writer Takes Shots at FFXIII

BioWare Austin writing director Daniel Ericksonn doesn’t think Final Fantasy XIII is an RPG, and he doesn’t care who knows it. In an interview with Strategy Informer he said: “You can put a ‘J’ in front of it, but [Final Fantasy XIII’s] not an RPG. You don’t make any choices, you don’t create a character, you don’t live your character… I don’t know what those are – adventure games maybe? But they’re not RPG’s.” (link)

I Choose You! Whatever You Are…

After teasing us with silhouettes, Nintendo revealed the starting Pokémon for Black & White. Known as Tsutaja, Pokabu, and Mijumaru in Japan, their names will undoubtedly get changed for the western release, and players will get to choose between a snooty tree lizard, a cheery fire bunny-pig, or a grumpy-but-adorable sea otter as they set out on their poké-adventure. Personally I’m tending towards the third option, who may or may not end up nicknamed “Otto”. (link)

Last Spartan Goes Down

After a long and valiant effort to keep it alive, Halo 2‘s multiplayer has finally been shut down for good, as the last remaining player, Apache N4SIR, was “forcefully removed” from the server at 1:58 EST on May 11. Apache thanked Bungie for creating the game, and also thanked Microsoft for its part in developing and publishing the franchise. Whatever you think of Xbox Live, it’s hard not to be a little impressed by the dedication shown by this group of die-hard fans. (link)

GameSpot Employee Fired After RapeLay Interview

GameStop employee Derek Littlejohn found himself out of work not long after he gave an interview to a college newspaper about the controversial Japanese game RapeLay. According to Littlejohn, RapeLay is just a game, and it’s pretty easy to pirate such titles if you want to, a process that he described, just in case any readers didn’t know it. So what got him fired? Well, given the context, telling the interviewer he worked at GameStop probably wasn’t the smartest move. (link)