Joystiq

Justin McElroy

- http://www.joystiq.com/bloggers/justin-mcelroy/

Reviews editor Justin McElroy has been writing about video games since he started reviewing them for The Herald-Dispatch when he was 12 years old. Besides Joystiq, his work has appeared in Computer Games Magazine, GamePro, Official Xbox Magazine, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, PC Gamer, The Escapist, Gamezebo, Gamers With Jobs and GameDaily.

Darkest of Days postmortem has some bright spots

by Justin McElroy { 1 day ago }

It's very easy to roundly dismiss a game that most people don't think is very good -- heck, we do it all the time. But we think before you make with the lambasting, you should have to read a postmortem article, like this one on Gamasutra from 8monkey, the developer of Darkest of Days.

Where many terrible games just appear to be rush jobs, the folks working on Darkest of Days (which hovers between a 45 and 52 on Metacritic, depending on platform) seem to be a nice enough group just doing the best with what they had (which, of course, was not enough money, time nor manpower).

A compelling postmortem isn't going to make Darkest of Days a better game (it's a long ways off from that), but maybe it'll make us all slightly nicer people.

Section 8 gets new maps on PC only

by Justin McElroy { 1 day ago }

TimeGate has announced an expansion of its multiplayer-focused shooter, Section 8, with the "Seek and Destroy Map Pack," which adds three new maps and 10 new achievements for 560

($7). Though the game is available on Xbox 360 as well, the company is only making mention of PC availability for the content at the moment.

The industry has become so skewed towards a console focus as of late, it's kind of nice to see PC players getting some exclusive love. Now, let's all be real quiet and see if we can detect the exact moment their heads explode when they hear they have to pay for it.

[Via BigDownload]

Desert Bus for Hope raises more than $132,000 for Child's Play

by Justin McElroy { 1 day ago }

After five days and 16 hours of playing the world's most boring game, the Desert Bus for Hope crew has reached its final stop for the year, bringing in a staggering $132,392.94 to benefit the Child's Play charity. With the third iteration of its annual marathon play session of "Desert Bus" -- a mini-game from the unreleased Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors -- comedy troupe LoadingReadyRun raised nearly $110,000 more than its first year. If you want to see just how brutal the experience was, you can try the game for yourself right here.

It's just the latest piece in a long line of evidence proving that a bunch of good-hearted gamers and Canadians with a brutal, masochistic streak can accomplish just about anything. Congrats, everybody.

Lucidity update adds checkpoints to address difficulty concerns

by Justin McElroy { 1 day ago }

Writing in a recent Workshop blog post, LucasArts responded to complaints that its XBLA and PC puzzle-platformer, Lucidity, can be "particularly punishing." A new update, which adds checkpoints in an effort , has been launched on PC and is set to via an update set to arrive on Xbox Live within the coming weeks. "We feel that there is so much great content in Lucidity that we want to open it up and make it more accessible for people to experience."

Listen, LucasArts, we respect what you're doing here, we do. But please, for all our sakes, be careful. Listening to the internet is a slippery slope, one that ends in everyone hurling dung and racial epithets at each other. And if you don't agree with that, you're a Nazi.

Call of Duty now a $3 billion franchise

by Justin McElroy { 1 day ago }

Activision announced this morning that, according to data garnered from the NPD, ChartTrack, GfK and internal estimates, the Call of Duty franchise has accumulated $3 billion-with-a-b in sales over its lifetime. As all but the densest among you have likely deduced, CoD was put over the top by the release of Modern Warfare 2, which moved $550 million in its first five days on sale.

For a bit of perspective, $3 billion is pretty darn close to the gross domestic product of the Kingdom of Swaziland, a comparison that's especially appropriate when you realize that 54 percent of Swazis have a Gamerscore over 20,000. ... Oh, wait, this doesn't say "a Gamerscore over 20,000," it says "access to clean water." Sorry, smudge on the page.

Snap Judgment: Serious Sam HD

by Justin McElroy { 3 days ago }

In Serious Sam, you use an increasingly powerful and ridiculous set of weaponry to blast an increasingly horrifying array of demons back to the dimension they came from. To put it another way, Serious Sam is what your grandmother imagines every video game to be.

Serious Sam: The First Encounter has just been brought into the modern era by Majesco and Devolver Digital with Serious Sam HD, on Steam today with a $20 price tag. I stepped into the beefy hero's signature T-shirt for a couple of hours to see how well the experience had held up over the years.

Gallery: Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD

Continued →

All the great Rock Bands started at Old Navy

by Justin McElroy { 3 days ago }

We can't tell you the number of times we've been packed into the mall during holiday season like angry, sweater-draped sardines and thought "This is great, but what if four people could swing plastic instruments around and warble an off-key version of 'Thunderstruck' just a few feet from us?" Finally, a retailer has stepped up to cater to our needs as Old Navy has announced it'll be putting Rock Band kiosks in 700 of its stores beginning on Black Friday.

Also, on Dec. 9 and Dec. 16, those who spend more than $25 at the store will get a free Rock Band track to take home, though we can't imagine why you'd want to play Rock Band at home when you could be playing in Old Navy.

Check out Joystiq's Black Friday Game Deals Hub or jump to a retailer guide below:

For more Black Friday coverage, check out Black Friday Deals, Cyber Monday Sales,
And other Black Friday 2009 stories today from Walletpop.com

So there's this squid in Assassin's Creed 2

by Justin McElroy { 3 days ago }

As if you needed another reason to love Assassin's Creed II, the video just below the break shows that it also contains our very favorite kind of squid: a secret squid. Apparently, staring into a pool in the last chamber of the Santa Maria Delle Visitazione for just under a minute will net you a visit from the sizable cephalopod you see in the image above.

Just as a warning, the video has a couple of instances of profanity. Why you'd want to sully such a beautiful moment is, frankly, beyond us.

[Thanks, Sean!]

Continued →

GameStop's Black Friday bundles are delectable

by Justin McElroy { 3 days ago }

First off, we just want to apologize in advance if this post is the catalyst that forces you to wake up at 3 a.m. on Friday morning. Sincerely, we're sorry. But we just thought you'd want to know that GameStop will be offering some mighty tasty console bundles from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving. For $300, you'll be able to pick up an Elite 360 with Pure, Lego Batman and your choice of Bakugan or Call of Duty 4, which is sort of like Sophie's Choice, if Sophie had to choose between eating delicious pie or a rusty folding chair. Those same three Benjamins will also net you a 120 GB PS3 Slim with LittleBigPlanet and the God of War collection.

Now, keep in mind that our friend Cheapy D says you'll probably be just as well served getting Black Friday deals from an online retailer like Amazon. We know, we normally don't trust bald people either, but you don't have to wake up before the paperboy this way. We think the choice is pretty clear.

Check out Joystiq's Black Friday Game Deals Hub or jump to a retailer guide below:

For more Black Friday coverage, check out Black Friday Deals, Cyber Monday Sales,
And other Black Friday 2009 stories today from Walletpop.com

Red Dead Redemption saddles up in April 2010

by Justin McElroy { 3 days ago }

While announcing a new trailer for upcoming western epic Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar let it slip that the game is slated to arrive in April of next year, according to Videogamer.com. That gives your wallet yet another reason to be terrified of the first third of 2010.

The latest clip of the game, dubbed "My Name is John Marston," will arrive on December 1. Allow us to give you a sneak peek:

John Marston: "I used to be bad, but now I'm good!"

Former bad guy friend: "I wish you were still bad, but you're not, so I'm gonna make you kill me!"

John Marston: "Man, it sure is dusty here!"

[Gunshots]

[Fade to black]

Undead Labs' Jeff Strain is totally into zombies

by Justin McElroy { 3 days ago }

We've already told you about Blizzard/NCsoft vet Jeff Strain's startup, Undead Labs, which is creating a zombie-centric, console-based MMO (sorry, marketing dept., we're not going to call it an MMOZ), but we haven't told you much about the game itself. Though this Eurogamer interview still provides next to no perspective on that topic, it does offer a considerable amount of insight into how much Strain thinks about zombies.

Take this gem for instance: "People are passionate about zombies ... the reason I'm talking about it is because I want zombie fans. I want the best developers in the industry that love zombies to want to work here."

Or perhaps this: "The reason zombies are so powerful and transcend fantasy is because right now they are the modern, societal guilt-free meat-puppet. We've been through the Nazi phase, we've been through the communist phase, we've been through the terrorist phase. Those were all at various times in history fair game in the gaming culture. Right now zombies are fulfilling that need for us. That no-rules, no-guilt mentality is something that people really resonate with."

So, what Strain is saying is that we used to be really angry at terrorists, but now, instead of that, we hate zombies. Will history remember how close Strain just came to inventing the zombie terrorist, the video game enemy that will someday unite the world, Wyld Stallyns-style? We suspect it will not.

GameStop 'Buy 2, Get 1 Free' used game sale starts tomorrow

by Justin McElroy { 4 days ago }

You've probably got a ton of brand new games you want to purchase, but with Christmas just around the corner, the available funds to buy things for yourself are likely dwindling. Tomorrow through Sunday, GameStop's got a helpful solution: A Buy 2, Get 1 Free sale on all used games. The sale is both in-store and online, though you'll need to use code B2G1FREE, along with SAVER to get free shipping on $25-plus orders.

Just so there's no confusion, we're not suggesting that you buy used games for yourself to save money, far from it. We just can't help but think how much extra cash you'd have left for Assassin's Creed 2 if you got everyone on your list a second-hand copy of Wheelman.

[Via CheapCollegeGamers]

Check out Joystiq's Black Friday Game Deals Hub or jump to a retailer guide below:

For more Black Friday coverage, check out Black Friday Deals, Cyber Monday Sales,
And other Black Friday 2009 stories today from Walletpop.com

Hands-on: Spawn HD-720 brings your games to you

by Justin McElroy { 4 days ago }

Now that's it's The Future, we've grown increasingly intolerant of being tied down to any specific location, even when it comes to console gaming. When you can talk on your phone and watch movies on the go, who wants to be tethered to their couches as they explore a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Nobody, that's who.

The Spawn HD-720 from Spawn Labs is designed to fulfill that promise of futuristic mobility by taking console video games and (in technical terms) squishing them inside your computer. We recently went hands-on with "Slingbox for games" to see if the future had truly arrived.

Gallery: Spawn Labs HD-720

Continued →

Help the Desert Bus for Hope at 2 p.m. EST and win terrible games

by Justin McElroy { 4 days ago }

Today at 2 p.m. EST, Joystiq's own preternatually handsome Justin McElroy will be visiting the brave men and women of the Desert Bus for Hope, and you should tune in! For starters, you'll get to watch former people who have been turned into little more than husks by extended exposure to one of the worst games ever draw strength from the timeless good looks and boundless compassion of Mr. McElroy. But, almost just as importantly, you'll also have a shot of winning a box of terrible games.

The Desert Bus team will select one person who donates here between 2 and 3 p.m. at random, and we'll send that unlucky SOB a box full of unpleasant games and other random swag. It's better than nothing but just barely. Besides, you're helping sick kids while treating your ears to a heaping dollop of everyone's favorite Thanksgiving treat: Justin McElroy. isn't that enough for you?

Rumor: Leaked video shows Mercenaries multiplayer sequel

by Justin McElroy { 4 days ago }

A leaked video that's rumored to show gameplay of a pre-production, multiplayer version of Mercenaries -- titled Mercs Inc. -- has been unearthed by Bitmob. The project is reportedly in pre-production at EALA, being created by two dozen or so of the Pandemic team that weren't let go when the studio's doors were closed last week.

The video features plenty of car-on-car and car-on-dude violence, as well as the extremely rare Triple Teabag, which hasn't been seen since the Ukranian Ice Hurling team's dramatic win over Poland in the 1906 Winter Olympics. It must be seen to be believed, and you can do just that right after the break.

Continued →