The view from our quarters.

Yaarrr!!! Join us from our new high seas abode maties as we talk about video games. Revel in the absurd amount of unnecessary sea-faring puns while we discuss what we’ve been playing, the news of the (past couple) weeks, and the point of video games, media, and art in general. That’s right, we get real deep down in the murky depths for this week’s discussion. So help us break in our new house boat by listening to this jaunty high seas adventure of a podcast.

News Links

I Am Alive Still Alive (how many times have you read that headline?)

Release Dates

Gamestop throws out Deus Ex OnLive Coupons; Apologizes

Gears of War 3 Gets a $30 Season Pass

3DS Redesign Rumors

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This NFL draft is too damn exciting for me to think of witty Portal 2 lines.

Boy, am I glad I haven’t bought Portal 2 yet. $35 at Kmart (360 and PS3 versions) beginning May 1st. GameStop will reportedly be offering it for $40 on the consoles and $30 for the PC beginning April 30th. Did somebody portal themselves into Kmart and GameStop’s headquarters and forge some papers?

Oh, you know what else is great. You could be enjoying some Portal 2 DLC as soon as this summer. So get out there and buy that game!

This is interesting: Valve has come out and said that “Portal 2 will probably be [our] last game with an isolated single-player experience.” Given how great Valve’s multiplayer and co-op experiences have been so far, I don’t really have a problem with that. It is sort of hard to imagine Half-Life 3 with multiplayer options, though.

And here’s the third episode of Mortal Kombat: Legacy. Johnny Cage!

Outland, a game that Ryan and I got some hands-on time with at PAX East, is now out for XBLA and PSN. For $10, you should probably get it.

Microsoft has confirmed that Hulu Plus will be coming to Xbox Live tomorrow. But if you know anything about anything, you’re paying for Netflix, not that Hulu garbage. Feel free to use Hulu Plus’ services free for the first week, though.

Is EA Sports planning a premium subscription service? Even if it is, the rumored benefits don’t sound overly enticing.

And finally, some super juicy Mass Effect 3 details. More dynamic combat with the ability “to roll, jump smaller gaps and dive into cover like Max Payne.” There’s also a new Heavy Melee class that “plays off some new melee moves — kicks, punches and a ‘SWAT turn.’” I think Renegade Shepard has found himself a new class.

Hope you enjoyed all the sorta-news. Now I need to get back to watching the wildest NFL draft I’ve ever seen!

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Thanks to a recent patch for the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2, we now know enough about the critically praised game’s final installment of post-release content to speculate wildly. What I mean by that, of course, is that we only know the name, “Arrival,” and that it’ll offer three trophies. Joystiq notes that “One of the Trophies, ‘Covert Action,’ refers to a Dr. Amanda Kenson, who was previously mentioned in a recent Cerberus Network update:

Historians and astronomers alike are abuzz tonight over a new paper published by Dr. Amanda Kenson of the University of Arcturus … ‘Only a small fraction of the mass effect relays date back 50,000 years,’ she writes, ‘The majority are far older, indicating they were created by a species predating even the Protheans.’ … What civilization could have spanned the galaxy for not thousands, but millions of years? If this were the case, we should have found mountains of evidence of their passing. Where is this species now?’”

Soo, we can pretty much just assume this deals with the Reapers and their inevitable arrival to Earth?

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More importantly, we get about ten seconds of visible gameplay here, and it looks fabulous. Maybe we’ll get enough clear footage in the next trailer to see the Frostbite 2.0 engine’s heralded destructive capabilities. But until then, content yourself with the knowledge that pre-ordering a limited edition of the game will net you the “Back to Kirkland” DLC, which contains four re-imagined Battlefield 2 maps, for free. The rest of us will just have to pay for them.

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Oh, my! It’s up to you to spend the $10 Ubisoft is asking for “The Da Vinci Disappearance” pack in order to save the beloved renaissance-man. The ensuing adventure will take place over eight missions and offer two new locations in addition to two new gameplay features. There is also a high probability of Hermeticist killing, as that’s the cult that decided to kidnap your old painter pal.

And once you’ve served up some cold justice in the single-player portion, you can take the fight to multiplayer with “one new map, four new characters and two new game modes.” Ubisoft was even kind enough to describe this portion of the add-on for us:

The new multiplayer map, Alhambra, is a lush environment set in Spain’s Albaicin of Granada and provides multileveled indoor and outdoor areas perfect for predators to lurk in the dense crowd for unsuspecting targets. The four new characters will undoubtedly be a huge hit with Assassin’s Creed fans, consisting of the Dama Rossa, the Knight, the Marquis and the Pariah. The two new gameplay modes, Escort and Assassinate, will provide a whole new gameplay experience for Brotherhood players. In Escort mode, two teams of four players compete in this team-based mode where each team must protect their VIP target or assassinate the other team’s VIP. In Assassinate mode, six to eight players are pitted against each other deathmatch style in one ten minute round.

Sort of sounds like stuff I would have assumed was already in the game, but I suppose it’ll no longer be a misinformed assumption when the new DLC releases in March!

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Finally Gets New Single Player Content [Kotaku]

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If you’re still racing the streets of Seacrest County and the cold cement of a prison cell hasn’t reformed your criminal ways yet, then you may be interested in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit‘s upcoming DLC packs.

The “Armed and Dangerous” pack starts things off with a bang on February 22nd and brings two new modes to the table. “Most Wanted” is the more ambitious of the two, pitting players in “an open-world battle where the cops are out to bust a specific racer while the racers battle to protect them, making full use of the open world, weaponry and demanding team tactics.” Sounds pretty snazzy, but I have my doubts as to how much of the open Seacrest County will actually be explored, considering how quickly most of these chases tend to end.

The mode that’s sure to end quickly, and at great human cost, is “Arms Race,” which has “every man for himself as racers use their full arsenal of weaponry on each other in ruthless races to the finish.” I’m not entirely sure how that differs from any other game modes, other than the official approval of already prevalent racer-on-racer violence.

The remaining two DLC packs, “Lamborghini Untamed” and “Porsche Untamed” release in the two weeks following “Armed and Dangerous,” respectively. Expect three new Lamborghinis, two new Porsches, and 20 new tracks between the two packs.

But before you spend your $7 on any one of the add-ons, know that you’ll have to manually download the version 1.2 patch from the Xbox Live Marketplace (PS3 owners don’t have to worry about this) first, as the 257MB update exceeds the 360′s maximum Automatic Title Update size.

NFS: Hot Pursuit getting three new DLC packs in the next three weeks [Joystiq]

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Coming as a surprise to absolutely nobody, Microsoft has revealed a second downloadable map-pack for its wildly popular Halo: Reach. According to GameSpot:

The Defiant Map Pack adds three new levels to Reach’s multiplayer mode: Condemned, Highlands, and Unearthed. Condemned is a space station level supporting 6 to 12 players, while Highlands takes the fight outside for 8- to 16-player battles in the wilderness of Reach. Finally, Unearthed is set in one of the planet’s mining operations and supports up to four players in the Firefight mode.

This very fine package of content goes on sale this March for 800 Microsoft Points ($10) and adds 150 achievement points. But the real value comes in how many hours of mind-numbing comfort it will surely afford.

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Don’t you love when publishers announce DLC packs on the day of a game’s release? I mean, they’re still putting out developer diaries for this thing! But hey, if the lighting is that gosh darn amazing then maybe just maybe you’ll be convinced to throw down your [undisclosed price] at [undisclosed time] for [undisclosed content].

Actually, I was just kidding on that last one. The “Severed” DLC pack will include two single-player missions that put you in the shoes of Dead Space: Extraction‘s Gabe Weller in his quest to save Lexine Murdock. As a rule, I’d be cautious about getting anywhere around somebody with a last name like “Murdock,” but that’s just me.

Dead Space 2′s ‘Severed’ DLC announced [GameSpot]

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In what’s essentially become par for the course, Microsoft has landed another batch of exclusive multiplayer maps for a big time (okay, maybe Homefront‘s not “big time,” but I want it to be) Military Shooter. To clarify, the 360 version of THQ’s story-driven FPS will ship with a map not available to PS3 or PC gamers. This map, titled “Suburb,” likely takes place in a suburb. But a suburb of where!?! That’s how they rope you in…anyways, in addition to that single launch map, 360 gamers will also get first crack at all DLC map-packs, as Microsoft has secured timed exclusives on those. Looks like PS3 gamers will just have to suffer everyday life while they wait for the Korean occupation to expand to their back yards.

Homefront DLC maps to debut on Xbox Live, ‘Suburb’ exclusive to Xbox [Joystiq]

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Thanks to Eurogamer, we now know of a brash and wild rogue with a sexy accent that’ll be appearing in Dragon Age II. Phew! I was worried that BioWare was only going to use stock characters.

But I suppose I shouldn’t get my hopes too high for that, as this testament to creativity is part of the “Exiled Prince” DLC, which runs for $7. Or at least that’s the going price for those of us who aren’t willing to pre-order the game’s “Signature Edition” before January 11th. Any gamers out there who take DAII as their lawfully wedded RPG for March 8th will get this DLC in addition to an in-game armory and a digital soundtrack for the same price as the regular game.

So really, this is closer to EA’s “Project $10″ program than it is to a traditional DLC add-on. The only difference is that EA is pushing things a little too far for my tastes with the pre-order requirement. Isn’t buying the game new good enough?

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