Late in the game review: inFAMOUS 2

Game title: inFAMOUS 2
Console: PS3
Developer: Sucker Punch
Release date: June 7, 2011

Americans like free games, go figure

A new report by NPD Group, a leading market research firm, states that free-to-play games are becoming wildly popular with Americans, and turning into a profit, to boot.

Assemble!

So, The Avengers is coming out in less than a month. This thing has been building since 2008 when Iron Man first came to theaters, incorporates four major comic book characters with their own origin movies, two of which already have sequels. Needless to say, I'm fairly excited.

"Family values" groups continue anti-gay campaigns against EA and BioWare

BioWare, and its owner EA Games, have been the targets of more than one email campaign by organizations that are outraged that same-sex romantic relationship are available in some of their games. In the past few years, games like the Dragon Age series, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Mass Effect 3 have had these possibilities.

ALL .com, .net and .org websites are subject to U.S. laws

The Internet is, undeniably, a global community. Anybody from anywhere all across the world can start up a website and start producing content. Well, it turns out that, even if the website is owned an operated outside of the United States, the U.S. government probably still has control over it.

UK retailers Game and Game Station refuse to stock EA titles, cancel pre-orders

You know how Gamestop is everywhere in the U.S.? It's one of the few game-only retailers out there these days. Well, in the U.K. their equivalent is a chain of stores named Game. Seriously, I've seen three of these things withing 5 miles of each other before.

Now Game and it's subsidiary, Game Station, are reportedly refusing to stock all EA game releases for at least the month of March and cancelling customers' pre-orders. That means U.K. gamers will have to look elsewhere for Tiger Woods 13, Sims 3: Showtime, and Mass Effect 3.

Schedule adjustment

Hey all, I just wanted to make this post to say that, due to scheduling conflicts, Deranged Gamer will have one-update weeks for the next two or three weeks. New posts will be on Thursdays. Come on back next Thursday to check out a new late in the game review!

Collapsing anime snow sculpture injures an elderly woman in Japan

A unnamed 61-year-old woman in Japan recently reportedly sustained small injuries when a statue of Hatsune Miku, the anime-styled Japanese pop-star, collapsed.

83-year-old woman replaces her lower jaw with a 3D-printed version

An elderly woman in Belgium has successfully had her entire lower jaw replaced with one created with a 3D printer. This is reportedly the first time something like this has been done.

Bioware to host summit with The Old Republic guild leaders

Bioware, creators of, among other things, the hit MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, plans to host a summit to discuss "the state of the game" with the players. Specifically, guild leaders.

Battlefield 3 hackers exploit the system to frame innocent gamers

Hackers. They can be a pretty common thing with online games these days. Usually, they cheat to give themselves an unfair edge against others or to get themselves extra benefits like XP. But what happens when hackers start targeting innocent players, and those players end up banned as a result? That's exactly what's been happening on the PC version of Battlefield 3 these days.

The SOPA 'splosion

As I'm sure all you tech-savvy readers are aware, last week was quite an eventful one in the age of the internet. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its counterpart the Protect IP Act (PIPA, somehow short for the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act) have taken the internet by storm. And by "storm," I mean that thing that happens right after you kick a bee hive.

Most console gamers don't pay for games

According to a recent study, the majority of console gamers don't pay for the games they play.

Diablo III may be banned in South Korea

A law in South Korea may delay Diablo III's South Korean release - it might even be banned entirely.

Google+ spreads like web-based wildfire

Google+ has been sweeping the Internet for the past two weeks, with the amount of users quickly approaching 10 million. Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com, projects that the number could grow to over 20 million this weekend. This is with the site still being in beta and membership being invite-only.