Via kotaku:

Capping off a fairly terrible fortnight of news surrounding Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward comes word this morning that Modern Warfare 2’s map pack is one of the most over-priced pieces of downloadable content we’ve ever seen.

Popping onto Xbox Live spokesman Larry Hryb’s podcast to promote Modern Warfare 2’s upcoming "Stimulus Package" map pack (which is launching first on Microsoft’s console), Infinity Ward’s Robert bowling revealed that the five maps – two of which are old maps being re-released for this game – will cost 1200 Microsoft Points.

Or, $15.

For five multiplayer maps.

Fifteen. Dollars. Or, if you’re so inclined, £10, €14, or AUD$19.

Hoo boy.

Ughh.

If you were wondering, no I’m not going to be buying this. The reasons should be as clear as glass.

FOREWORD: I’ve been meaning to write about this for quite some time, and only got the motivation to do it today. Here goes.

Paid DLC. Some people don’t have a problem with it at all, and buy it up by the boat-load. I do, and I’ve pretty much boycotted it since the whole idea came about with my 360 nearly 2 years ago. What annoys me is that, in today’s day and age, companies feel the need to hike the price up on the actual retail product in the first place with content that, honestly, should have been on the disc / download in the first place. Piracy isn’t an excuse for this (DRM is another issue I’ll moan about at a later date).

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I mean, look at it.

That’s far, far better from the old one. The old UI did it’s job but you always had a dry dick afterward. Now you can do the job AND have wet pants when you’re done.

Don’t have it yet? Go get it, tiger. Have some more screenies to masturbate over while you wait:

luaduck.co.uk is now using DISQUS for comments (all previous comments have been preserved, don’t worry!). If you aren’t already using DISQUS, you’ve got 4 options for posting:

1. Sign up for a DISQUS account.
2. Use OAUTH to sign in with your Twitter username.
3. Use OpenID to sign in.
4. Comment as a guest.

Any way works, and it’ll get a comment straight onto the site. The other benefit is that I don’t have to manually approve each comment, it’s all hooked in much better to Akismet.

Have fun!

P.S: I’ll make a blog post about the LAN I went to in a few days.

03:30 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: im so fucking drunk

03:31 – [FP] luaduck.co.uk [Falcon]: play L4D2 while stoned

03:31 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: my bday drinks tonight

03:31 – [FP] luaduck.co.uk [Falcon]: best experience ever

03:31 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: 2B of champagne, 6 pints and god knows how many shots

03:31 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: im too far gone man

03:31 – [FP] luaduck.co.uk [Falcon]: that’s perfect

03:32 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: i dont own l4d2

03:32 – [FP] luaduck.co.uk [Falcon]: in that case impulse buy while drunk

03:32 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: ok

03:32 – [FP] luaduck.co.uk [Falcon]: drunken impulse buying is the best kind

03:33 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: yeh but you know i gota ban you in the morning

03:34 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: cheers i just spent 54 quid!

03:34 – [FP] luaduck.co.uk [Falcon]: hooray

03:34 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: had to get  avp 2 as well

03:35 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: i fucking hate you

03:35 – [FP] luaduck.co.uk [Falcon]: that’s the spirit

03:35 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: you just did what gimoy has been trying to do for 3 months

03:37 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: sigh

03:37 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: DL now

03:38 – [FP] luaduck.co.uk [Falcon]: you might be the greatest winner ever to roam the planet

03:38 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: fuck off

03:38 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: you played me

03:38 – [FP] luaduck.co.uk [Falcon]: tru

03:39 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: and my drunken mind

03:39 – |H|H| Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: bastard

So I’ve had my falcon for a couple of days now, probably enough to make a review.

The Falcon is a Haptic-Feedback device designed to replace the mouse in gameplay (the idea being that you can feel your games). The control scheme can be a little wierd at times (you use the central area for precise aiming, and the edges to pan around like a joystick) but you get used to it after about ~15h playtime.

To be honest? I love the thing. You’re going to get dreadful KD ratios for the first few hours, but you’ll gradually improve as time goes on.

The Falcon retails for $199 (plus P&P + customs), but you can get a falcon with 20% off (ex. P&P + customs) with the code featured at the top of the homepage!

The bundle includes:

· 1 Novint Falcon Game Controller (Black or white)

· 1 Standard Novint Falcon Grip

· 1 Pistol Grip

· 1 USB cable

· The Orange Box Game Key (downloadable from Steam)

· Newton’s Monkey Business™ Game Pack

· Feelin’ It™: Sports Pack Game Pack

· Installation driver CD

· Download link for Penumbra Overture

· Free downloads for drivers (full game required) for Quake 4, Quake Wars, FEAR, FEAR Combat, Crysis, Prey, and DOOM 3

· 1 Power Supply

· Novint Falcon User Manual

· Novint Games Manual

So, what are you waiting for! Go buy one NOW DAMNIT

Enter code "luaduck" at checkout.
Excludes shipping fees, while stocks last.

First off, happy christmas to all. My personal list this year:

• Ton of Blu-Ray’s & DVDs (Star Trek, Night At The Museum 2, Futurama 3)
• Loads of books (NewScientist ones & Hitchhiker’s Guide 6)
• The Beatles: Rock Band (360)
• DiRT 2 Retail PC (yay online play)
• Some other stuff, including  a LAVA LAMP (trippy)

Quite a lot has changed since I last made a proper blog post. First of all, because weekly updates were getting pretty much out of control, tweet digests are now disabled, but you can still keep up-to-date with it on the widget to your right. If you want more updates than that, go follow me: http://twitter.com/luaduck

Second, I’ve been getting trackbacks quite a lot recently – the main one has been braden.black’s blog where I get lovingly mentioned. Thanks, braden!

Lastly, I’ve banned about 500 attempted spammers over the last 2 months, and they were all caught by akismet (so if you think about spamming, think again) – however, akismet has also been spam queuing legit users. If you need unblocking, throw an email my way.

Thanks!

Tweetboard is now in service (It’s over there, to the left!) – go ahead and sign in and you’ll see how awesome it is.

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Just a little something I cooked up for Shadiku.
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