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Remember Braid? Well, the developer Johnathan Blow has been working for a while on the follow up, known as "The Witness." This game fell completely out of my awareness until today, mainly because the review embargo is over. And if early reviews are anything to go by, it looks like we may have an early GOTY contender.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/42ls5x/the_witness_review_thread/
 
yourbeliefs said:
Remember Braid? Well, the developer Johnathan Blow has been working for a while on the follow up, known as "The Witness." This game fell completely out of my awareness until today, mainly because the review embargo is over. And if early reviews are anything to go by, it looks like we may have an early GOTY contender.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/42ls5x/the_witness_review_thread/
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Yeah, I completely forgot about this. It's not often that an indie game is announced so far before release unless the announcement is in the form of a Kickstarter campaign. I am looking forward to checking this out when it gets discounted though.
 
Microsoft refunds dad over $8,000 for 17-year-old son's Xbox binge

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-refunds-dad-over-8000-for-17-year-old-sons-xbox-binge

We've all heard the horror stories where parents are charged ridiculous sums of money because their young child has been lured into buying an in-game purchase, but it's rare we hear of this mistake being made by a 17-year-old. The spree cost his dad over $8,000 after in-game purchases had been made on the Xbox.

Lance Perkins, father of the son who made the purchases, was billed just two days before Christmas, with a total of $7,625.88 being spent on in-game purchases for FIFA's football (soccer) games. Later, Perkins noticed more Xbox charges, bringing the total amount spent to $8,206.43. Thankfully for him, Microsoft decided to refund him the charges this week.

Initially, Microsoft had no intentions of paying the bill, but after Lance Perkins got in touch via e-mail, and explained that his 17-year-old son was still a minor, Microsoft decided to look into the situation further.

Perkins explained to CBC who initially reported on the news that there "will never be another Xbox system - or any gaming system - in my home." He later got back in touch with the news outlet to say that he thanks Microsoft for deciding to refund the bill.

This incident once again highlights that companies are not doing enough to protect consumers. As it stands with most services - not just in-game purchases - all that is needed to make purchases is a persons card number and security number (on the back of the card), which offers almost no protection as these details can be copied down for later use.

Source: The Inquirer via CBC
 
Kudos to MS for doing the refund. But doesn't the Xbox have any way of password protecting transactions? I live alone and no one else has access to my gaming systems, but as a precaution, in the event of theft or hack, I have it set up that a password is required for any transaction in the PS Store, either via the PC browser or through one of my devices.
 
Zookster said:
Kudos to MS for doing the refund. But doesn't the Xbox have any way of password protecting transactions? I live alone and no one else has access to my gaming systems, but as a precaution, in the event of theft or hack, I have it set up that a password is required for any transaction in the PS Store, either via the PC browser or through one of my devices.
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There are extremely detailed account settings and parental controls that could have prevented this from happening. From what I have seen these kinds of settings have much more available options on Xbox One than PS4.

The problem is that a typical parent who is buying this for a kid may have never had their own game console or if they did it could have been long before the days of buying stuff over the internet. They can easily get their kid a console and then never interact with it themselves so the kid is free to choose all their own settings. They might not know about all the account settings that are available to them even if they do interact with the console.

The point is that the tools are there but the parents might not know how to use them. That or they may think it isn't necessary for them to put those tools into use because they think their 17 year old son is smart enough to not rack up $8,000.00 in FIFA microtransactions.
 
Zookster said:
Kudos to MS for doing the refund. But doesn't the Xbox have any way of password protecting transactions? I live alone and no one else has access to my gaming systems, but as a precaution, in the event of theft or hack, I have it set up that a password is required for any transaction in the PS Store, either via the PC browser or through one of my devices.
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Yes it does: http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/security/prevent-unauthorized-purchases

Of course, if you know the password(s), then it's a moot point. And also nowadays the kids know the systems better than the parents usually.
 
I'm not a parent, but it seems to me that with all the other devices and apps out there that ask for a credit card number, any parent should know that there is a definite possibility their unsupervised kid would easily run up charges, either intentionally or unintentionally, if they don't take proper precautions. I would be surprised if this is the first time the kid ran up charges without permission.
 
yourbeliefs said:
The new Homefront is coming 5/17 (just in time for my daughter's birthday!) to PC/One/PS4, but Xbox One owners get access to a closed Beta last month.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/1/12/10752330/homefront-2-release-date

Sign up for beta here (looks like the site crashed but keep trying.)

https://www.homefront-game.com/age
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king3pj said:
I am looking forward to this game even though I never played the original. The setting just looked cool from the trailers. I'm not really interested in the multiplayer aspect but I suppose I will sign up for the beta anyways. It never hurts to have access in case I end up wanting to try it for some reason.

Edit: The release date is the day before my birthday too.
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I received my code for the closed beta today. Apparently the real beta doesn't start until February 11th but they sent out some invites early to stress test the servers this Friday night. If anyone else with access is interested in playing together let me know.

I should also note that this beta code was in my spam folder. I just happened to check it today and saw that my code was in there. Just something to keep in mind if you signed up but haven't received a code.
 
Looks like I forgot to sign up. Oh well. Honestly I'm on a wait and see mode. I'm not really sure why there's so much anticipation for this game. I mean the original wasn't exactly a diamond in the rough. It didn't do well for a very good reason, because it wasn't very good. I mean I've played worse games in my life, but hopefully Crytek (or whoever is making the game now) will just scrap everything from the original and make some more compelling.
 
yourbeliefs said:
Looks like I forgot to sign up. Oh well. Honestly I'm on a wait and see mode. I'm not really sure why there's so much anticipation for this game. I mean the original wasn't exactly a diamond in the rough. It didn't do well for a very good reason, because it wasn't very good. I mean I've played worse games in my life, but hopefully Crytek (or whoever is making the game now) will just scrap everything from the original and make some more compelling.
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Yeah. Like I said, I never played the original. I have read Steam reviews when it was on sale and saw that it was only about 3 hours long and not very good though. I gotta say, I would not be very happy if I spent $60 for a game that wasn't as long as a Lord of the Rings movie.

Still, the setting looks interesting and I would play it if it gets good reviews. It's not one of my most anticipated games or anything but I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out. That's part of the reason I wanted into the beta but since the multiplayer aspect is the part I'm least interested in it probably won't be that helpful.
 
It didn't help that the story was basically crap as well. The idea that the Koreas united and became some sort of global superpower that could cripple the USA and its allies is just a joke. I realize with games that you need to suspend disbelief a bit, but come on. Don't insult our intelligence here. It's almost as bad as the MW3 story of "Soviet Union invades all of Europe in ONE DAY." And note that this occurred shortly after the Soviets had just tried to invade the East Coast of the USA in MW2 (wouldn't it have made more sense to attack the West Coast as its closer?) It really came across as one of those games that had a bad development cycle and costs just got too high and the game was shipped out before it was really complete. Anyways I digress. Hopefully the sequel will be better, because it would be quite the blow to the franchise if the sequel came out even worse.
 
yourbeliefs said:
Remember Braid? Well, the developer Johnathan Blow has been working for a while on the follow up, known as "The Witness." This game fell completely out of my awareness until today, mainly because the review embargo is over. And if early reviews are anything to go by, it looks like we may have an early GOTY contender.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/42ls5x/the_witness_review_thread/
Click to expand...

king3pj said:
Yeah, I completely forgot about this. It's not often that an indie game is announced so far before release unless the announcement is in the form of a Kickstarter campaign. I am looking forward to checking this out when it gets discounted though.
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Well the hype got to me. Listening to the Giant Bombcast from this week and hearing the guys gush over how great this game is made me decide to just plunk down the full $40 so I can play The Witness tonight. It's not often that you hear these guys get this enthusiastic about any game. Jeff Gerstmann, in particular, is usually pretty hard to impress.
 
king3pj said:
Well the hype got to me. Listening to the Giant Bombcast from this week and hearing the guys gush over how great this game is made me decide to just plunk down the full $40 so I can play The Witness tonight. It's not often that you hear these guys get this enthusiastic about any game. Jeff Gerstmann, in particular, is usually pretty hard to impress.
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I'm sure there's more to it (there has to be). But in the one trailer I saw, the game seemed nothing more than a series of mini-game puzzles to unlock new areas to explore, reminding me of a somewhat annoying gameplay element of every (all 10) Ratchet & Clank games I've played, but without the crazy fun gun battles that ensue.
 
Zookster said:
I'm sure there's more to it (there has to be). But in the one trailer I saw, the game seemed nothing more than a series of mini-game puzzles to unlock new areas to explore, reminding me of a somewhat annoying gameplay element of every (all 10) Ratchet & Clank games I've played, but without the crazy fun gun battles that ensue.
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Yeah I think there's some sort of "deeper meaning" to the puzzles in general. I mean there has to be given how many 10's I've seen thrown at this game. I'll try it eventually, but right now I have enough on my plate that I can wait until this gets a 50% discount.

Here's some of the game in action for those interested:

 
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