M3: My Morning Musings – Legos, VR, Tamriel, & More

Spoiler alert but Lego: The Hobbit ends as Smaug flies off to attack the lake-town. This was supposed to lead into DLC from The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies but it still hasn’t come out after months of the movie being out. Sadly, Warner Bros has revealed that the planned DLC is not going to ever come out and they won’t make standalone game featuring Battle of the Five Armies.

Playtonic is a new studio built from former Rare Developers that are planning to bring a “spiritual successor” to Banjo-Kazooie in something known as Project Ukulele. The game will seek crowdfunding sometime in May on Kickstarter and will feature a bright and colorful world with plenty of things to collect. This will be the return of 3D Platform games in a big way from people who know how to make good platformers.

The next chapter in the Elder Scrolls Online game, Tamriel Unlimited, is due to hit retail and digital shelves tomorrow. The new update to the game allows you to buy the game and get to play without any subscription fees. The first year of ESO has been a bit rocky with only a million subscribers playing the game. WIth the console titles launching in June, now is a perfect time to jump in and play the game.

I really felt the game was good but seemed more like a single player game. I am much more likely to continue my adventures in the world of Tamriel without subscription fees. If you already own a copy of the game, you can play for free just by updating the client. You can see a video highlighting the changes below:

We spoke about Star Citizen’s large file size last week. The game is said to be at least 100 GB for the full game client. If you want to jump in and try out Star Citizen, they are allowing users to get a free week of play. However, the demo client is 20 GB. YIKES! That is a big file. To begin, you will need to make a note of this code: SXSWFREEFLY2K15. Enter it and follow the instructions on this site.

Happy flying!

Palmer Luckey, the Oculus Rift Founder, was on a panel during SXSW this weekend talking about the Oculus. Sadly, it appears they are backing away from a release in 2015. He originally said months ago that something would have to go horribly wrong for the consumer version of Oculus not to release in 2015. While nothing is going wrong, it appears that Valve may beat Oculus to market with a consumer VR kit. The question that remains: Will Sony beat Oculus to market in Spring of 2016?