Friday 28 October 2011

Serious Sam 3 Weapons Trailer

I love Serious Sam and this trailer is getting me more excited for it. I can't wait to go take on hordes of enemies with a sledgehammer. This is how shooters should be face paced, ridiculously hard with shit tons of bad guys ready to be shot down. There should be more games like this out there, the only two that come to mind right now are Painkiller and Serious Sam, I'm sure there are plenty more out there but I can't think of any right now. Anyway here's a trailer showing off some weapons you'll be using next month when the game is released.

Thursday 27 October 2011

EA to expands games on Origin

EA have recently announced that they will be expanding on games available on Origin. Up until now EA have only sold their own titles on Origin, soon they will be seeing the likes of Batman: Arkham City and Saints Row: The Third along with other additional titles promised in the coming months. While it is heavy disliked by a lot of people at the moment, I feel it is a good thing they are widening the variety games available on their platform. Of course they still have quite the road ahead of them if they even want to get remotely near Steam and their popularity but if they keep up adding new titles it will surely help.

I will quite happily use Origin if the price is right, I generally go with where ever is cheaper at the moment it tends to be either Amazon or Steam sales. The fact they have Battlefield 3 priced at £40 for a digital download there is no way in hell I'm buying it for that price especially when you can buy a boxed version of the game for 10 quid less and actually physically own it. They certainly need to lower the prices if they want to tempt folk across to their platform even if it is only on their own games.

Steams Halloween Sale Starts Now

Valve are at it once again and throwing even more discounts at you. I completely forgot Halloween was coming up to be honest, but now through scrolling through all the holiday deals they have which you can find here. I am now nearly £20 worse off than I was this morning. I got Bioshock, Resident Evil 5, The Ghostbusters Game, and  every Painkiller game for I believe it was £17 all of which have been on my list of games to get for awhile now. No doubt Valve will rob me of the contents of my wallet a little more before these holiday deals end on the 1st of November. I just noticed there is a Dead Space bundle for £15 I may have to get that as well while it's going cheap.

Wednesday 26 October 2011

Games that should have been more popular - Science & Industry

I was thinking about how a lot of games and mods never truly got the love and support they really should have. Over the next few weeks I am going to write up about a few I feel should have been more popular. First game I am going to bring up is an old Half-Life 1 mod under the name of Science and Industry. Compared to the likes of Counter Strike and Team Fortress this mod was severely under rated. It is in essence an advanced capture the flag type game.

You play as a security guard for one of two research compan
ies, Amalgamated Fluorodynamics (AFD) and Midland Carbide Labs (MCL), I have no idea the reasons behind the names but they aren't really important. Each team starts off with 3 scis (from now on will be mentioned as scis), your job as a security guardis to protect your companies research lab from the opposing team while trying to kidnap rival scientists (from now on will be mentioned as scis as I am lazy) and bring them to the G-man at human resources to make them work for your team. This is the main objective in the game, there are some secondary objectives depending on the map which I will get to in a bit.

The reason for you needing to kidnap and hire enemy scis is to help with your teams research. This research can get you better weapons, better armour, devices such as trip mines, satchel charges and mind rays (which make you scis work more efficiently making them research quicker) and implants for your player which can speed your movement, regenerate ammo, health and armour among other things.

Along with hiring scis you can also help you teams progress with secondary objectives. If you happen to kill an enemy who happens to be using a weapon you have yet to research, you can pick it up and return it to human resources. Doing this speeds up research of that specific weapon. There are other secondary objectives that are only available on certain maps. These objectives include:
Stealing files from your opposing team which can help speed up research.
Sabotage of enemy lab equipment which costs them money to replace, this is important as the team with the most money at the end of the round is the winner.

I would really like to see some one bring this back and update it to say source graphics. It would be awesome if Valve picked it up, I believe they could do wonders with it and put Half-Life and Portal fans against each other changing the team names to Black Mesa and Aperture. They could then make the playable characters for each team a well known person from each franchise. Black Mesa having Gordon, Alyx and Barney while Aperture has Chell, P-body and Atlas, then maybe include the gravity gun and the portal gun as exclusive weapons for each team retrospectively.

If you are interested in the game and want to give it a shot to see how you like it, you should give it a download and while very few people play these days, there is always the weekly gather Sunday night at 9pm GMT which is still going without fail after all these years.

Tuesday 25 October 2011

Gabe Newell on video game economics.

The mighty Gaben has sat down recently and spoke about 'how Valve experiments with the economics of video games'. There is a full article about it on geekwire here it is quite an interesting read. He talks about about piracy stating;

"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. For example, Russia. You say, oh, we’re going to enter Russia, people say, you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market."

At the end of the day piracy isn't going anywhere and excessive DRM doesn't really stop it, if pirates want to crack a game they will getting round the likes of Ubisofts always online DRM for example, leaving pirates with a nice offline version of whatever game they happened to cracked, while genuine punters that may happen to have an unreliable internet connection can't play the game they paid for, which is generally why people dislike Ubisofts DRM. Anyway I don't want to get in to a full blown rant about that so I'll stop before I do. I must admit because of Valve and Steam I have bought a hell of a lot more games than I normally would have purely due to constant deals on games, games that I may or may not would have pirated if it wasn't for that, I mean I don't pirate games that's illegal. Shhh... Nothing to see here, move along people.

Anyway go read the article linked above.

Saturday 22 October 2011

Left 4 Dead - Blood Tracks

Another write up of my play through of Left 4 Dead 2 custom campaigns. This one is named 'Blood Tracks'. It is a four level campaign and includes the original L4D survivors. Just like the last few I have done, there will be a video below of me running through one of the levels in this campaign with the rest of them over on my youtube channel.

So we start off this campaign along the coastline with only secondary weapons (unless I'm completely blind but I played it a couple times before recording it and couldn't find any). So you start heading in land trying to find your way to the train tracks which eventually lead to you rescue, but I'll get to that later. You end up heading through a shipping yard which is where you get some primary weapons and come to the first zombie alert event where you have to move a big container with a crane which is blocking your way to the safe house which is not far from this point, it's round the corner and through a building. It could do with a few more infected through out the map, does seem a to lack somewhat in the zombie department on this level.

Now we have the second level which sets you off leaving the safe house and heading through an industrial yard where you can get some decent primary weapons. Towards the opposite end of this place you have to take a turn and go through a woodland area which leads to to a house where a horde alert event happens. This one is quite the pain in the ass, after you blow up the house you drop down to some train tracks below and have to run through a ridiculous amount of infected hunting you down. You have to be extremely quick running to the safe house otherwise you could easily get over whelmed.

Level 3 continues down the train tracks you came across in the last level and leads to a quite interesting tank encounter. You come to an area with a bunch of shipping containers and there is a safe room type door which is closed, as you go to open it a tank bursts through the door. First time I did this I crapped myself. After defeating the tank you head through the now gaping hole where the door once was which takes you to an abandoned underground train system which you fight through, eventually leading you back outside. From here it is only through a couple buildings to the final safe house. This level seemed to have a decent amount of zombies in, could maybe of used a few extra special infected but overall it is fairly balanced.

Now we come to the last part of this map. It is quite a short walk from the safe house to the finale area.  Just a quick walk along to the end of the tracks and through some buildings leading up to the rail bridge. This is where you hold out and await rescue. I find this finale quite difficult as I can't seem to find anywhere to hold out as everywhere seems to be fairly open. Though I have always tried to take the higher ground and stay about the walkway between the two houses. Every time I have attempted this at least one person hasn't made it to the escape train.

It's an alright map and I find it misleads you in to a false sense of security in the earlier levels due to the lack of zombies until the hordes come along especially on level 2. I will definitely be playing this campaign again as I am determined to master the finale and get everyone to safety. I'm sure I will manage it in a couple more runs at it. Below is my last attempt at the finale and was probably my worst run out of all my attempts as only Bill made it.



Next campaign on the list is 'City 17'

Friday 21 October 2011

Ever wanted to be a panda? Now you can.


While I am not a World of Warcraft player, Blizzards latest expansion got me debating whether I should start playing due to their new race Pandaren, and if you haven't figured out what makes this new race so appealing to me, it's the fact they are pandas. That's right you will be able to play through WoW as a panda.

I find this hilarious and the picture just makes it more funny.

There's little piece on the matter over at PC Gamer which is where I came across this quite comical news if you are generally interested, here is the link.

Doom 4 Postponed

An unnamed source have told Kotaku that 'Doom 4' will be "indefinitely postponed" due to the disappointing launch of 'Rage'. I have yet to play Ids latest IP but it was plastered all over the news about the poor state of release, especially on the PC side of things. Anyway this is apparently due to Zenimax and Bethesda who believe this has demonstrated "a serious lack of confidence in the project management at id". The guys at Kotaku have contacted Bethesda and are awaiting feedback about the whole situation and will no don't post something about it the moment they hear back from them.

It is a shame as I would like to see a new Doom game in the works. My question is if Id have no new IP in the works what are they going to do, while they still have Rage to patch up and sort out but what are the future plans for Carmack and co.

Update:

We have had comments from Bethesdas Pete Hines stating that no game in development has been postponed.

"We don't comment on unannounced games and DOOM 4 hasn't been announced (though I appreciate that id has previously referenced DOOM 4)," Hines said. "Games are done when they are done and no title under development at id has been postponed – indefinitely or otherwise."

Thursday 20 October 2011

CS:GO at Intel Extreme Masters

Here we have some competitive CS:GO gameplay on an updated version of Dust2 along with some incite in to the game from Chet Faliszek. The map itself hasn't changed all that much, there has been some boxes moved slightly and some scaffolding put up to climb on which I don't remember being there in previous versions of Counter Strike though don't quote me on that. The guns used in this footage seem to vary from the standard mp5, ak, carbine and awp which most people tend to use in CS:S.



Tuesday 18 October 2011

Round 1 goes to Mojang

While I am not the biggest fan of Mojang or the 'Elder Scrolls' series I have been following the law suit over Mojangs new game named scrolls. In case you haven't been following it basically Zenimax (Bethesdas parent company) have been involved in a law suit lately in dispute over Mojangs newest game named 'Scrolls' which apparently is infringing on Bethesdas trademark for 'The Elder Scrolls' series. Which in my honest opinion is a complete and utter load of shite as by that logic if anyone every decides to name their game 'The' or 'Elder' for some stupid reason (possibly to agitate Bethesda and co) that would also be infringing 'The Elder Scrolls' trademark. Anyway I'm not here to get into a rant about the stupidity of this case. Merely to point out that Mojang have won an interim injuction allowing them to keep the name of their game as 'Scrolls'. While Bethesda can appeal hopefully they will just drop this ridiculous case. Either that or take up Notch and his Quake Deathmatch challenge, as I believe all law suits in the gaming industry should be settled by gaming.

Monday 17 October 2011

Left 4 Dead - Left Behind

Here comes my third entry of my Left 4 Dead campaign write ups. This one is 'Left Behind', it consists of only three levels, however these levels are quite long and could have easily been split up in to four, possibly five at a push. The campaign itself is really quite challenging and I would suggest getting a melee weapon as early as possible as the hordes when they come are quite large and just as you think you are doing with a horde attack more come along.

The first level starts you off in the outskirts of a city, you fight your way through streets and buildings, along with a brief period in sewers. There does seem to be a lot of supplies laying about, but considering the amount of zombies you easily can go through all of your ammo quite quickly (which is why I suggest grabbing a melee weapon).

Second level of this campaign you take exit a building and head once again into some sewers. After you escape the sewers it's a short walk to a dam, which is where I got a bit lost and had to put the in game hints on as you go on a scavenger hunt to find parts to a computer so you can open an electronically locked door. There is a lot of back tracking at this part as it seems you have to get them in a certain order even though some parts are really quite close to each other. Just like the first level there is a hell of a lot of zombies but there is also a lot of supplies to make up for this. After you have figured out this frankly quite tedious task of fixing the computer to open the door, you make it to the other side of the dam. Awaiting you is a train taking you to the final level, but first you have to wait for a cable car to get you down to the platform below while you defend yourself from on coming zombies. This horde seems to be lacking severely in the zombie department and could of don't with a lot more. I would say this final horde is quite pitiful to be perfectly honest. This level could do with some tweaking but overall it is still quite good.

Now we come to the finale which will be based at a military base but first you have to get there. After fighting your way off the train and through the train station you come to a gated area. A gated area which looked like it was being defended by the military at some point, due to the dead marine with a gun right next to you. He also happens to have a radio with him which tells you there are zombies heading your way which come along when you open the gate. It can never be easy, so after the initial group of zombies you have to find your way past another security door which leads to what looks like a loading dock for trains, I'm not sure but I did have yet another tank battle here which was fairly easy due to the openness of the area. It's not just a couple more streets away until you get to the military base. So now we are at the finale finally. However rescue isn't coming for another 10 minutes yet. Luckily there is a shed load of ammo and supplies to keep you going until they get there. To start with it was quite annoying until I went up in one of the watch towers and so long as you keep an eye out for smokers this finale is extremely easy as you can kill everything climbing up the ladder.

It is a good campaign, though could do with a few tweaks here and there and maybe be split in to 4 levels instead of 3. Below is my attempt at the finale of this level and like with my other write ups of these campaigns if you want to have a look at what the rest of the map is like I have uploaded my run through on my youtube channel.



Next campaign on the list is 'Blood Tracks'

Sunday 16 October 2011

PC Versus Console Gaming.

I came across an article on Gamerant about Id's John Carmack and his statement about PCs not being the lead platform for gaming and how Valve disagree. This obviously started I'd say a discussion but was more of a flame war about which was better PC gaming or console gaming. So here we are at the age old debate about the matter, so here are my thoughts about the matter.

While I am primarily a PC gamer, I do agree with John Carmack, and actually believe PC has never really been the lead platform for games, consoles have always been ahead, you can take this back to the days of early Nintendos and Segas and compare them to the likes of Amiga and Commodore, both of which were good platforms for gaming but I am sure consoles were ahead in sales back then as well. The fact of the matter is that console gaming will always be popular due to the fact of it's simplicity. What I mean by this is that you can go out and buy whatever console you want and buy a game for said console and you can play straight away. With PC gaming after you buy a disc of what ever game you want to play, you have to sit there and install the game so you are waiting 10 - 20 minutes or however long before you can actually play your game. That is 1-0 to console.

We then have the debate about cost and a lot of people have this notion that if you want to game on PC you have to spend thousands. While yes you can spend thousands if you're the kind of person that needs to have the latest tech possible, you will spend a ridiculous amount over the years. I bring up a point that console gaming could also cost a ridiculous amount if you want to have the latest version of which ever console you choose and go out and buy a new Playstation or Xbox etc every time they release a new one (and I don't mean PS2 to PS3 or Xbox to 360, I mean buying a new one when say you have a 250GB version and they bring out a 320GB version. There are people out there who do this, just as there are people who upgrade their computer every 3 months). The point I am getting to is that PCs don't have to cost £2,000. You can quite easily upgrade every 3-4 years and still have no problem running the latest games. The last time I upgraded was maybe 2 years ago (I can't remember so don't quote me on that). That was getting me up to a dual core chip, 4GB of Ram and a Radeon 5770 graphics card (which is the very minimum I would suggest for pc gaming, I am not sure of the Nvidia equivalent) costing me about £300 or so while it won't run the newest games at the highest graphical settings it runs them perfectly fine at the default settings, which is probably about on par with console graphics. Yes a 'gaming' PC is more expensive than any console counter part, but you also get a pc with your gaming platform if you choose to go down this road unlike consoles.

You could also debate the matter of exclusive games for consoles, and yes there are quite a few out there (and I'm not going to get in to a rant about Xbox exclusives that should be available for PC through GFWL). I would have to say PC probably do have a lot more exclusive games than consoles combined such as the obvious ones like WoW, Starcraft, Diablo and Total War series. Then you have the likes of Quake, Unreal, Hard Reset and Red Orchestra making an appearance on the shooter side of things. There are literally hundred, possibly thousands of PC exclusive games. Where as consoles each have very few in comparison.

It is obviously going to be easier for developers to create games for consoles as they have specific hardware specs so they only have to make one setting suited to that, while on PC they have to be able to support both high and low quality graphics. Which is why I believe PC gamers are seemingly more loyal and appreciative to companies that look after them, just look at Valve and Blizzards fan base.

Last point I am going to make is the keyboard and mouse versus controller debate. Frankly I find this stupid to be quite honest. Some people find controllers easier to use than keyboard and mouse and vice versa. Unless you are in to competitive gaming it doesn't matter. I prefer controllers for games which involve fighting, racing along with rpgs (final fantasy etc..), I prefer keyboard and mouse for shooters and mmos. They have made controllers compatible with PCs, it seems kb+m is starting to make an appearance over on the console side of things with the release of CS:GO for the Playstation. Why it took a pc developers to bring this to console god knows. But hopefully it's a sign of things to come so we can once and for all stop this pointless debate as it doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, there will always be both PC and console gamer, and this debate always seems to happen when either a) a 'next gen' console is released, which is when the "death of PC gaming" is usually predicted or b) when a consoles are showing their age which is when the PC gamers seem to come out of hiding and go on about how consoles are dated tech and pc gaming is the way forward. We see to be getting toward the latter right now.

I will leave you with this final thought. If you enjoy gaming just go out there and game. It doesn't matter if you play on PC, Xbox, Playstation, Wii, Gamecube, N64, SNES, NES, Dreamcast, Saturn, Genesis, Master System, PSP, DS, Gameboy, Game Gear...... are we starting to see my point here. Stop bitching about how the console you don't have is worse than the one you have. Just play it and have fun, enjoy it. You know the reason behind them being created in the first place.

Fanboys piss me off!

Saturday 15 October 2011

Left 4 Dead - The Dark Parish

'The Dark Parish' happens to be L4D2 campaign 'The Parish' except you guessed it, it is dark now. It makes sense now, but when I was having a mass download of all these maps, I kind of just went for a load rated 70 or higher, never really looking at descriptions of well many of them. This one included I should of put two and two together really due to the name, but it never clicked until I loaded in game.

As most people all ready know 'The Parish' map as it is one of the official l4d2 campaigns I will not bother going in to full blown detail about it as 'The Dark Parish' is pretty much the same as it's day time counter part. There are a few differences though, there seems to be more zombie spawn areas and less supplies lying about. Anyway here is a video of my attempt at this campaign, be warned it isn't the greatest footage in the world.



Next campaign on the list is 'Left Behind'

Thursday 13 October 2011

AMY

We have yet another zombie game on the horizon going by the name 'AMY'. But unlike most 'zombie' games, you can actually get infected. You can use this to your advantage by temporarily becoming a zombie to sneak past hordes, and so long as you get healed in time the infection won't kill you. It's an interesting take on the whole zombie situation. Here is a trailer explaining the contamination aspect of the game.

Left 4 Dead - Two Evil Eyes

So here we have a little review of Left 4 Dead custom campaign Two Evil Eyes. It is quite a long campaign and has a total of 6 levels.

The first one is ridiculously short and a simple cross a bridge, through a house full of zombies, round a corner and your done. It does seem like a little taster for the rest of the campaign.

The second level is a bit longer than the first but still not the longest level. Just like the first level there you do have to alert the horde quite early on which is easy enough if you get on top of the crashed train before they get to you. It does also seem to have quite a lot of special infected and you encounter your first tank of the campaign, which you can actually go hide up a tree from (if you go round the back of the tree house). After that it's just through a house and the safe house is the next building over.

Level three is where you finally get your hands on some decent weapons instead of the stock uzi and or shotgun which are just outside the safe room. That's the good new, bad news is you are now entering a swamp. Swamps are never good news, let alone a zombie infested one, so after wandering about killing zombies on your way, you come to a building. However this building happens to be closed off with no way in, luckily there is an open manhole nearby. I would say a tunnel is better than a swamp, so you head on down the man hole and find very little zombies down there, at least I did. This doesn't seem to be any old sewer tunnel though, it seems to be a secret tunnel to a garden area which is full of supplies and weaponry and an alarmed door. Obviously not wanting to head back in to the lovely swamp, you of course open the door, which in turn alerts the zombies. I chose to cheese it through the horde instead of sitting there fighting until the alarm goes off. While fighting through zombies I noticed a gate which you can't get past at the moment, so I follow the path round which leads to a car park with a few supplies towards the back of it, near a button you have to push, which opens up the path previously blocked by the gate. The walkway you unlocked leads you to a boat on a little river which you have use to get to the docking station which is right next to the next safe room.

Now we have a bridge level as the fourth part of this campaign. I found this quite difficult on normal (I was playing with random people that seemed to like wandering off by themselves and bots though), it took me 2 or 3 tries to actually finish this. While you can go with the I am going to just run and gun, never stopping to get this over with, there is a train crossing about halfway across so you have to wait for it to pass, and trains being noisy and all, it alerts the horde. I found so long as no one gets incapacitated you will generally be okay with this level, the moment someone is down it becomes hard work (though that might be the genius I was playing with that kept running ahead). The map itself is quite short yet quite challenging.

Next we have a quite dark and gloomy level. As you leave the you hear a helicopter over head which happens to be your rescue in the finale. After listening to what he says you carry on with your journey which is through a cemetery at this point of time. After fighting towards the back of  this creepy place you end up falling through the floor into a cave. Which is where you have to alert the horde by blowing up a barricade, doing so you are stuck in a hole with a wall of fire on one side and a horde of zombies on the other, it's not a great combination. Anyway you fight through this tunnel and escape you have literally a couple streets left to the safe house. However the house is fenced off, and the only way to get there is through the garden which is blocked by an alarmed car which you set off as you jump past it and on come the horde for another battle before you get into the safety of the house. The level isn't all that hard on normal but I could see it getting rather tricky on advanced.

We are nearly to safety as we leave the final safe room and head away to find the helicopter that you heard in the last part. So you head out and a short walk away you come to an almost dried up river bed which leads to an abandoned house on a cliff side, where you can stock up ammo and whatever other supplies it has inside. Just round the corner from here is where the escape finale will happen which consists of a few buildings and a helipad (which is blocked off until it's time to go). I found your best bet is to hold out on the roof tops and if you have actual people playing with you, I suggest using the fire and explosive rounds which are laying about for the tanks only, but of course you can't get the bots to work like that, which made it a lot harder than it had to be come tank time

On normal it took me about 40 minutes give or take to finish, so it is a decent length campaign. That was first attempt time for it as well, so no doubt you could finish it a lot quicker than I did. The hordes could maybe do with getting tweaked a little as some were pretty small while others seemed far to large. The special infected seemed quite nicely spread out with a decent amount of them to make it a challenge. To be honest the first two levels probably could have been combined into one, due to the shortness of the first level. Other than that I enjoyed this campaign and will be playing it a lot more. I would say it is definitely worth a download. Below is my shoddy attempt at the finale, I do make it but only by using everyone else as bait. I need to get this finale done with some people, hopefully leading to everyone escaping. I do have the rest of the campaign recorded on my youtube channel as well if you want to go check out what it's like, just fyi.

Next campaign on the list is 'The Dark Parish'.

Wednesday 12 October 2011

The state of the gaming industry these days.

So I have read a few articles lately advertising downloadable content for games which aren't even out yet, this mentality seems to be spreading throughout a whole bunch of developers as of late. I for one hate the whole 'we have content prepared the which we could quite easily just throw in to the game for release day but we are not going to' frame of mind far to many developers are getting these days. So due to the likes of Batman AC and Battlefield (the latest games I have noticed doing this), I decided I am going to sit here and rant about why I do not like the state of the gaming industry today.

While I agree DLC has the potential to do great things and extend the replay value of a game. DLC should be something worth while. This should be the new aged equivalent of expansion packs of yester year. Take a look at Yuri's Revenge for Red Alert 2, to this day I would have to say that is one of the greatest expansion packs of all time, then you have Blue Shift and Opposing Force as expansions for Half-Life, which I still think they should of done the same with Half-Life 2 would of loved to play as Barney through that game but I digress. That is what DLC should be, not this whole 4 new maps for £15, or with the likes of Mortal Kombat where you pay them for new characters, that should be unlockable stuff in game, and the worst of all of this is Homefront when they released a shotgun, that's right a single shotgun as DLC for their game.

With the map packs while it is a good thing and it proves the developers still support the game and get new content out. The fact is that you get 3 or 4 new over priced levels  I truley believe that every game should have the option of using mod tools provided by the developers so people can create their own maps, thus prolonging the games life span due to constant new features and levels. Many companies have done this and still have people playing them to this day, a prime example of this is Valve. People are still playing Counter Strike and that game is getting quite old now, it's 12? if we go back to the pre Valve version of the game. Anyway my point is they got the gaming community to do half there work for them and when something caught their eye, they snapped it up and continued to support it along side the community.

At the end of the day video games are a long term investment, you shouldn't be sat there making them to try and get a quick buck. There are loads of games I buy from years ago purely because they are good games and I never got round to it first time round. Which is why I laugh at the likes of THQ and the latest Red Faction game; Armageddon, when they wiped their hands clean of the franchise when it didn't turn instant profit. They are a big company and have a number of other games on the go such at Saints Row, Metro and yearly renditions of WWE games to help subsidise. I am still going to get Red Faction: Armageddon, but due to me being skint and me getting another couple of games, it's still on the list. But now it's nearer the top of the list and will probably be bought at christmas. They have to remember we are in a global recession and not everyone can afford to go out and buy every single game as a day one purchase.

Talking of day one purchases as of late it doesn't seem like you can really trust them. With the likes of Rage, Dead Island, Homefront and numerous other titles being buggy as sin upon release. The bugs in the fore mentioned games were quite substantial though, if they were small glitches which could of easily been missed that is fair enough. The reasoning behind this, I don't know. The fact of the matter is this should not be happening. I would rather see a game delayed than developers throwing out half finished buggy products. This is another reason I wait before buying games normally a couple months or so after release, just in case if it is released buggy, it would more than likely be sorted by then. Games like Dead Island and Homefront (can't say for Rage as I haven't play it yet) are good games, but the majority of people are put off by the initial problems, and word of mouth spreads and you end up not getting the sales you wanted because you didn't push back the game a couple weeks to finalise the game and rid it of problem that shouldn't be there.

Saturday 8 October 2011

Left 4 Dead Custom Maps

Recently I downloaded a shed load of custom campaigns for Left 4 Dead 2 and will be playing through all of them and posting up my thoughts on each one of them along with footage of me playing through them. Below I will write a list of each one I plan on doing and will include links to my write ups once they are done. I will start off with 'Two Evil Eyes' and continue down the list as it is, as that is how they are ordered in game for me, so it will be simpler to keep track. One last thing all these maps can be downloaded from l4dmaps.com and if you need a how to about installing them here is the link.

Two Evil Eyes
The Dark Parish
Left Behind
Blood Tracks
City 17
Dark Blood
Dead Before Dawn
Dead On Time
Dead Series
Dead Aboard II
Death Sentence
Detour Ahead
Die Screaming II
Gas Fever
Golden Eye 4 Dead
Haunted Forest
Highway to Hell
I Hate Mountains
Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Zombies
Kokiri Forest
One 4 Nine
Let's Build A Rocket
Left Or Right
Left 4 Mario
Military Industrial Complex II
Dead Flag Blues 2
N. O. Meltdown
No Parking
Night Of The Living Dead
Resident Evil Outbreak
Overkill
Precinct 84
Questionable Ethics
We Don't Go To Ravenholme
Vague Reminders
Run To The Hills
Salt Hell Park
Source Of Infection
Suicide Blitz 2
The Return Of The Jockeys
Tour Of Terror

Tuesday 4 October 2011

Gaming Etiquette: Playing your part

I have noticed a few things that have been annoying me recently mainly in Team Fortress but I'll talk about Left 4 Dead first. Basically it is just the amount of times I have been teamed with people that do not help you when you get incapacitated or in trouble with hordes when you are near a safe house. Instead of coming out to give you a hand they just let you fight your way out of it or die. I'm sorry but it's a co-op game, therefore aren't you meant to help out your team mates when they get in trouble. Yes, this will guarantee that you make it to the next part of the campaign, but it annoys the crap out of me. You are supposed to help out and get the entire team to the end not just one person. Along with this I have had a number of games where team mates have just been pure ass holes and shooting you, by this I don't mean accidentally shooting you while you are surrounded by a horde and they shoot you while thinning out the zombies attacking you, that, while it is slightly annoying especially if you have low health, is acceptable as they were just trying to help out and I will be the first to admit I have done this on a number of occasions as some times you aim is having an off day or whatever. My point is recently I have had people coming in the safe room while preparing and just shooting you quite blatantly, I'm sorry but wtf. If you are going to play games where you need to rely on team mates don't be a dick and team kill.

Now we will get on to the matter of Team Fortress. There are 3 classes I am going to complain about and I shall start with the Engineer, the amount of people that walk idly by damaged and or sapped buildings and don't even think about repairing it, I play engineer quite often and at the start of maps if there is another engineer on my team I will always build up their buildings before even thinking of setting up mine, I think it is better to have one fully upgraded sentry rather than 2 or 3 level one sentries, along with teleporters as well. While I am not saying you have to do this and by all means get your stuff up first, but when you have give others a hand with theirs. Hell even if it is just upgrading a tele entrance which hasn't yet got exit so when it does go up it will be level 3 and much more helpful. If you do choose to play engineer don't be that guy who does nothing but sits hidden behind his sentry constantly hitting it, I have seen people sat constantly wrench a sentry even when there are absolutely no enemy in site. This isn't any help at all, if anything do some defensive scouting, and patrol your base and see where the enemies are coming possibly weaken them before they even get to your sentry making them easier to kill.

Next we have the medics. If played right they are the most useful of all the classes. If not like in damn near every game the healer will get blamed. My main beef with medics is pocket medics for heavies and while this is fine even when you are playing pocket medic, you should still heal people near by that need healing. There has been a couple incidents lately which is why I am bringing this up where a medic has been healing a heavy while in cover and I am retreating to get out of the line of fire and get some health and ammo back, I call for the medic as I am practically dead and does he heal me? No he doesn't, he sits there continuing to heal this heavy that hasn't even ventured out into the war zone yet. If you are going to play medic, heal the people that need healing most. Sure heavy medics are a great combination and can kick some serious ass but for the love of god they have 300 health they can hold their own for a few seconds while you heal other people that need it.

And last but not least we have the Pyro they have annoyed me for years. The main dig I am having a go them for is the severe lack of spy checks they do, this is especially annoying when I am engineering it up. All it takes is a little puff of fire on your way to doing what ever it is you are going to do. While of course it is every ones job to spy check, it is a hell of a lot easier for pyros as they just set them on fire for everyone to see. Another thing that bugs me about them is the fact that very few of them realise that with a lot of the flame throwers you have secondary fire that is a burst of air which allows you to put out fires. The amount of times I ran towards pyros on my team whilst on fire hoping to be extinguished and died because they didn't is ridiculous.

I think that will do for todays rant, and I will return with another when something else pisses me off while I'm playing something. Thank you and good night.

Building your skill

Here is a video with a little more detail about different game modes in the upcoming Ubisoft game Rocksmith. Definitely looking forward to this coming out, it is looking pretty cool.


Orcs Must Die!

A downloaded a demo of this game earlier today. It is a 3d tower defence game, the basis of the game (and all tower defence games for that matter) is you kill stuff until you have have enough money to buy more things to kill stuff with. Most of my tower defence experience has mainly been top down web games such as Bloons Tower Defence, I have spent many, many hours playing that game. Anyway getting to my point I never have really experienced a 3d version well maybe with the exception of Monday Night Combat which kind of is but with a multi player aspect thrown in for good measure which is pretty fun. Anyway I downloaded and gave the demo of it a shot after reading about it somewhere I honestly can't remember now.

The demo consists of three levels, each one unlocks a new trap to use in the next which I will go into in a minute. Each level you have to hold off hordes of Orcs would you believe it, and the character you play as starts off with a set amount of money and time to prepare your defences. You get to choose a selection of what you will use to defend with, in the demo you get a sword, a crossbow, spike trap, tar pits, arrow traps and exploding barrels, the last two mentioned are unlocked after completing level 1 and 2. It does give you a little taste of the game, and after finishing the demo which didn't take all to long being 3 levels long, it did leave me wanting more.

It is a great fun little game that needs both planning and strategy, I think I will be getting the full version of this when it is released which is the 12th October in Britain. It will cost £11.99 on Steam which considering the amount I can see me playing it is well worth the money I believe it is available on Xbox as well. I release this isn't the first third person tower defence game but it is however my first. Below is an interactive trailer to give you and idea of what the game is like.

Monday 3 October 2011

Quake Wars is 4

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is celebrating it's fourth birthday. It was released on 28th September 2007 in Europe and October 2nd in the US which makes a change from America getting titles first, but then again Splash Damage is based in England. Anyone that hasn't played it, I suggest giving it a go. I found it used on Amazon for a couple of quid. So you can get it for literally next to nothing, unless you buy from Steam where it goes for £15. Still at that price I would say it is definitely worth the investment.