Games I've Been Playing

It's the end of the month again so I it's yet again time for me to do another one of these. I'll start off with a little Fallout: New Vegas. I've had this game for ages I bought it months ago in a Steam sale of some sort, but never got round to playing it, as with far too many games I own. Over the past couple of weeks or so, I've been working my way through it, and have just made it up to the Strip. I still have a way to go to finish off the game but it's definitely on it's way to the finish line and finally get off the backlog list. Next couple of games I picked up recently due to Steam realising I actually had money left in my account. They only got me for £15 this time but I got 3 decent games out of it though. Mirrors Edge, Serious Sam 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

I got Serious Sam 2 to finish off my collection of Serious Sam games on Steam. Which is a little ironic as it was the first Serious Sam game I played. The story I don't really care for, but I prefer the weapons and gameplay in this game than other Serious Sam games. Next we have Mirrors Edge, it's a cool little game and I'm glad I got it. I've put a couple hours into it already and got up to Ropeburn, the first boss, though I am stuck at this part so have left the game alone for a while, this also is more than likely due to me playing a lot of Deus Ex which I picked up for a tenner. It was an absolute steal at that price. I am loving this game I think I'm about half way through now, maybe a bit further. The more augments I get as I progress the better the game gets. The augment that allows me to safely float to the ground no matter how high I drop from is by far the coolest one I've got so far. It's just the little animation and sound it makes, it is awesome.

On the multi-player side of things I haven't been playing that much this month until this past week. I've been getting back in to Nuclear Dawn which has had a couple major patches recently which included a new map and     some new items for certain classes such as the ammo kits for Engineer and hypospray for the medic, both of which are a great addition to the game, the ammo kit is especially helpful in the early portion of the map as it gives you the chance to keep your team mates supplied while the commander plays catch up. I've also been playing some Super Monday Night Combat got into the beta a few weeks ago. It has had a GUI update recently which does look a lot better than it's previous version. It's a great game. I'm really good with Assault, Karl, Support and Combat Girl, however I do need to practice with other classes, I'm currently working on getting Cheston up to scratch at the moment, he's a Gorilla with a tommy gun how can you not love it.

Steam Weekend Deals

This weekend you can pick up some pretty cool games for a fraction of the price as Deus Ex: Human Revolution and every single Serious Sam game are discounted at 66% off their full price. I have most of the Serious Sam games except Serious Sam 2 which I will be getting to finish off the collection, which is ironic as it was the first Serious Sam game I actually played. As for Deus Ex I played the start of it awhile back possibly on Playstation at a mates, I really can't remember. Seems pretty cool and I was a fan of the original as well. So for £10.19 I can't exactly say no. If you don't have any of these games now is the time.

Indie Royale - Alpha Collection #1

This little package of games only comes with three alpha games, so by buying them you will help the developers fund the development of these games. So upon buying this bundle you will not only get the current build of these games but also any future updates that happen to come available. You have just under 7 days before this offer expires.

Just like all the previous Indie Royale bundles it is a pay what you want deal so long as it is equal to or higher than the minimum which at the moment is just over 3 quid. Each game is available on Desura or as a standalone version for Windows, Mac and Linux. The games included in this bundle are:

• Towns

"Towns, a city building and management game mixed with an RPG that draws inspiration from titles spanning Dungeon Keeper, Dwarf Fortress and Majesty. Instead of playing the hero who delves deep into the dungeon, players oversee the town that houses and caters the hero's needs. Along the way, players can craft unique weapons, obtain randomized loot and build a settlement capable of holding back the forces that rise up from the active dungeon upon which the town sits." 

• 3079

"3079 is a futuristic, open-world action first-person role playing game, and an alleged lovechild ofMinecraft and Fallout, with a block-like world, futuristic action, and role-playing elements played in a first-person perspective. 3079's randomly generated areas, buildings, items, quests and characters make it an entertaining open-world experience."

• Wyv and Keep

"Wyv and Keep: the Temple of the Lost Idol is a lusciously pixelated 2D co-op puzzle platformer. Dubbed as a more fiendish version of Blizzard's classic The Lost Vikings, the game features two young treasure hunters venturing into the land of Amazonia. Take control of the duo and use teamwork to solve mind-bending puzzles, navigate challenging action sequences, and find hidden riches deep within an ancient temple. Play by yourself, with a friend locally on one keyboard, or online, dodging fiendish traps, evading cannibalistic pygmies, shopping for hats, and even exploring an active volcano. Even create and share your own puzzles with the included cartographer." 

Borderlands 2 Release Date

It has been revealed today the official release date of Borderlands 2 is September 18th in America and September 21st everywhere else. It is available for pre order and if you do you will get a number of bonus items for the games including the Golden Key (to unlock a rare item in the Sanctuary Loot Chest), the Vault Hunter's Relic (to boost your gear-hunting fortune), and the Gearbox Gunpack (to deck your characters out with unique Gearbox Golden Guns). We also get treated to a brand new trailer from the guys at Gearbox as well.

Tribes: Ascend Open Beta Starts Friday

Tribes: Ascend is an upcoming free to play multiplayer first person shooter which is being developed by Hi-Rez Studios. For the past few months it has been in a closed beta. However this coming Friday the game will be done with it's closed beta and becoming open to the public. So anyone interested in the game who have not been lucky enough to get a key of the beta will now be able to play. Along with it becoming available to the public, the game will be adding new game mode "Arena Deathmatch" as well as a number of new maps.

Nuclear Dawn Update On The Way

The guys at Interwave have another update for Nuclear Dawn heading our way. This update adds a bunch of cool new features such as giving the commander to set a default spawn area, giving the Support engineers ammo packs which will allow them to keep there team mates supplied on the front line. I can see this being especially helpful in the early goings of a match. There are a number of updates to the latest map Oilfield as well. For full details on the update you can check out the changelog.

I want some Battlefield with my Mass Effect

Back on Valentines day, EA made lonely gamers day (probably gamers that arn't lonely aswell) by not only releasing the Mass Effect 3 demo (which I happened to enjoy except for everything being bound to one key which you couldn't change but I've already had a little rant about that) they also announced that upon pre-ordering Mass Effect 3 through their Origin service they would get a free downloadable copy of Battlefield 3. This offer was supposed to last until the 5th of March, but 2 days after announcing this they decide to pull the offer without a explanation in site. As you may have guessed this has pissed off a lot of punters. The deal was frankly amazing and no doubt would have dragged a lot of new clients over to their Origin service, which if they want to catch up with Steam and for it to be successful they will need to play hard ball which they seemed to be doing with this offer. But for them to suddenly pull it as I said before will piss people off. It's a bad move on their part. What ever the reason behind, this is unacceptable really, it's bad business offering something, getting peoples hopes up then taking it away just because you can. While they obviously have a reason behind doing this, it yet to be announced to the public. If you did happen to get in on this deal during the two days it was available you will still get your code by the 8th of March. Below are a couple tweets for the Origin account pretty much saying what I just did, minus me ranting of course.

PC Version of Mass Effect 3 Will Not Support Controllers

Mass Effect 3 on PC will not have controller support. While this won't phase most pc gamers at all as they are happy enough with there keyboard and mouse to play. Despite this Biowares senior designer Manveer Heir explained why this is on twitter.

“There is a development cost in terms of time/effort to get all the graphical user interfaces so 360 buttons show up on PC. It may seem minor, but our GUI team was already stretched thin, and things were coming in at the last minute, so we couldn’t add more work.”

This seems like a pretty legit reason for it and I believe the previous games in the series didn't support gamepads on PC either (don't quote me on that though). While there are third party programs out there which will allow you to play on PC with your controller if you wish to do so, I still believe in this day and age all games should be compatible with both, regardless of platform. Of course you will get those that think playing on PC with a controller is blastphemy, you will find these morons everywhere that allows you to post a comment who say things such as "I'm glad it doesn't support gamepads. Keeps console noobs from screwing their teammates over in multiplayer. Mouse + keyboard = best shooter controls". Just because you prefer a certain type of controls doesn't give you the right to be a complete asshat.

If you are a gamer it shouldn't matter about your choice in peripheral. Everyone knows aiming with a mouse is much more accurate than thumbsticks, therefore making them better for games such as shooters and RTS games. On the other side of the coin you have fighting games, driving games and the majority of sport games which gamepad controls have the edge over keyboard and mouse. I am primarily a PC gamer and do prefer using keyboard and mouse for most games. But sometime I just want to sit back with my feet up on the desk and play a game, you can't really do that with a keyboard and mouse, at least not with my desk setup. So I occasionally break out the Xbox controller and use that instead. Due to me not wanting to sit up at my desk that makes me a 'console noob' according to the muppet who I quoted above. All this makes me is lazy. Sure it's less accurate than aiming with a mouse, does that mean I can't play game? No of course it doesn't, it just means I have to spend an extra half a second aiming.

First Thoughts of Groupees 'Be Mine' Bundle

I recently bought the Groupees 'Be Mine' bundle and thought I'd do a little write up of my first impressions of the games included in it. All of these games if bought separately would cost over £40, so getting these at the absolute minimum of $1 is quite the bargain, I would suggest paying more as you will get your moneys worth out of them. I've already gave each game at least an hour each so far, that is since earlier today when I bought this bundle, I'm definitely going to put a lot more time in to all of these games.

Xotic is a strange little game. The basis of it is to progress though levels collecting things, you do this by shooting at them which breaks them and gives you items to pick up. Running through levels destroying stuff and collecting items seems simple enough, however there are many things put in your way to slow you down though like the weird enemies in the game, such as mutant looking things and spiders seem to explode if they touch you which are really quite annoying as they keep respawning until you kill there nest. Which is something I didn't realise the first time I encountered them so I just sat killing waves of them when all I had to do was walk round the corner and blow there nest up. Then you get the likes of huge gaps you need to cross, which can be done in a number of ways depending what upgrades you have. You can sit and cross it by placing a number of platforms underneath you as you jump, this has the higher fatality rate, if you can find an upgrade in the level that gives you flight, that is the far better solution to these giant death holes. It's not so much flight but more the ability to jump after you've jumped. It seems pretty cool.

Next we have Wasteland Angel. I had heard of this game prior to getting it in this bundle, so I somewhat knew what I was getting into with this game. It is played from a top down perspective as you drive around in your car shooting stuff. The game starts you off  in your car outside a town which you have to protect from waves of enemies. While this is pretty much the game, it does change it up occasionally to stop you getting bored and gives you boss battles. I've beat the first two which are big nasty armoured trucks with a couple flamethrowers attached to the front for good measure. Took me quite a while to beat it first time round, using napalm is the key for these guys. After the boss battle you get a bonus round which puts you in first person perspective. The first bonus stage was survival based, where you had to survive as long as you could while trying to get the highest score you could by shooting things. The second bonus stage was a time trial check point type race. 

There are a couple of platformers in this bundle. I will start with BEEP, it's a cute little game where you play as a little robot called BEEP, hence the name. You begin in a spaceship with a number of planets around you this is the level select menu which is pretty cool. After choosing a level, it looks like you standard platformer, plenty of platforms to jump on and what have you but come equipped with a gravity gun which is very necessary as there are movable platforms, debris in your way which you can move and it can also grab things (ie collectables, which happen to be little gold nuggets) which are out of reach. You also have what I think is a BB gun which you will need as these levels are fairly hostile towards you. I have only played the first few levels and have came across a number of things that are a danger. You have robots that shoot at you, some weird flying electric fish, along with a shed load of lasers and of course plenty of holes to fall down. As I am on about stuff that kills you, if you do die I wouldn't worry too much about it as each level has regular checkpoints so you won't have far to go to get back to where you were. You also seem to have unlimited lives so dying isn't really an issue.

The other platformer in this bundle is named Sideway: New York. This has a slight twist on your average platform, which is the fact that you play as graffiti on the side of buildings. You aren't completely stuck to the wall though as you can use window ledges, drain pipes among other things to jump on. You can also spray paint your own platforms to jump up on, which is a nice touch, thought you can only do this in certain places, it is quite obvious where you can spray though. As with any platformer, it's not all fun, games and randomly jumping about, thought that is a major part of it. Of course you need stuff that will kill you, or at least to attempt to. The main enemy you come across are alien goo blob type things, there are other enemies as well such as flying paint blobs and other graffiti artists. The other graffiti artist was like a mini boss I beat the first one at the end of level 2 or 3, he paints more enemies to attack you. While he isn't too hard to beat and only takes a few jumps on the head to kill him, but the paint blobs can get annoying if you don't kill them quick enough and can become overwhelming. Just like BEEP you don't seem to have any lives so you can die as much as you want, it also has regular checkpoints as well so won't you have far to go when/if you die.

Lastly we have The Ball, I say lastly it's not quite you get a bonus game called Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals due to the bundle reaching their 3 grand goal. But that is a point and click adventure game and I am terrible at them. I did attempt that game but struggled to get out of the first room, so I'm not really the right person to talk about the game. Anyway onto The Ball. The game starts you off underground as you fell down a mineshaft. Your friends up top aren't helpful at all and just tell you to explore the cave. So as you have no other choice than sitting around for help which isn't coming anytime soon, you take a wander along the only path available which crosses a very unstable looking bridge which breaks as you cross it, so you fall down another level. Great start so far you've fell down 2 holes in just as many minutes. You then see a building ahead but before you get to it you pick up some ancient device. You can use this device to push special buttons the first of which allows you in to the building. Upon entering the building you find the ball. The device you picked up outside can be used to both push away and attract the ball depending whether you use the left or right mouse button. Once you have the ball you have to take it along with you as it helps you solve puzzles. Sounds strange I know, but as you progress there are a number of buttons to press to open doors and activate lifts. Some of these can be activated by you but some of them only work by being ran over by the ball.  It's a cool game and definitely seems a worthy addition to the collection and I look forward to finishing the game off.

First thoughts of Modern Warfare 3

So Activision have pulled out the stops and let folk try out the multi-player for their latest Call of Duty game. So me being bored and the type that only play CoD due to free weekends (I'm not the biggest fan but I'll play it if I don't have to pay for it. First impression of the game was good, and by good mean complete and utter wank. This is even before I entered a match. I was sat about in the menu for half an hour or so attempting to connect to necessary "online services". For the first few attempt I figured there will be a bunch of folk trying to play the game due to the free weekend. However I grew more and more impatient with the game the longer this went on. Sure there is going to be more people playing the game but surely someone up there at Activision HQ must of thought to check the servers to make sure they would be able to handle the influx of new players, it's not rocket science.

In conclusion my experience of Modern Warfare 3 consisted of:

• Mostly menus
• The game "Connecting to Online Services"
• Then error messages telling me the connection to these servers had failed.
  

I would like to thank Activision so much for wasting my bandwidth, and due to this frankly terrible service which lead to me not actually being able to play the game, I exited the game, went straight to my Steam Library and deleted the game. Half an hour of waiting to play a game is unacceptable should not happen especially from a game made by someone as big as Activision. I was willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt ignoring all the anti CoD flaming that always happens and give the game a shot, but all I got was menus. I'm still not going to say the game it self is good or bad because I don't know. The online servers however are terrible.

Groupees 'Be Mine' Bundle

The Groupees 'Be Mine' bundle is yet another pay what you want Indie game bundle. They seem to be popping up everywhere these days. The bundle includes the following games:

• Xotic
• Beep
• Wasteland Angel
• The Ball
• Sideway New York

All of these games are available on Steam and if bought separately would cost about £43. Just like other indie bundles like the Indie Royale, Indie Gala and Humble Bundle you can pay what you want for this selection of games, getting them at a severely reduced price. The site appears to be struggling with the amount of traffic heading it's way, so you will have to wait until tomorrow to get on it, you can keep up to date about what is going on over on their twitter. Anyway it's another cool little deal which I will be getting to add to the collection, thought I would share and give them some publicity as this is the first I have heard about this bundle.

Humble Bundle Mojam

This weekend the guys at Mojang will be creating a new game. You can actually vote on what Genre and Theme you want them to make over at their website. From the two polls on their site they will choose the highest and lowest result and combine them into the game some how. They will have 60 hours to make the game and it will be sold via the Humble Bundle site. I'm quite interested to see what happens with this, I can see it being quite a weird and random game considering some of the options in the polls

Mass Effect 3 Demo

I downloaded the Mass Effect 3 demo last night through Origin and played it earlier today, encountered no problems with it. It was my first experience of the Mass Effect series. I have been meaning to pick up the first 2 games but have yet to get around to buying them. First thing I noticed is the lack of advanced graphics options, which doesn't really effect me as I tend to leave graphics settings on default but I know a lot of people won't be too happy about this.

Also with the key bindings use, cover, and jump all use the same button. I'm playing on a PC I have a entire keyboard to use and don't need one button to do numerous things, I'm not limited to the amount of buttons like consoles with controllers. They need to make separate keys for each of these. It's doesn't sound like that big of a deal but I find it interrupts the flow of the gameplay. It's more annoying when your in cover and need to get up and run somewhere, there are times when I was running along with some cover in front of me and I went to jump over it but ended up ducking for cover behind it. I should be able to jump when I choose to not when the game says I can. The controls seem very console orientated and not at all optimised for PC, you know because it's a PC port of the game, the least you could expect is some decent controls. It's a shame because throughout my play through of the couple levels available in the demo I actually enjoyed the story and the gameplay, except the not so brilliant controls. If they get some decent controls implemented for the full release, I would definitely consider getting it.

On the plus side of things, the combat is pretty swift and accurate, both melee attacks and weapon combat. Also you don't have health regeneration like a number of recent games, which is a good thing, unless you play a cyborg character, have robotic implants or have some actual reasoning behind it doing so it isn't acceptable to implement into the game. It does have armour regen though which considering the game is set in the future, the concept is definitely plausible.

Overall the game seems pretty cool, but it's the consolised controls I can't get past. So I will probably give the game a miss until it turns up cheap on sale in a few months time or so. Also I feel I should play the first two games before I before I play this anyway. I know very little about the series or the characters in it so playing previous games seems like a good idea.

Free Weekend for Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer on Steam

Not sure whether you want to buy the latest Call of Duty game? Here is your chance to give the multiplayer a shot. This weekend you will be able to play Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer completely free. You can start pre loading there game now in preparation here which I am doing now. While I'm not the greatest fan of the series, I tend to play a few hours whenever one of these weekends pops up as I did with Black Ops a few months back. I'm not going to buy the game, but it will at least give me a little perspective on it. There are plenty of people on each side of the fence, some love, some hate it. I like to sit on the fence and watch them fight it out. Just thought I'd mention it in case any one was interested really. I may do first thoughts on the game after the weekend has finished as well.

CS:GO Beta Expands

Just a swift little update. It would appear that the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta is set to expand. Those looking to get in on some new Counter-Strike action may be in luck according to a tweet from the CS:GO developer twitter about an hour ago.

Killing Floor Steam Sale

Killing Floor is a pretty cool little co-op survival game and it happens to be on sale on Steam for the low, low price of £2.24 which is 85% off the usual cost. You can also buy the DLC along with the game for the slightly more expensive (and I use that term loosely) price of £3.21. The DLC is just different character skins it doesn't actually add anything to the game except you can have your guy looking different. I refuse to any DLC of that nature as that kind of stuff should just be unlockable in the game but I'm not going to get in to that rant right now.

Anyway if you haven't played the game, what a new game to waste some time or hell if you have have 3 quid spare laying about I would suggest picking it up. It's great fun especially if you play with some buddies and organise your strategy to survive, you will need one especially on the harder difficulties. You will easily get your moneys worth out of this game. I realise that's not saying much as it's £3 but my point is it's a decent game and worth the buy.

Nuclear Dawn Mapping Contest

The guys at Interwave have announced a Nuclear Dawn Mapping Contest. The contest as you may have guessed is a map building one, letting modders and map makers show off their skills and hopefully get their level included as an official map in a future update of the game. Should you happen to win this competition, not only will your level become an official Nuclear Dawn map, you will also gain 1000 US dollars, you will also receive full credit in game and on the website, as part of the Nuclear Dawn team. For any aspiring video game designer, that would be a nice addition to your CV (resume). The winner will be selected with a public vote by the Nuclear Dawn community.

The competition starts on February 18th and runs though until June 25th, with the voting taking place in the two weeks after the final submission date. To take part you have to create a post in the contest forum for your map, introducing yourself and your team, along with some details of you map. Everything you need to know is in the link above. It's good to see the Interwave guys taking an interest in their games community and getting them to help them along their way. Other developers should take a page out of these guys book and let the people who play your game help you. Prime example of this is Valve, the amount of custom maps and levels the Valve community have made is frankly ridiculous and it has helped there games stay popular after all these days, that and the fact they actually still update their games years after release. Interwave seem to be doing the same kind of thing, they have had a number of updates since it's release and are planning more.

Anyway all you modders and mappers out there, you have about 4 months to get a map finished for this. I look forward seeing what comes out of this. I can see us getting a whole bunch of new custom maps as well as a new official one as well.

Greatest Video Game Ending.

A recent fan poll at Guinness World Records has announced that Call of Duty: Black Ops has the best video game ending of all time. I can see a lot of anti CoD fans not being happy with this. I can't say as I haven't played the game and don't know how it ends. If I had to choose favourite ending of a game I would probably choose either Final Fantasy X as I was quite the fan of that game. Though it's not my favourite Final Fantasy game is does have a good ending. Anyway either that or Half-Life 2: Episode 2 purely for the massive cliff hanger ending. I'm not sure why Super Mario is quite high in the list though.

Anyway if you are interested below is the top 50 in the poll. A few of them I agree with like Portal and Heavy Rain, most of the others I have either not played, not finished or just can't remember how they ended.

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops
2. Halo: Reach
3. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
5. God of War
6. Red Dead Redemption
7. Portal
8. Metal Gear Solid 4
9. Final Fantasy VII
10. Heavy Rain
11. Super Mario Bros.
12. Pokemon Black and White
13. Halo 3
14. Halo: Combat Evolved
15. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
16. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
17. Portal 2
18. Grand Theft Auto IV
19. Mass Effect 2
20. Super Mario Galaxy 2
21. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
22. Kingdom Hearts
23. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
24. Shadow of the Colossus
25. Assassin’s Creed
26. Assassin’s Creed II
27. Metal Gear Solid
28. Sonic the Hedgehog
29. Super Mario Galaxy
30. Mass Effect
31. Kingdom Hearts II
32. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
33. Sonic Adventure 2
34. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
35. BioShock
36. Gears of War 2
37. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
38. Fallout 3
39. inFamous
40. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
41. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
42. Super Metroid
43. Half-Life 2: Episode Two
44. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II
45. Call of Duty: World at War
46. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
47. Crysis 2
48. Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time
49. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
50. Resident Evil 4

A message from Gabe Newell

If you read the news section of Steam or follow Valve on Facebook, you may have already come across this. It's an update from Gabe about the database hack a few months back and this is what he said:

"Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users:

We continue our investigation of last year's intrusion with the help of outside security experts. In my last note about this, I described how intruders had accessed our Steam database but we found no evidence that the intruders took information from that database. That is still the case.

Recently we learned that it is probable that the intruders obtained a copy of a backup file with information about Steam transactions between 2004 and 2008. This backup file contained user names, email addresses, encrypted billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. It did not include Steam passwords.

We do not have any evidence that the encrypted credit card numbers or billing addresses have been compromised. However as I said in November it's a good idea to watch your credit card activity and statements. And of course keeping Steam Guard on is a good idea as well.

We are still investigating and working with law enforcement authorities. Some state laws require a more formal notice of this incident so some of you will get that notice, but we wanted to update everyone with this new information now.

Gabe"

The Valentines Bundle

Indie Royale are at it again. Giving you a bunch of indie game for next to nothing. The minimum at the moment is round about £2.80 but as all is subject to change. The games included in this one are:

• Zeno Clash
• Hoard
• Lume
• Soulcaster
• Soul Caster II
  

The Soulcaster games are currently not available on Steam but are available on Desura. You have just under 5 days left to get in on this bundle of cheapness and I as usual will be getting this in the very near future. 5 games for 3 quid, how can you say no? Whoever came up with this idea is a genious (I know I spelt genius wrong but it annoys a friend of mine,. Hello Jamie if your reading this). Since this concept started there are so many games I have played which I would have normally not bothered with. 

Blizzard Vs Valve over DotA trademark

Vs

It would seem that Blizzard are appealing against Valve and there attempt to tradement DotA 2. I can see why as the original DotA game was a mod for Warcraft 3 and has had the Blizzard name behind it over all these years. However it is just that a mod, a fan made game and we all know Valve are famous for taking mods and making them full fledged games with the likes of your Counter Strike, Team Fortress and Day of Defeat. However I'm sick of frivolous lawsuits popping up every which way.

I still think every quarrel in the gaming industry should be solved by playing games. Notch mentioned about playing Quake to determine the outcome of the whole "Scrolls" thing with Bethesda a few months back. Shit like that should be the way forward. Best of Valve vs the best of Blizzard in a winner takes all DotA tournament. If Blizzard win Valve changes the name. If Valve wins they get to keep it.

You could take this principle in to other mediums as well. Take the music industry for instance, the amount of people that bitch and whine about how "this band stole my riff" or "that band is using the same chord progression as my song" bull shit (I'm looking at you Joe Satriani, yup as much as I dislike coldplay, them using as tune similar to one of your riffs is hardly worth a law suit, there are more examples but I can't think right now). Anyway crap like that could be easily sorted that out with a guitar battle.

Anyway I'm getting slightly off topic but if you want to have a read through of the appeal you can here. From the law side of things I would probably be on Blizzards side as the name has always been associated with them and they have accepted the mod as one of there own. I can't see it going anywhere as it was a fan built project and not actually owned by Blizzard.

From a gamers perspective however, I couldn't honestly give a shit what the game is called so long as it's a decent game. So my message to all those throwing lawsuits about in the gaming industry is fuck off and get back to developing video games. At the end of the day Valve could just easily change the name and this could all be over saving people a lot of time and money. The game would still be exactly the same except they'd have to think of a new name and logo. But as I said before I honestly couldn't give a crap about the name, it doesn't matter.

Hard Reset: Extended Edition Trailer

A little while ago Flying Wild Hog came out and announced they are making an expansion for Hard Reset. We now have a trailer for the "Extended Edition" of the game.



It does look pretty cool and graphically it is looking extremely pretty. I am looking forward to this and will more than likely be getting this day one as I am sure this will be more of the same frantic carnage that was Hard Reset.

Hawken Beta Signup

Hawken is a new Mech Combat FPS. It caught my eye with a gameplay trailer a few months back. It looked pretty cool and after that trailer I never really heard of it again until now. The game is currently in closed beta which you can sign up for here. 



The gameplay looks pretty awesome from what the trailer has shown. I can see some pretty epic gun battles happening in this game. I'm going to be constantly checking my emails over the coming days. Hope I get in the beta soon.

New Map for Nuclear Dawn

Nuclear Dawn is a cool little game and has recently got another update which includes the addition of a FOV slider in the options and a bunch bug fixes which can be found in the changelog. We will also be seeing a new map with patch 5.2 under the name of Oilfield (there are a few screenshots of the new map under the changelog for those interested). The map is in a now open beta form for everyone to play and test. Hopefully there will only be minor bugs to get rid of which won't interfere with gameplay all that much. Just a short and sweet update of what's happening with this game. Now I'm off to play it.

Ubisoft Strike Again

Ubisoft, the company PC gamers love to hate, are once again interrupting gamers ability to play their game due to their "successful" always online DRM. This time it is due to a server switch which will cause disruption to their DRM servers.

According to Eurogamer games such as Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, Might and Magic: Heroes 6 and The Settlers 7, along with a number of other Mac ports will become completely unplayable. So if you do plan on playing these games during the server switch, which starts on the 7th February until a currently unknown date I suggest you go to your favourite download site and get a patch allowing you to play the game you rightfully own.

Once again because of this fantastic DRM policy in place. They are going to be pissing off actual customers while pirates would be able to play their games without any problem at all. I don't own any of the games in question not being available so it doesn't affect me personally, that is irrelevant though. If I did own the games in question and wanted to play through the single player campaign I wouldn't be able to. I would be fine if only the multi-player portion of the game went down as that is perfectly understandable. But the fact you can not play the single player due to online servers being down is frankly ridiculous.