Call of Duty 4 Impressions

Call of Duty 4, a game I said I didn't think I'd much care for. However, there are times when you must admit that you were wrong and embrace defeat. I mean literally grab it and hug the damn thing. Although since I purchased my defeat on Steam, I can do little more than smile. ENOUGH with the small talk, you wanna hear juicy details.

I must say that Infinity Ward has our classed themselves. This is a top notch shooter on the PC platform. Previously I had played Call of Duty on the Xbox, Call of Duty 2 on the PC, skiped 3 because it looked like a shitty launch title for the Wii. Previous incarnations were WW2 themed, however, with a title like "Modern Combat" I don't think there will be any mistaking this time.

Game play is robust. Unlike alot of shooters, there is so much chaos and gun fire that you must move cautiously. Using cover, return fire, crouch and prone techniques you can work your way to the next position. The gameplay is based on frenetic battles, lots of guns, lots of confusions, but many of the maps push you in a direction and use keen scripted ques to help immerse you.

I found "Hardcore" mode to be most challenging. This mode removes all HUD elements, radar, and crosshair. Now it is imparitive that you aim down the gun to be most accurate.

Single player is very cinemattic. I provides that "stress" in games that makes you almost panic. As I said earlier, it uses the scripted events to help immerse the player into the action.

Multiplayer is NUTS. It is what BF2 should have been without the vehicles. Lots of cover, lots of debris, lots of stuff going on. Ive seen servers as large as 50, but that is too big for the maps. 30 players seems to be the sweet spot. Persistant online ranking allows for RPG style addictiveness to infuse the game. As you capture points, kill enemies, you earn Exp points towards the next rank and weapon unlocks.

I got the game via Steam, and I paid a premium price for it. However, the game is always up to date, I can get it wherever I go, but no server browser via Steam. You can get COD4 in retail outlets as low as $39.95.

I would definitely recommend this game if you got some cash to spend or looking for a new shooter.

NEWS FLASH: Electronic Arts vs. Take Two Interactive

Just breaking news via GamePolitics.com, EA announced today that it would be making a bid to buy all of Take-Two public holdings in an attempt at a hostile takeover. Subsequently, Take-Two responded shortly thereafter to let EA know that they weren't going down with out a fight. Siting that EA's opportunity was not about creative freedoms, but about EA's bottom line. This is all on the heels of the hotly anticipated release of GTA4. The latest installment of Take-Two's largest franchise, and one of the biggest in gaming history. Not to mension EA's CEO admitting to screwing up smaller companies in the past. Origin, responsible for the Wing Commander Series and Janes Flight Simulators; also BullFrog created by Peter Molyneux(left after EA tookover), and Westwood Studios responsible for the Command and Conquer Series, all had been taken under the "EA Wing" so to speak. One must ask, where are they now? Still working at EA? Speculation leads us to belive that probably not all of them. I'm sure they are all working somewhere. This was more of a case of give me your Brandings and Trademarks and we will give you a few million dollars to retire on. Are there lessons learned from the past at all? EA is on a collission course with the Galaxy and Take-Two won't have it. A modern day David v. Goliath case.

The Definitive LAN Party Guide Part 1

Hello residents of the interwebz! Today is the beginning of a 3 part series about LAN Parties. With the DSL generation in full swing, many people today forget their fond memories of a LP past. If you want to get your party on, here are a few tips from LAN Party Pros. I'll tell you where and how to throw the best shin-dig around. Topics range from Games to Girls, Pizza to Players, and many many more topics. Sit back and get ready to take notes.

TOPIC 1 - Getting Started

• Set Date and Time
• Date of Party and Begining/End time important
• Where da party at?
• Tables and Chairs
• What should we bring?
  

First thing to do is to decided to have a LAN Party. If you live with roommates and/or parents, please discuss with them before having a party on the premesis. Next would be to decide when to have the party? Should you do it on a weekday, weekend, holiday? For me, having it on a Friday/Saturday or a Saturday/Sunday usually works the best. Everyone is off work, its a weekend so noone has obligations to fill. However, holidays work good if you want to come up with a fancy name for your LP. We like to use "LANsgibbing." Thats trademarked BTW so don't think about using it. So now that you have decided what day your party will be on, now its time to choose a time. Choosing a time is not as important as the date, but it still can give you a tactical advantage by choosing a good start time. Now, I don't know your friends, but if they are anything like mine, they don't like to wake up early or show up on time. So here are a few tips when setting your start time. Tip1: Schedule doors open around noon. If you take your friends into account (mine for this instance) 12noon gives us plenty of time to set up in the morning/evening before, late enough not to have to feed anyone, and early enough to get the slowpokes playing by 3pm.

Where Da Party At? How do you let your fellow gamers know you are having a LAN Party? Lets discuss some ways to get the word out about your party. We can start by the most obvious methods: E-mail, IM, and Hand Out Fliers. Fliers are good when you need to get the word out to massive amounts of people. This is good if you are having a very large LP at a school or a public gathering, not so much for your living room LAN. For most of us, E-mail and IM are going to be the easiest and safest alternatives. You should email your cohorts approximately a month before hand. This will give them time to talk to their boss/employer to take time off, clear their schedules of other crappier things to do etc. I suggest Email first with a list of things to bring, general rules, and an RSVP date. If your friends are like mine, noone will RSVP to the email, but everyone will RSVP one way or another. The RSVP makes it easier to do a head count for pizza or for our next step, securing tables and chairs.

Once you have the people taken care of, now its time to secure the seating arrangements. For me, its easy since I have all the equipemnt. I have long tables purchased from Staples and HomeDepot for approximately 30-75 dollars. Square tables allow you to maximize players in a given space. In the early days of LAN Parties, everyone had a CRT so monitors were a concern for table owners. Now, most people use LCD flatpanel displays so that is no longer an issue, and helps to allow more gamers per table. Chairs can be purchased at Staples/HomeDepot for approximately 9-15 dollars. If you can, try to secure enough seating/tables for a 10% overflow population (I.E uninvited guests, boyfriends/girlfriends of attendee). The more the marrier.

Ok, so you have your seating arrangements situated, now its time to focus on the food. What to eat, what to drink, who brings the beer, who brings the chips and salsa. Alright, all I can say here is Pizza. You can order alot of it at one time, it can be delivered, and its not that expensive. We have tried BBQ LANs, we have tried just about everything under the sun, but Pizza always turns out to be the easiest option. If you don't want to be out the money for pizza, put a cover charge on everyone who attends. Usually between 7-10 dollar will cover the pizza option plus any expenses that you incurr while planning the party. Just a tip, there is always someone who doesn't pay, make sure you have some extra dough on hand to cover for a douchebag. Party-goers should be encouraged to bring snacks and soda to share with other gamers. This way there should be something for all tastes.

More on PC Gaming Alliance

(This was originally attached to the previous post.)

No sign of Valve. WTF, you would think that Valve would be all up in that. Just thought I'd bring it up. However, is Microsoft really committed to 3 consoles? The PC, 360, and Xbox; probably not in that order. It's all speculation at the moment anyways. Do these giants have a plan to steer the PC away from the iceberg? Better Standardization? Optimization? Collusion? What if the graphics cards waited for major improvements to be released? Maybe developers could agree on a computer specification that they would use for the next 2-3 years. Some way to slow the growth and allow for a longer hardware life cycle. However, corporate greed in many organizations wouldn't allow this to happen. No one wants to change paradigms and lose money. My thoughs: Just make graphics cards huge, pack them with 2 gigs of ram, and call it good. We all know that has been the limiting factor for video cards. I think it will be tough for hardware manufacturers to embrace a change like this. However, a change in business models never hurt anyone.

Here is my Take on the standardization of the PC.

BRAND: GlinkmanPower 1300ex Motherboard
Power Requirement:2w + 10w(cpu)+ 30w(gpu) = 42w consumption max
FORM FACTOR: ATX-MDH-220v (Asus)
PCIE-16: 2
PCI:3
Onboard LAN Ethernet/WiFi (nVidia)
Onboard EAX 12 Sound (Creative)
Onboard FireWire 1394
Intel or AMD compatible (x86-64)^3 Architecture
Supports 32 GB RAM (MS releases XPSP3)
Supports Up to 12 SATA2 Devices

My Suggestions for the PC Platform

• Big on Memory
• Low on Power
• Quad core or More
• Allow GPU to have more GigaBytes than MegaHertz
• Extend the Life Cycle.
• Refocus on Optimization current generation to allow hardware manufacturers to innovate, not re-clock products.
• Integration of Wireless and bluetooth technologies into motherboards.

Eat your words Clifford, PC Gaming Aliance Formed

Over at the ever polular Game Developers Conference, a not-so secret alliance was being announced to the public. My previous post with the toutings of Cliff Bleszinski, head hauncho at Epic Games, and how he said that Epic was not primailry focusing on PC games. Well, I think THIS might say otherwise. Here is a snippet.

"One of our main major objectives is to provide one voice on PC gaming market. There's no one source that says 'hey this is where the PC market is going'. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are always calling their market share - we're going to call our market through this group."

-Randy Stude
PCGA President

The artlice goes into some detail on what the PCGA is going focus on in the comming months and years. I think this goes to show you that there is alot of hardware manufacturers who do not want the PC gaming industry to die. But lets hope that this isnt just failed bargins like "Games for Windows." This somehow seems to address everything that CliffB was complaining about. Interesting turn of events.

Media Attention: Scape-goat Journalism Discovered

Well, I've been looking for something to write about, and I finally found it. With the recent NIU shootings, the violence-in-games debate has started to roar. Finally, MSNBC puts Faux News and Jack Thompson in their respective places.

"On Friday, police were still struggling to figure out why a seemingly polite, well-respected graduate student named Steven Kazmierczak had shot and killed five students at Northern Illinois University and then turned the gun on himself. But Thompson had it all figured out. Faster than you can say wild speculation and reckless sensationalism, he leapt in front of Fox News cameras and suggested that video games were to blame.

Click Here to read the entire article. I think its about time someone starts asking questions and pointing out sensationalistic journalism.

CliffyB Defies his Master, PC Gaming "Secondary"

This seems like giant slap to my face. In a day when gamers should stick together, CliffB, the Unreal dude, says via MTVMultiplayer

"I think people would rather make a game that sells 4.5 million copies than a million and “Gears” is at 4.5 million right now on the 360. I think the PC is just in disarray… what’s driving the PC right now is ‘Sims’-type games and ‘WoW‘ and a lot of stuff that’s in a web-based interface. You just click on it and play it. That’s the direction PC is evolving into So for me, the PC is kind of the secondary part of what we’re doing. It’s important for us, but right now making AAA games on consoles is where we’re at."

There you have it. Cliff Bleszinski doggin' his home court, giving PC gamers the cold shoulder! What gives Cliffy? You're game not selling well? Get a hot spark in your eye? From an economic standpoint, I can see where he is coming from. As one of the few independant developers in the US, they must sell units to put food on their plates. However, "sims type games" aren't the reason PC gamers still use the platform. Its diversity of Genres that exists. The inharent multifunctional nature of the system makes it great. I have yet to see a decent RTS on the Xbox. What about MMO? I think what Cliffy is seeing is the fact that gamers (on the PC anyways) expect much more from an app than some console kiddie. The PC has plenty of shooters. Shooters with guns, bigger guns, cars, trucks, bigger trucks, tanks, rockets, chainsaws, etc, gamers are looking for something that pushes the boundaries, not just last years game packaged with new graphics and fancy Special Edition DVD bullshit. It is what divides the true "hardcore" gamers from the "I got this for Christmas" gamers.

CliffyB, I hereby challenge you to start bringing your innovation to the table. Keeping such a corporate mindset will disorient you and stifle the creative process. Personally, I think Unreal Tourney has been the same game since the 2002 iteration. What else have you changed besides the look and maybe a few game tweaks? What "new" or "bold" content have you added; and by bold, I don't mean "HOLY SHIT HEADSHOT" with the crazy announcer voice.

I think developers are starting to wallow in the financial advantages of the console war. A stable platform for witch all the games can use the same engine till the end of time. Collect royalties from other developers when they use your product. Well, untill Microsoft recoups their R&D costs and makes another Xbox and then all your games are...well...useless.

We will talk then CliffyB.

WASD

The Casualties of War: UPDATED

Well, the newest TF2 update has been released. New maps, some bug fixes, but no new weapons or game play mode. Hmm...what happened. I guess the fun stuff wasnt quite ready for show time. Either way, it will automatically be downloaded when you restart steam if you haven't already.

[UPDATE NEWS]
I've registered a notable difference in play since the update. I have not scientificly proven this, but I can see it with my eyes. Or maybe its just the warm glow of a hulking CRT. Anyone else?
[UPDATE 939pm PST]
A server update casusing chrashes has been released.

A Frightening Trend in Modern Journalism

Thinking back to my highschool days as the Editor in Chief of the school news paper, we learned the principles of journalism. We learned of yellow journalism being credited for the Spanish-American war. We learned that journalists should dig for the truth and not interject his/her own opionions into a story, or simply journalists should not editorialize a story. That pretty much sums it up in a nutshell.

Ok, with that said lets look at todays blunder. A local news affiliate out of Omaha Nebraska is reporting that a recent "study" says video games, even non-violent kiddie games increase emotional arousal and agression. This "study" did brain scans of kids who played a non-violent game and comparted it to scans of other kinds who played violent ones. Now, I'm not going to say that this is or is not true, however, what about kids who play competitive sports? Football or basketball, do thoes increase agression and emotional arrousal? A hundred bucks bet they do too.

My qualms aren't really with the data, but how these journalists interpret and depecti the data for the sheep watching the TV news. Just like Fox news, this local afflilate grabs some "expert" to rant on about how video games destroy our children. Later on in the article, Joe Blow Mr. Payne says after his kids are done playing a game all they have on their mind is Kill Kill Kill. However, the artlicel goes on to state that Mr. and Mrs Payne have not seen any signs of increased agression or violence. Some how that just doesn't sound right. Maybe Mr. Payne hates his wife for cheating on him, and some how projects that on to his kids. I'm not sure.

It's a sad sad time when junk science is so easily gobbled up by "journalists" and slammed into the piehole of middle America. I think its about time people start usuing their brain. It's amazing what human intellegence is wasted on.

Battlefield Noobfest? Another Battlefield Game in the Works

Yessiree you heard right. A new game from developer D.I.C.E is just around the corner. And I know how excited you are about new games in the Battlefield franchise. Lets count the wonder: Codename: Eagle, Battlefield 1942, Road to Rome, Secret Weapons of WWII, Battlefield: Vietnam, Battlefield 2, BF2: Special Forces, Euro Force, Armored Fury, BF2142, Norther Strike, Battlefield: Bad Company, and now Battlefield Heroes. Yes, the fine tradition of the Battlefield Series, EA and DICE have devised a quick and painless way to rid you of your spare cash laying on hand. It will be a free to download and play, supposedly running on older systems. Reports from PHL and other gaming sites report that it may be close to that of BF1942 hardware requirments. It will be a cartoon style shooter, with fully customizable players. "What's the catch" you say? I know you know that there are no free lunches. The new painless way to rid you of your cash would be micro-transactions. Like that of the Nintendo Wii and Xbox Live, you don't have to pay for the game, but if you want new shirts or faces or whatever crap they allow for consumption, you are going to have to shell out some micro-transaction credit cards.

So lets recap really quick: The game requires less processing power, it's free to play and download, quicker access to play, you can customize every aspect of your soldier. As if the Battlefield Series wasn't already riddled with douches and 10 year olds who scream for chocolate milk. I think what's going on here is an attempt by EA/DICE to bank on the new Myspace Generation of kids, who require instant gratification, can't be away from their top 8, need total customization and some sort of ranking system to show their EMO buddies how much they don't suck at something.

It seems like poor Team Fortress 2 rip off. I think what gets me the most is DICE's inability to actually support a product once it has launched. So, like the rest of the franchise, we will see a spike in game play, and then slowly sputter out once DICE has moved on to create Battlefield Heroes 2: The Money You Hid Under Your Mattress.

Just as a side note: Check out gamespy.com, somewhere on the right hand of the page, if you scroll down far enough you can see how many folks are playing what games. Battlefield had close to 14,000 players where as BF2142 (the superior game by DICE standards) had a whopping 300 players. This was on the weekend around 9pm PST. Certainly the BF2 player base should have been absorbed into other games by now.

Worst Gaming Temper Tantrums

I think this is why I will never play the Xbox 360. Anywho, Here is a collection of the top 5 gamer tantrums available on youtube. I saw this on Gamerhelp.com and couldn't help but pass it on. ROFL is all i can say. Make sure to watch "chocolate milk kid."

Bravo Brett Thomas

Here is a nice article I found written by Brett Thomas over at bit-tech.net. His article confronts the ever present rumors that PC Gaming is dying. Here is a snipet. Hit the link to read the entire article.

But it's not PCs that will have died, and it's not consoles that will have won. Consoles are just the tool most convenient for the purpose - locked down systems that can prevent outside innovation without significant initial investment. It's gaming that will have died, and a single corporate monolith that won. The same rehashed game sold eight different ways - that will be consumer "choice."

Read the Entire Article

TF2 Getting New Game Modes and Unlockable Weapons

Team Fortress 2 has been, to many, a suprise hit (maybe not). However, Valve's commitment to consistant improvement should be the talk of the community (talking to you Digital Illusions C.E.). The announcement made in late January via the PC Gamer blog, sheds some light as to what will be included with the new update due some time around the end of February. Starting with the Medic, Valve will gradually release unlockable "load-outs" after the player has completed a signifigant amount of new achievements. According to the blog, these unlocks will signifigantly change the way that the class is played. Read the blog for more details. Lets just say that these improvements will allow for a variety new techniques to be used in game.

Along with the unlocks, a new game type and 2 new maps will be included. The new game mode that will be similar to a VIP escort map in the original Counter-Strike. In a series of map fragments (ex. dustbowl and hydro), a team must escort a train car to the opposing teams base.

I don't know about you, but I'm foaming at the mouth over this. The possibilites are endless, adding more playability to an already awesome game.