CoD4: Galactic Warfare mod

Brought to you by the German modding group, the Black Monkeys. The beta release hit the net a few days ago. I've played it a bit, and the character models are incredible to see in action.  Even though there's only one map at this point (Mos Eisley), the whole experience is surprisingly polished and professional, and hella fun to play.

The iPhone's true "killer app"

From the Mirror (UK):

Soldiers in Afghanistan are using a £19 iPhone "app" created from computer game technology to kill Taliban fighters.

BulletFlight helps sharpshooters work out how the wind and the rotation of the Earth will affect their bullet - and even predicts the wounds the enemy will suffer if it hits him. Snipers are using the ballistics program downloaded on to their iPhones to target the enemy over long distances.

Yet another Top 5

The worst marketing campaigns of 2009, from Set on Stun.

 1. Evony
 2. Dante's Inferno
 3. Rogue Warrior
 4. Modern Warfare 2
 5. Dead Space Extraction

Mr. Sherman's explanations for the various selections are interesting, but he missed what was by far the bigger story on MW2: the fallout from the IWNET announcement.

Borderlands DLC: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot

As of today, MMUR is available for the Xbox, with the PS3 version due on January 7. No word on a PC release date as yet.

Instead of new mission sets, the DLC will feature a number of arena-combat game modes, along with a bank to store your loot (a widely requested feature that should have been in the original release).

Video below the fold.

Adobe will be top target for hackers in 2010

From NetworkWorld:

Adobe Systems' Flash and Acrobat Reader products will become the preferred targets for criminal hackers in 2010, surpassing Microsoft Office applications, a security vendor predicted this week.

"Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity. In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot," security vendor McAfee said in its "2010 Threat Predictions" report (PDF).

Hackers usually target the most widely used products in order to achieve the maximum impact. For a long time that has made Microsoft their primary target. But the software giant has tightened security in its recent OS releases, leading hackers to look for additional targets.

McAfee also predicts more sophisticated attacks on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, Mozilla's Firefox browser, Apple's Quicktime media player, and Google's Chrome OS, with HTML 5 serving as a new vehicle for infiltration.

Monday Music XIII.5: the Midnight Riders

This Christmas song is so good, even the baby Jesus loves it!

UNAUTHORIZED EDIT: The hell he does!

Modern Warfare 2 the most pirated game of 2009

From TorrentFreak:

'In just five days of sell through[,] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the largest entertainment launch in history and a pop culture phenomenon,' Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said commenting on the game’s success. This is, of course, reflected in the number of pirated copies being traded on BitTorrent.

With 4.1 million unauthorized downloads of the PC version alone, the game more than doubles the achievement of last year’s 'winner' Spore. Modern Warfare 2 leads both the PC and Xbox 360 lists, by a landslide.

The overall trend across all platforms is that, unlike last year, all of the games are 2009 releases. What makes Modern Warfare 2’s chart-topping even more impressive is that this has been achieved after just two months of availability. We further see that the figures for the most downloaded titles have more than doubled compared to last year, equaling the growth in uTorrent users.

That's IWNET: fail at everything, and fail hard.

Monday Music XIII

Only links today.  Two of the three videos had "embedding disabled by request" - which is a completely asinine thing to do - so you'll have to just click on the text.

KT Tunstall - I Want You Back

Living Colour - Solace of You

The Smiths - What Difference Does It Make?

Left 4 Speed 2

L4D2 mapping & add-on tools released

Additional details are available on this L4D blog post.  Here's the short version:

To play custom maps, you'll need to download the Left 4 Dead 2 Add-on Support application from your Steam client's "tools" tab.

To make custom maps, download the Left 4 Dead 2 Authoring Tools from the same location.

EDIT: Hammer still takes a long, long time to load.  So be ready for that.

Speak with your team

For the time being, IT( )E has migrated over to Teamspeak 3 (beta). Our Ventrilo server is still there, but we want to test TS3 for a bit to see which platform is better. So far, the sound quality in TS3 seems superior, but it also uses more system resources (~26,000K vs. ~9,000K).  Here's our connection info:

Server - ts35.gameservers.com
Port - 9107
Password - donkey

Yeah, we made Rogue Warrior...

...but don't hold that against us.

From Now Gamer:

When it was pointed out to [Rebellion's lead designer] Alex Moore that both Shellshock 2: Blood Trails and recent flop Rogue Warrior might influence gamers' feelings towards the upcoming Aliens vs Predator, the developer insisted that they were worlds apart.

'I thought this question would come up and I suppose it’s something you’ve got to ask,' Moore said in an interview with X360 magazine. 'I would hope that people can see that Rebellion’s roots are in AvP. We’ve put an awful lot of time and effort and investment into AvP. Just the devotion to it and the fact that… I’ve got to be so careful what I say.'

AvP had damned well better be "worlds apart" from Rogue Warrior. It's nice to see the tacit admission that the latter was crap, but the question remains: if you value your reputation - if you take any pride in your work at all - why would you even think about releasing a game like RW?

The games of 2009: a list of lists

A. Wired's top 5 multi-platform games

 1. Left 4 Dead 2
 2. Assassin's Creed 2
 3. Batman: Arkham Asylum
 4. The Beatles: Rockband
 5. Borderlands

Read More

BC2 - new game mode video

This developer walkthrough showcases an original gametype for Bad Company 2: "Squad Deathmath." The mode pits up to four teams against each other, providing fortifications for defense-minded teams to occupy, and a single armored assault vehicle at the center of the map to focus combat.

The featured map is Laugna Presa: a jungle environment with lots of elevation changes.

Watch

Gamasutra's Best Of 2009: Top 10 Indie Games

There's so much more out there than you realize.

The death of a watchdog

From the Associated Press:

David Walsh said when he was assembling his first report card on video game violence 13 years ago, children were attacking on-screen monsters or aliens with imaginary chain saws and guns.

'When I saw kids as young as 8, 9 years old literally doing facial contortions as they killed and dismembered people, it was pretty shocking. And I think what happened is a lot of other people got shocked as well,' Walsh recalls. 'I don't think we want our kids' culture defined by killing, mayhem and dismemberment as entertainment.'

That first report card, which singled out bloody first-person shooter games "Doom" and "Duke Nukem," made an instant splash on Capitol Hill in 1996 and made the annual reports issued each holiday season by  Walsh's National Institute on Media and the Family a news fixture.

But there was no video game report card this year, and there won't be any more. The institute is closing its doors, a victim of the poor economy. Walsh, the group's founder and president, is packing his books as his staff of eight full-time employees prepares to shut down Dec. 23.

Dismemberment is now acceptable

We reported a while back that the forthcoming inter-species murder-fest, Aliens vs. Predator, had been effectively banned in Australia, being denied even the courtesy of a rating. Well, the publisher appealed - as publisher's are often forced to do in Oz - and to the utter shock of all, they won.

Not only did they win, but the game was approved for release with no edits whatsoever. The "classification board" - so horrified at the intense depictions of violence - apparently decided upon further review that it was all in good fun.

The words "arbitrary" and "capricious" come to mind, especially since Australian gamers have been forced to play a sanitized version of L4D2 as the result of the same farcical rating process. One hopes that some form of bribery was involved in AvP's case, as that would at least make sense.

Mass Effect 2 preview

Oddly enough, the intel is on a site called MM( )RPG, but it's a good yarn nonetheless. It seems BioWare has been running the upgrade machine night and day; none of that "add a few new weapons and characters and call it a sequel" nonsense that permeates the industry.

If you still haven't played the original Mass Effect - and you can tolerate the third-person viewpoint - you can pick up the game for a mere $20 these days. That's a hell of a deal for 30 to 40 hours of AAA gameplay.

Titillating tessellation

Tessellation is a method for increasing the geometric detail represented in a game through real-time shading, as opposed to increasing the polygon count of a pre-rendered object. Where most recently released games use normal mapping to create lighting and shadowing effects on flat surfaces, tessellation creates true geometric detail by amplifying the resolution of a "superprimitive" mesh, and then displacing the added vertices. For example:

Using tessellation produces high-resolution graphics without the need store a ton of vertex data on a disk, or in system and video memory.  Installations will thus be smaller, and graphics rendering will require less bandwidth, because only a limited amount of vertex data for (what will become) a hi-res mesh needs to be transferred over the PCI-E bus to the GPU. The tessellator generates all the new data without storing it in memory.

Read more

A note on RSS

The RSS feeds for this site redirect through feedburner, so they update a bit slowly. Once a post or comment is submitted, it will take about a half-hour to update. If you find a comment is missing when you click on it in the "Recent Comments" links on the sidebar, it's because the comment has been deleted.

Transforming people into pixels

The image below shows the real-life humans that served as body models for the characters in both Left 4 Dead games. It's pretty remarkable to see how close the character renderings are to the real thing.

Thanks to IT( )E Karnage for the tip.

The Soldier wins!

The final tally: 6,327,979 Soldiers martyred ... 6,406,065 Demomen massacred. To the victor go the spoils, and the spoils are actually pretty nice.

The War Update is now live, but since the Steam servers are slammed at the moment, you'll probably have to wait.

Even more BC2 footage

I finally got my wish: a Bad Company 2 vid on a map other than Arica Harbor. The setting this time around is the Panama Canal, but unfortunately, the color palate hasn't changed much from the last map. Still, as a showcase for the various vehicles - and some very impressive particle effects - the eye candy is enough to hold your attention for a minute and 52 seconds.

The video also drives home two obvious points: games like this are best played with lots of people, and console controllers make no sense whatsoever in this kind of environment.

Watch

The Ring of Honor

Most of the new toys for the Soldier and the Demoman are up on the TF2 blog. The mysterious secret weapon for the winner of the class war has yet to be announced, and the kill-count for each side has drawn closer than expected.  The last official tally returned 5,727,928 dead Soldiers, and 5,743,720 dead Demos, putting the murder margin just under 16,000 units.

I didn't win ... yet

Valve have picked the first, second, and third prize winners in their penultimate propaganda contest, and I'm not one of them (avast!).  The winning entries are all good, but not one of them depicts tea-bagging in any form whatsoever.  Horseshit, I say.

Apparently, though, there will be additional winners selected in the coming days. Keep your dirty little fingers crossed.

More work on the blog

The template we've been using was too much of a hack job, and has created a number of problems, most particularly with the site analytics. What you're seeing right now is a temporary fix.

UPDATE: after several hours of work, I'm more or less done - aside from missing a few links I know were on the previous layout, but that I can't remember right now.  Once again your feedback would be appreciated (although your pitiless indifference would not).

UPDATE (2): the template doesn't look quite as a should in IE8, but I have no idea how to fix it, and I'm not going to try.

Tactical L4D2

I found this over on the Steam forums. It's brilliant:

Introduction:

Hello! MattL here, and today I'm going to share with you my guide to being a pro in L4D2. Make sure to read every one of my tips and guidelines, and always make sure to follow each and everyone of them! Suggestions are also welcome; I am always adding new things and observations to the guide!

First, make sure you always use the auto shotgun. Every other gun in the game is just a waste of space.

Second, make sure you never stick with your team mates. Hold your personal safety in higher regard.

Third, never, and I repeat, never give anything to your team mates. See two molotovs? Throw one, grab the other! Find extra pills? Use one, grab the other. See your friend bleeding out in the corner? F♥♥♥ him!

Fourth, remember, exploiting glitches isn't cheating. It's tactical.

Fifth, always walk up to the Witch. Make sure to dance around her and yell out internet memes, which will eventually cheer her up, and you guys can be friends.

Read more

Monday Music XII - gone edgy

This week: Dave Matthews Band, Thin Lizzy, Joy Division.

Watch

First Left 4 Dead 2 DLC announced

From Steam News:

Dubbed "The Passing," the first game add-on for L4D2 brings the original Left 4 Dead (L4D1) Survivors down south for a meeting with the L4D2 cast, while delivering new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay for the PC and Xbox 360.

Targeted for release in early spring, "The Passing" takes place just after the Dead Center campaign of L4D2. Set in a small town in rural Georgia, players assume the role of the L4D2 Survivors as they meet with the L4D1 characters.

In addition to the new co-operative campaign and associated narrative, "The Passing" will include new arenas for Survival, Versus and Scavenge mode and introduce a new co-operative challenge mode of play. The Passing will also include a new "uncommon common" zombie class, melee weapon, and firearm.

It doesn't sound like we're going to get to play as the old survivors in the new campaign, but it's not entirely clear.

Medal of Honor: first footage

It's all pre-rendered, and it still doesn't look as good as Call of Duty 4.  Which is odd, because MoH uses the same engine as Bad Company 2.

Watch

Art for maggots

The brains behind TF2 have a little side-event going as part of the Soldier vs. Demo War and class update extravaganza. It's a propaganda contest, wherein you can submit a TF2-themed propaganda poster in the hope of winning fabulous prizes.  First Prize is a unique weapon that the winner can use in the game, with the winner's name emblazoned upon it.  This thread on the Steam forums has links to a large pile of submissions. This is my first entry:

And my second:

The New War: different than the Old War

Another update cycle has begun. The Soldier and the Demoman are the beneficiaries this time around, but Valve has added a twist. In addition to the standard three new weapons gifted to each class, one additional weapon is up for grabs. The secret seventh armament will be awarded to whichever of the two classes kills the other more during the War Update period, currently underway.

So does this mean we'll find a bevy of servers where everybody is one of the two at-war classes?  (Quite possibly, and it might even be fun.) What's the strategy? If you want the Soldier class to win, for example, do you simply try to pummel the Scottish cyclopes, or do you join as a Demoman and suck it up as hard as possible whenever a Soldier is around?  If people choose the second option, will the Spy be pissed at the fraudulent appropriation of his idiosyncrasies? Will Soldiers ignore opposing Soldiers? Same with the Demomen?

Looks like it's time to load up TF2 again.

The New Zombies: just like the Old Zombies

Is it worth 10 bucks?  IUN reviews "The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned":

TECHNICAL: It sucks when you have to hack an .ini file to skip a litany of "I Love Me" intro movies. It sucks harder when you realize that you've just paid $10 to put them all back. Bonus: all the old bugs are still there.

...Verdict: -$3.00

STORY: The intro sequence is pretty funny. The plot is as cliched and vacuous as you've come to expect with Borderlands. Still, it's nice to be doing something besides looking for the Vault, especially if you've found it three times already.

...Verdict: +$1.00

ENVIRONMENTS: Zombie Island adds some much-needed visual variety to Pandora. The level design overall is a bit more interesting, but there is one large kick in the balls: Old Haven was cut-and-pasted into the DLC (to become "Dead Haven").

...Verdict: +$2.00

CHARACTERS: Some nice, sometimes hilarious additions, but the standard zombies are the new bandits: they're everywhere, and variants are few. There is, however, a zombie that can puke on you, thus impairing your vision with its bile. It's not the Boomer though, no sir: this zombie is skinny, and the hurl is a darker green.

...Verdict: +$2.50

GAMEPLAY: In a stroke of creative genius, Gearbox has added crescendo events. (If you don't know what a crescendo event is, don't play L4D, because they're definitely not in there.) Also, we were promised "dozens" of additional quests.  I found 1.5 dozens.

...Verdict: +$0.00

ITEM DROPS: More!

...Verdict: +$1.50

* * *

OVERALL VERDICT: a total value of four American dollars. SKIP IT, unless you still just love the hell out of Borderlands.

Paging Dr. Ned

The first DLC package for Borderlands - entitled "The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned" - is now available via through most digital delivery services. For $10, you get 5 new areas to grind through "dozens" of new missions, and an expanded bestiary to murder.

Hopefully, the new content will provide for more than one night's excursion around the Island.  I'll let you know.

Have you seen this man?

We found the dog tied a 3.5 meter "multi-color finale" missile (professional grade fireworks), but the fugitive bastard was nowhere to be found.  If you see him, keep your distance, and call our hotline at 1-800-MASS-HOL.

Any reward we can scrape together will be sent through Pay Pal.

Monday Music XI - Back in Business

This week:  Jimi Hendrix, Magnet, Gemma Hayes, Nathan Lee, and Hanif Khan.

Watch

Say goodbye, Rochelle

The news from Kotaku is that the L4D2 SDK (release date unknown) will have additional functionality, allowing for a broader range of custom content.  In particular, modders will be able to inject user-created models for the survivors, the (un)common and special infected, and all the weapons.

I'm guessing the SDK will also allow you to import character models from other Source games, so expect to see Coach, Ellis, Nick, and Rochelle unceremoniously dumped in favor of Bill, Francis, Louis, and Zoey within weeks of the SDK's release.  And I'll give you dollars to donuts that Alyx Vance (one version or another) will make her way into the L4D universe before long.

Kotaku speculates:

What does this mean to you, the Left 4 Dead 2 PC player? Well, a whole lot more than just Nude Zoeys, I'd bet. Maybe nude jockey-Zoeys hybrids? It's a start.

Inevitably, it will be called the "Sit on My Face" mod.

Gamasutra's Top 5 PC Games of 2009

Yeah, it doesn't really mean anything, but here's the list anyway:

5. Torchlight (Runic Games)

4. Empire: Total War (The Creative Assembly)

3. Left 4 Dead 2 (Valve)

2. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (Relic Entertainment)

1. Dragon Age: Origins (BioWare)

And then there's this encouraging thought:

Finally, it's worth pointing out the originality on display this year; of the 15 games highlighted here, more than half hail from newly-created properties. And take heart, PC fans: nearly all had PC as the lead development platform, with the majority exclusive.

More BC2 footage

One or two obvious bugs that need to be worked out, but it all still looks righteous.  Hopefully, we'll get a look at a different map soon (like the one below).

Watch

On the Brink

Splash Damage - the developer behind both "Enemy Territory" games - has released a series of videos (all below the fold) showcasing their next title, Brink, due in 2010. The new game retains the objective-completion focus of Wolfenstein and Quake Wars, but it appears that Brink places a greater emphasis on the straight FPS combat mechanics than its predecessors did. 

And those combat mechanics are looking pretty solid. Borrowing some of the distinctive choreography of Far Cry 2 and Mirror's Edge, players can sprint and slide into a crouch in order to get to cover, traverse under a low-hanging obstacle, or evade enemy fire. Additionally, mantling over and on top of objects in Brink is more visually satisfying, as you can actually see your limbs doing the things they'd realistically have to do. Both sets of animations are something of an evolutionary step for first-person shooters, most of which provide substantially the same visual feedback no matter how you're moving about.

Aliens vs. Predator banned in Oz

From Wired:

Australian censors have banned the forthcoming [Q2 2010] Aliens vs. Predator videogame and developer Rebellion Games’ CEO Jason Kingsley isn’t happy about it.

The developer “will not be releasing a sanitized or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices,” said Kingsley in a scathing statement on Tuesday. The game will be released in February.

Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification is notoriously tough; sexually explicit art films like Salo and Ken Park met with ratings difficulties in the country.

But videogames have a particularly tough row to hoe in Australia because the restricted 18-and-up movie rating does not apply to them. If a game in Australia is deemed by the government to be inappropriate for children, it is “refused classification” — that’s doublespeak for “banned.”

The censors' report is available here (via gamearena.com).  Excerpt:

The game contains first-person perspective, close-up depictions of human characters being subjected to various types of violence, including explicit decapitation and dismemberment as well as locational damage such as stabbing through the chest, throat, mouth or eyes. Characters can be stabbed with a Predator's wrist blade or an Alien's tail in depictions reminiscent of impalement. The Predator collects "trophies" by explicitly ripping off human heads, their spinal columns dangling from severed necks. Heads can be twisted completely around in order to break a character's neck. Eyes can be stabbed through or gouged, leaving empty, bloodied eye sockets. It is noted that a player is able to combine manoeuvres together in quick succession, which further increases the impact; for example, a Predator can stab a character through both eyes with its wrist blade and then rip off their head, with a spinal column still attached. Extensive post mortem damage, including decapitation and dismemberment, is also possible.

Jason Kingsley's outrage seems a bit silly here. If L4D2's depictions of violence had to be so thoroughly nerfed to be granted classification, AvP's ban was entirely predictable. There is some irony here, however, in that the uber-violent AvP movie was not similarly banned. The OFLC does have an "R" rating for films; just not for video games.

GT reviews "The Saboteur"

I was interested in this game, but it lost me.

Watch video

Ask a Ninja reviews "Ninja Assassin"

They don't move

So the Saboteur has boobs.  Jim Sterling at Destructoid thinks they're grand:

It's worth noting how the nudity in The Saboteur is not as creepy as it usually is in videogames. There's something quite classy about it, which makes it altogether sexier. The women are fairly well proportioned and realistic, and while it's clearly sex for sex's sake, it still manages to look more mature and less cheesy than most games that claim to have important, intelligent sexual content.

This is what he's talking about:

VIDEO

Me, I'm calling "Uncanny Valley" on these ladies. But maybe robo-eroticism just isn't my thing.

Gamespot does not <3 Rogue Warrior

I might have mentioned before that Rogue Warrior was looking a bit stinky.  Gamespot puts it a bit differently:

In Rogue Warrior, lead character Dick "Demo Dick" Marcinko (based on the real-life ex-Navy SEAL, and voiced by actor Mickey Rourke) doesn't just drop an F-bomb--he drops an entire nuclear warhead of repulsive language that would make even the most world-wise among us reach for a set of earplugs. As depicted in developer Rebellion's newest first-person shooter, Marcinko is a shallow, potty-mouthed antihero without a single redeeming quality. Unfortunately, the appalling dialogue seems to have inspired Rogue Warrior's gameplay, which is characterized by useless stealth mechanics, inconsistent hit detection, incredibly linear level design, and abysmal AI. Yet the boring, one-dimensional gameplay and terrible dialogue aren't the game's most insulting blemishes; that prize belongs to Rogue Warrior's total lack of value. You can finish it in just over two hours, and the stripped multiplayer consists only of deathmatch and team deathmatch, yet publisher Bethesda Softworks is asking full price. Don't be a sucker: Steer clear of this garbage.

Ouch.

Modern of Honor

With Call of Duty Effing 7 rumored to be either a Viet Nam or generalized Cold War era offering, it seems that Electronic Arts has pulled the final feeding tube out of the World War Deuce first-person shooter. The next Medal of Honor game will be set in modern-day Afghanistan:

Operating directly under the National Command Authority, a relatively unknown entity of handpicked warriors are called on when the mission must not fail. They are the Tier 1 Operators.

Over 2 million Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines wear the uniform. Of those, approximately 50 thousand fall under the direct control of the Special Operations Command. The Tier 1 Operator functions on a plane of existence above and beyond even the most highly trained Special Operations Forces. Their exact numbers, while classified, hover in the low hundreds. They are living, breathing, precision instruments of war. They are experts in the application of violence. The new Medal of Honor is inspired by and has been developed with Tier 1 Operators from this elite community. Players will step into the boots of these warriors and apply their unique skill sets to a new enemy in the most unforgiving and hostile battlefield conditions of present day Afghanistan.

There is a new enemy. There is a new war. There is a new warrior. He is Tier 1.

There's not enough in the teaser trailer to make it worth posting, but it's here if you're interested. 

To all the MoH vets out there: what are your thoughts?

Boycotts FTW!

From Wired:

Valve said Tuesday that its cooperative zombie shooter Left 4 Dead 2 shuffled two million units across the Xbox 360 and PC during the last two weeks of November. That’s more than double the sales the original Left 4 Dead managed over the same period last year.

No doubt, L4D2 had the chops to beat its detractors into submission. But PC gaming forum-dwellers are looking like idiots these days, eh?

Metro 2033 - coming 23 years earlier

If the gaming industry is a mirror on the collective psyche, everybody wants to venture out of the last pockets of civilization after the world has gone to shit. As long as there's mutants to shoot, what the hell, right?

Metro 2033 is another one of those games, picking up the post-apocalyptic torch from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s mostly dead hand. The trailer is nevertheless intriguing, particularly because the visuals bear a striking resemblance to what the AtmosFear 2.0 engine produced in Cryostasis (a game you very probably didn't play). Thankfully, though, it looks like Metro 2033's environments will be more varied, if just as cold.

(Trailer below the fold.)

Mega-Martyrdom

MW2 has a bit of a glitch, and it's pretty funny (as long as you're the guy exploiting it). Sticking with the particular weapon & perk combo all but guarantees you'll finish at the top of the leaderboard.

1UP is taking the high road, decrying glitch users as filthy cheats and steadfastly refusing to reveal how it's done. Destructoid also thinks glitchers are scumbags, but they posted the "how-to" video anyway:

That didn't take long

A group called the TeknoGods has released version 1.0 of a "multiplayer loader" for MW2, which is essentially a server emulator that bypasses IWnet and allows players to connect directly to a listen server. The loader still requires Steam for network initialization, but the two-player co-op mode is no longer dependent on IWnet's matchmaking facility.

The plan for version 1.1 is to enable dedicated servers, without the need to connect to either IWnet or Steam. (MW2 already has dedicated server code - it's just disabled.) The beauty of the loader is that it's not a hacked executable. It's a straight code injection, which means that it operates in much the same way as a mod. That, in turn, means that it's going to be extremely difficult for IW to patch the loader to death.

Hacking dedicated servers into existence is not without its pitfalls. Without Steam, there will be no anti-cheat. Although the loader is designed to work only with original (i.e. not cracked) executables, it's entirely possible that a new crack will be developed that the loader can't detect. And, most importantly, there's the risk that your Steam account will be banned if the IWnet bypass is detected.

None of this changes the fact that MW2 for the PC is $60-worth of gaming f*ckery. But, it is nice to see that there are still a few guys out there that aren't content to get bent over by Infinity Ward, even as the reek of a failed boycott still permeates the air.

The sleeper hit of 2009 ...

... is probably not going to be Rogue Warrior.

Initially developed by Zombie Studios, the game was later handed over to Rebellion Developments after the publisher, Bethesda, decided that Zombie was making a mess of things.  The game was just released today, but the early returns are anything but positive.  Watch the video, and judge for yourself:



I probably would have shut it off as soon as I heard "Get dead, f*ckbags."

UPDATE: IUN has learned that Rebellion is also developing the much-anticipated Aliens vs. Predator, due in February 2010.  You have been warned.

The other kind of gaming

As of 8:19 PM EST, Steam says the number of people playing MW2 today peaked at 102,968. Time for a little wager, I say.


On March 1, 2010, I'm setting the over/under for MW2's player population at 20,000. Who's taking the under, and who's taking the over?

Bear with me

As you can see, I'm working on a new layout for IUN. What you're seeing now is not the final product.

UPDATE (1):  the layout is about what it's going to be.  I need a new banner now.

UPDATE (2):  done for now. Feedback would be appreciated.

What recession?

Citing internal sales estimates and figures from third-party tracking firms, Activision announced Friday that Modern Warfare 2 has sold 55 million units worldwide (all platforms) since its November 10 release. At USD 60.00, that's $3.3 billion in total sales for a game that cost around $200 million to push out the door. PC-specific figures were not made available.

As IUN predicted way back in July, MW2's sales have exceeded projections that ranged from 11.1 million units in the first two months after release, to 12 million units by Christmas. The hype worked.

CoD4 Star Wars mod

Amazing.

Call of Duty: Secret Spielberg Level Unlocked

Call of Duty: Secret Spielberg Level Unlocked - watch more funny videos

Bad Co. 2 PC beta delayed

From Gordon Van Dyke:

Hey all,

We wanted to update you, and slow the flood of tweets, on questions surrounding the BFBC2 PC Beta being cancelled. I'll get right to it and say "the BFBC2 PC Beta is not cancelled". Now this all started due to changes made to an earlier blog that removed the PC Beta from the details and the reason for this was the plan changed. With the huge success of the PS3 Beta we decided to drastically increase the PC Beta's capacity to insure as many people as possible could participate. Unfortunately this meant we had to delay the Beta to very early next year giving us more planning time to make it happen and implement more optimizations.

Here is a recap of the current PC features, and we can now confirm DX11 support with more details to come later!

PC Enhanced Features

• Up to 32 Players on PC (24 on consoles) - Play with up to 32 players online in the biggest multiplayer Maps in Battlefield. Each with a different tactical and gameplay focus set across a variety of environments.
• Full DirectX 9, 10 & 11 Support - Immerse yourself in the Battlefield world as Frostbite engine brings tanks, helicopters and explosions to vivid life on your PC. The game will fully support Windows XP, Vista, and 7 with new tech that further improves things like lighting and shadows.
• Enhanced Gameplay - The PC version also includes wide peripheral support like Joysticks for flying, NVIDIA 3D Vision, Logitech LCD Keyboards and VoIP Support plus a variety of specific features tailored for PC play.
• Friend Support - Find your friends online with the new buddy list to see if and who is online so you can quickly join their game.
• Dedicated Ranked Server - Everyone gets non-stop action with no connection penalties based on some other player's internet. Ranked Server Provider program will give players opportunity to rent their own server(s) located in professional grade datacenters, ability to modify settings like map rotation, create reserved slots for friends or clan members, kick & Ban players, and custom name your ranked server.
• Clan Support & Private Servers - Independent Clan Tag, and ability to rent servers for hosting and controlling private password protected competitive servers with expanded control over the settings from public ranked servers.
• PC Squad Play System - Updated from previous Battlefield PC titles now gives control of your squad before heading into combat.

Turkey, Beans and Mustard ? Tough Decisions

Whether you're eating beans with mustard, potatoes heated up over a sterno candle, turkey from a microwavable plastic container or a hot dog from quik trip, have a happy thanksgiving.
Perhaps you can all celebrate by tearing each other apart in left for dead and posting screenshots of your appendages. Hope you all have a great holiday ! -Steve

If you want people to read your post ...

... put the word "hooker" in the title.

Monday's MW2 post has 454 unique hits as of today. That has never happened at IUN before. Excluding a post that gets daily hits from a Google image search, our previous record was 121 (for "Crushed").

Maybe we should rename the blog Hookers and Beer.

The inquisition in between

I was sick to death of Left 4 Dead. I think I still am. Playing a game four or five nights a week for a couple of months in a row will do that to you. Obviously. Night after night, safe-room to safe-room, pipe bombs and pounces, pistols and puke: it all got a bit painful by September.

I figured Left 4 Dead 2 would be more of the same, and to some degree it is. It's still all about "point A to point B," and the inquisition in between. The survivor bots are still assholes, and the game is still mostly intolerable when playing with strangers. Any game that discourages you from killing the one thing that's annoying you most has a lot to answer for.

There's light and heat in this sequel, however, and it throttles you straight away. Everything has been upgraded: the Source Engine, the level design, the sound, the vampires, the difficulty, the trees (yes, the effing trees), and it's almost dumbfounding when you start to realize how much the new array of stuff changes things. I thought I could just adapt and assimilate - applying the competencies I developed in the first game to the second, tweaking them slightly to account for the cricket bat. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Predictability between rounds - a core failing of L4D1 - has gone right out the window. Valve didn't escalate the difficulty by throwing more zombies at you, or giving them rocket launchers for arms. No, they opened up the terrain. They vastly reduced the number of accessible right-angles in the geometry (i.e.: good luck finding a corner). They created three new specials whose sole purpose is to separate the survivors with ruthless efficiency. And they made weather ... a monsoon with a mind that looks so menacingly real, you understand immediately that it wants you to die.

So yeah, L4D2 is hard. An early Spitter can have you reaching for your health pack three steps out of the safe-room. A Charger can knock you into next week. Oddly enough, though, the Boomer still feels like the linchpin of the infected attack. The consequences of being blind and covered in gooey demon pheromones are much more dire in these circumstances. These days, Shiva stacking puts you on a timer (of doom). Oh, and the Director hates you. It hates you like you kicked its food and peed on its dog. The moment you start to feel good about your progress, the Director flips the switch for Relentless Mode (TM), and things go south at the speed of stupid.

In the midst of all the evolution, the one thing to truly love about the second game is that it constantly forces you to make choices you don't want to make. Do you wait for the next ammo pile, or do you drop your ass-kicker with the laser site in favor of a lesser weapon that actually has some bullets? Do you grab the chainsaw for its (very temporary) close-range lethality, or do you stick with the magnum with its longer range and infinite ammo? Which incapped teammate do you save first, and when do you just leave them all and bolt for the safe-room? How you answer those questions - and a seemingly infinite array of others like them - goes a long way towards determining whether you stay alive for the next 90 seconds. It's intense and maddening and orgiastic in equal measures, and I usually stop playing more out of exhaustion than anything else.

There are, of course, a number of peccadilloes I could mention, but they hardly matter in the grand scheme of the Great Southern Apocalypse. In one year, Valve managed to elevate the game I used to love to a level I did not expect, and I just don't care about the rest of my gaming library right now. Good on them.

This one's not going away

Another gaming media outlet - Crispy Gamer - has picked up Ars Technica's journalistic ethics story regarding Modern Warfare 2. Kudos to Ben Kuchera for taking the lead on this, and to James Fudge for picking up the torch. I'm betting we'll hear a lot more on this subject in the coming days. In particular, I'll be very interested to see how Metacritic responds.

Here's your hooker. Like our game?

From ArsTechnica:

The gaming press had a choice: either play Modern Warfare 2 in Santa Barbara, under the watchful eye of Activision and on their dime, or give up early coverage. Many sites wrestled with the ethical implications by posting disclaimers, others simply ignored the issue and didn't discuss it in their review. We explore what happened during the review event, and ask the question: what does Activision get for all those plane tickets and hotel rooms?

Ars didn't accept the free hotel room and airfare, but enough gaming press outlets did. Go ahead and skip right to the end of the article:

Would knowing when and how a review takes place change the way you think about the final score? What's clear is that readers should know the circumstances surrounding how the game was played, and how controlled the situation was. Reviewing the game at home is one thing, reviewing it in a remote location, surrounded by other enthusiasts and the game's creators is another. There is no reason Activision couldn't ship writers prerelease copies of the game: it has been finished and packaged for some time, and the leaks had already spread across the Internet.

Instead the company decided to pay for the gaming press to come to a specific location, stay in company-provided rooms, play the game a specific way... and all this came at a substantial cost to Activision Blizzard.

What value did they get for that money? We asked Activision and have yet to receive a response.

What value, indeed? Even if you suffer from some kind of virulent retardation that causes you to conclude that these "professionals" were not influenced - even a little - by all the pampering, it would still be obvious that the Acti-vacation was designed to skew MW2's Metacritic score upwards. The whole thing creates such a massive appearance of impropriety that it doesn't matter if MW2 actually is worthy of an 87 ("generally favorable reviews").

"Playing in a room full of friendly developers and your games press colleagues with perfect connections is undoubtedly much more fun than gaming online with some of the legendarily obnoxious Xbox Live players," [one compromised reviewer] told Ars. "You'd have to be a pretty naïve reviewer to think there's no difference—and if you let that experience form the basis of your multiplayer assessment without qualification, you're giving too much credit to online gamers' behavior."

Well no shit. Any media outlet that accepted Activision's package should have their MW2 review nullified for the Metacritic calculation. It's that simple, and it's that stupid.

Borderlands DLC video

I'm a bit disappointed Gearbox went in this direction, but at least I don't have to listen to more bandit trash-talk.

Video Games | Borderlands | Zombie Island DLC Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Destructoid previews Bad Company 2 (some more)

If you're trying to decide if BC2 is worth all the hype (on its own merits, as opposed to simply capitalizing on MW2's stupidity), this Destructoid article is a good read. It really would be nice to play a PvP multiplayer FPS that sports interesting objective-based game modes without skimping on the shooter core. Quake Wars and Section 8 failed because they couldn't do both. BC2 has the potential to avoid that trap.

L4D2 - some windows aren't really there

But it's good for the "Long Distance Carrier" achievement:

Battlefield Moments EP2 - Arica Harbor

Left 4 Dead 2: First Impressions

I'm sure it won't be as hyped as MW2, but L4D2 was released last night. After about an hour and a half delay, I was finally able to load up the game at about 12:30 CST. I played through the first two campaigns on single player just to get a feel for them. There were a few complaints I had, but overall, I believe it has a lot of improvements over the first. Many of the changes are subtle, but they affect the gameplay significantly.

First, the maps. They are much more open this time and it's not always immediately clear where you are supposed to be going. I never got lost, but I did have to stop a few times to look around and get my bearings. For the most part, they kept the idea of marking the general path with various lighting techniques. Also, the maps seem much bigger this time which is a plus for me.

The survivor characters were surprisingly well done. I was afraid that I would be too attached to the original cast, but the new survivors have already won me over. Especially Ellis. At the beginning of the Dark Carnival campaign, he literally had me laughing out loud. The only one I didn't particularly like was Nick, but only because he's a prick. And I haven't confirmed it, but I'm pretty sure Rochelle and Zoey are the same voice actors because they sound almost identical to me.

The new special infected are a welcome addition.I have a new found hatred for the Jockey and the Charger is just a monster. The Spitter didn't make much of an impact on the games I played last night. Could be because bots don't cluster or because the maps discourage stacking, but I'm sure she'll have a bigger impact in versus.

The flow of the game is much better as well. There are almost no down times when there isn't at least a couple of infected attacking. Because of this, sitting still is even worse than in the first one. Also, the level are much more complex this time and there are several moments that will stick with you. The very first level in the hotel was incredible and there's a moment when you walk into a certain shop that is just euphoric. And like in real life, when something gets turned on or an alarm goes off, you now have to turn it off before the horde will stop coming. No more hiding in a corner and waiting it out.

There are small things that add some variety to the game as well. For example, there aren't as many ammo dumps laying around. There are however, lots of guns laying around. What this means is that if you want to replenish your ammo, you're going to have to pick up a different type of gun. No more picking up an auto-shotty and carrying it with you for the rest of the game.

There were really only three complaints that I had. The first one is minor and a personal opinion, but I thought the tank looked a little less intimidating this time. He looked more like a pink blob and a little smaller and less muscular...just didn't give me the same sense of dread I'm used to. Also, the musical cues seemed to be missing. Maybe I just missed them, but I was surprised every time a tank was in my face or a horde was on top of me and I had no warning from the change in music. The lack of music also made it seem a little less tense. My final complaint was the AI. If you thought the original bots were dumb, then you're gonna hate these guys.

Overall, a very good experiance and a very nice improvement over what was already an excellent game to begin with.

MW2 for the PC: British sales suck

From GamesIndustry.biz:

With first week UK sales reaching 1.78 million units, it's no surprise to find that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has entered the UK sales chart at number one this week.

...

Only the controversial PC version of the game could be considered a disappointment, entering at only number five in the individual formats chart. The PC version accounted for just three per cent of overall sales, compared to 57 per cent for the 360 and 40 per cent for the PlayStation 3.

No reliable word on the North American figures yet. I'll keep you posted.

UPDATE: VGchartz says they have "exclusive" - though "preliminary" - data showing that the PC version accounts for just 5 per cent of sales worldwide. We'll have to wait to see what Black Friday brings.

Borderlands: get weird

I've played through Borderlands twice now, and I'm messing around with a new character I hacked together (with Gibbed's Borderlands Save Editor). The game is billed as a role playing game, but the story and characterization elements are so thin that it's a bit difficult to take the claim seriously. That's not a problem, mind you: tuning your weird abilities to inflict maximum nut-ball devastation is its own reward. That early realization got me thinking, and I came to another as I started my second playthrough: the four characters you can play aren't the real stars of the show.

Along with the majority of the NPC's in Pandora, the player cast members have almost no personalities to speak of. Most of the voice-overs are repetitive to the point of being tiresome, and the only motivation seems to be "kill things to acquire things to kill more things to acquire even more things." There's so much stuff in the world, though, that the formula kind of works. With upwards of around a bazillion weapons and other kinds of gear, looting takes on a life of its own, and finding that next screwy shotgun that turns bandits into gooey pools of giblets is all the incentive you need to grind out the next mission. The experience point and class customization systems just add layers of beef - and cheese - to the murderous sandwich. The stuff you acquire makes you what you are, and at the end of the day, you're little more than the sum of your gear.

So, the real personalities in Borderlands are the weapons. Some of them set the bad guys on fire, some liquefy them with acid, some fry them with pretty blue static discharges, and some cause the guy next to them to explode, too. Sometimes, your bullets fly off in a spiral pattern, and sometimes, your grenades disappear right after you throw them, only to reappear in a rather inconvenient spot (for the bastards that are trying to ventilate your dome, that is). Quite a few of the weapons have their own pet-names: the "Vicious" this or the "Genocide Stomper" that. One shotgun's description pays homage to Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness. Since that's the greatest movie ever made, you can conclude that the rest of Gearbox's inspirations are equally licentious.

Borderlands is just barely a first person shooter, in the sense that skill at the controls doesn't make much of a difference. Kills are far more a function of pulling the right tool out of the toolbox, and unleashing whatever advantage it brings to the table. Your toys seem to want you to be reckless and inelegant, and more than a bit daft. You really do have more fun that way.

*Tangent Warning*

Although everyone else seems to think that the game is best experienced in the co-op mode, I don't agree. I have a playlist that includes tracks from Tool, the Doors, Thrice, Stevie Wonder, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Radiohead, The Cure, and Elbow, that I cobbled together just for this game. It's a weird mix for a weird game, and the parts fit together with all the logic of a fever dream.

BFBC2: developer walkthrough

The narrator is Gordon Van Dyke: a former modder that impressed DICE so much they gave him a job. The video gives you a good sense of how the game will play, but it's a PS3 implementation, so the movement won't be as chunky when you get your grubby little fists on the PC version.

Video Games - E3 2009 - PlayStation 3

United We Fail

Steam reports a peak MW2 (MP) population of 68,026 today. View the hypocrisy in real time here.

Day Two

Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling on the advantages of IWnet:

Cheat / Hack Free Games: The biggest benefit of using IWnet by far is the fact that you don't have to worry about joining a server full of aim-bots, wallhacks, or cheaters. Or relying on the server admin of the server to constantly be monitoring, banning, and policing it. Modern Warfare 2 on PC allows us to control the quality of the game much more than ever before as well as utilizing the VAC (Valve-Anti-Cheat) system to keep games clean of hackers and cheaters.

UPDATE: Apparently, Activison doesn't want you to know about this. You'll see all kinds of MW2 gameplay videos in the coming days, but those won't be pulled for copyright claims, will they? (Note that the video is available here, thanks to an unnamed source.)

Destructoid previews Bad Company 2

Words here.

If reading isn't your thing, just watch the video with the volume maxed. I have never heard a game (surround) sound that good.

Pirating MW2: the 360 takes the lead

The story is interesting on its own. That it's not a PC story makes me fell all good inside.

The posting last Thursday on Craigslist was alarming. Someone was selling a Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle, with both a console and a game, for $500. The problem was that Modern Warfare 2, one of the most anticipated games of the year, doesn’t officially go on sale until Nov. 10.

Activision Blizzard, the game’s publisher, called in IPCybercrime.com, a Dallas private investigation firm that specializes in online investigations. The investigators tracked down the seller and stumbled into a scheme to pirate the game and sell a bunch of fake copies over the Internet. While the bust led to the arrest of just one hacker among many, it sheds light on the shadowy underground of the business of illegal piracy. It also offers a peak at how investigators try to head off a major piracy disaster before it happens.

And later:

Coincidentally, pirate digital copies of Modern Warfare 2 flooded onto torrent sites, which are peer-to-peer sites for sharing software, on the same day. That has likely caused untold losses for Activision Blizzard, Holmes said.

Full article here.

Meet AVA

The name of the game is Alliance of Valiant Arms. It's a feature-rich modern warfare shooter that runs on the Unreal 3 Engine, and it costs $60 less than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (yes, that means it's free).

The gameplay has a Counterstrike quality to it, but AVA is deeper (and prettier) in all respects. It has three basic classes, 50 levels of advancement, nine game modes, a full achievement system, and a solid array of weapons that you can tweak out with attachments.* You start with one primary weapon, a pistol, and a frag grenade for each class. As you progress through the ranks, you earn money to buy better boom sticks. Unlike Counterstrike, the weapons you buy are persistent, meaning you'll always have them as long as you keep them repaired (most of the optional gear is temporary, however). And, there's a whole pile of new stuff coming on November 11.

* Note that the website does not list all the gear that's available in this build.

AVA isn't as polished as Call of Duty, but the amount of content is pretty remarkable for something that's completely free. I've had a hell of a lot of fun with it so far, and it more than satisfies the urge to play the more traditional type of multiplayer shooter. In an age where most games are going the co-op route, it's nice to get back to my roots for a couple of rounds.

You get a decent wad of cash after you complete the tutorial mission. I highly recommend buying the M16 straight away: you'll do a lot better with that than you will with any of the default weapons.

If you're interested, start here. If you're not sure if you're interested, watch the video:

Score One for DICE

The folks over at DICE want PC players to know that they still like us so they posted this letter that they were sent.
Edit: Hopefully the image shows up properly. I uploaded this from work, but access to any blogspot sites is restricted so I can't verify it. I'll check later from home.

One More Update on MW2

Just in case IW hasn't convinced any PC gamers yet that it doesn't care about them, Best Buy recently hosted an online chat with Mackey McCandlish and Ryan Lastimosa from IW. Aside from further confirming that there are no dedicated servers and that 9vs9 will be the maximum game size, they also dropped a few more bombs. Here's some of what they had to say.

Q: Is there a console in the PC version of the game, so we can change our field of view from the xbox's default 65 FOV to 80 also can we tweaks the weapon damage for each gun, removes perks, graphical debris, breathing sway, also thru console like we where able to before or is this all gone?

IW: We would like you to play the game the way we designed and balanced it.

So not only is there not going to be any mods, there most likely will be no customization at all. If its not in the menu system, it can't be changed. And just how far does their balancing go? There will also be no ability to lean around corners because the game "isn't balanced for lean."

It was then brought up that if there is no console, what about hackers? Will there be a way to kick them? Let's see what IW has to say.

Q: Since we cannot kick people in ranked matches, how will we stop hackers who get past VAC?

IW: Our goal is to ban hackers from the game.

Good luck with that one. In other news, I've also heard rumors that IW has found a cure for cancer and is currently in negotiations with all the world's leaders to end war forever. Is there anything they can't do? Unfortunately, yes, there is.

Q: Is there a /record feature? Answer yes... please. We're trying to give you a 'chance'.

IW: No.

(As an aside, the way I hear this specific Q&A in my head makes me crack up every time I read it.) Ok, so not necessarily a dealbreaker that it doesn't support a record feature, but why would they not. It's not like it's a difficult thing to implement or that the game wasn't "balanced" for it. My opinion: perhaps they didn't want a lot of videos on youtube with 5 second pauses in the game every time someone leaves the game.

Q: Please give me a direct answer. On the PC version. Are all games hosted by players, and is there a five-second delay when host migration is in effect?

IW: yes.

So every game is hosted by a player and if that player leaves, then there will be a five second delay while the game selects a different host. Oh, and there is no way to select who will host. That's determined by the game. If you thought a high ping or low frame rates would make a game annoying, just imagine what it's going to be like every time the host rage-quits. Oh, and what about the host having an advantage because of a really good ping. No need to worry, because that will be offset by the game "having a great tolerance for latency".

But luckily, it's not all bad news. There was at least some good news for PC players.

Q: Ignoring IW.net, is the PC version a direct port of the console version?

IW: No, PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings.

See? Doesn't that make you feel better? You're going to be able to use your mouse and keyboard and use text chat in game. And what's that you say? You want to use a resolution higher than 800x600? Well, the folks over at IW have heard your cries. They're going to let you adjust you graphical settings. See, they spent so much time on the PC version that they're going to let you use features that have been in every PC game since Doom. Apparently, it was balanced for that.

But there is some good news. All those reports about how it's the best selling game at Gamespot ever. Well, those are only retail sales and a lot of Gamespot stores don't even sell PC games. So how well is it doing in the digital distribution world? Direct2Drive, Impulse, and GamersGate are all refusing to sell it because it relies on Steamworks. As for Steam, it has yet to go higher than 4th and is consistently being beaten by L4D2, Borderlands, Torchlight, Dragon Age, and even Football Manager 2010.

Test drive the infection

One plug-in, many console commands.

Yep.

GT's top 10 "Guiltiest Pleaures"

Video Games | GT Countdown | Top 10 Guiltiest Pleasures

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii