L4D TV

Episode 220 of GameTrailers TV has all the the L4D2 footage you can stand (along with a lot noisy, spastic segues where the commercials would be):

RIP: Les Paul

If you've never heard the name, read this.

And this ... this is Rock 'n' Roll in the womb:

Burning the candles at both ends

From Shack News:

The next expansion pack for Electronic Arts' long-running PC MMORPG Ultima Online will debut as a digital download on September 8, developer Mythic confirmed today.
...
Stygian Abyss marks the eighth expansion pack for Ultima Online, which originally arrived in 1997 from Origin Systems. The game's seventh expansion, dubbed Mondain's Legacy and released in August 2005, recently became free to all subscribers.

And all of Iowa rejoiced.

Phenom II vs Core i7: Gaming Value Comparison

PureOverclock.com has posted an analysis of the gaming performance per dollar value of the AMD Phenom II and Intel Core i7 processors, paired with comparable high-end video cards. Their conclusions are somewhat surprising:

When we first set out to tackle this article, we weren't quite sure what to expect. We've seen both the Phenom II and Core i7 up close and personal, and have a healthy respect for each platform. However, we are performance junkies around here and pride ourselves as overclocking enthusiasts that try to extract maximum performance from our systems, regardless of platform. And we have been suitably impressed by the overclocking prowess of the Core i7 lineup, as have many other enthusiasts the world over. But we also know that very few people are also able to take advantage of much of those increases in real world tasks that can truly harness that power to a great degree.

We've seen the pendulum swing from Intel to AMD, and back and forth, and as gamers, we had assumed that the strengths of the Core i7 platform would prove too much for a Phenom II to overcome in terms of gaming performance. So today's investigation set about not to prove a certain viewpoint, but to try to illuminate the facts of the unknown differences, not the least of which were our own experiences. And as we must admit, we were rather surprised at the results.

There are a few conclusions we can now definitively draw after today's exploration, plain and simple. It is fact that a Core i7 gaming rig will give you better overall performance in terms of absolute numbers and framerates; the difference isn't very much, but it does exist. It is also fact that such a system will cost considerably more money as well for what is essentially almost the same performance. When the results are then applied against those cost differences, it is also fact that the Core i7 system then becomes a very expensive option, costing hundreds of dollars more for little to no performance increase in most games.

Where things get really interesting is when you equalize the costs between the platforms and look at what you get for gaming performance in return. For a current difference of $215, you can purchase a second Radeon 4890 to go with a Crossfire setup in your Phenom II system and it will utterly crush a Core i7 gaming setup that will have only one graphics card. And we must admit, that provides a very compelling reason to consider an AMD gaming system, especially when we consider that a Phenom II X4 can overclock very well and also easily handle just about any regular use application. Unless you're doing a ton of video encoding or workstation renderings and animations, the cost for performance difference is very difficult to justify, particularly for a gaming setup.

WoW account suspensions addressed

As IUN reported previously, via ArsTechnica, a large number of World of Warcraft accounts were suspended recently due to chargebacks filed against them by PaymentOne, a company most of the affected subscribers had never heard of. Blizzard investigated, and finally responded:

'The communication that was provided to the players affected by these temporary suspensions was unclear—we want to take this opportunity to clarify that these problems are not the fault of PaymentOne, which acts as an intermediary between the local telephone companies and Blizzard Entertainment,' said Blizzard. 'Note that the chargebacks were issued by the telephone companies and not PaymentOne. We regret any confusion over this issue and will be reinstating all of the affected accounts while we conduct a further investigation.

Those affected players who recently sent in payments have had their World of Warcraft accounts restored, and no further action is required. With regard to the account holders whose accounts still show missing payments, we will be contacting them directly to further address any outstanding issues.

Quotes originally published on Opposable Thumbs (Ars).

Hookers are the most trustworthy people

It's tough to listen to game developers talk about well-worn plot devices and endlessly-recapitulated game mechanics as though they're innovative. That said, I still expect Assassin's Creed 2 to be the sleeper hit of Q4 2009.

Video Games | Assassin's Creed II | Dev Diaries Part II: Power to the People HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

It's not the economy, stupid

Swedish developer GRIN hasn't made a decent game in a while, and it seems that's destined to be the company's epitaph. Following the 2009 releases of Bionic Commando, Wanted: Weapons of Fate, and Terminator: Salvation, the developer has announced that it no longer exists:

It is with a heavy heart we announce today that GRIN has been forced to close its doors. This as too many publishers have been delaying their payments, causing an unbearable cashflow situation.

That's what happens when your last three games have been blistered with metascores of 70, 62, and 49, respectively. A good metascore doesn't necessarily equate to a good game, but it does have a hell of an impact on the availability of publishing dollars.

Amidst all the crashing and burning, a number of former GRIN employees went out and formed a new development house, dubbed Outbreak Studios. Gamers will do well to remember the name, and its history.

Video games are dead

That's the title of part 1 of Scott Steinberg's series of interviews with industry heavyweights. If you're at all interested in the business behind the games you play, this is worth watching:

OF2 vs. MW2: Battle of the Abbreviations

A while back, I speculated that Codemasters was attempting to position Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising as a direct competitor to Modern Warfare 2. I never explained what I meant by that, so let me do so now:

The way I read the media chatter, Codemasters is telling veteran gamers - who would otherwise be inclined to play the next Call of Duty - that they have a broader, deeper, and more mature game to offer. OF2 is intended to be something that's more of a war sim, yet more accessible than ArmA 2, and the creators want to convince the CoD crowd that they're ready for a game like that.

Read this interview at RPS, and tell me if I'm on the right track.

Monday Music II

Cas Haley - Walking on the Moon



Cat Stevens - Peace Train



Antoine Dufour - Scratch

Approaching epilogue

More on Six Days in Fallujah, as the saga (perhaps) nears an end. From IndustryGamers:

Atomic did not comment on the number of affected [i.e.: laid-off] employees, simply stating that development would continue with a smaller team funded by sister company Destineer, which purchased Atomic in 2005. However, IndustryGamers has heard from an anonymous source who claims, "Out of 75 people, less than a dozen are left and about a third of that isn't even developers. The remaining team is basically a skeleton cleanup crew that will be gone soon too. They are trying to downplay the extent of these layoffs, but the reality is that Atomic is pretty much dead."

Return of the Messiah, part II

The redirect is now working (FTW), so we can start running custom maps. I'll get a new rotation up later tonight.