L4D2 cinematic trailer

It's quite good.

The KF update, in all its glory

Steam News has the details:

Updates to Killing Floor have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Killing Floor

• Added an all new fireball projectile launching specimen called the Husk
  
• Added a new Perk called Demolitions. This Perk's new weapons are the Pipe Bomb, M79 Grenade Launcher, and M32 Grenade Launcher
  
• Added new weapons for existing Perks
  
  • Support: AA12 Automatic Shotgun(with Alt-Fire Semi-Auto mode)
    
  • Sharpshooter: M14 EBR Semit Automatic Sniper rifle(With Alt-Fire Laser
    Sight)
    
  • Commando: SCAR Automatic Rifle(with Alt-Fire Semi-Auto mode)
    
  • Medic: MP7M Modified Sub-machine Gun(with Alt-Fire Heal Dart)
    
• Added 3 New Maps: KF-Bedlam, KF-Wyre, and KF-Waterworks(the Grindhouse Wave 1 first place finisher)
  
• Extended Perk Level to 6 with Gold Perk Icons to signify to others that you are Level 6. New perk levels included enhanced abilities for each perk
  
• Added 22 new Achievements focused on the new Perk, Maps, and Weapons
  
• Completely redone User Interface with a more user friendly Trader Menu design
  
• Implemented new Headshot system that improves headshot detection in network games. Additionally this system fixes Insta-Kill Decap on Fleshpound when attacking up close, and fixes the headshot detection issues on the Scrake
  
• Improved Healing tool functionality. Healing tool will no longer give "false positives" where the healing animation plays but no actual healing occured. Healing should be easier to perform as well
  
• Added ability to Repair Body Armor at Trader, with the additional ability to partially repair the armor when low on money
  
• Improved Collision Detection on players. Should allow you to shoot Zeds near other players where the old cylinder collision would not
  
• Tweaked Clot attack animations
  
• Fixed not being able to properly select your Perk in the Lobby Menu when you join a game during Trader Time
  
• Fixed 3rd Person Nade throwing animations not working online
  
• Fixed issues with the UPnP system implemented in version 1007. The UPNP system should now properly handle opening ports on many more routers. UPNP system is now asychronous so will no longer make the game appear to hitch if the UPNP system is active. Including a new INI setting for disabling UPnP support
  
• Fixed known exploits on all official maps(KF-BioticsLab, KF-Farm, KF-Foundry, KF-Manor, KF-Offices, and KF-WestLondon)

Borderlands: RPS interviews themselves

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has something along the lines of a review of their first tens of hours playing Borderlands together. It's helpful in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way. The verdict: they love it, warts and all.

Painkiller: Resurrection demo

Available at AtomicGamer, CGO.ro, Gamers.at, GH, Exp.de, Filefront, FileShack and BigDownload.

Making hay

Bad Company 2 developer DICE is taking full advantage of the furor directed at Infinity Ward.

Good for them, I say.

The new Killing Floor

And it ain't your daddy's Killing Floor.

IGN has a preview of the third DLC, and it really is massive. Along with the Husk specimen with its ranged attack, the new maps (one of which is a community creation), the new Demolitions perk, and another perk level overall, the weapon additions are dead-righteous:

The Support class now tops off with a fully automatic AA12 Auto Shotgun that chews through large groups of enemies in a terrifyingly short time. As great as it is, you'll definitely want to make sure you're watching your ammo because it's very easy to expend it all if you're not careful. Likewise, the Sharpshooter can try out the new M14 Enhanced Battle Rifle and benefit from its new laser designator, accessible by using the middle mouse button. On the Commando side, players trade in their AK-47 for a new SCAR Mk 17, which is, in my opinion at least, one of the most enjoyable weapons in the game.

By far the most inventive of the new weapons is the Medic's MP7 Medic Gun. To lessen the need for medics to be right next to their teammates in order to heal them, the developers have upgraded this standard machinegun to shoot healing darts built with Horzine technology.

The holy grail of Killing Floor lands Thursday. The Plucky Pounding begins Friday night.

Inflict wound, apply salt

So the uproar over Modern Warfare 2 had just about peaked. Infinity Ward's forums are ablaze. The gaming media have picked up the story (see these articles on Eurogamer, Shack News, and GamesIndustry.biz for examples). In a matter of three days, an online petition to restore private dedicated servers amassed over 100,000 signatures. An unknown number of people have cancelled their pre-orders, and the game has an ugly one-star rating on Amazon (UK) after 103 reviews ... zero stars is not an option.

Today, IW started damage control. On his own site, Community Manager Robert Bowling provided some details on the matchmaking functionality of IW.NET, which could actually be a decent system if it works as advertised. There is one particularly salient question, however, that Mr. Bowling avoids altogether: why is IW forcing people to use this new matchmaking system instead of making it an option alongside the traditional server browser? In other words, why is it necessary to kill the dedicated server model that has served PC gamers - and served them well - for years?

Note the he does offer a (non) answer those questions, by way of setting up a rather transparent straw man:

IWNET takes the benefits of dedicated servers and allows them to be utilized and accessed by every player, out of the box, while removing the barrier to entry for players unaware of how to maintain a server on their own.

I call bullshit. Having administrative control over a dedicated server affords an array of obvious benefits that will be either neutered or completely unavailable with the new system. Anyone that has found a home on a clan server can rattle-off half a dozen without even thinking about it. More to the point, this supposed "barrier to entry" only affects the handful of people who choose to become a server administrator; no one else has to worry about it. Players have always had the ability to filter servers for a number of useful variables, and to add servers to a list of favorites. That system has worked well for years, and for the majority, there's no overriding need to totally supplant it with consolized matchmaking.

Insulting the community's intelligence wasn't a great start, but IW's Jason West decided to take it a step further by insulting the community itself. Talking to GameInformer, Mr. West was quoted as follows:

"We're just prioritizing the player experience above the modders and the tuners," says West. He points toward the mounting feedback IW has received from PC fans of Modern Warfare who couldn't find a decent server to play on between all of the cheaters, the insular communities, and huge skill level disparities that the original game's community fractured into. "We thought maybe it would be cool if the fans could play the game," he laughs.

And later:

West takes a shot at the motives behind some of the outrage, noting that there's money to made by selling dedicates servers and adspace on them: "It's a little dubious. Some of the people complaining are complaining with their pocketbook."

More bullshit, another man of straw. Eliminating a proven feature set in favor of a simplified (read: dumbed-down) matchmaking system, instead of letting the two systems coexist, does not result in a net enhancement of the player experience. And IW.NET does not merely de-prioritize modders and "tuners" (whatever the hell that means), it marginalizes them out of existence.

I don't believe for a second that IW.NET was a response to an outcry for better matchmaking. No one who has played CoD4 for any substantial amount of time could mistake a higher rank (achieved via MMO-esqe grinding) for a higher skill level. And I guarantee you, aimbotters, wallhackers and every other species of cheating scumbag will find their way onto MW2's official servers. Every argument adds to the great, steaming pile of misdirection, crowned with IW's total indifference to the fact that most of us will see right through it.

And finally, IW's West and Vince Zampella drop the bomb we all saw coming:

Again and again during our conversation, West and Zampella hammer the point that hardcore PC players lose very little to this change relative to the returns that casual to moderate fans will see. Clans can set up private matches to do their training or what have you; all they lose is the ability to customize the game on a deeper level with mods and such.

That's all we lose? Yeah, that's not much of a blow at all.

So there you have it. Infinity Ward's response to the community that made them is this: "if you don't like it, you can all go fuck yourselves." That peak I mentioned at the beginning of this post is just the end of phase 1.

The G (Spot) Man

If you've played Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead, this should make your day:

The gloat

From Kotaku:

Earlier this morning, the executive producer [DICE] for the Battlefield franchise tweaked Call of Duty overInfinity Ward ending dedicated server support, "confirming" that, yes, dedicated server support is "a given" in Battlefield titles on the PC.

"Dedicated servers FTW. What ever secures a better online experience is a given for us," Tweeted DICE's K.M. Troedsson.