Battlefield 4 beta gameplay

Heh, I love Freddie. He's my HERO. (Get it?)

The sickness

SOURCE:  http://pettyartist.deviantart.com/art/Constant-Companion-Portal-162763625

Another Skyrim Video

Okay, so yeah I know it's getting out of hand, but here.

And yeah, we know it's not real, because he kills three bears without even having to try. They should have shown him getting his ass kicked.

Completely off topic

But in the theme of silly videos:

Hey Mage: I'll see your censorship...

...and raise you this guy:

Unnecessary Censorship

The Dragonborn Comes

Wow.

Best BF3 video we may ever see

BF3 notice

You must be logged-in to Origin to download the patch.

Skyrim has one big problem...

...but no one cares, really.  There's more than enough to love, that the tiresome bits may be tolerated.

Tom Bissell, a man whose writing was unknown to me before today, wrote a series of interesting words on Grantland, a site I have never heard of before. His subject is Skyrim's narrative exposition, and why it sucks, needlessly. Read the whole thing, of course, (and fear no spoilers) but this will whet your appetite:

I suppose that can't really be held against the Elder Scrolls games any more than the addictiveness of crystal meth can be held against crystal meth dealers. The real problem with the Elder Scrolls games — the real artistic problem, I mean — is that when you're not out there chopping and shopping, or dropping a Helmet of Alteration to make room for an Axe of Freezing, you're stuck in some town, being buttonholed by a loquacious elf inexplicably determined to tell you all about a magic tree. The series' designers have always mercifully allowed the player the option of spamming through the tedious pre-quest dialogue at the speed of thumb, but the problem with the Elder Scrolls games has now grown more significant than its narrative content's optionality. The problem, it now seems clear, is that the way in which the Elder Scrolls games present their narrative content — the way, in other words, they try to communicate "drama" — has never worked and will never work. 

The dialogue in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is without question the best written and most capably performed of any Elder Scrolls game. Another way of saying this: It remains terrible. Please know that, two hours into Skyrim, my astoundometer remained soaringly high. Whether you're watching some lonely club-carrying giants herd woolly mammoths across the steppe or journeying up a snowy mountain to a hidden monastery or hiding in a watchtower from a poison-breathing dragon or doing something as desultory as catching butterflies, for god's sake, the game is as visually compelling as it is experientially gratifying. Every time one of Skyrim's characters opened his or her mouth, however, I felt my irritation begin to nibble away at Skyrim's edges. Irritation in response to a game's dialogue is especially problematical when said game contains hours upon hours of dialogue. How can it be that the part of the game that exerts so much effort to accomplish something succeeds in accomplishing nothing?

Mother of God...

Change your Steam passwords

November 10th, 2011  

Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users:
Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.
We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.
We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.
While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.
We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.
We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.
I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Gabe.

We Love CounterStrike

Harshest game review ... ever

Extra Credits excoriates Call of Juarez, the Cartel.

+1

Saints Row: The Third - "Shock and Awesome" trailer

Why is it that any game that mocks CoD and BF immediately gets my attention? It's just a trailer, for Pete's sake.

But still, it's a pretty awesome trailer:

CCP responds ... well

Very well, indeed. I have no prognostications to offer, but the message is pitch-perfect:

A LETTER TO THE FOLLOWERS OF EVE 

reported by CCP Hellmar | 2011.10.05 17:29:00 | NEW | Comments 

Dear Followers of EVE Online, 

The past few months have been very humbling for me. I've done much soul searching, and what follows is my sincere effort to clear the air with all of you. Please bear with me as I find my way through. 

The estrangement from CCP that many of you have been feeling of late is my fault, and for that I am truly sorry. There are many contributing factors, but in the end it is I who must shoulder the responsibility for much of what has happened. In short, my zeal for pushing EVE to her true potential made me lose sight of doing the simple things right. I was impatient when I should have been cautious, defiant when I should have been conciliatory and arrogant when I should have been humble. 

This soul searching took me back to when EVE was just an idea. Bringing her to life in 2003 was, in many people's minds, impossible. But we found a way because EVE is something unique in the world. Getting her to 100,000 subscribers was an even more fantastical feat. Before long, we were launching in China, making DUST 514, merging with White Wolf to build World of Darkness, building Carbon, growing the company to 600 people, increasing our subscriber count beyond that of the population of Iceland and on and on, one resounding success after the next despite earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and even a world economic collapse. 

Somewhere along the way, I began taking success for granted. As hubris set in, I became less inclined to listen to pleas for caution. Red flags raised by very smart people both at CCP and in the community went unheeded because of my stubborn refusal to allow adversity to gain purchase on our plans. Mistakes, even when they were acknowledged, often went unanalyzed, leaving the door open for them to be repeated. 

You have spoken, loudly and clearly, with your words and with your actions. And there were definitely moments in recent history when I wish I would have listened more and taken a different path. 

I was wrong and I admit it. 

Captain's Quarters 

Without establishments and meaningful activities to engage in, forcing players into a mandatory single-player Captain’s Quarters experience was a mistake. I mentioned earlier the perils of not getting the simple things right. Removing ship spinning was a negligent oversight and a clear sign that we had fallen out of touch with our community. The interiors for Incarna were so scoped down by our launch window that CQ was essentially a prototype feature that we foolishly promoted as a full-blown expansion. We underestimated our development time, set impractical or misleading expectations, and added insult to injury by removing something in which players were emotionally invested. 

I fully empathize with your disappointment in CCP. We would have been much better off positioning Incarna as an optional technology preview that interested players could have experienced and helped us to refine. The tragedy here is that the team really did build solid technology and great art to support what you can see and did it in way that sets a strong foundation for building out the rest. The fact is, in spite of our missteps, they delivered some of the most amazing interior rendering and character technology in the industry, and their efforts deserve praise. The fact we didn't leverage their achievement more effectively is my fault. 

Virtual Goods 

Next we arrive at our rather underwhelming virtual goods rollout. There was hardly anything to purchase initially, let alone to put the cost of the infamous monocle in perspective. The last thing we wanted to do was create the perception that all items in the store would be in that price range. Quite frankly, it was rather pointless to begin with because we did not have a multiuser environment in which players could show off their purchases. It was another feature that we rushed out the door before it was ready. 

We also didn't do enough to assure you that this wasn’t the beginning of a "pay to win" scenario in EVE. Let me be blunt: Unless the MMO business changes radically, our virtual goods strategy for EVE Online will remain limited in scope and focus on vanity items, or as we said after the CSM visit this summer: The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. 

Though the introduction was clearly flawed, our plans for virtual goods are intended to make your playing experience better, not to disrupt it. From a strategic perspective, we had to take these first steps because monthly subscriptions are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. The culture of online gaming is changing, just as the notion of digital ownership did with music. If we don't evolve our technology, our game design and our revenue model, then we risk obsolescence, and we just can't allow that to happen to EVE or to our community. 

Incarna 

For the same reasons, Incarna—the real one with actual meaningful gameplay in it— will be a big step towards the future. For an experience that relies so much on emergence and human interaction, it's remarkable that it's taken us this long to actually put a face on it. Once Incarna hits its stride, EVE will be more personal, and thus more accessible to general audiences. Visual self-expression in a virtual setting is a core psychological component of gaming; most people need to see their avatars, or something vaguely humanoid, or else they don’t connect with the game. We were behind the curve and it needs to be addressed for the sake of EVE's longevity. We have the technology. Now we need time to add the content that will bring more meaning to the gameplay—again, without disrupting the space combat simulator that many of you are, or at least were, very much in love with—and without delaying crucial improvements that this core experience desperately needs. 

A Humbler, Stronger CCP 

I'm sharing these revelations with you now because it's taken this long to transform them into action. From all this self-reflection, a genesis of renewal has taken root, a personal and professional commitment to restore the partnership of trust upon which our success depends, and a plan that sets the foundation for us to sensibly guide EVE to her fullest potential.  In the coming days and weeks, the details of this plan and what it means for you will be unveiled. Part of what led us down this path is the fact we have not communicated well. This blog, and those that will follow, will hopefully demonstrate our conviction to transparency.   

Good things are coming. They always do when you learn from your mistakes. In 2007, we faced a similar crisis of confidence, and it resulted in the creation of the CSM. We're a better company because of it. In the last months, we've taken a hard look at everything, including my leadership. What I can say for now is that we've taken action to ensure these mistakes are never repeated. We have reexamined our processes, hired experienced industry professionals for key leadership positions, reassessed our priorities, moved personnel around and, above all else, recognized our limitations. 

For me, the most frustrating aspect of this is that after all this time, as far as EVE has come and in spite of everything that's happened, I fervently believe with all my heart that we've not even scratched the surface of EVE's potential. My personal failing is not reconciling that passion with pragmatism. We've been trying to expand the EVE universe in several directions at once, and I need to do a better job of pursuing that vision without diluting or marginalizing the things that are great—or could be great—about the game right now. Nullsec space needs to be fixed. Factional warfare needs to be fixed. The game needs new ships. We need to do a better job of nurturing our new players and making EVE the intriguing, boundless universe it has the potential to be. 

We really do have something that no one else has. EVE is still unique in the real and virtual world. This is our vision for her, and we want so badly to take you there. But getting there is not an entitlement. It will take hard work, open communication and, above all else, collaboration with you. The greatest lesson for me is the realization that EVE belongs to you, and we at CCP are just the hosts of your experience. When we channel our passion for EVE constructively, we can make this vision a reality together. 

But enough talk from me. We all know that much quoted phrase, "It's not what you say, it's what you do," that will make the difference here. From now on, CCP will focus on doing what we say and saying what we do. That is the path to restoring trust and moving forward. 

Regards, 

Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO 

CCP Hellmar  

P.S.Please comment on our forums or on Twitter @HilmarVeigar

Aliens: Colonial Marines E3 presentation

Looks pretty tense.

Woody Allen on "the Darkness"

Call of Complacency

The man's name is Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, and he wrote this article, entitled: "How to make Call of Duty worth your respect." This sentence sums it up nicely:

"If you [Bobby Kotick] aren't prepared to take a few creative risks, with all your millions on billions, who the hell will?"

I certainly agree with him, but I'm looking forward to what I expect to be the title of a follow-up post: "Why CoD Elite is such a clusterf*ck." 

Creative complacency is its own punishment, but there are worse things on the horizon.

To know them is to love them

DOTA isn't my cup of tea, but Valve's blog posts are often worth reading even if you don't give a sh*t about the particular game:

Our original plan was to spend the next year or so in beta, adding new features and slowly growing the number of heroes until we reached a level of parity with Dota 1, at which point we'd release Dota 2 to the world. But the feedback we're seeing everywhere is that people just want to play it, even though there's still a ton of heroes yet to be implemented. We've also seen that the folks who are already in the beta are chomping at the bit to show everyone else some of the fun games they've had. So we decided our original plan was dumb.

SOURCE

ROHOS: a question of FOV

The gates to Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad have been thrown wide. That means you can download it from Steam right now, people. Many players reported that the beta performed much better after the most recent (September 8) patch, so we can hope that the full game will be in fair working order this evening. 

Do note, however, that Tripwire has rolled-back support for horizontal fields of view ("hFOV") other than 75 degrees for the release build. That does not mean you won't be able to set your own hFOV, but it does mean you might have problems if you choose to tinker with that particular setting.  Note also that the 75 hFOV applies only to 4:3 aspect ratio monitors.  On a 16:9 setup, the view angle equates to somewhere between 85 and 91. Eyefinity users should be able to get 120 degrees or better.

Tripwire's Ramm-Jaeger explained the decision on the dev's official forums:

I'll reiterate and expand on what Yoshiro said. The ability to adjust the FOV between 70-90, as well as the ability to set different FOV zoom for ironsights were features that were added very late in the dev. Mostly I did it as a personal favor to Zetsumei, and I stayed late one nite and worked til almost 2 in the morning one evening to get those features added into the game (unplanned and unscheduled features). Both of the features ended up causing a lot of bugs. We spent a LOT of time trying to fix the bugs (too much time to be honest) and decided to pull official support for these last minute features.  

The game was developed for 5 years with a default FOV of 70 (on a 4:3 monitor, which is actually 80+ FOV on a widescreen monitor, which is pretty close to the FOV of Ostfront). After testing with 90 we discovered it caused a lot MORE clipping issues (yes there are a few remaining clipping issues at 70 degrees, but they are FAR worse at 90). They were bad enough we felt we couldn't officially support them for shipping, and there wasn't time to fix bugs in an unplanned feature. The ability to set an FOV up to 90 will likely return post release after we fix the clipping issues with it. It will also include an "are you sure you want to do this, you may get bad performance" warning when you set your FOV that high.  

Regarding the weapon zoom settings, those don't have any exploitative benefits, but they also don't work 100%. So we took them out of the settings menu, but left the functionality in game. So those of you that still want to use them, feel free to set them up in your ini, they will still work. But because of the issues with them, we can't officially support them right now. And as this was an unplanned feature, we didn't have time to fix ALL of the bugs with them. Essentially, if your monitor is set to certain resolutions (5:4 for example) it could still cause your aim to get off. Now those of you that are willing to take the risk, feel free to edit the inis. In the future we'll likely fix the remaining bugs with the system, and add the settings back to the menu.  

In summary, these were last minute features that I BUSTED MY REAR to try and get it. They just didn't quite make the cut for tommorow, but will be back in the future.

Enjoy.

The cascade continues

Ed. note: this post is a follow-up to "The Space Barbie Failure Cascade," published on this blog on June 25.

Not three months ago, the looming specter of "pay-to-win" mechanics provoked a player riot in Eve Online. The Council of Stellar Management (CSM) flew to CCP's headquarters in Iceland, ultimately receiving assurances from the developer that so-called "gold ammo" would never find its way into the MMO. The most visible result of the conference was this video, which CCP apparently hoped would bring an end to the Incarna scandal.

Of course, it didn't. Eve's player base continues to shrink, and it seems Incarna has the dubious distinction of being the first Eve expansion to fail to increase the game's "Peak Concurrent Users" even temporarily.

Now begins the anti-CCP public relations blitz over the developer's neglect of its flagship game. It started in earnest with a long diatribe* by Alexander Gianturco (a.k.a. "The Mittani") on Kugutsumen.com, and continues with this Eurogamer interview with the same. Gianturco is the Chairman of the CSM, and a leader of Goonswarm, arguably the most powerful alliance in Eve. Love him or hate him, the man has real influence.

* Readers interested only in the subject matter of this post may want to skip to the section entitled "The CSM, PCUs and FiS Neglect" (FiS = Flying in Space).

A couple of choice quotes from the diatribe:

In other areas, particularly upper management, the company seems hell-bent on running Eve Online into the ground to try to make a reality out of the foolish business decisions they made during the Icelandic banking bubble. In 2006 they acquired White Wolf and promised to develop a World of Darkness MMO; similarly, they committed to developing a FPS that will somehow link to EVE out of Shanghai. Then the bubble popped, and everyone began to ask tough questions about the notorious overconfidence of Icelandic males. One of these projects at a time seems reasonable; developing both of them simultaneously is 'Fearless' and 'Innovative' using Hilmar's favorite buzzwords. Elsewhere we call it groupthink-fueled folly [...] 

What we see here is the impact of the neglect of what CCP now calls "Flying in Space", what you and I call "Eve Online". Usually after an expansion there is a surge of players who join the game; these create peaks and valleys in PCU (Peak Concurrent User) numbers as people kick the tires on the new content and then either stick around or leave. Incarna, which has taken a tremendous amount of development and marketing resources from FiS, essentially had no impact.  

Read that again. No impact. Millions of dollars and months of development, into a toilet. Meanwhile we suffer a backhanded Sanctum nerf and have had no new FiS content besides Incursions since the introduction of Wormholes.

In the Eurogamer interview, Gianturco says his views are "100 per cent representative of the Council members."

Incarna still isn't finished, and the CSM thinks that and the general absence of new content in Eve is due to declining resource allocation in favor of Dust and World of Darkness. That's a tough pill to swallow when you're a player forking over a monthly subscription fee.

Eve Online's idiosyncrasies don't end at its emergent gameplay and unitary economy. It has given birth to an omnipresent and somewhat peculiar politics as well. CCP has never been able to control the latter, and I'm betting that their "media strategy" is going to be humbled before that of the CSM.

It will be fun to watch.

Dead Island: early reviews

Ed. note: PC reviews for Dead Island are hard to come by. All the words that follow are about the console versions. The game is due for release tomorrow (June 6).

Start with Dan Whitehead's review on Eurogamer. Of all the reviews in this post, his is the most informative.  The conclusion:

I didn't encounter anything game-breaking in the 26 and a bit hours it took to complete the story solo, or during my forays into co-op play, but it would still be all too tempting to fill this review with complaints about the flaky game engine, the weird floating objects and distracting animation spasms, and annoying glitches like inactive quest points, inconsistent navigation markers and the general air of a scrappy half-finished game. All that stuff is in here, and can easily dominate the experience. 

I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the experience though. Dead Island is a deeply flawed game, but it's also clearly a low-budget game and one that has interesting ideas, often under-served by the bargain-basement code. Finding the diamonds in the rough demands a lot of patience, and enough investment in the base joys of zombie slaughter to tolerate the laundry list of flaws. 

I suspect this will be one of those games that will be justifiably mocked by the majority for its many flaws but embraced by a forgiving minority, and passionately defended for its underdog status. Neither response will be entirely wrong. Much like gnawing on human flesh, Dead Island's clumsy horror-action role-player is the definition of an acquired taste.

IGN has the only video review I could find (GameTrailers has one posted, but it wasn't working at press time). IGN's reviews are generally garbage -- and Greg Miller's is no exception -- but you will get to see some of the texture pop-in everyone's talking about. Note that you have to have a YouTube account to watch it, due the age restriction.

GamesTM has a short review with one worthwhile quote:

Aspects of Fallout 3, Resident Evil, Far Cry 2, Borderlands (and many more) litter its design, in ways that would reduce a whack-by-whack review down to a comparative shopping list of features. But even still, it somehow still manages to moan with its own zombified voice, with a system of exploration, quest accumulation and bespoke weapon upgrading that somehow combines well with the simple act of driving over a procession of the undead in a van so heavily decked out in armour that you can barely see out the front window. Furthermore, Techland ramps its character levelling almost perfectly, as feeble weapons give way to heavier duty, home-tooled monstrosities, and the spreading mutation introduces new types of zombie and even more powerful versions of the blade fodder you’ve already encountered. At its best – say, taking three zombies’ heads off with a single swing of the arm – it’s a hugely empowering experience.

Justin McElroy at Joystiq offers a mostly negative review. A few of his caveats deserve consideration:

* The game encourages you to throw weapons, but doing so risks accidentally tossing your prize into an area you can't retrieve it or under a pile of bodies where it's similarly inaccessible. Plus, when you're on the run from too many zombies to handle, throwing a weapon is basically saying goodbye to it forever. Another whole system that should be fun, but isn't. 

* [Y]ou'll almost always use disintegrating melee weapons and the only way to stay ahead of the curve of weapon loss and degradation is by being thorough with your looting. Entering pretty much any room in the game presents you with 10 to 15 areas to search, usually yielding a bit of wire, deodorant (or some other random trinket) or a couple of bucks. When you do find a weapon -- since your inventory will almost always be full -- you'll have to meticulously compare it to every other weapon in your possession. When entering any room is marked by rifling through seven trash cans and comparing the durability stats between two hammers, pacing is ... a problem. Oh, and did I mention the searchables replenish themselves, so you get to frequently repeat this banal dance? Whee! 

* Your occasional AI partners are beyond stupid, thinking nothing of walking into a Molotov cocktail fire, for example. At least twice I had to restart because an AI guide had lost his pathing and couldn't complete the mission. In another instance, my partner wanted us to run from the zombies, only she wasn't running fast enough to outpace them, so we just kept getting eaten.

Jim Sterling has a helpful analysis at Destructoid, which features this study in contradiction:

Ultimately, this is a Techland game that looks just like a Techland game. The glitches, the low quality graphics, and the bizarre gameplay issues that are hampered by broken animation and temperamental collission detection scream of a game that needed at least a few more months of development. To say Dead Island is rough is to be diplomatic. It is, in many ways, a severely broken mess.  

Yet ... it's a fun broken mess, at its most ultimate conclusion. So much about Dead Island doesn't work, but its ambitious concept is so earnestly presented and its loot-heavy character progression so addictive, that it somehow manages to get away with a laundry list of problems that ought not to be forgiven. I hate Dead Island, yet I adore it at the same time. Its combat irritates the shit out of me, yet I created a knife that has a 75% chance of making heads explode with one stab! Co-op is obnoxiously restrictive, yet I can't help jumping into games because taking out zombies in groups is so cool. Its story is inane and pointless, yet I found a bonus enemy in the jungle with a hockey mask -- called Jason -- who had a secret chainsaw in his cabin. Dead Island is the kind of game that mercilessly punches you in the gut with one hand and gives you a slice of birthday cake with the other. 

And of course, there's a day one patch, with an enormous changelog.

RO2 beta update

September 2 changelog, from Ramm-Jaeger on Tripwire's forums:

We're going to be rolling an update to the beta out shortly. Here is the changelog for your perusal: 

- Turned on Speedhack detection and added a system to allow server admins to decide what to do with a player when they are detected using a speedhack (kick, session ban, or permanent ban).  

- Fixed PreStartDuration not working properly which caused the round to start prematurely after a map change.  

- Fixed getting stuck with a zoomed FOV when using grenades 

- Added ability to turn off anti-aliasing 

- Fixed floating meshes when a player dies 

- Fixed destructibles not updating their shadows when destroyed 

- Fixed DOF inside tanks 

- The ranked server system is now operational 

- Player progression stats are now saving and loading 

- Unranked servers are now showing up as unranked in the browser 

- Realism modes are hooked up and functional 

- Killing a tank now gives extra points based on the number of players in the tank 

- New map list: Gumrak, Grain Elevator, Barracks, Red October Factory 

- Team balance changes. Commanders and top scoring players no longer get team swapped on death. The role select menu will not appear immediately to make it more obvious that you have died. Also, fixed a bug where an axis soldier could spawn on the allied team or vice versa. 

- Fixed some HUD icons sticking around on the screen 

- Fixed Countdown ending with time still on the clock 

- Fixed automatically firing your weapon sometimes when respawning 

- Fixed some issues with scoring in Firefight and prevented running out of reinforcements in this game type 

- F10 will now cancel a pending server connection properly when stuck on a loading screen 

Oops, missed one thing: 

- Fixed the Welcome Screen editor in webadmin making the welcome screen text invisible in game

Enter the Scumbags

Yes, Red Orchestra 2 is an Unreal Engine game, and yes, that means working hack prototypes are already out there. But no, this does not portend disaster (as it did with Homefront).

Tripwire's Ramm-Jaeger posted on the official forums earlier today to assure everyone that they're not only on it, but that they planned for it:

So I'll start this post with my usual - calm down, step back, take a deep breath. See, don't you feel better already?  

So I've seen a lot of buzz and panic about cheats starting to appear in the beta. First I would say this - don't panic. This is to be expected, and has been planned for. We've prepared for this and knew it would happen all along.  

Anti-Cheat - This is exactly why we've got the dual anti-cheats of VAC and PB. VAC as you all know uses a delayed banning system, while PB detects and kicks on the spot. Between these two RO2 will be one of the best well protected games at launch. Right now Punkbuster hasn't been enabled yet, and will be coming online during the course of the beta.  

So what about the cheats that "fall through the cracks" so to speak. This is where two very powerful additional tools come into play: PBBans and Server Admins! 

PBBans - PBBans has a system which allows streaming of a master ban list. As cheats are caught through PunkBuster violations, screenshots or demos, they are added to the Master Ban Index (MBi). So admins catching someone cheating on their servers can submit screenshots or video to PBBans and get the cheater banned. In this way, even cheaters using cheats that "fall through the cracks" will find themselves banned.  

Server Admins - an active server admin is a powerful tool against cheating. "But other games have active server admins, and they got overrun with cheaters" you might say. The difference is, Tripwire are giving the server admins the tools they need to combat the cheaters such as Punkbuster and PBBans. So unlike many other recently released games, RO2's server admins hands will not be tied when it comes to cheaters, and they have some weapons at their disposal to combat them.  

An active dev team - another very important tool in combating cheats is an active dev team. Many recent games have come out and been overrun by cheats while the dev team did little or nothing. As we have done in the past, Tripwire will be leaning forward on this and extremely active in combating cheats. An example of this is some cheating that we started noticing yesterday which is known as "speed-hacking". Later today, just 24 hours later, we should be releasing an update that combats this type of hacking.  

You - the final important component of this is YOU, the player and fan. If you have any information on any new or existing hacks for the game, private message the information Yoshiro or one of the moderators on this forum. DO NOT post the information in the open. You all can help be our eyes and ears to combat this issue.  

So in conclusion I ask you all to be calm and work with us to help combat hacking. Hacking and hackers are an ever moving target, and very difficult to eliminate completely. But together with you the fans and all of the weapons at our disposal we will marginalize and reduce hacking in RO2 to the point where it is barely a factor. Likewise we will do everything in our power to frustrate the efforts of hack makers and hackers to the point where they find it is not worth the effort.

Twilight Zone

Did I wake up in the Twilight Zone today? I was reading the Battlefield3Blog and noticed the banner ad at the top of the page.

Yes, ladies, that's an advert for a Fingerhut credit account, where today's top offer is 25% off T-Fal cookware. Don't forget to order some diapers and bras while you're at it.

Terraria

Steam knows what you play. It knows what you want to play that's similar. In fact, based on the fact I play Left4Dead2 it suggests.... Terraria. Because it's a FPS. Wait, because it's in 3D! Wait, because it uses the Source engine. Well crap, WTF?

From Dust, to distrust

You may read the whole article: War on PC gamers continues: Ubisoft misled on From Dust DRM

... or you may satisfy yourself with the money quote:

The game was scheduled to be released alongside its console counterpart, but it was delayed at the last moment, with Ubisoft promising that it would not require an Internet connection to play after an initial activation. The game was finally released and... guess what? Ubisoft lied. The original forum post has been edited with the new information, the company is stone-walling fans and the press who ask for comment, and no one is happy. Oh, and the port is absolutely terrible.

And of course, the game has already been cracked. The pirates get a better deal than the paying customers, once again.

Dearest Ubisoft: I will always cherish the initial misconceptions I had about you.

f*ck

This, folks, is why you don't pre-order.

As originally reported at bf3blog.com, the console versions of BF3 will feature an in-game server browser, while the PC version will not. You read that correctly.

DICE has confirmed that PC players will have to connect to servers through a separate application called Battlelog. DICE's Alan Kurtz (@Demize99) has tweeted his recommendation that, instead of Alt+Tabbing to access Battlelog, you should restart the game. Because it loads so quickly.

You just cannot make this shit up.

UPDATE:  according to Eurogamer, Mr. Kurtz has said that Battlelog is the whole main menu for BF3. But it's still a separate application. And it's not Origin, so that's three separate applications to log in, pick a server, and play.

SHADES OF UBISOFT UPDATE: if Battlelog is the main menu, and it is web dependent (as it appears to be a website + browser plugin), will you be able to play the single player if you don't have web access?

PEANUT GALLERY UPDATE: several commenters on the aforementioned Eurogamer article, and on this RPS post, seem to love the new system.

BF3 pre-order packages

Editor's note:  we do not recommend pre-ordering any game, even though we've made that mistake many, many times.

From ea.com:

There are a number of pre-order offers for Battlefield 3 available now or soon to be available. Some countries have already announced their offers, while others will follow. Your best bet is to check in regularly with your favourite retailer/digital download service.

By the beginning of August, you should be able to find all of these items where they are supposed to be available. Here is what they all are and how to get them.

BREAKDOWN OF PRE-ORDER INCENTIVES FOR BATTLEFIELD 3

Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand

What it is: An entire themed expansion pack the size of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam.

Where to get: You will be eligible to download this expansion pack (once it is released) if you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition at any retailer all over the world.

Available: Release date of Back to Karkand TBC. This expansion pack is not on the disc and is not available day one.

Value: At no extra charge with every pre-order of Battlefield 3: Limited Edition. You will be able to buy it separately if you don't pre-order (date and price TBC).

More info: In this blog post. More to come.

Physical Warfare Pack

What it is: A set of three time-based exclusive items and one early weapon unlock for Battlefield 3.

Where to get: At select retailers all over the world when you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition.

Available: Day 1 if you pre-order. If you do not pre-order, you will get access to this content at no extra charge at a later date.

Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order at select retailers.

More info: In this blog post.

SPECACT Kit Upgrade

What it is: A set of 8 multiplayer skins, one for each class and side in Battlefield 3.

Where to get: At select retailers all over the world when you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition.

Available: Day 1.

Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order at select retailers.

Dog Tag Pack

What it is: A set of 5 unique in-game dog tags to choose from. Dog tags in Battlefield 3 serve as your in-game signature, displayed on screen every time you defeat an enemy. You can also claim the dog tag of your enemies via skillful stealth knife takedowns. This pre-order exclusive pack gives you 5 unique dog tag designs to complement the standard range in the game.

Where to get: At select retailers all over the world when you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition.

Available: Day 1.

Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order at select retailers.

Avatar Battlefield 3 Gear

What it is: Battlefield 3 gear for your Xbox 360 avatar.

Where to get: At select retailers all over the world when you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition.

Available: Day 1.

Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order at select retailers.

Shotgun and Beret for Battlefield Play4Free

What it is: An 870S shotgun and a beret for in-game use in our play-for-free title Battlefield Play4Free.

Where to get: By pre-ordering Battlefield 3: Limited Edition on Origin.

Available: Day 1.

Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order on Origin.

More info: In this blog post.

This is almost porn

Just when I was starting to lose interest. 

There's a new BF3 trailer making the rounds, and this one features vehicles. Lots of vehicles, and 64 human beings in-play. If all of this works smoothly, every game awards show is going to have to create a new category called "Best Netcode."

All skepticism aside, it's glorious.

Dead Island: the coming tedium

A new trailer, featuring butchery and bad words. On the strength of the marketing alone, I'm calling a low-80's Metacritic score right now.

Team Fortress, Too

Even with all the live-action HL2 vids floating about, I didn't see this coming (though I'm not sure why). It's well done for what it is, but something about it creeps me out.

Eat Your Heart Out

Yes, that's 1.01 GigaBYTES per second read speed. That's better than half the speed of DDR-266 RAM. Any bets on who gets in a map first in L4D2 now? ;-)

Dual's of these, on SATA-3 in RAID-0:

Rage: Dead City

From Bethesda and Id Software. Due out in October:

McHack?

Need a McBurger with your McHack? From E.Y.E. :

RL Minecrack

Can you tell I spent the day entirely on Youtube?

Size Matters

Just a little lolcats for you

Final Combat: dignity is the first casualty

"All of your intellectual property are belong to us!"

Final Combat is a rather shameless TF2 ripoff from a Chinese developer that I will not name. They have a website full of theft that I will not link. It seems they've ripped assets straight out of TF2's cache, and modified (slightly) the rest to accommodate the Motherland's goose-stepping military aesthetic.

Kotaku tells me Final Combat has "a Pyro with a guitar on his back, a Scout armed with a hockey stick, and a Demoman, distinguishable from his TF2 counterpart only by heavy armor." The dev actually has the balls to claim that all of their content is completely original. See what you think:

Meet the Soldier Rocket



See also:

Meet the Heavy Fat Man

Meet the Sniper

Meet the Striker

Splosions + Sexism = Born to Fire

B2F is a Korean "class-oriented" FPS in search of European and American publishers. It features bad voice acting and jiggle-boned boobs large enough to stop an RPG round.

BF3 alpha gameplay

Watch it before the takedown:

Live-action HL2 (another one)

For All You Minecrack Whores

For all you Minecrack addicts who are interested in growing up to something beyond 8 bit square graphics, or perhaps have too many virtual callouses from swinging the darn pickaxe... have you thought of OpenSim?

Download the Imprudence Viewer (or another Second Life Viewer, but I recommend Imprudence 1.4) from here.

Set up an account with "OS Grid" and log into the universe. I'll be launching a node shortly and can give you guys each a region to call your very own.

If you're still lost - it's the open-source version of Second Life without the monthly fees. And since I have my own server, you'll be able to make your own stuff, etc.

The best part is that even if I shut my server down, all of your inventory items remain in the grid for you to use in the general universe (with whatever region restrictions might exist.)

The Space Barbie Failure Cascade

Author's note: I am not an EVE player. The month I spent in the game amounted to nothing; I can decipher only about a dozen of the game's billions of acronyms. I've tried to understand this controversy – if only on a superficial level – in an effort to give my EVE-enabled friends a clearer picture of the causes and the consequences of all the turmoil.

Icelandic developer CCP deployed the "Incarna" update to EVE Online a few days ago. The new features include the long-awaited "Captain's Quarters" (CQ) environment which, among other things, allows players to view their avatars in a clickable mirror.

The source of the late unrest is another feature of Incarna: the so-called "Noble Exchange" (NeX). It's a new boutique market from which players can buy vanity gear (at absurd prices) to customize their avatars. CCP created a third currency – dubbed "Aurum" – to drive that market.

To obtain Aurum, players must convert it from PLEX, the "Pilot License Extension" that, until now, could only be used to purchase additional subscription time, or sold for ISK. Technically, PLEX is more of an item than a currency, but it still functions as a medium of exchange in EVE's in-game economy. If player wants something from NeX, there are two options: (1) spend ISK to buy PLEX on the market, and convert the PLEX to Aurum, or (2) use real-world money to buy PLEX from CCP, and convert it to Aurum.

As things currently stand, the introductions of NeX and Aurum shouldn't unbalance the EVE economy. Players have had the ability to use real money to buy virtual money (via PLEX → ISK) since 2009. Although most of the vanity items available are ridiculously expensive in real-world terms – the price of a monocle is about $70 at present – those items have no substantive effect on the game world. Players can buy all the "Precision Boots" they want with ISK (and keep their subscriptions going, besides) without spending a dollar of real money, and it amounts to nothing more than a currency sink in EVE's economy.

The problem is that CCP is considering making other, actually useful, items available through NeX.

Meet the Medic

Genius.

Sega Hacked, 1.3M Accounts Stolen. How Long Before Steam?

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/165499/20110619/sega-hacked-1-3-million-users-information-compromised.htm

And in a show of mass stupidity that explains just how disconnected mass media is from the entire situation - almost every article comments about how LulzSec wants to help track down the hackers. Apparently they all missed the sarcasm in the LulzSec twitter post they are referencing. What's really interesting - the LulzSec twitter post was made two days before Sega announced it was hacked...

How long before our Steam accounts are compromised? I recommend everyone make sure your steam password is NOT the same as your email password. With both logins the same, there's no strength behind the Steam two-factor authentication, because it relies on sending you an email. If your steam password gets hacked, and the password is the same on the email account attached to your steam account, you're done.

And don't think that "encrypting" passwords by the company does any good. I've seen someone demonstrate using four nVidia video cards to crack passwords to the tune of thousands of passwords decrypted per minute. You gotta figure with four nvidia 580 cards, you get 2048 CPU cores that can be used to crack passwords simultaneously - they fall like cards.

Oh, and the password you DO use for steam? I'd recommend at least 12 characters or longer. It's only a matter of time.

BioWare Hacked

Alberta based BioWare was recently hacked, eh?

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/06/17/alberta-gaming-company-hit-by-hackers

18,000 user accounts compromised. If you have a login with them you might want to change your password. And please, please please - don't reuse passwords on multiple sites! Definitely don't reuse Twitter and Facebook passwords because that's the first place someone with access to it will try.

"Zabiuk said one of the key pieces of information hackers are looking for are credit card numbers, but passwords and user ID's are also valuable since many people use the same one for several accounts, making it easy for thieves to access accounts such as PayPal or iTunes."

Batman's Kryptonite

Yes, I know: the original had it, too.

Top 10 Things We'd Love About DNF (If We Were 12)

Security Through... Well, No Security.

Hot on the heals of the Bethesda hack where LulzSec stole the Brink source code and player database...

Today they hacked and took down Eve Online. And Escapist Magazine. And the Minecraft login server. Escapist and Minecraft appear to be DDOS attacks. Eve looks more sinister. Update: LulzSec is saying it was just a DDOS against Eve. No skillz required.

A Bit of Nostalgia

A new book has been published online at Smashwords by Robinson Mason, "A Commodore 64 Walkabout":

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65936

It goes into details of how to set up a Commodore 64 emulator and the various games and genres available for it.

More importantly, Chapter four has quite a long interview with me... It seems that I was somewhat influential back in the 1980's. Whatever happened to that? ;-)

Mason is an Analyst at HP, and writes Sci-Fi novels on the side. He also has a huge fascination with 1980's tech.

Ruminations at Random

A couple of observations about the videos from the last post:

1. The most interesting thing about E3's parade of best-foot-forwarding is this: BF3's in-game footage often looks better than the cinematic trailers of other games. DICE seems to have figured out that graphics and aesthetics are not the same thing, and they're using the former to drive the latter. That might be the biggest step any developer takes this year.

2. It seems that BioWare has had their own epiphany with the final installment of Mass Effect. Shepard can now roll and vault over cover while running. Why? Because cover is boring.

3. There's been some talk of ramping-up the RPG elements with ME3, but it's still going rely heavily on the "guns and conversation" motif that has become ME's hallmark. What this means, three games in, is that the narrative arc is going to have be pitch-perfect all the way to the credits. Anything less will be viewed as a disappointment.

4. It was a good move to spotlight the combat mechanics in Rage, even if we've seen some fairly substantial bits of it already. Up close, the injury and death animations for the NPC's are better than I've seen (or noticed before) in a shooter -- with the possible exception of Condemned: Criminal Origins. Unfortunately, I'm still not terribly interested in the game. It pains me to say that, because I have a whole wing in my gaming memory dedicated to Id.

5. Dead Island is losing me a little more with every trailer. I like the "Far Cry with zombies" concept, but I forsee a Borderlands-like repetitiveness on the horizon. And seriously, everything associated with guns just looks wrong. How the hell do you mess that up?

6. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has a lot of nice little details in it, but still has the feel of a game that should have been released two years ago. All that tactical shooter/squad commander stuff has been done into the dirt with Rainbow 6, Arma, Operation Flashpoint, and GR itself, and Future Soldier's novelties probably won't bring enough to the table to generate a lot of interest. The irony is that the closer the game creeps towards "mainstream" shooter status -- in an effort to broaden its appeal -- the more it's going to have to compete with MW3 and BF3. Niche games occupy a niche for a reason.

E3 2011 trailer park

The rundown of day one:

B A T T L E F I E L D   3

(Older embed of the video was sucky in quality.  Just watch the high-res version here.)


M A S S   E F F E C T   3 (Kinect/voice command demo)

EA, being the undisputed alpha-retards of marketing that they are, have thrown a takedown notice at YouTube, so you'll have to watch the cinematic trailer here.

Update: no telling how long this upload will survive, but the cinematic trailer in 720p is on YouTube again, right here.

R A G E

D E A D   I S L A N D



G H O S T   R E C O N :   F U T U R E   S O L D I E R

Why dedicated servers are necessary

It's called "host advantage."

At least it ends with a hummer ...

I didn't do everything. I only pissed for a couple of seconds. I didn't play with the shit. (Literally, there is an interactive turd.) I only took enough time with the white board to write "FUCK STINKY," and moved on. 

There's 15 or 20 minutes of gameplay in the demo, consisting of two levels. And yet, it feels ... representative. Obviously, I can't speak to the full experience, but if a demo is about teasing just enough to get people amped for a game, this nugget offers little reason to buy Duke Nukem Forever. 

The video below could be considered a spoiler. In point of fact, it might spoil your enthusiasm for the game. It's the first level in its entirety (once you leave the bathroom, that is).

Yep. "Interactive turd" just about sums it up.

May 21st was a long time ago

MW3 will whore "premium" content

You knew it was coming.

MCV reports that MW3 will indeed feature purchasable content beyond the usual map packs we've all come to loathe:

CEO Eric Hirshberg described [the new "Project Beach Head" tech] as as "online platform" that "will be an integral part to the innovation signature of the Call of Duty game that we're releasing this year". 

The biggest news, however, is confirmation that for the first time Call of Duty will offer players additional online features at a premium. Whether or not this will turn out to be the long-rumoured subscription service remains to be seen.

And later:

Boss Kotick, however, was keen to emphasise that players will never have to pay extra to receive they services that they do today... 

"While we are attempting to deliver new incremental experiences that have yet heretofore been unseen by our players, we are not attempting to monetize or take any experience away that currently comes as part of the value proposition of buying the game."

It might have just been a poor choice of words on Kotick's part, but "incremental experiences" doesn't sound like "cosmetic upgrades" to me. Since I'm in the minority that finds that the ability to purchase tattered hats and beard dirt does nothing to enhance my experience in any given game, however, I may be reading too much into it.

MW3 trailer - "Our buildings also fall over."

Com3 to Franc3! 3njoy cr3p3s, bagu3tt3s, fin3 win3, and th3 3iff3l Tow3r!

I promise you all, this game will be shit.

Promise.

It can only happen in TF2

(Yes, it was obviously staged.)

OT: Civil War Reenactment

For those of you interested in real wars, I grabbed several shots of the Civil War reenactment of the "Battle of Lewisburg" today and posted them to Flickr:

Brink: "Parkour This" in 18 seconds

Brink patch here, free DLC coming

The following information comes from Splash Damage's Brink blog. 

The DLC

It's due in June and will include new maps (note the plural) and "new content." That content is rumored to include additional weapons.   

Patch notes

A new game update for the PC version of Brink is now available on Steam and we've got the changelog here for you. Thanks to the magic of Steam, you'll receive the update automatically the next time you log into your Steam client.

General:

• Fixed issues with custom ui_fov settings when playing as a client

• Added support for 2560x1440

• Slightly improved start up times

• Fixed crash when clicking in blank area on Training Videos menu

• Fixed memory leaks on shutdown

• Fixed Be More Objective leaderboards being incorrectly named

Graphics:

• Fixed "texture gridding" issues on certain graphics cards

• Fixed settings being incorrectly applied on the advanced video options screen

• Improved performance when using Ambient Occlusion

• Fixed halos not rendering correctly

AI Bots:

• Removed bot intelligence inhibitors for Freeplay games

• Adjusted bot behaviour in Campaign games to make teams more evenly matched

• Changed bots' objective priorities across all game modes

• Fixed issue with bot difficulty continually dropping

User Interface:

• Fixed poor server browser performance for users with a large number of items in their history

• Made server browser refreshes much more responsive

• Changed server browser to no longer group player counts by max players

• Added new pop-up text for server browser filters

• Fixed not being able to sort by favourites column

• Server browser now retrieves favourites correctly from Steam

• Fixed arrow keys not working when exiting out of a chat submenu

• Made it easier to select a default secondary weapon

• Disabled chat options in solo mode

Dedicated Servers:

• Can now use net_ip command to assign IPs to server instances

• Dedicated server binary can now be run as a service, which won't have a CSIDL_PERSONAL virtual folder

Art imitating life

From the Department of Damn That Was Fast:

FY_ABBOTOBAD Released for Counterstrike

From GameBannana:

Created by Fletch (May 7, 2011)

Based on Osama's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Map may be used as a base for a bomb or hostage map at a later stage. 3D skybox will also be added when/if I have time.

A quick update (May 9, 2011)

What alot of people don't seem to understand is that the only thing this map has in common with Osama is location. I can see how people would think it is in bad taste, but honestly if that's your opinion you may as well protest the whole game (as well as many others).

BRINK launch trailer

Brink ready for pre-load

The game unlocks on Monday, May 9.  (EDIT: it actually unlocks at midnight, so call it the 10th.)

First Person Spammers

BASHandSLASH.com has a great podcast up on the trend in first-person shooters away from the "classic" format where success depends primarily on actual skill.  You can listen to the cast here. 

Game developers seem to have discovered a previously untapped pool of customers: people who want to feel good about their performance without exerting themselves, and who want that gratification instantly. In tailoring the new generation of games to appeal to that demographic, developers like DICE, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch have taken the legs out from under the run-and-gunners that used to thrive in MP servers. It's a sad state of affairs, and one that's likely to outlast my interest in gaming.

So, have a listen. If you've ever bounced out of a game because you were sick of getting killed by a dozen things you couldn't have avoided, you'll identify with the thesis.

P.S.: I am not promoting the podcast just because my name is mentioned. Or because I'm quoted extensively. I am very humble - almost shy, actually - and I would never attempt to stroke my own ego on this blog.

Never.

Flaccid Effect?

When the news broke that Mass Effect 3 would be delayed several months, everyone was not surprised. Q4 of any year is Call of Duty season, and Q1 of the following year is when we all gather together to talk about how shitty the latest Call of Duty is. It follows that Q1 is a vastly better interval in which to release all non-Call of Duties. QED.

But then, there's this. John Riccitiello (the Big Boss Man at EA) had something mildly disturbing to say at an investor meeting:

One of the things that Ray Muzyuka and the team up in Edmonton have done is essentially step-by-step adjust the gameplay mechanics and some of the features that you'll see at E3 to put this in a genre equivalent to shooter-meets-RPG, and essentially address a much larger market opportunity than Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 began to approach.

Immediately, it's fair to wonder whether Riccitiello knows Jack Shytte about Mass Effect, as it has always been a shooter/RPG hybrid. The two components varied in emphasis between the two games, but were obviously present in both.

So maybe Big Boss Man is just blowing smoke up the asses of his financial backers, suggesting the Mass Effect IP will innovate by doing what it has been doing all along. What's disturbing, though, is the last bit. Addressing "a much larger market opportunity" sounds a lot like "trying to appeal to a broader audience." And that sounds a lot like "we're deliberately engineering this thing to draw in the Call of Duty crowd."

Medal of Honor tried that. So did Crysis 2. Both were published by EA, just as Mass Effect 3 will be.

A billion dollars is a lot of money.