Are you ready?

Someone posted this to my nook-look.com wallpaper site, so I just had to share it.

Dead Island preview

You've seen the trailer, and it may be the greatest trailer ever made for anything. "But what about the game?" you ask. DualShockers has a preview, and I'm relieved to say it's mostly positive.

First thing that needs to be clarified right off the bat: the trailer doesn’t have much to do with the actual game. The trailer was intended to portray the first night of the zombie outbreak at the Royal Palms Resort in Papua New Guinea, and drive home the notion that even paradise can be transformed into hell, under any circumstances. The family shown has no real story significance to the game; once again, all for emotional effect.

...

Combatwise, Dead Island seems more like a hybrid between Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising 2. It’s mainly melee based; Deep Silver Brand Manager Vincent Kummer made it abundantly clear that, while you’d be able to pick up pistols from cop cars and dead policemen, they wouldn’t be common at all, the ammo would be very limited, and there wouldn’t be a bunch of assault rifles, grenade launchers, and bazookas laying around for no reason. While it’s mostly close range combat, some weapons can be thrown at zombies, dealing much much more damage. Watching Sam B hurl a sledgehammer at a zombie was quite delightful, and brought up memories of the bloodiest melee moments in L4D2.

Read the rest here.

UPDATE: GT scored an interview:

Video Games | Dead Island | GDC 11: Zombie Slaying Interview

Xbox 360 | PlayStation 3 | Nintendo Wii | PC Games

MOAR UPDATE: from Wired's Ben Kuchera.

Dragon Age 2: pre-release DLC announcement

Look, I know DLC is a fact of life now, but this just seems a really overt "f*ck you" to BioWare's fan base. The message I'm getting from the video is this: "pay full price for part of the game, then pay more for the full game." This DLC clearly isn't about "value-added" after launch. It's about "value-subtracted" before launch.

Maybe that's already the reality of DLC, and I just hadn't thought of it that way until now. Either way, I'm calling marketing FAIL:

Finally, a step forward?

This console generation has worn out its welcome.  The hardware inside the Xbox 360 was middle-of-the-road five years ago, and yet we're all stuck with that system's specs because of cross-platform development. Game developers could scale up their content to take advantage of more powerful PC hardware, but they typically don't, as there's little financial incentive to do so. The willingness of console gamers to buy seventh generation games - combined with a much smaller market for PC games - means that Microsoft and Sony have zero motivation to bring their toys into generation eight. 

There are, however, exceptions to the lowest-common-denominator rule. The original Crysis was revelation in 2008, and Metro 2033 pushed up against the steel ceiling of photorealism in video games two years later. The next game to raise the bar may well be Battlefield 3, if this "gameplay trailer" is actually representative of the game itself:

Think about how visually indistinct 2010's Black Ops was to 2007's Modern Warfare. Then have a look at this collection of screenshots.

Crysis 2 demo

Today, Crytek did us a solid by releasing a multiplayer demo for Crysis 2. In an age when demos are an almost forgotten luxury with AAA titles, it's nice that Crytek still recognizes the necessity of letting players know ahead of time whether the engine is going to humble their rigs before they buy the game.

That said, prepare to be humbled, and disappointed. There's a "press START to begin" screen once you get past the intro movies, and there's an option for aim-assist. For me, the game was only semi-playable, as my FPS ranged between around 50 while standing still to the low 20's when I had the audacity to press W. Some people are reporting that the game is running smoothly for them, but I'm not alone with my pain. Oddly enough, the game did seem to perform better with each successive load, but I still haven't been able to get an acceptable framerate, even at the lowest graphical settings.

SLI isn't working yet, apparently, as one of my GTX 260's spiked up to 99° C in one 15 minute session, while the other remained at 50° C. That undoubtedly killed my framerate, as my CPU temperatures didn't increase unreasonably. (Note that the r_multiGPU=1 command from the previous games doesn't seem to work.) If Crytek doesn't patch SLI support into the demo, I'm going to have to give up on it.

I've only played the game for about 30 minutes in total, but some of the pros and cons are immediately evident. On the plus side, Crysis 2's MP is fast-paced, and it looks like it might allow players to go beast with some creative flair. On the minus side, the map design (the demo features two) is pretty weak, and the systems ape Call of Duty's to an uncomfortably large degree.

If the full version of Crysis 2 were released tomorrow, I'd take a pass. But, there's still time for Crytek to get its act together for a proper PC release, so I'll reserve decision for now.


[UPDATE] And we have this shit already:

501 and 8 on Havanna

A couple of notes before you watch: 

(1) this is Xbox footage;

(2) the video is running too fast to tell if there are any aimbots in-play; however

(3) spawn rape is possible on all platforms, and it has been possible in every Call of Duty game ever released;

(4) the gametype in the video is demolition, which means that each team spawn from around three locations at only one end of the map.

What you have here is a group of players that have figured out how to set up the most brutal pub stomp possible in a specific set of circumstances. It's all a function of team stacking + map + gametype. The clan may have had a couple of cheaters, but it's not necessary to cheat to obtain similar results.

I want to be clear about one more thing: this scenario is the result of design flaws (particularly the spawn system) that have existed through seven iterations of the game. The difference between this and other spawn rape conspiracies is simply a matter of scale.

It's time

Reinstall it.