3:12 to Yuma, if Yuma is freakin' hell

Blog posts aren't supposed to make you crap your pants, but this one from the L4D blog will turn your bowels to water. The whole thing is well-worth reading, but for the attention deficit monkeys, there's one sentence that tells you everything you need to know:

Given the extreme pace of Survival Mode, the number of zombies killed in a single round often outnumbers an entire campaign.

Consider that last night, Frisky, Bone and I dropped just over 2400 on "No Mercy"/advanced in about 75 minutes. A round of L4D's survival mode is designed to last about 10 minutes.

10 minutes my ass.

The post is accompanied by an informative graph, which provides some nasty insights:
(click to enlarge)

The red curve is brutal. The way I read it, at about the 3:12 mark, a Boomer, Hunter, or Smoker is going to spawn in every 4 to 5 seconds. At that point, you'll have already faced 4 or 5 horde rushes and 2 tanks, in addition to all the specials wandering in at extremely regular intervals. And Valve haven't mentioned yet whether we'll find any witches in the arena. Dirty.

Extremely regular. Is that like extra-medium?

Three down, a billion to go

The co-founders of "The Pirate Bay" have been sentenced to a year in the brig and ordered to pay $3.5 million in damages [1] ... not for copyright infringement, but for making copyrighted material available to the actual pirates [2]. Intellectual property owners declare victory, but are disappointed that the villains will not be shot by Navy SEAL snipers. At least one observer sees fit to recall the secret of the Dread Pirate Roberts [3], which earns him a lap dance from Princess Buttercup.

Meanwhile, Stagnetti has his revenge: Stardock's Demigod has around 140,000 users three days after release, but avast! ... about 120,000 of them didn't pay for the game [4]. The other 20,000 are getting screwed with connection problems, of course, having to compete for database resources with all the bastard buccaneers [5].

If you've ever wondered why I always play as Francis...

...this is why:

Quickie link

If you're interested in Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, you'll definitely want to check this out.

How to be a jackass in L4D

(Part I of MXXXIII)

1. Throw a Molotov at The Tank in a narrow corridor, leaving one teammate on the other side.

2. Miss The Tank completely.

3. Wait for the flames to die down while The Tank is boning the lone teammate on the other side.

4. If the lone teammate survives, don't heal him, even if you're the only one with a health pack.

If you followed these instructions, congratulations! I hate you.

Nine seconds you'll never get back...

More on Six Days

From Nick Breckon at Shack News:

Immediately it was apparent that Six Days is not aiming for a very realistic take on modern warfare. I never did imagine that Atomic would create a plodding, Operation Flashpoint-esque shooter in the sacrifice of action-packed combat. But considering the extensive marketing on the point of realism, I certainly didn't expect to see soldiers running out into the middle of the street during a firefight, taking a half-dozen bullets in the chest, and then regenerating their health safely behind cover. Not in a planned demonstration for press, at least.

I've recently come to the (tentative) conclusion that Atomic's claims to authenticity are, for the most part, a defensive contrivance. There are good reasons to doubt that their intent from the beginning was "to create the most realistic military shooter possible." Rather, I think it's more likely that the "authenticity" argument came after the criticism started (or was anticipated).

If I'm right about that, it was a pretty stupid decision to go this route. It's not just that Atomic is making extravagant promises about Six Days in Fallujah that they obviously aren't going to be able to keep. They also seem rather eager to pimp the controversy as a marketing tool, which is more evidence of their tone deafness.

I can't see this ending well.

She's frigid, but not in a bad way

Thus far, Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason has been completely off IUN's FPS radar. But since the game is due for release in the US on Wednesday (April 15), it's probably time to stop ignoring it.

If you're looking for a new single-player experience to pass the time, Cryostasis might be worth a look for it's fairly unique concept. One caveat: the game apparently has no multi-core support, which may be a real problem considering it's supposed to be the first showcase for Nvidia's PhysX real-time water physics (tech demo immediately below).



We also have a game play video for you, which is actually the third of three:

Trailer Park Boys - Episode 1

Six Days in Fallujah: maybe we should discuss this

The lede from GamePro:

'Honestly, I think people are afraid of it,' Peter Tamte says. 'Obviously the Iraq War is a controversial topic.' Tamte is the president of Atomic Games, a game studio that is readying a bold new military shooter called Six Days in Fallujah. The game is set in the bloodiest combat of the Iraq War, the battle of Fallujah, and it won't pull any punches concerning its mature subject matter. 'If this were a movie, a TV show, or a book, people wouldn't question portraying the war in Iraq,' Tamte continues. 'So why wouldn't that apply to a video game?'

A cursory putz around the 'net will reveal all kinds of generalized invective masquerading as answers to Mr. Tamte's question. None of them are useful criticisms of the game itself, of course. That's because at the moment, no one outside of Atomic Games (and perhaps the publisher, Konami) can comment on whether the game's content glorifies the battle, or trivializes it, or constitutes a flippant response to it. (I'm paraphrasing a pair of denunciations from a Daily Mail article.)

At least some of the heat, however, is generated by the very act of using a war-in-progress as the setting for a video game. Given Mr. Tamte's (quite correct) observation that movies, TV shows, and books would not be condemned merely because they're set in the Iraq war, it's fair to ask why the video game medium should be treated differently.

There are, I think, persuasive arguments that video games are unsuited to the task of portraying recent, traumatic events. That's not to say that such a portrayal couldn't be done well, but it is a monumentally difficult undertaking in an industry where the "fun factor" is the preeminent metric. If the developers really want to "present the horrors of war" authentically and respectfully, they may have to produce something that's not a "game" in the usual sense of the term.

There are several obvious counterpoints to that argument, most notably the proliferation of games set in World War II. Several of those would claim to be realistic interpretations of historical events, providing a "visceral" combat experience, and none were condemned out-of-hand. You can also argue that books and movies are forms of entertainment, which means that people are meant to enjoy the experience of reading and watching them. We don't necessarily call it "having fun" in those contexts, but the distinction may be one without a difference.

These arguments have their own counters, of course, and thinking in these circles has made me ambivalent. Ultimately, though, I have to agree with Dan Rosenthal that Atomic/Konami is probably going to fail at this, because they're only seeing a small part of the minefield surrounding them. Categorizing the game as "survival horror" shows that they're tone deaf. And the fact that they're using their Third Battalion First Marines consultants to provide cover on the P.R. front just doesn't sit well with me.

I'd like to be wrong, but I also worry about the potential shit-storm Six Days could create for an industry that doesn't respond well to controversy.

LATE UPDATE: a few soldiers respond in support of the game.