Flash Game Friday: Hedgehog Launch

Looking for something to do on a boring Friday afternoon?  Well maybe our new section Flash Game Friday has something for you.

This week’s selection is Hedgehog Launch, where the aim is to launch your hedgehog into space. You earn money towards upgrades for your launch each "day" until you’re able to get into space.  So the smallest number of "days" to get into space is better.

Hit up the site here to give it a go and see if you can do better than my abysmal 20+ days effort.

Post in the comments how you went.

MMOs sold in Australia without classifications

Massively have up a rather interesting article about the fact that the vast majority of massively multiplayer online games on retailers shelves in Australia are void of any valid Australian Classification Board (formerly the OFLC) ratings.  This includes well known titles such as Blizzard’s ridiculously popular World of Warcraft MMORPG and other titles such as Age of Conan (pictured).

It seems that a misunderstanding or incorrect information may have been given by the Office of Film and Literature Classification at one point to game publishers that indicated that purely online games such as World of Warcraft would be exempted from classification.  But from the information that Massively have obtained from the revamped Australian Classification Board now seems to indicate that this isn’t the position as they see it and any game (whether its an MMO or online only game) is required to pass through the classification review system to receive an appropriate rating before it is available for retail sale.

If this is indeed what has occurred and is required under the classification laws in Australia, this leaves a situation where many retailers and the distributers of these games titles in Australia may be in for a rather nasty shock.  Significant fines are imposed against companies that engage in mass sales of products that require classification but are sold without correct and valid rating advice attached.

So I think this is going to be an interesting one to watch as it develops.

You can check out the very comprehensive story on the issue at Massively here.

Guitar Hero: Metallica full track listing

Props to Jed for the heads up.

Team Fortress 2 – Patch out now *Updated*

Valve have posted a lengthy update about their progress with the next lot of patches for Team Fortress 2, with details about an incoming bug fixes patch thats coming out probably in the next 24 hours and the next major content patch that includes the Scout class update.

First off, we should be expecting a patch anytime now, with the update fixing a bunch of exploits and bugs that are currently affecting the game.  Valve will also be including changes that include pushing your settings for unlockable items into the “Steam Cloud”, which means if you play the game on multiple computers or have to format and reinstall, all your settings for unlockables are saved.

Once those updates are pushed out and in the wild, Valve will be set to release the Scout update.  Valve have mentioned that the Scout pack is pretty much wrapped up, with just a few pieces of artwork needing to be completed, with the design and coding team having already started work on the next class update pack.

Valve have also addressed a few question that people have had in their latest posting as well, which I’ve included below:

“Why did you change the minigun’s muzzle flash away from the original one shown in Meet the Heavy?”

That muzzle flash was one of the earliest effects that we put in the game and it was done before our new particle system was in place. As we moved forward with the effects we decided that such a cartoony hard-edged look to the effects didn’t help the readability of the overall game. If the muzzle flashes and all the effects had well defined edges, they would visually compete with the rest of the TF2 world and the players. So it was decided that the effects should be much softer than the rest of the game so as to not overwhelm an already visually dense game.

“Why should I use Natascha? And doesn’t she only do 66% damage, not 75%?”

You’re correct, there was a bug that caused her to lose 0.75 damage off each individual bullet she fired. She spits out so many bullets that a tiny amount like that added up to a significant difference. Tomorrow’s update will fix that, and also includes a slight boost to the amount of slowdown she delivers. Our internal playtesters have been finding her much more useful, especially on the large number of Scouts running around with new toys.

“Why is the Sniper such a fake Australian? Aren’t several members of the TF2 team Australian?”

Yes, it’s true, the Sniper is a fairly unconvincing Australian. Most of his lines make him sound more English than Australian, and the voice actor is clearly an English actor faking an Australian accent. As for why we didn’t fight to make him more authentic, we though it was appropriate that he was about as convincing an Australian as the Demoman is a Scotsman, or the Medic a German.

So there you have it, expect a bug/exploit fixes patch out anytime now (probably sometime today) and the Scout update very soon as well (next week perhaps?).

*Updated*

And the patch is out now, so restart your Steam client and you should pick-up the update.  The list of fixes included in this patch are as follows:

Team Fortress 2:- Added percentage to UberCharge HUD panel for the Medic- Added upgrade progress and levels to Engineer HUD panel for all buildings- Added mp_tournament_allow_non_admin_restart server ConVar to allow server admin to toggle whether non-admin players can issue the mp_tournament_restart ConCommand on the server. Default is 1 (current behavior)- Added flag to the gamerules entity so map authors can override the HUD type being used. Allows map authors to force CTF or CP HUD to be used if they mix CTF/CP entities in the map- Added check in CTF HUD to make sure it doesn't point at disabled capture zones when the player is carrying the flag. Allows map authors to have more than one capture zone for each team in the map- Changed AutoTeam to give new players to the attackers on attack/defend maps if the teams are even- Fixed Pyro model not animating in the class menu- Fixed players getting stuck in the "prepare to respawn..." countdown loop- Fixed Natascha not getting the proper 75% of damage and slightly increased the strength of Natascha's slowdown- Fixed teleporter entrance/exit effects being drawn when they don't have a matching teleporter entrance/exit- Fixed announcer saying "the cart is nearing the checkpoint" after the round has already been won- Fixed cloaked spies having a particle-beam effect while standing next to a dispenser that's healing them- Fixed server crash when trying to load a map that contains control points with duplicate index values- Fixed several materials warnings in the console- Fixed "Cart.Explode" sound script entry using an unknown sound channel- Marked the cl_bobcycle and cl_bobup ConVars as cheats

Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source:- Fixed clients using reloadresponsesystems, sv_soundemitter_flush, sv_soundemitter_filecheck, sv_findsoundname, and sv_soundscape_printdebuginfo to lag/crash servers

Source Engine:- Fixed client "timeout on mapchange" problem- Fixed setinfo exploit- Marked the r_aspectratio ConVar as a cheat

Server Browser:- Renamed "Quick List" to "Map List"- Removed minimum ping filter from Map List

Another Tomb Raider movie planned

Everyone’s favourite anatomically pleasing female protagonist is slated to be coming back to the big screen.  Yep, thats right, Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series of games is set to star in a third movie.

Shacknews have details that Warner Bros. are looking to have the movie take a slightly different direction from the first two movies, with a stronger love interest (say what?), a differing back story on Lara’s origins and the main bad guy she has to take down.  At the moment details are sketchy, but Ian Livingstone from Eidos who publishes the Tomb Raider series of games is set to be executive producer.

No details are available on who will play the Lara Croft character, but I’d guess its unlikely that Angelina Jolie would be returning to the role again (but who knows?).

Fallout 3 – Operation Anchorage DLC out now

The first set of downloadable content (DLC) for Fallout 3 has been released today – titled – Operation Anchorage.  Its available for both PC and Xbox 360 owners, but PS3 owners are bang out of luck on this one as they won’t be getting this DLC (or any of the future planned DLC either).

Operation Anchorage as the name suggests involves a virtual reality simulation of the liberation of the Alaskan locale of Anchorage, with the addition of a "Covert Ops" perk along with additional weapons, armour and achievements for you to get stuck into.

Further DLC is planned, with "The Pitt" (based in Pittsburgh) slated for release in February and "Broken Steel" after that in March which will increase the level cap to 30.

Dawn of War II Beta

Whilst owners of DoW:Soulstorm have had early access for the past week, today the Dawn of War 2 Multiplayer Beta was unlocked and is now available to the public. Providing 4 races, 5 maps and 12 Hero characters there’s more than enough to get a sample of the game before the full release on February 20.

For those not familiar with the first game, DoW2 combines the strengths of THQ’s two recent RTS games Dawn of War and Company of Heroes to create smaller scale tactical battles using cover, fields of fire and RPG elements for characters. Unlike traditional RTS games, base building is almost non existent and the game focuses on capturing and holding map points to generate resources. The old RTS strategy of hoarding money and tech-ing up quickly doesn’t fly – pushing for territory is the only way to win.

For those returning from the first game, don’t expect to breeze in with old tactics and survive. Now you’ll find cover is life, suppression is death and those who run away really do get to fight another day. Don’t expect me to spill all the changes either, I need to make sure there’s still a few people I can beat when I jump on tonight.

For a look at the graphics and general gameplay, this video describes a typical day in the life of a Space Marine Captain: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56760

The beta comes with a selection of 1v1 and 3v3 maps (but no 2v2 which is odd) and 4 races (Marines, Orks, Eldar and Tyranids) which each have 3 Heroes specialising in different play styles. The races are relatively balanced aside from a few issues with certain unit types, but thankfully there’s no clear win-unit yet. 3v3 matches are a lot of fun, especially if you have people you know to play with. I’ve had a lot of epic matches over the last week, fighting for every last victory point to try and scrape out a win. It’s pretty rare for an RTS game to inspire you to fight to the last man rather than rage-quit the second things don’t go your way.

I was surprised to find that the beta also automatically records the replay of each game you play and saves it to your HDD. I’m not one to obsess over what I did wrong, but it’s a great opportunity to watch the fights and see all the work put into the combat animations. There’s often way too much happening in the heat of a battle to stop and appreciate how good it looked when your Ork Warboss just cleaved a Marine in two or a Drop Pod came down and turned a Carnifex into a greasy crater.

Playing ranked games online rewards you with visual upgrades to units as you win more battles, which start off as barely noticeable but quickly become more impressive with each higher rank. Unfortunately it’s not like CoD4 or Killzone 2 , the upgrades are cosmetic only. Still it’s a nice reward for people who’ve played a lot of rank matches and want to pimp out their units.

It’s also the first game I’ve played that’s bothered to use Games for Windows, which is amusing considering it’s deployed through Steam anyway. Even though I still use Steam to communicate, it’s nice that I can log into my 360 profile to invite friends or see if a Gears 2 game is going. That’s about where the pros end though, I can’t believe they expected anyone to pay for this when Steam is free. Someone should get fired for that…

To close I’ll say even if you’re not an RTS guy, I’d give DoW2 a shot for free to see if it grabs you. It sits half between an RTS and an action/RPG game for me, but since it does require some thinking it’s going to turn some players off immediately. 

Article written by El_Funko.

Where there’s desperation, there’s opportunity