Quake Live open beta

Amongst all of the excitement of the TF2 Scout Update on the same day, I completely forgot about the Quake Live open beta coming out.

So now I’ve had a chance to give it a go and see what the fuss is all about..  don’t know what I’m talking about?  Well I guess you’re gonna have to keep on reading right?

Quake Live is effectively Quake 3: Arena, so of course you might be thinking..  "that game came out years ago, why would they be remaking it?".  Well, this time its with a bit of a twist, its Quake 3 that you can play in a web browser.  The game starts off by getting you to download and install a browser plugin (sorry Mac and Linux users, only Windows is supported so far), once you’re done, restart your browser, register on the site and you’re ready to go.

Initially you are required to complete a skill level check, which puts you in a hallway and you have to complete a couple of obstacles to reach doorways that indictate where your skill level is.  As long as you can locate your jump key and know how to rocket jump you should be able to avoid humiliating yourself and having to pick the "Beginner" option.  Once you’ve completed the training match against the AI, you can jump into the fray with real opponents.

The plan is for it to be advertising supported so that there won’t be a need to charge for access to recoup costs and make some dime out of it, so it should remain free to play.  The developers id Software have indicated that plans for Mac and Linux support are in the pipelines, so this should provide access to virtually everyone to get in there and have a go.

Its a rather nifty idea, so it’ll be interesting as to what other things we see id Software do with this technology.  You can check out Quake Live by visiting the web site at the following location:  http://www.quakelive.com/

3FL – Win tickets to see Watchmen

Westnet and Paramount Pictures are giving 3FL members the chance to win one of 20 in-season double passes to see Watchmen, (rated MA) one of the most anticipated comic-to-celluloid flicks of the decade, only in cinemas 5 March 2009.

Click here to enter!

Flash Game Friday: The Visitor

Looking for something to do on an otherwise boring Friday whilst waiting for the weekend to finally arrive? Well maybe our section Flash Game Friday has something for you.  

Aliens are among us! Well, just one alien, and he’s tiny… or is he?

Guide this little parasite through a point-and-click adventure from the great outdoors to the human-inhabited indoors. Contains horror themes and delicious cartoon violence. Go play The Visitor.

World of Warcraft – Ulduar patch preview

Blizzard have released details of what you can expect to see in the upcoming Ulduar content patch, with the public test realm patch notes currently available.

The new Ulduar raiding instance will form the largest part of the new 3.1 patch that Blizzard currently has in testing on the PTR system.  The instance itself explores some of the lore associated with the Titans and new enemies who have taken up residence in Ulduar.

Ulduar will be available in both 10 and 25 member raid formats, comprising of a total of 14 bosses with 11 of those bosses including a "hard mode".  The "hard mode" will reward successful raid groups with extra loot, the possibility of titles and maybe even vanity items along the lines of the black and twilight drakes available from Sartharion in the Obsidian Sanctum if you kill him in "hard mode" (i.e. engage him with the 3 drakes still alive).

So far Blizzard have mentioned that some of the encounters in Ulduar will include a battle which will have players utilising vehicles to defeat the boss.  The vehicles used for the battle will apparently scale with the level of gear that you have equipped, so this encourages players to complete the earlier content in Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity and Osbidian Sanctum before entering Ulduar.

Another major feature that will be introduced with this patch is the so called "dual spec" system, which will allow players to retain two talent specs that are pre-defined by the player that will be switchable between by visiting the inscription stones.  Dual spec will allow players to retain 2 sets of glyphs and action bar bindings as well as the two talents specs without having to re-do all of this when switching is done, this will also players to avoid the cost of changing their talent specs.  At the moment the PTR has this costing 1000 gold to learn the ability initially, but it should be a gold saving for hybrid classes who frequently change between roles in their normal gameplay.

There are a heap more changes, including a very wide range of changes to the various player classes.  Community site MMO-Champion has the full list of changes both from the patch-notes and also changes that aren’t documented in the notes.

Blizzard also have up a preview video of Ulduar that you can check out on their web site here.

TF2 receives a minor update

Valve have released a small update to TF2 this morning, bringing with it a couple of fixes and some changes.

Gameplay changes:
- Removed the damage reduction against non-stunned enemies on the new bat
- Players with full health can now pick up dropped sandviches

Fixes:
- Reverted the change that treated chat text starting with / as a command instead of passing it through as chat
- Fixed a crash related to baseball impacts
- Fixed the Heavy’s hands disappearing when he’s stunned while wearing the KGB
- Fixed the BONK! particles appearing in the air when the bat’s taunt kill is used on a target
- Fixed Force-A-Nature description not fitting inside the item window
- Fixed the Axtinguisher

All of our servers have been updated and are ready to go. 

As a side note, wob has chucked on a scramble mod that might help if you find yourself in a stacked server, hit up this forum thread for details and feedback.

2 minute review – Street Fighter IV (360)

Anyone not familiar with the Street Fighter franchise should probably take a long, stern look at themselves. I’m going to assume everyone else knows enough about the series that I can take liberties with jargon and in-jokes – so you’ll know that in between Street Fighter II and IV, there were of course seven Street Fighter games released. You’ll know what sho-ryu-ken means, and that anyone who picks Dan has already lost.

With the dynasty on the wane through SF Alpha & Ex and the largely forgettable SF III, this month’s release needed to pull a huge, impressive rabbit out of a formidable and trendy hat. The draw here is in the balance, reviving the simplicity and playability of Street Fighter II with an extra, entirely optional layer of technique per character that some of the more ‘ardcore players will enjoy sussing out. Historical characters (Ryu, Guile, Blanka et al) play out of the box just as you’d expect, but with a polished, explorable depth breathing new life into old bones.

While the core mechanics hark back to their winningest roots, characters now also have access to a broader toolset through focus, revenge and ex techniques. Focus techniques are slow, telegraphed charge up moves that can soak up one hit before delivering a vicious blow. That one-hit absorption offers a new tactic in itself, allowing a player to temporarily wear a bad situation to deliver a heavy hit if the timing is right.

A character’s ex meter builds up with a successful offence and general execution of moves, enabling more powerful versions of basic moves (more fiery fireballs, more… upper uppercuts) as an ongoing reward. Conversely, once a character has taken enough of a beating, their revenge meter fills up – allowing for the delivery of a tide-turning ultra combo, potentially taking an opponent’s life down by as much as half. It also makes the TV flash and bang a lot, and the cat leave the room with much haste.

With a variety of on and offline game modes, plenty of unlocks and a slew of challenges per character, there’s enough here to please all walks of gamer, with many friends or no friends at all. It’s a genuine crowd pleaser.

I do have one love/hate thing going with the game though, truth be told. The presentation is second to none, despite the 2D playing field the 3D renders are stunning and fluid, and the general game menu and interface is tidy and buffed. What irks me is just how much pretty tomfoolery goes on between fights: there’s too much prattle, too many unskippable animations and downright terrible anime cut scenes. Where Tekken let me rematch in the blink of an eye, Street Fighter IV forces me to endure a tired sequence of very pretty, very slow events between bouts.

So that’s one blip on an otherwise stunning release. If you’re at all into fighters, this is a must-have. And uh… if anyone fancies a bout online, my gamertag is withSausage. See you ringside.

OMG! TF2 Scout update is here

The TF2 Scout update is now here, having hit the Steam network just a few minutes ago.

So what are you waiting for, fire up that Steam client and get updating!  Whilst you’re doing that, we’ve got the full list of changes just below.

New features: - Added The Force-A-Nature, The Sandman, and Bonk! - Added 35 new Scout achievements. - Added crit boosted on/off sound effects. - Added new sounds for upgraded teleporters. - Added new sound for a fully charged medic dying. - Add bonus points section to scores.      - Scouts earn a bonus point for killing Medics who are actively healing a target. - Added several new speech concepts, mostly hooked up to new Scout lines. - Added new "Remember last weapon between lives" option to the Multiplayer Advanced dialog. - Spies can now control which weapon the enemy team sees them holding. Hitting the "last disguise" key while disguised updates the disguise to show the Spy's currently held weapon. - Added several new Arena mode announcer speech events. - Added "First Blood" to Arena mode. - Removed 2x item respawn times in arena. - Changed backstab handling to fix facestabs. - Spies disguised as enemy team can now see player IDs for enemies.

New maps: - Added community maps: cp_egypt, arena_watchtower, and cp_junction. - Updated cp_fastlane with Arttu's new version.

Mapmaker requests: - Added new input for forward speed modifier to FuncTrainTrain. - Added TeleportToPathTrack input to func_tracktrain.

Bugfixes: - Fixed a bug where players would sometimes gib from non-gib damage kills. - Fixed stat screen showing an entry for a class called "map." - Fixed item model panels not using team skins. - Fixed obscure bug where spectators were able to carry the flag.

Huzzah!  All of our servers have been updated, so you can get straight on there and start wh0ring up those Scout achievements!

Killzone 2 Impressions

A lot of reviews have criticised K2 for not adding any innovation to the FPS genre, which is somewhat true, but the same things were said about CoD4. K2 is missing co-op, but CoD4 still had infinitely spawning enemies until a magic line was crossed – both of which could be considered inexcusable or a mere minor fault depending on your point of view. Ultimately I feel the same way about both games – the single player campaigns (whilst fun) are merely a warm-up to the main event of online multiplayer.

Unfortunately the only aspects of multiplayer I can comment on are the game modes and general interface. Forget having to vote for a game type, K2′s Warzone mode provides all the variety of previous multiplayer modes in an automated process. Matches start with 5 minutes of general TDM to warm everyone up, which then automatically switches to one of several modes – VIP Assassination, CTF, Take & Hold (multiple cap points) and Search & Destroy (place explosives). The winning team of each game mode scores 1 point towards their overall team score for the map. With 7 game mode rounds per map, there’s always a clear winner at the end.

The constantly changing modes create intense gameplay and some interesting strategical options. Has your team completely phoned in a round of TDM and you’re 20 frags behind with a minute left? Grab your squad and get ready to hoof it to the CTF point as soon as the objective switches to get a head start on your opponents. Of course, that’s only in theory as I wasn’t able to explain my innovative strategy ideas to the bots I was forced to play with.

Speaking of which, for those who enjoy playing offline against bots, the AI in K2 is quite challenging and not in the usual instant-180-degree-headshot manner. Bots would cook grenades, flank me when I camped behind cover with a rifle and set ambushes behind corners which ensured that skirmish mode wasn’t a complete snore-fest. The AI still isn’t perfect of course, several times two opposing bots ran side by side while I had to shoot around my AI teammate to nail the enemy, but it’s a step in the right direction.

If there’s one thing I took away from what I’ve seen of K2 so far, it’s that Guerrilla Games know what gamers want. There’s GTA style stat tracking for the single player campaign (including total time played, kills with each weapon and quickest level complete time), inbuilt clan management (including member performance, tournaments and in-game clan currency to bet on matches), online XP ranks/unlocks in the same vein as CoD4 and region filtering for localised multiplayer games (AUS included).

I can already see lots of K2′s features being adopted as standards for future games, such as being able to jump to specific save points within a campaign level once you complete it (like chapters on a DVD) or the use of Sixaxis controls for fine-tuning aim on the sniper rifle. That last part shouldn’t be glossed over and forgotten either. I’m glad that holding a controller steady will improve my aim rather than holding a button to take a deep breath – thoroughly more realistic and incredibly intuitive.

It’s for these reasons that I’m confident the multiplayer component will hold up to the hype it’s been given by beta testers and the lucky reviewers who managed to get into an online match against actual humans. It’s unlikely the developers got so many interface and design decisions right and then completely folded on such a large component like online multiplayer. That Guerrilla Games had a separate team working on the multiplayer aspect alongside the regular campaign team since the start only reinforces that.

I realise writing a wall of text about a PS3 exclusive for a site catering predominantly for PC gaming comes with a risk of personal injury, but with the large number of 10/10 "BEST GAME EVAR (this month)" reviews flooding out for K2 I think it’s necessary. For those that wonder "is it really that good or just really popular?", my opinion is it’s not a perfect game, but it’s definitely going to become a new benchmark to compare future games against and is well worth checking out.

Article by El_Funko.

Xbox Live tackles the global economic crisis

Doing their part to address our tightening wallets and pry some dollars from our hands, Microsoft have decided to run weekly Xbox Live specials after a successful trial in December last year. The program is available to Xbox Live Gold members starting this week with Braid at 33% off down from 1200 points to 800. For a full run down of the program read on.

Taken from Major Nelson’s blog at majornelson.com

After the successful run the deal of the week had last December, we’re bringing it back on a regular basis. Starting Monday, February 23rd Xbox LIVE Gold members will receive a discount on a different piece of content each week (Arcade games, Game Add-Ons, Xbox Originals.)

With this announcement of the program, I am also able to give you a tip on what the first deal of the week will be.
Braid the award winning Xbox LIVE Arcade title normally 1200 points will be available for Gold Members in all Xbox LIVE regions starting Monday for only 800 points, a 33% savings.

Braid will be available for the special price after Monday February 23rd at 13:00 GMT/0800ET/0500 PT *

Here are some details around the program:
The special deal pricing is available for Gold Members only
I’ll post the new deal each Monday morning when it becomes available at the special price
The Marketplace team is doing their best to make a Deal of the Week available in Xbox LIVE regions
*You must be signed in as a Gold Member on the web marketplace to see the lower prices

 

Coming later this month, Xbox LIVE Gold members will also have exclusive access to steep discounts on Game Add-ons for Ninja Gaiden II and Project Gotham Racing 4, as well as the original Xbox classic, Fable.

Of course anything you download from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace is Freezone for iiNet and Westnet customers!

Flower, just like Fl0w but with more e and r

 The visuals and game play are tied together by some impressive audio. The sound of the wind as it swirls and gusts past you with the motion of the controller puts you right there in the windy field. The gentle tones of the background music build on the serenity of the world while setting the tune to which the field dances to. At the same time the music adjusts to your own actions. The way in which you guide the wind to find your objectives has a direct effect on the music be it tempo or volume. Flowers often trigger their own tones or sequences as you flow over them, flying over a string of flowers is akin to a string of notes played on a piano.

It’s through these core items, audio, visuals and motion controlled game play that Flower delivers an incredibly immersive experience. The developers have looked at what it is to be the wind and recreated a platform for the player to dive into it fully. You’re left with a mesmerising and breathtaking experience.

To some it may seem that there is little point to the game, and they would largely be right. Flower is not by any means challenging. There is no prospect of failure, no punishment for poor performance and whether you complete a level in five minutes or five hours is of no consequence. Flower attempts to take the concept of gaming as a relaxation exercise to the absolute extreme. After a long day when you’re too tired to fight Hordes in Gears of War 2, breach Omaha Beach again in any number of titles or strip fractions of a second off your lap times in Gran Turismo 5, Flower is there to let you settle back and indulge in blissful relaxation.

Pros:
• A beautiful and mesmerising experience
• Excellent control scheme, all Six Axis capable games should take their cues from Flower
• Relatively cheap at AU$12.99 especially given its strong replay value

Cons:
• A truly emasculating experience when played in front of your significant other (and girls this still applies you)
• The simplistic game play may not be for everyone
• Only seven very similar levels but this is offset by the replay value of all seven
• No demo

Thatgamecompany continues to deliver unique and innovative but simple experience and Flower should not disappoint. Overall I would highly recommend this to anyone with a PS3.