Counter-Strike:GO Beta Key Winners

WINNERS HAVE BEEN PLANTED!

Our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta key contest was hotly contested by lots of people who thought “I love Counter-Strike, give me a key” qualified as a creative entry. They were wrong.

The following people had legitimately creative entries and will find a beta key arriving in their inbox shortly.

Patrick M.
Peraras I.
Ashley S.
Gidych I.
Kevin P.
Gavin M.
Kurtis F.
Christopher H.
Hugo J.
Ian V.

My favourite entry, while flaunting the allotted 25 word limit, still wins because it was creative enough to offset the whole cheating thing:

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for a good entry, I can tell you I can’t do that. But what I do have are a very particular set of skillz; skillz I have acquired over a very long career. Skillz that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you give me my CS:GO key now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you…in game.

Take note; I only endorse cheating if it’s creative cheating.

Last Day To Win A CS:GO Beta Key

How do you feel about strikes that counter things? What about offensives on a global scale?

If you answered no, then you didn’t read my questions carefully enough because that answer doesn’t make any sense. You’re not going to make it in the fast-paced world of eSports with that attitude.

Fortunately that won’t stop you from winning a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta key in our contest which ends tomorrow.

All you have to do is send an email from your iiNet, Westnet or Netspace email address to contests@3fl.net.au and explain, in 25 words or less, why you deserve one of the beta keys.

Entries close at 12pm WST Friday 16th of March 2012. Winners will be announced shortly afterwards and notified via email.

Counter-Strike:GO Beta Key Contest

Sometimes the Terrorists win, sometimes the Counter-Terrorists win, and sometimes the 3FL readers win beta keys. Some of those readers may be Terrorists, but that’s their business.

Thanks to our friends at Valve, we have 10 Counterstrike: Global Offensive beta keys to give away and you don’t even have to disarm a bomb to get one.

All you have to do is send an email from your iiNet, Westnet or Netspace email address to contests@3fl.net.au and explain, in 25 words or less, why you deserve one of the beta keys.

The 10 most creative entries will win, so don’t expect to win if you go with “Because I want one!”

Entries close at 12pm WST Friday 16th of March 2012. Winners will be announced shortly afterwards and notified via email.

Hawken Gets A New Gameplay Trailer

Finding $20 in an old jacket, an extra chicken McNugget in the box or a new gameplay trailer for Hawken are all things I immediately declare to be the “BEST SURPRISE EVER!”

At least I can share that last one with you, because you can’t have any of my nuggets.

The latest trailer shows how far along the game’s development has come. Not just from how awesome the mech combat looks, but with quick peaks at the capture & hold points and the giant ships cruising over the battlefield serving as some sort of objective to be destroyed. Not bad for what’s still being called an indie game.

If this video is anything to go by, that closed beta they hinted at last month probably isn’t far off from commencing. Head over to the Hawken website to enlist.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Beta

It seems today is a day of beta contests, because now Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is considering your application. All you need to do is complete a survey on Steam and let them know about your extensive history with the Counter-strike series.

According to the official blog, they have already sent out over 9000 beta keys to existing CS 1.6 and CSS players, and now plan to select participants from the Steam survey over the coming months to be included in the closed beta.

These aren’t the boring, generic beta survey questions either. Do you play CS 1.6, or are you more of a CS: Source player? Is the AWP more cost-efficient than the AK-47 when it comes to kills-per-dollar? If you knife a sniper in the back after he makes a rude joke about your mother, will you teabag him in revenge? These are all important questions that will evaluate what you can bring to the CS:GO closed beta process.

Load up your Steam client and then complete the survey to be in the running to join the beta.

48 Hours Of Guild Wars 2 Beta Signups

With all the articles and videos this week from the closed beta press event for the Guild Wars 2 MMO, I’m sure everyone’s a little jealous of those fancy journalists who got play the game. I know I am.

Those jerks.

Luckily for us, ArenaNet is accepting applications to join the closed beta for Guild Wars 2 for the next 48 hours! Head over to the sign-up page to get your entry in and start praying to various gods that you get accepted.

You’ll need to submit a DirectX Diagnostic of your PC hardware, so if you’re at work you’ll have to wait until you get home to enter. Entries close at 6PM GST on Feb 4th.

Tactical Intervention Strikes in 2012

Alright kids, it’s time to stop arguing about whether CS: Source or 1.6 is better (who am I kidding, that argument will never die) because a new candidate is about to bunny-hop it’s way onto the scene.

Tactical Intervention is the work of Counterstrike co-creator Minh Le (also known as Gooseman) and will be released as a free-to-play multiplayer online shooter. The game has been in development since 2010 and is set to launch later this year. You can sign up for the closed beta test starting next month by going heading to the official website.

Check out the teaser trailer below to get a brief look at the game, then head to our forums to continue the everlasting debate on which Counterstrike version is the best.

Hawken Begins Closed Beta Registration

We finally have the first solid bit of news on the release of Hawken – the awesome indie mech combat game inspired by the old Mechwarrior series.

The game will be released as a free-to-play in-browser game on December 12.

I assume most of you are now sobbing uncontrollably because you’ve just realised it’ll be another 10 months before you can jump in the cockpit of a mech and start melting faces, but don’t cry! Firstly because mech pilots don’t cry, but secondly because the closed beta sign-ups for Hawken have begun.

Head over to playhawken.com and register your interest for the beta. If you can get 3 friends to sign up through your unique enlistment URL, you get to reserve your username ahead of the beta. Don’t be one of those losers who has to add numbers to their name because it’s taken.

Check out the gameplay demo from PAX 2011 below to see the game in action.

Starhawk Open Beta Begins Feb 21

On Feb 21, anyone who wants to jump into Starhawk will get the chance when the open beta starts. You can get in earlier if you’re a PSN Plus subscriber or bought Uncharted 3.

Woohoo, free stuff! Everyone loves free stuff!

Starhawk is the sequel to Warhawk, one of the first multiplayer PS3 shooters, known for its gyro-controlled Warhawk jets and combining solid team-based FPS gameplay with vehicles to really make the player feel like he’s in the middle of an epic battle.

The sequel kicks things up a notch by adding the ability to deploy buildings, defensive turrets and energy shields on the fly in the middle of a game and adding the ability to transform the jets into a rad looking mech while singing Robot Rock (at least that’s what I’ll be doing). It’s the sort of ambitious design for an online shooter that makes me wonder whether it’s going to actually work well outside the controlled environment of the developer’s studio.

However the video below has a lot of resounding endorsements, so it sounds like the new stuff really works. It even includes a few people who don’t have to big the game up just because they write for Playstation Magazine, so it’s probably reliable.

Besides, the game just looks like it would be a lot of fun. Check it out.

3FL’s Dota 2 Beta Key Winners

It’s time to announce the winners of our Dota 2 Beta key contest!

We had a whole pile of entries from eager Dota fans wanting to get their hands on a coveted beta key and help Valve make Dota 2 the biggest and best MOBA game yet. Each key grants the winner entry into the Dota 2 beta and includes 2 additional copies of the beta to gift to their friends through Steam.

Unfortunately not everyone can be a winner, so read on to find out who snagged themselves a beta key with their creative entry!

Read the rest of this entry »