As evil returns, so do I

Hello again everyone, it's been a while. I apologize about the lack of posts recently, it's been a while since I last posted. As everyone most likely knows, Diablo 3 came out on the 15th of May, and just like ever other PC gamer I decided to pick it up.

Having never played a Diablo before other than a quick blast on Diablo 2, I had no idea what to expect. I have to say I am really impressed by what I have found. While there are quite a few problems with the game right now, such as itemization been the key one for me, and a few issues with some abilities the core game play is fantastic.

I plan on returning to blogging, and will return to posting daily however this time I will be focusing on Diablo 3 mainly and will be doing a lot of theory crafting. It's been some time since I played any sort of RPG but one of the things I have missed was the theory crafting. Yeah it sounds a bit nerdy, but I actually love doing maths. Crunching numbers and formulas to try and find that perfect DPS sweet spot, or the correct way to stack my defensive stats. 

I am currently playing mainly as a Monk (level 52), so my first theory work will most likely be based on this once I hit Inferno. I am also leveling one of each of the other 4 classes, and have them all around level 20ish except for the Wizard. Once I start progressing through Inferno, expect to see videos as well as theories. It's all good an well to slap some figures in front of someone, but it's also nice to see the idea in action. 

It's only a short post today, but I plan on doing more in depth ones very shortly, and at some point over the next couple of days I should have one out discussing dodge and it's unmentioned diminishing returns. 

exaVolt 3 CTB First Impressions

I had my first chance to catch an exaVolt tournament yesterday, and was fully impressed. exaVolt is a series of tournaments for Microvolts, and yesterdays match-ups featured some of the top teams in the game.

In the Stream I followed I managed to see Shank (21st seed) upset 2 teams, and nearly upset a third, only for them to invite an extra player into observer mode which got them disqualified. This was quite a shame as they did well in their second game. The first one they were 4-1 down, and Death Valley (12) seemed to just give up, then 2 of them left the server almost thinking they had won. This gave Shank the chance to grab a cap back, and after that they just steamrolled. In the second match, we saw them playing Crazy Toys (5). The match was played on PVC Factory, and was extremely evenly matched throughout the course of the game, with Shank surprisingly managing to pull off yet another upset.

Match 3 was Exordium (1) vs Nordic (8), and was certainly one of the most entertaining matches I have seen in eSports for a long time. Both teams were very evenly matched, and the game went back an forth for ages. In the final few minutes of the game Nordic were one capture up, and no matter how hard Exordium pushed they just couldn't manage to capture. They had 2 pulls in the last minute, with the final one getting within a few feet of the flag, only to be stopped as the timer ticked down to about 3 seconds to go. Nordic managed to hold on to the lead, but sadly lost out to inHarmony (4) in the next match.

inHarmony originally lost to Shank, but they were allowed to advance through as this was the game that Shank got disqualified. The game seemed to be in inHarmonys favor all game however every time they seemed to go anywhere AngryDay would step-up and make a seriously clutch play. Out of all the players, he impressed me the most as some of his kills were incredible and really kept his team in it. As we moved onto the Semi-Finals where inHarmony knocked out Nordic, we saw Forbidden (2) vs BlackBox (3). This was meant to be a grudge match since the two teams appear to be rivals. However the map it was played on (Neighborhood) is far to big for 4v4 and the majority of the game teams we just sat back in their base. There was very little action so overall it was a disappointing match.

The final took place on PVC Factory, and was between Blackbox and inHarmony. The game was over far faster than expected, with Blackbox picking up some quick captures and ending the game fairly quickly. Forbidden managed to defeat Nordic in the 3rd place match-up which was played off stream.

The commentating was fairly good as well, and was from a player known as Chipz. He was fairly new to the commentating game, as you could tell sometimes he wasn't sure what to say. However his energy when something big happened was incredible and was certainly entertaining to listen to which the matches were being played. With a few more weeks practice he will defiantly be a great caster to watch, and will offer a lot to the games being played.

Overall I was really impressed by the quality of matches being played, and the stream was fairly good quality. It was slightly lagging frame rate wise at times, but certainly watchable. The community was also hanging out on IRC, and I learnt quite a bit from them during the evening. I would like to also put a thanks out to Bacon, who is a Mod over on the MV site, for sticking behind after the tournament and explaining quite a bit more of what goes on within the scene. It was interesting to learn about it, and for such a small community there is a lot going on!

Microvolts round-up now online

Just a quick update to let everyone know, the Microvolts round-up video is now online. Next week I will be planning a couple of shows that I will be streaming during the week, stay tuned for more information.

Microvolts and Microtransactions

As part of this weekends series on Microvolts, I will be starting by discussing the market and it's transactions. I will be uploading a first impressions game play later on this evening, so I will use todays blog to discuss the customization available.

As is the norm with free to play games, you can purchase items for varying duration's. If you choose to purchase an item for an unlimited duration you can then use a third currency in game to upgrade the item. You have a chance when killing someone in game for them to drop energy which is used to upgrade. So far I haven't found any set pattern as to when you receive this, so I can't recommend easy ways to farm it. Each weapon has 5 available upgrades for it.

In terms of real money purchasing, the game is fairly cheap to play. If you choose to purchase a weapon with real funds it will cost you just short of $10. The power increase on weapons between free and real money is around 3-5% increase, so these aren't required. Purchasing armor however has quite a bigger increase available on it. The bonuses from armor, either health or run speed and on the accessories extra ammo, is usually double. The increases on health for example are 20 on free, and 40 on the purchased items. If you purchase a full kit for 90 days (The maximum duration), it will set you back around $15, which works out at $5 a month. Not bad at all when you think the game is free to download, cheaper than any MMO going.

As I stated, later on tonight I will be having a video go live, and I am currently trying to get a stream going as well. Just a note to the Nexiuz fans reading this, don't worry I haven't forgotten about the game I am just waiting on the PC release before I go really in depth into it.

If No Cliché made a third person shooter

The original Dreamcast cover.

The title will most likely bewilder most of my readers, and certainly most of todays gamers. No Cliché  was a developer for the Dreamcast, and sadly only ever had the chance to make two games, one of which was a cheap game for the purpose of people testing out DreamArena their online service. The game I am speaking about is non other than Toy Commander.

Toy Commander is now regarded as some what of a cult classic. With the Dreamcast not doing so well in sales, it never got much coverage, especially with the idea that you were just essentially playing with toys. However beyond the toy skin lay one of the most entertaining gaming experiences I have ever had. The story behind it was how Guthy (Called Andy in the US version) had received new toys for Christmas and he neglected his old toys. Because of this his older toys decided to rebel.

Now I know this sounds like a crazy story-line, however it worked really well. You played in 8 different levels, all based on a room in his house, and upon completing a room you unlocked the next. You played as different vehicles which split up into three categories, ground, air and helicopter. Where Toy Commander shone though was it's game play. The levels and missions were vast and different, most of them required you to do varying objectives and the only mission that seemed to be a recurring theme was how each room had a race mission. Unlike how you might imagine, the game was actually fairly difficult and to beat the final boss you needed to defeat every other boss in the game to stand a chance. When you beat a boss you unlocked the ability to use it in the final battle, something you really needed to be able to do.

This ties us in nicely to the game I am playing this week, Microvolts. Like Toy Commander you are again playing as the role of toys in varying domestic environments, however this time it's a third person shooter. So far I've spent a few hours on the game, but the first impressions are solid. The graphic style is fantastic and the game play is unique for todays market as it features a variety of weapons available on spawn. These weapons are more like what you would find in an arena shooter however, with this such as gattling guns, rocket launchers and grenade launchers being the flavor of the day. You can purchase new weapons with typical free to play style, but the real money weapons seem to have higher stats. They don't seem like a giant increase from what I have seen, usually around 2-5% damage increase which I doubt will break the game. You can also dress your character cosmetically, with each item having either extra HP or movement speed.

Splash art for Microvolts.

The game is available at www.microvolts.com and I will be playing it over the weekend with the ingame name of Nood1e. I certainly recommend every to try this as the game is a huge amount of fun and I plan on doing a lot more content for it. There should, sound codecs permitting, be a first impressions video for it going online tomorrow evening with more written and video content over the weekend.

Are social games finally starting to move forward?

Social games are something that have started to explode over the last few years. Games such as Farmville and Bejeweled gained huge popularity through the medium of Facebook, and as a result Zynga, Farmvilles creator, is now worth over $1 billion. With Facebook having over 800 million members it's certainly starting to attract the attention of game developers.

While the games are often played by thousands of people, it's an area I haven't really payed much attention to. It seemed to me like every game released was either a game similar to Farmville, or something along the lines of Evony. Imagine my surprise when browsing online today and I discovered Überstrike.

Überstrike is a first person shooter developed by Cmune Games and is played directly through Facebook in your browser. While I have usually just passed over social games I decided that this was certainly worth a look. When first loading the game you are met by a tutorial as with most games. The only downside I have with this during the tutorial you are unable to change any of your settings during it. This includes both your graphics options and controls, so if the sensitivity is wrong there isn't much you can do, also if your PC is struggling to run the game then you have to wait until after the tutorial to change it. With there being no indication that you can change options this could put players off early as a lot of people on Facebook don't have amazing systems.

Being a Facebook game, it is free to play and allows for purchases with both in game and real money currencies. The cost of purchases with real money are quite extreme. I was taking a look at weapons and found a Sniper Rifle that costs $30.00 to buy, sadly it also one-shots enemies players if they don't have armor without hitting them in the head. The weapon was only available to be purchased through real money as well.

The game play is quite decent, however being a browser game it seems to suffer from some input lag, which affects the play of the game. Some of the maps are pretty poor too, one of them I played just seemed to be random boxes and jump pads thrown into a giant room, and when I say Giant I mean giant. The only way to tell which team the player you are shooting at is on, is by a health bar above their head. This is only visible when you are quite close, so on the previously mentioned map you couldn't actually tell who was on your team even when zoomed in with the sniper. At max range on the map the cross hair on the sniper is the size of a player, meaning an accurate shot of the head is difficult. This is a problem as all other weapons just seemed useless on the map unless you ran around the bottom of the map hoping for someone to spawn near you.

Overall the game is fairly average, and appears to be a pay to win shooter. This is something I would expect to see on a Facebook game, however it is good to see the platform finally starting to evolve. I will keep checking back on social games to see if anything else is changing within the market. At over 800 million users on Facebook it makes sense that people are starting to move towards the platform, and we already see a lot of integration with Facebook among games right now. Ijji already connects with your Facebook account and uses it to log in to their games. Combining games with Facebook and the mobile platforms is something I expect to see a lot of in the future, even if it's not the full game but something similar to Warcrafts auction house application. The future is looking good for the social platform, and it's also looking interesting for gamers too.

Blacklight Retribution video now live

I must apologise for the late uploading of this video, I planned on having it done yesterday. However I was having some issues with the sound codecs so it took longer than planned.

The video is now live and I would love some feedback on it. I will be starting to do videos more often now I understand how to get it done quickly, and I will be returning to regular blog updates tomorrow.

Here is the video;

Blacklight Retribution video coming tomorrow

Sorry for the short update. I have decided to try and incorperate Youtube as a medium for blogging to the world. I will be uploading a game play video to Youtube tomorrow as a review for Blacklight Retribution, and will also be uploading an accompanying review here for anything I didn't have time to fit into the video.

I appologise for the inconvience.

Day-One DLC, is it right?

As many people will be aware, Mass Effect 3 shipped today in Europe. It has already had some huge success over in the States, selling 890,000 copies on its first day. However one thing I have seen a lot of talk over in these past few days, is the topic of DLC being released for sale on the first day.

Publishers today are starting to move their attention towards DLC as a means to bring in more revenue after the release of the game. I personally have no issue with this itself, I am more than happy to support the developers of games that I love and in the past have purchased a huge amount of DLC content. However it's the downsides to this DLC frenzy that is slowly starting to take over the industry. With the shift towards DLC as a source of revenue, developers are starting to cut support for custom content in games. I have heard many reasons for this from developers including the comment from EA about fans being unable to use Frostbite 2, which as someone who has toyed around with creating content I was deeply offended by. What is starting to irritate me more though is that fact that we are seeing games released on much shorter life cycles, which are actually lacking content because developers want to shift DLC later on down the line.

Console games especially suffer from this problem, while PC is starting to move towards free to play to avoid this problem. One of the reasons that people are complaining about is the fact that single player games are now increasing in price, and having less content resulting in shorter completion times. RPG's such as Skyrim and Mass Effect don't really suffer from this, but shooter games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield can easily be completed in just a few hours. If you have no intentions of playing the multiplayer, this works out at around £10+ per hour of game play. That's a story for another day, as I am here to talk about day one DLC.

Releasing content on the first day is something I don't agree with if it is for a fully comercialised game retailing at £40+ R.R.P. DLC packs are usually around £6.99-11.99 on the Xbox, a price which usually translates on to the PS3 and PC releases. There is no reason that this content shouldn't already be on the disc come release, but even worse than that is developers pulling content out of the game to release as day one DLC. This is something that we are starting to see a trend with, which developers usually use the fact that the DLC comes with the collectors edition as an excuse for this. I wouldn't mind but it usually costs more to get the standard game and DLC than it would for the collectors editions which usually sell out fairly quickly. Battlefield 3 actually did this fine for me, as the content wasn't ready on release so they allowed you to download it for free in the future if you had the collectors edition.

Mass Effect 3 has however had its disc data mined, which has resulted in people finding half of the day one DLC already on the disc. This is yet another kick in the customers teeth from EA, who are very rapidly starting to show the industry that they actually don't care at all and are more interested in the short term than long term financial gains. It's the equivilant of buying a directors cut edition of a DVD, only to get home and find out that while the content is on the disc you need to pay extra to view it. I hope this is a practice that we see disappear very soon, but I sadly doubt that is the case.

With the rise of free to play games, and the rapid increase of mobile gaming on smart phones and tablets, big companies like EA will start to lose out a huge chunk of the market. It's not like the graphical quality or drive space of these devices is behind, the rumored iPad 3 specs is looking likely to be more powerful than the PS3. Big companies like EA and Activision could lose the huge share of the market they currently monopolise. When you look at the PC market, they don't seem to have even close to as big an impact at the minute and companies such as Valve and Riot are leading the way. The only foothold they have is Battlefield 3, which disappointed a lot of PC gamers who felt like they had been ignored for the console players, and Starcraft 2 which is currently a phenomon thanks to e-sport scene exploding has seen huge success.

Sadly it looks like day one DLC is here to stay. It's becoming more common and I can only see it being an expected feature in the future. With Microsoft and Sony trying to lock down their consoles even more and not allowing free to play becoming a feature, it seems to be a bleak future for console gamers. The casual players most likely won't stand for stuff like this and have no brand loyalties, they just play games because they are fun. The only people getting hurt here are the long term fans that put EA and Activision on the map, something neither company seems overly bothered about.

Free Weekend First Impressions - Blacklight Retribution

Free Weekend


Free weekend is a new section I am going to be doing every weekend. Every week I will be finding a new release, or a game still in beta, that is free to play and be playing it over the weekend. I will be posting on the Friday my first impressions, and then on Sunday writing up a larger review. Throughout the following week, hopefully starting on Monday, I will be uploading videos onto Youtube of the game I have been playing. I will also be hoping to stream some games and play with the community as well. For the first weekend I will be playing Blacklight Retribution.

Blacklight Retribution

The game is published by Perfect World, who aren't well known for shooter games. However don't let this put you off. Blacklight Retribution is actually a followup to Blacklight Tango Down which was originally an Xbox Live Arcade game. The game itself is built upon Unreal Engine 3 and because of this has a solid foundation for it to be built upon.

While the game is still currently in Beta, it has now moved on to Open Beta. Most free to play games enter open beta before release, but during this open beta everything is usually usable including the cash shops. The cash shop in BLR is actually quite a surprise. Perfect World have been well known for having quite a few "Pay to win" games, where while they are free to play you can't actually unlock most of the more powerful items without spending money. Usually quite a large sum of money. BLR however doesn't follow this model, and everything can be purchased for either the real money or in game currency.

When you purchase an item in game you are given the choice of purchasing the item for 1 day, 7 days or permanently. The prices themselves are actually fairly reasonable for the majority of things. Unlocking a weapon permanently will cost you either 5500 GP (In game currency), which I have earned before level 8 in a night of playing, or 500 Zen which is worth €4.50. These guns can actually be hugely customized, ranging from damage to range and also recoil to weapon spread. There are also your typical unlocks such as scopes and increased magazine sizes. There are a few items that are only purchased by real money, but from all the ones I have seen these are only cosmetic items. The only problem I have had so far is that you can unlock an additional load out at level 5, but the game doesn't mention this anywhere and the load out is available to purchase for 1000 Zen (€9.00).

In terms of game play, the game is quite solid. I haven't seen many bugs other than an occasional problem with hit registration which I have read is currently being fixed. The connection seems to be fairly solid, and the maps well constructed. Blacklight Retribution currently 6 maps in the game and 4 game types, 5 if you count Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch as separate game types. The game features CTF and Domination pretty much how you would expect them to be but it also features King of the Hill with a bit of a twist. Teams will fight over the hill as you would expect, but each hill has a small capture time. Upon reaching the capture time your team will gain a point and the hill will move. It's more dynamic than normal king and leads to some great comebacks, where games might usually feel lost. Blacklights only downside is that servers only play one game type at the minute and don't rotate.

I will be playing the game during the course of the weekend, and will be uploading a more in depth review on Sunday. If you want to join me in game add me, my username is Nood1e. The L is a number one.

Official Blacklight Retribution website

Battlefield 3 expansions revealed

EA have just announced information on the next two Battlefield 3 expansions. Battlefield 3 Close Quarters is to be the first released, followed this fall by Battlefield 3 Armored Kill. While I am excited for Armored Kill as it contains lots more of the typical Battlefield arsenal, (vehicle combat, large maps and so forth), Close Quarters actually fills me with a bit of worry.

When Battlefield 3 came out, one of the biggest complaints that I saw was about the maps. People complained that they were too enclosed, and there just wasn't enough space for proper vehicular combat. The levels Metro and Seine Crossing were commonly complained about due to their urban setting, something people felt belonged more in Call of Duty. I personally agreed with such comments at the time, and still do. What Battlefield has always had is its own niche of combining infantry and vehicular combat almost flawlessly.

In todays current gaming selection, modern combat is taking over. Nearly every game is either modern combat, or bases itself very closely to the Call of Duty formula. What Battlefield 3 did was push itself away from this by giving people the option of vast environments, which they could happily destroy with tanks, jets and other forms of armored weaponry. With the release of BF3CQ they are planning on moving more towards that CoD formula, which is something they really don't need to do. On the BF3CQ preview page they mention the word competitive. This is something that most likely won't exist in Battlefield.

Battlefield has struggled to make a huge impact in the past at events, and I believe that it will continue to struggle. The problem is that while Battlefield 3 is a great game, it requires far to many players to actually form a team, so organisations aren't willing to sponsor teams as often. By reducing it to Close Quarters they are now allowing for making teams smaller (Something we could have already done anyway with Squad Deathmatch and Rush), which makes it easier for teams to form and organisations to send teams to events. However by doing this they are now losing the niche and entering the 4v4 or 5v5 area of competitive FPS, a scene dominated by Counter Strike and Call of Duty 4 on the PC and Halo and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 on the Xbox, and personally I don't think that it can compete.

Battlefield 3 was never made with competition in mind, it was made for the huge maps and 32-64 player games. Trying to bring that formula down to 8-10 player servers is only going to ruin the experience. They would be best leaving Battlefield as it is, and actually do something with Medal of Honor if competition is where they want to go. The last iteration of Medal of Honor was forgotten in just a few weeks, and failed to make a big impact on the gaming world at all. Battlefield Expansions are gaining far more discussion than Medal of Honor is, which is something EA need to change if they want to continue spending money on the series. Now personally I would love to see them go to Medal of Honor with competition in mind, and take it back to WW2 and it's Allied Assault roots on the PC. Even today MoH:AA is still one of the finest PC games made, and still has quite a healthy community.

EA has the money, and certainly the talent, within their company if they wish to make a truly incredible competitive game. Turning Battlefield into EAs flagship competitive game, and moving it towards CQC will only upset the hardcore Battlefield players and be yet another question to the long list of "Why does MoH actually exist?".

SMNCs staying power, and a brief update on Halo 4

Recently I was accepted on to the beta test of Super Monday Night Combat. So far the game has been enjoyable, and is certainly a very good attempt at bringing the DotA genre to a shooter perspective. The game has multiple maps, which is something the DotA genre never managed, which are all well made and each one has it's own completely different feel to it. The Pros, this games name for champions/heroes, are also fun to play with most been unique even though a couple are a little too similar. In this respect I can't praise the game enough, so what makes me think that it might not live around to tell the tale?

The casual market is certainly the biggest market right now, and while yes I strive for competitive aspects in each and every game, if the casual market is over looked then the game will rapidly decline. This is bound to be the case with SMNC. Being a DotA style game, it has the learning curve of running head first in to a brick wall. League of Legends countered this with a fantastic tutorial mode, and good in depth write ups of what champions did. They have now also added videos to all the characters so you can easily identify what is what.

SMNC doesn't do any of this. The practice mode it has is actually a custom game mode, with no practice to be found. Also finding information on characters is difficult as the option is a tiny little button not clearly marked. While they have moved it to a better location instead of being down in the bottom right hand corner on it's own, it still isn't clear what it does. This is all in the store page however, come match time when you choose a character I still haven't found a single way that tell you what each champion does. So you have no idea what you are going to be playing as, nor fighting against, if you didn't find it in the store before. With this being a free to play game I doubt peoples first reaction will be to jump in the store. The UI is also horribly clustered, and it force you in to a global chat room which takes up a huge chunk of the home page, something everyone I have played with has complained about. The other major issue I have with this game is the matchmaking system.

Matchmaking is something that is now rapidly growing in the PC market, and I no longer mind this as they are running on dedicated servers and it is used to make sure you get a good match. Sadly this isn't the case with SMNC. The matchmaking just slaps ten people in a game together. Which means that if a premade is going somewhere, as a single player you have a chance to end up fighting against it. I have been in many matches where the premade just destroys me, and I have no way of fighting back. The worst problem about this, is that you can feed champions like in any DotA style game. As you level up you can increase your skills and damage, as well as gaining a passive health and damage increase. Now when you hit level 8 you have already seen you damage increase, and you are also now doing 50% additional damage if you choose to spec into it from the offensive skill. 50% is far to big a number, as if you get fed early on it's not uncommon to be level 8 while the opponent is around level 4-5. As a premade you will most likely have a team of level 8s fighting a team of level 5s, which means the non-premade team has even less of a chance.

The game is a really solid game, with a few balance tweaks needed. This wasn't meant to be a game review saying that SMNC is a poor game, far from it in fact as I love playing it at the minute. However I am used to playing in competitive rule sets and against higher skilled opponents. As a casual player I can only see this game been hell right now until they tweak things and massively improve the matchmaking (Which is something they have actually attempted in Patch 27).  The game will be free to play so I recommend it to everyone upon release as I'm hoping these issues will be sorted out by then.

Halo 4


Just a brief update on Halo 4 folks. Frank O'Connor has come out and told us that "I’ve responded to it a couple of times. There aren’t ‘perks’ in the game as being described here. And classic Halo is still there."

This is good news as it means that CoD style perks won't be used. I didn't think this would be the case as such, and don't think I mentioned as such yesterday. He has also said that the engine isn't the same used for Anniversary, and more news will be out on the composer soon. 343i also asked for some questions which they were planning on answering in an update. Once that update is out I will dissect the information for you all.

The source for the Frank O'Connor quote is found here.

Halo 4 details released. How does it fair up for competitive play?

The first thing I need to mention here, is this is my opinion based on the information released so far. The information comes from the following sources;

Halo 4 First Look Video
11 Things we've learned about Halo 4

In the video we can see at a few occasions that sprint will be back in the game. However there is no visible sign of a sprint bar, so this may just be default now as opposed to being an armor ability. This doesn't instantly make the game un-competitive as quite a few games are using sprint features today. However it did have some downsides on Halo Reach due to the long kill times. It meant that escaping a bad situation was far to easy, so players weren't punished for making bad decisions. We can also see the Battle Rifle has returned, while it's difficult to tell completely it looks like the BR Spread is coming back. When we have the inconsistency of the Battle Rifle combined with sprint, the kill times on Halo 4 could be far too long and player's could easily escape a bad decision they have made. When you get to the higher level of play, players are used to doing everything pretty much step by step perfection. So then it becomes a case of the better team is the one who can punish mistakes the most. When mistakes are hard to punish this removes a lot of excitement from the crowd when they yet again fail to see a team make that Extermination all because the other team just ran away. Now don't get me wrong running away is a legitimate tactic, but it has it's limits.

If we take a look at the 11 things we have learned page, there are a lot of things that don't bother me so much. Things like a new bad guy for the single player, the Nazi Zombies designer now working with 343i and also Mechs. These things shouldn't in anyway affect the multiplayer so they should be of no worries for us. There are a few things that need to be changed, however I don't see it happening. The game running at 30 FPS yet again, but having better graphics than Halo Reach. Reach already had a fair amount of screen lag on some maps, especially forge maps, so increasing the graphics is just going to slow the game down even more. Large "feel good" Text is something that I'm unsure of. I have no problem it making the player feel like they have done something good, providing that it doesn't end up like Call of Duty where your screen is flooded with numbers and icons every time you turn the corner.

The ability to customize load-outs and also improve your character in more ways that cosmetic is something that I am on the fence about. I can see it leading to interesting game play choices if they manage to balance the weapons out. Having a weaker but more mobile player who uses range weapons? Sounds fun. Having a slower but more tanky player who enjoys shotgunning or assault rifling things up close? Again sounds fun. These ideas can also make the game play a lot different, something we know Halo is in dire need of as it's starting to get a little stale. However balance in previous games has been nothing short of awful. There are so many weapons that just have completely no use what so ever. Interesting guns such as the Focus Rifle have been made redundant because it has a cool down of about a second before you can fire it again. Had they lowered it's range and removed this cool down it could have been an amazing tool. Running round destroying shields while your team mates clean up with precision weapons. Having a tool like this on the previously mentioned tanky guy while your squishy ranged team mates pick-up the kills from range sounds like a huge twist in console FPS. This would be stepping the system more towards the style of TF2, which would certainly be the way to go as opposed to CoD. So as I mentioned before, until we see more information I am on the edge. Balance would be a huge factor for this to work, and it's Halos rapid decline in terms of a balanced sandbox that has me worried. 343i are now at the helm though, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and I look forward to seeing what they can come up with.

The final two things I want to briefly touch on are having on screen icons for weapon placements and weapons respawning on random timers. Having icons on screen should act like Tutorial Tooltips for newer players. We should be able to turn them off if we wish. No player should have any reason to complain about this, as after a few games everyone knows where weapons spawn anyway. The only thing could be when a player drops a weapon you can see it, but again in more competitive games people communicate this information anyway. However weapons respawning on random timers is bad for everyone. All it will do is promote camping, as players won't want to move from the area of the power-ups / power weapons. Halo already lacks reasons to move around the map as it is, lets not give them more reasons to sit around and wait. This won't help new player's in anyway sadly, as the better players will still be able to out shoot them anyway. Also this will mess up competitive games as it will start to promote a random element. The best way to stop better players stomping on newer players is to actually great a decent matchmaking system. The one used in Reach was awful and put a lot of players off as it matched anyone with everyone.

To conclude Halo 4 has quite a few issues with it right now which can totally affect competitive play. However with a few tweaks and some solid work on balancing the sandbox, Halo 4 has some serious potential. As a Halo fan would I be worried right now? No not at all. I wouldn't, however, be full of confidence either. If 343i decide to step even closer to Call of Duty then I can see Halo 4 being a mismatch of games that feels nothing like Halo or Call of Duty and just turns gamers away.

Indepth Nexuiz weapon information.

Illfonic have released the damage and fire rates of all the weapon so far. They have also explained what they are and aren't able to change server side. This is a good piece of information for player's and we can now help point them in the right direction as to where something needs nerfing or buffing.

Official Post

As well as this FellipeMariano has put together a quick guide on each weapon. While most players will have caught up on a lot of what is mentioned, if you are a newer player I would certainly recommend taking a look at this guide as it could help you out.

FellipeMarianos weapon guide

Over the next few weeks I will be making a few guides for SMNC and Nexuiz. I can't do much Nexuiz content right now due to a problem with my Xbox however I will help keep people up to date on the scene as it progresses. As soon as the PC version is released I will be making quite a few weapon and map guides for the game.

ESEA Play-offs today - TF2 / CS 1.6 / CSS

The play-offs for the ESEA will conclude today. We are down to the last 4 in TF2 and CSS, and there are 6 remaining teams in the 1.6 tournament. Player's will also be competing for $80,000 in prize money split over the different games. I have posted the first rounds below and will also give a link to the stream and bracket pages.

Team Fortress 2

Upper Round 1

3/3/12 - 16:00 GMT (11:00 EST) #1 Quantic Legacy vs #4 High Rollers Gaming

3/3/12 - 19:00 GMT (14:00 EST) #3 The Experiment vs #3 Classic Mix-up

Stream will be live here.

Brackets can be found here.

Counter Strike 1.6

Upper Round 2

3/3/12 - 16:30 GMT (11:30 EST) #1 Back2Back Gaming vs #5 Black and White

3/3/12 - 19:00 GMT (14:00 EST) # MouseSpaz vs #CheckSix Gaming

Stream will be live here.

Brackets can be found here.

Counter Strike Source

Upper Round 2

3/3/12 - 16:30 GMT (11:30 EST) #1 3DMAX vs #5 SWOLEPATROL

3/3/12 - 16:30 GMT (11:30 EST) #3 Blight Zomblerz vs #2 Dynamic-CSS

Stream will be live here.

Brackets can be found here.

SMNC Rule Change 27 has gone live - Australian servers also implemented

The newest patch for SMNC has now gone live. I went over a few changes in a previous post, but I didn't include the new rotation. The rotation is as follows; Assassin, Assault, Combat Girl, Sniper, Tank, Veteran.

I have only played as the Sniper so far during this rotation, but the first thing that struck me was his scope. The curved glass effect on it makes it really awkward to aim at anything close to medium distance. This shouldn't really be a problem as he is meant to be a long range class, however on Bullet Gorge Arena during the early part of the game the majority of the combat is in medium range. Thankfully his close range kit is rather impressive. I enjoy using his Flak and find it a lot more useful than the Gunslingers Gun Flurry since you don't have to stand still to use it. His traps are also huge when used during an annihilator fight, and they can hold someone in place while your team destroys them. I found myself using his alternate weapon and fighting in close range a lot more than using my sniper.

The final update that wasn't in the original patch notes is that they are now hosting Australian servers. It's great to see a game finally support the Australian market as I believe it's a huge scene that is sadly largely ignored.

Insomnia 45 Battlefield 3 Tournament updated

Multiplay have changed the system of the BF3 (PC) tournament down to 6vs6. The community asked if it could be lowered as they believed it would help bring in more teams. So Multiplay obliged and have changed the set-up. They have also posted a list of banned items, and also the potential prize pools. If you are a competitive BF3 player within the EU then this is certainly an opportunity you don't want to miss.


6v6 Infantry
Same Prize Pool – even with less players per team.

8 Teams £1,220
16 Teams £1,940
32 Teams £3,380
64 Teams £6,260
And so on up to £10,500 for 110+ Teams!

Banned items added:

MAV Drone
Spawn Beacon
M320 Grenades (M320 buckshot and smoke are allowed)
IRNV Scope
Tactical Light (All variants)

Click here for more information.

Super Monday Night Combat - Rule Change 27

So a new patch is upon us in SMNC. The patch is down on the forums as 3/1/12, so I would have expected it to be out by now however I haven't been asked to patch my game yet. Before I continue the patch notes can be read here on the official forums;

Rule Change 27

The first thing that I notice is introduction of a matchmaking system. This is certainly what the game is needing, as I have numerous times entered a match only be to placed against a premade team of 5. I also noticed that Downtown Spunky Arena is making a return with a few bug fixes to it. There has also been a change to help them detect idle players and they won't be rewarded with XP or Credits. It's a step in the right direction but I still feel that a temporary ban from matchmaking would be another step in the right direction.

In terms of balance there have been a few small changes that stand out to me. The use of reload on characters that lunge has been increased to 2 seconds between lunges instead of every 1.5 seconds. The Veteran Ka-Klaw move also will now throw the player to the Veteran even if it fails. This one I don't like so much as it's usually a guaranteed death if you get caught by it. However if this means it's a bug fix where it might randomly fail then I understand, but I liked the fact that you could avoid it. Also Megabeth has had a tweak on here Whirling Derbish and Disku Derby. The Whirling Derbish now deals a little less damage per tick, but deals damage and knocks back every 0.3 seconds instead of ever 0.35 seconds. Disku Derby will also knock back an enemy if it hits them.

The final major change is more of a cosmetic one. Instead of buying an entire uniform for a pro, you can now buy it in parts. They are now split into Head, Chest and Legs. So you can have any character in their Christmas outfit, but still wear the Heartbreaker hat!

Nexuiz 1.1 patch notes (Xbox 360) and THQ announce a UK Tournament

Quote from the Tiggs on the official forums

Here is what you can expect in our upcoming update! (Date will be announced soon)

Along with server performance upgrades and network optimizations the following fixes are in this update:

MAJOR ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN FIXED:

Fix for 8 players not being able to play in an online match
Infinite loading screen when joining a match with no timeout. 1 person stuck in lobby:
Spawning without a weapon, only a reticle
Hard crashes during Host Migration Screen

GENERAL FIXES

Reduced network bandwidth on the Flags in CTF
Fixed Increased Score mutator not working correctly for clients, only the host
Fixed ragdolls from jittering really bad
Fixed issue where score bars don’t adjust when Increased Score is called
Fixed bug where projectiles don’t get destroyed right away after hitting a player, floating around where they hit for a second when the player dies
Fixed issues with Post Game points not lining up correctly with what you really earned in game
Fixed issue of dropped weapons not giving you ammo. This sometime would not allow you to pick up a dropped weapon, and the name of the weapon would not show on the HUD.
Fixed issue with Super Crylink not always telefragging other players.
Fixed issue with destructible items not always going away, like IllFonic Heads and Flag Defense.
Fixed Magic Flag not teleporting and effect not spawning on clients.
Fixed effects not attaching to flags at all times on clients, for Regen Flag etc.
Fixed bug where destructible items explode when they are already destroyed.
Fixed bug where Ubernuke sound only played on the host.
Reduced Oldschool Mutator pixilation from 25 to 15.
Fixed Issue where Nex Scope goes away when buttons are mashed.
Fixed Nex Scope zoom out sound not playing.
Fixed Jump Pad usage statistics not adding up when you jump from Jump Pad to Jump Pad.
Fixed issue with Party Play not assigning friends in your party to correct teams.
Fixed issue with the Lobby not showing the correct teams in the Post Match Lobby.
Fixed issue with Mutator Icons getting stuck visually when counting down.
Prevented joining / searching a game in progress after a host migration.

ADDED FEATURES

Turned on vSync to reduce screen tearing
Added voice support to Party Play lobby

Also note that the damage on the shotgun has been lowered, and this change has already gone live. It's good to see how fast they have managed to fix all these bugs, and to my knowledge the update has already been handed to Microsoft, so we are just waiting on them to verify it and upload it. Sadly my Xbox red ringed today, so I am unable to play for now, however I will still continue to keep you updated on the scene.

 THQ Announce UK Tournament


THQ have announced a 4v4 pull up and play tournament over on their official site. This tournament will be a one day event, where teams will be randomly matched into groups of 4. While this might seem strange, it's a fantastic opportunity to meet other like minded members of the community. Participants must be from the UK and the winners will receive a free copy of Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team.

Official Tournament Site

Nexuiz 3v3 Tournament (Xbox 360)

Nexuiz Rankings over on the official Nexiuz boards has decided to set up a 3v3 tournament on the Xbox 360. The tournament will be running a best of 3 tournament, which consists of at least 1 CTF and 1 TDM match. I hope this is a trend we continue to see over into the PC version as it would be good to mix up the game types during a tournament scenario.

There will be a $250 prize fund (Even though the post states $200), as the prizes are split over the top 3. The format will be;

1st - $150
2nd - $75
3rd - $25

So take a trip over to The Nexuiz Forums to sign-up.

UnrealNorth2 - UT2004 Fragmovie by Vlad

I may be a couple of days late posting this, however this is a newly released frag movie for Unreal Tournament 2004. While some of the clips are old, the video is new and it's great to see that the community is still as active as ever. As a Quake fan it's also great to see Aerowalk and q3dm6 remakes feature so heavily in this video. It just goes to show how good the maps actually are.

Nexuiz released.

Nexuiz has finally been released today over on Xbox Live Arcade. It's great to see another arena shooter on the market, especially after such a huge gap since the last one. I have been playing Nexuiz today where I can, and so far it is holding up as a solid shooter. I won't be writing a full review yet as I don't believe I have played it enough, and I will also wait for the PC release as this is where I am used to playing games.

With the brief play testing I have done so far however I do believe that it has the potential to hold up in the competitive market with a few changes. The Nex, Nexuiz' equivalent of the railgun, seems to be a tad strong right now, killing any player who doesn't have armor. The mutators however are a great introduction to arena shooters, and with the ability to turn a few off in the custom match options will be a great tweak for competitive play. I feel some don't belong within a competitive environment, such as the ability to kill yourself while holding the flag to gain a capture. There are however some really good ones like the ability to give your team their favorite weapon when you activate it. The downside to this is it gives them the weapon that they have the most kills with, you can't actually set which weapon you want. I feel this would be a much better idea as I usually switch to a shotgun or machine gun based weapon to pick-up kills if I know that they are low.

Illfonic have also been working with the MLG while developing the game, and I have been following them over on the MLG forums. It's great to see the lead developers working so closely with the community, and the fact that they are looking at supporting the tournament community and also allowing us to develop custom content on the PC is a huge bonus as most companies decide to ignore this feature in todays DLC littered world. I believe that Nexuiz has the potential to become a huge game in the competitive scene, and is certainly a breath of fresh air from the modern combat genre dominance we are experiencing right now.