May 18 2012

Super Monday Night Combat (Updated)

A Quick review of Super Monday Night Combat.

This is a sequel to Monday Night Combat and its better all round. It's free to play and is funded by micro transactions to buy the characters (pros) , outfits (why anyone would ever do this is beyond belief)  and taunts (basic taunts are in the game).

The beta/demo/full game is available from Steam

Ok about the game… it’s a cross between DOTA (defence of the ancients) and Team Fortress 2. There are 9-15 characters to choose from. Each character with different weapons and “abilities”, ranging from “place turret here” to “cloak” or “emp blast”.  For the full game I think they will make you buy a character (pro), these range from £1.5 to £5 quid.  The game is basically 5 pros v 5 pros. A Pro can appear only once on each side.

The game format is basically your team's bots spawn at your base and try to get to get to the enemy base and fire at anything within range on the way. Wave after wave will spawn about 20 seconds apart. The bots get bigger and meaner as time goes on. Once there they pull down the “money ball” and when its destroyed you win, or lose if the enemy destroy your money ball. Your team's pros can destroy the enemy bots, or heal your own bots, or kill the enemy pros.

If you have played DOTA then you will know this format well, the main difference is that DOTA is an RTS mod from “warcraft 3” and so in 3d isometric top down. SMNC is an FPS in the “over the shoulder” point of view. Some pros can go 1st person for a while.

Everyday few days there is an update, and it’s getting better and better. Currently the friends , and play with friends, features are pretty poor. Playing with 9 randoms is still very good fun though.

Recently the devs added a training arena which is quite good if you have not played before.

The feel of game, for me, comes from the commentary which has left me in tears of laughter the first time you hear them in a match. Its very much a “blood bowl” type feel, but in a American football over the top type way.

So apart from the poor “play with friends” feature, it's nearly there.

Here is the steam demo video

http://store.steampowered.com/video/104700

There are endorsements and products that you use to power up/boost for pros stats on the set up screen, but so far these are not really useful. Adds 2% damage type of stuff, but they may have -1% speed penalty. You probably need to spend some time playing to get the good ones, but they will not have a game breaking effect.

For a quick blast of fun the odd rating is 8.5/10

** Update **

The character (pro) balance needs a lot of work. The assassin is way too powerful as she cloaks in, kills everything then "assassin leaps" back to her base away from danger. Many people simply disconnect now as soon as they see an assassin in the game.

By Oddbodge • First Person Shooter • 0 • Tags: ,

May 18 2012

Remote Steam Downloading

Steam / Valve have just enabled the remote downloading of games on the steam network.

Steam download help page

Not sure this will be really useful. Your gaming PC would need to be left on and you would need to use a web browser where you are to purchase and start the download.

Only useful if you want to try and download the game on day of release, but could be quite useful if you can boot your gaming PC remotely.

 

By Oddbodge • fragLANd, Hardware, Mobile Gaming • 1

May 12 2012

Battlefield 3 Double XP Weekend.

DICE announces they are handing out double the experience points for Battlefield 3 for those who play the military shooter sequel over this weekend. Here’s how this works:

This weekend, play Battlefield 3 multiplayer and boost your rank faster! Beginning Saturday, May 12 at 12:01AM PST and continuing through Sunday, May 13 at 11:59PM PST, all soldiers in the Battlefield 3 brigade will earn double XP in matches across all maps and modes.

During the Battlefield 3 Double XP Weekend players will continue to wage all-out-war in Battlefield 3 multiplayer. At the conclusion of each match, player’s total points for the round will be reflected in the end of round screen and classified as ‘ADDITIONAL POINT”. Double XP will be accrued across all ranked servers and matches.

By Tubby • First Person Shooter • 0

May 9 2012

Carmageddon: Reincarnation tries Crowd Funding

It seems Crowd Funding is The. New. Thing. for funding video games, and Stainless Games is joining in the fun with a Kickstarter project to help fund the completion of Carmageddon: Reincarnation.

Here is a snippet what they promise for the new version:

“Carmageddon: Reincarnation is a re-boot of everything that made the original games such a blast to play. The new game will be inspired by the classic environments, cars, drivers and power-ups from the original, but dragged screaming and kicking into the current state of the rendered art. And of course, there will be a bunch of brand new STUFF too, including true rag-doll pedestrians and physics-based power-ups that let you mess with their limbs whilst wiping away the tears – of laughter!

Multiplayer was the hidden-treasure of Carmageddon back in the dark days of LAN parties, but will now be able to be enjoyed by almost all of our players, thanks to the entire planet going online since then. The single player game will be brilliant too, thanks to demented opponents with demented A.I. brains made from demented code written by demented programmers.”

I loved the original games so backing this was a no brainer ;)

By DarkJedi • Driving Games • 0

May 9 2012

Bioshock Infinite pushed back to Feb 2013

Even the BBC are reporting this one: Irrational Games have announced they won’t be showing Bioshock Infinite at E3 this year as they want to give their team more time to tweak it to “make it even more extraordinary”.

Here’s the skinny from Ken Levine:

“When we announced the release date of BioShock Infinite in March, we felt pretty good about the timing.

Since then, we’ve come to realize that some specific tweaks and improvements will make Infinite into something even more extraordinary. Therefore, to give our talented team the time they need, we’ve decided to move the game’s release to February 26, 2013. We wanted to let our loyal (and very patient!) fans know this as soon as possible.

I won’t kid you: BioShock Infinite is a very big game, and we’re doing things that no one has ever done in a first-person shooter. We had a similar experience with the original BioShock, which was delayed several months as our original ship date drew near. Why? Because the Big Daddies weren’t the Big Daddies you’ve since come to know and love. Because Andrew Ryan’s golf club didn’t have exactly the right swing. Because Rapture needed one more coat of grimy Art Deco.

The same principle now applies to BioShock Infinite.

What does this mean for you? It means a bit more waiting, but more importantly, it means an even better BioShock Infinite. The great can be made greater, and we owe it to both ourselves and to you, our fans, to take this opportunity. Irrational Games is one of those rare developers lucky enough to ask the people who sign the checks: “Hey, can we have a few more of those checks?”

We are also going to hold off on showing BioShock Infinite at the big events of the summer, like E3 and Gamescom. That way, the next time you see our game, it will be essentially the product we intend to put in the box. Preparing for these events takes time away from development, time we’re going to use instead to get the best version of Infinite into your hands in February.”

By DarkJedi • First Person Shooter • 0 • Tags: , ,

May 8 2012

Portal 2 ‘Perpetual Testing Initiative’ now live

Portal 2 was updated today for compatibility with the Steam Workshop function that allows players to easily find and download user created content.

Now players can create new maps and portal puzzles using a graphical interface that mimics the cartoony public service information graphics that were shown throughout the game.

It’s only been a couple of hours since launch and already there is over 4,000 user generated maps to download – no wonder Valve are calling this update the ‘Perpetual Testing Initiative’ – doesn’t look like we’ll be running out of new content any time soon… ;)

Start browsing through the content at the Steam Workshop Portal 2 web page.

By DarkJedi • First Person Shooter • 0

Apr 24 2012

Crysis 3

Watch the announcement trailer on YouTube which includes some epic in game footage:

By Dwarf • First Person Shooter •

Apr 24 2012

Game Review

A refreshingly whitty review of Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light by Chris Jarvis.

By Dwarf • Console Gaming •

Apr 18 2012

Medal of Honour Warfighter

Here is the brand new trailer for the next MoH game due out later in the year.

The game will feature special forces from around the world including the very finest, UK’s SAS.

By Dwarf • First Person Shooter •

Apr 6 2012

0x10c

 

 

A new game in development which looks really interesting. Here is the back story:-

In a parallel universe where the space race never ended, space travel was gaining popularity amongst corporations and rich individuals.

In 1988, a brand new deep sleep cell was released, compatible with all popular 16 bit computers. Unfortunately, it used big endian, whereas the DCPU-16 specifications called for little endian. This led to a severe bug in the included drivers, causing a requested sleep of 0×0000 0000 0000 0001 years to last for 0×0001 0000 0000 0000 years.

It’s now the year 281 474 976 712 644 AD, and the first lost people are starting to wake up to a universe on the brink of extinction, with all remote galaxies forever lost to red shift, star formation long since ended, and massive black holes dominating the galaxy.

Take a look at the website here

By Dwarf • Flight / Space •

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