Team Fortress 2 gives Notch his own hat
When he’s not tweeting, Minecraft developer Markus “Notch” Persson loves to indulge in a little Team Fortress 2, according to his tumblr blog. He was recently invited to take part in the third TF2 Mixup, with famous Team Fortress 2 personalities such as Valve’s Robin Walker and YouTuber Freddie Wong blasting each other to bits.
Notch was enjoying the game, earning the Primeval Warrior medal, when suddenly he was awarded with his very own hat. It resembles Notch’s own visage, if it were made in Minecraft and then copied onto a cardboard box, and – so far – he’s the only owner. “I am never quitting TF2 again, and you should all go buy it right away,” said Notch. “How much is it, you ask? It’s FREE! YES!”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 player scores world’s jammiest knife kill
Given the sheer number of people who have died in warfare in the course of human history, it’s fairly probable that soldiers have passed on in wildly random ways. Take this clip from Modern Warfare 3, pointed out to us by CVG. A knife is lobbed across a level, lands on a helicopter and then drops onto some unfortunate grunt below, like a particularly violent game of MouseTrap. Thing is, that’s probably happened at least once during an actual war (minus the part where the knife phases through the steel wing of the chopper), which turns this clip from hilariously jammy to faintly disturbing.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive preview
This preview originally appeared in PC Gamer UK issue 233.
Since shortly after its first beta release back in 1999, this tactical, team-based Half-Life mod has dominated the competitive firstperson shooter scene, while countless hours of community yelling have made it a tight, balanced experience. A brief foray onto consoles in 2003 failed to expand the audience away from its PC home, so why are Valve attempting to create what they’re calling the ‘definitive’ version of a game that people like just fine as it is?
Syndicate preview
This article originally appeared in PC Gamer UK issue 233.
Syndicate – like its top-down, squadbased predecessor – imagines a future war between merciless corporations, fought by hypertrained and utterly amoral killers. These corporations are sinister and faceless business octopi, with tentacles in every industrial pie. They’re the world’s largest and most influential companies. Were this real life, the player would be working for a 2069 version of Apple.
Instead, Syndicate’s main character, Miles Kilo, works for the worryingly blandsounding Eurocorp Syndicate. The game’s developers, Starbreeze, haven’t said what Eurocorp sell yet, but the company puts its name on guns. Any business happy to plaster their name on the barrel of a rifle isn’t going to be too altruistic.
Saturday Crapshoot: Jurassic Park: Trespasser
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, he’s sorely in need of a palate cleansing after five hours of tedium. And you know it’s bad when you resort to this to wash away unwanted memories.
On a day with Skyrim, Saints Row 3 and the Tribes Ascend beta on my PC, do you know what I wasted about five hours of my precious existence playing? That’s right – the new Jurassic Park game. Well, it claims to be a “game”, though I argue that “Jurassic Park: The Vaguely Interactive Machinima That’s Suspiciously Like Aliens For Some Strange Reason” would have been almost as snappy.
Did I like it? I did not. Do I recommend it? Only if you’re planning a time capsule full of warnings to the future. Honestly, we sent this kind of interactive movie the way of smallpox for a reason. Instead, how about taking a look back at something a bit closer to what the Jurassic Park movie deserved. Something innovative. Something ambitious. Something not shit. Trespasser is definitely two of the three.
See if you can guess which two…
Battlefield 3 cheaters face bans and stat-wipes
As reported on CVG, Battlefield 3 cheaters are feeling the full force of EA’s banhammer, with “hundreds” of people kicked out for exploiting glitches in the game. A post on the Battlefield’s official Twitter read: “This week we’ve banned hundreds of offending accounts and have stats-wiped accounts for exploiting (such as boosting).”
One glitch apparently allows a player to hide inside an upturned truck and then repair it for a massive amount of points. Players exploiting such glitches will have their stats completely wiped and even face a ban – but it does make you wonder why DICE allowed such a glitch to enter the game in the first place.
A new patch to solve such issues is in the works – but according to the Battlefield Twitter: “There is no ETA. Stay tuned to Batlelog [sic] news and http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com”. It’s also said to fix the issue of the flashlights being as bright as the opening of Akira.
Borderlands 2 devs talk how Handsome Jack has changed Pandora
We were overwhelmed by Borderlands – once we got past the initial levels and finally clicked into the bizarre, nine-toed genius that merged FPS and RPG with such gleeful disregard. It’s a hard act to follow, but developers Gearbox are aiming to go above and beyond the original with Borderlands 2. Writer Anthony Burch and concept designer Scott Kester chatted with Gamasutra about the upcoming sequel, specifically changes to the setting and characters.
Borderlands 2 has a new antagonist in the handsome form of Handsome Jack, and in the five game years since Borderlands he’s fundamentally changed the game world. He’s taken over the Hyperion weapons company, and claimed responsibility for finding the original game’s vault. In true James Bond-baddy style, he’s built an orbital base near Pandora’s moon – in the shape of a giant “H”, no less. “You can never forget that Handsome Jack is screwing over the moon,” said Burch.
Battlefield 3 – Mortars to be countered by flying EMP robots
If you ask any Battlefield 3 player what the most annoying thing in the game is, they’d say tactical lights, but after that they’d probably say ‘bloody mortar spam’. Thankfully MP1st have noted that DICE are looking into a fix. The problem is that mortars can be safely spammed from extremely long distances, with users safe from any reprisal. How could that be dealt with? Designer, Alan Kertz, has been tweeting that they might be using the Recon’s flying drone as a counter:
“Seriously considering MAVs as a counter to Mortars. ECM jammers could destroy the Mortar with a few hits. Looking for feedback.”
Other issues that DICE are looking into involve players spawning without weapons and the ability to use the IRNV scope while driving vehicles. There’s also good news for colour blind gamers, as DICE say they’ll be looking into a colour blind mode in future updates.
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad review
Red Orchestra 2 is the best murder simulator I’ve ever played. It’s not the best first-person shooter or multiplayer game, or even the best team-based multiplayer game. It’s certainly not the best World War II game, and its singleplayer is the worst I’ve played in years. But in the killing, and in the being killed, Red Orchestra 2 is a terrifying and satisfying experience.
Payday: The Heist review
Payday is that bit in every heist movie since time began where the poo hits the fan. At some point, our gang of four criminals in clown masks were hunched over a table in a smoky room, working out their every move with mathematical precision. Now they’re trapped in a crumbling building with the loot, every policeman in the world is kicking in the front door, and their only hope is to survive long enough to make a miracle. And then do it again on a harder difficulty setting, because Normal mode is for wimps.
Hard Reset review
Bezoar isn’t a city. It’s an explosion with streets. Every plaza is piled high with toxic barrels, every kiosk and ATM wired so that a single overly-enthusiastic sneeze can spray arcs of lightning at anyone in sight.
Why? Because Hard Reset isn’t just a reference to what you’re expected to do to the army of killer robots infesting the city: it’s what the game tries to do to shooter design itself. It’s a back-to-basics FPS in a shiny modern engine, not so much throwing out such things as moral choices and fancy physics puzzles as declaring them officially irrelevant. It’s you versus roughly seventy squillion enemies, hoping to save at least slightly more of your futuristic home than you blow up.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection review
I remember storming the beaches of Normandy five years ago in one of CoD 2’s most tense and memorable levels. Yesterday in Black Ops I shot a zombie on the moon with a gun that made it vomit blood then explode. What the hell has happened to Call of Duty?
Whatever our memories of the shooter series, the zombie survival mode introduced by Treyarch in World at War has frequently been the best part of the regular Call of Duty: Black Ops packs. It follows, then, that a DLC pack made up of five zombie levels should be the best. It is, but not by much.
Call of Juarez: The Cartel review
A gangster emerges from cover, points his guns in the wrong direction and sidles toward me like a drug-addled crab. How did this man even survive this long in a Mexican drug cartel? I shoot him the face and turn on his two-dozen equally dopey friends, tapping the fire button impassively until the assault ends. This is justice in Techland’s vision of the modern Wild West. Brutal and boring.
Battlefield 3 review
A helicopter just buzzed over my head, thirty feet above the ground. It was moving quickly, skirting around a hill, firing its main gun at an enemy I couldn’t see. I stopped running and just stared at it.
I do this a lot. Battlefield 3’s multiplayer makes me want to place a deckchair in the desert and watch the chaos happening all around. On its best maps – like the 64-player Caspian Border – every pixel on screen flickers with battle. I’ll climb to a rooftop and just freeze. In the distance, smoke stacks rise from a burning forest. In the air above me, jets twirl, chased by artillery. On the ground below, a tank has smashed through the lower floors of the building. I’ll spot a glimmer from a hillside 300 metres away, and it’ll be a sniper readying to kill me.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 preview
This article originally appeared in PC Gamer UK issue 232.
I poked around the Scrapyard paintball arena and scanned the ground while dangling from a zipwire, but there wasn’t a single PC to be found at the recent Call of Duty XP event in LA.
When asked about our platform, Infinity Ward employees only offered happy patter about their return to dedicated servers. Compared to Battlefield 3’s grandstanding, MW3 is short on PC love or technical boasting, and instead refreshingly open about design specifics.
