Arma 3 - Gameplay

A bit of sniping, vehicles, and the new physics in action.

Online Gaming in 2 Minutes

God bless Xbox Live.

Global Agenda patch 1.44 to add new maps and “cosmetic flair”

A new Global Agenda update is set to arrive later today, adding new maps and a couple of new stores, one selling jetpacks, and another selling “cosmetic flair.”

The two new maps, Magmarock and Haulin’ Acid have been promoted from beta status to be played in PvP mode. Magmarock is a control map that will be added to the Mercenaries PvP queue, while Haulin’ Acid provides another payload arena.

The new jetpack store can be found in Dome City. Ironically, you have to use a Dome City jetpack to reach the jetpack store on the upper levels of the hub. The store will also sell custom jetpack trails.


The new fashion store, Burning Fashions, will replace Carter’s Seasonal Accessories, and provide more buy-able cyborg bling to pimp out your warrior. You’ll find the full patch notes below.

Dome City Changes:

• Carter’s Seasonal Accessories has closed up shop.
• Burning Fashion has arrived in Dome City and will be selling cosmetic flair where Carter’s used to be.
• The long awaited Skyward Jetpacks has finally landed at the upper deck of Dome City and is open for business. In addition to selling jetpacks available elsewhere in the game, Skyward also sells high-end jetpack trail effects. You must be a boosted customer with a jetpack in Dome City in order to reach the upper deck of Dome City where Skyward resides.
• Adjusted the position of the guard at the South gate to the Sonoran Desert to be less confusing to players attempting to exit the dome.

Open Zone Changes:

• Uncommon quality Repair Kits can now be purchased from Yuma Imports at New Yuma Station
• Fixed some issues with materials that appeared to flicker when using Direct X 10 on some clients

Gameplay Changes:

• Frenzy wave should now properly award buff points for hitting allies

Bugs Fixed in Version 1.44

• Finalized netcode update (initially deployed on 6/23). Significant changes to net code that improve communication between the Atlanta data center and the games` other data centers. This should reduce occurrences of the “stuck on floor” issue for EU and NA West users, as well as provide some other benefits while entering and leaving matches.

Map Changes

• New PvP Control map “Magmarock” has been promoted from Beta and added permanently to the Mercenary PvP Queue.
• New PvP Payload map “Haulin’ Acid” has been added to the Beta Maps Queue.

EA Say F2P Competes With Consoles

the head of EA Games believes that F2P could be a market as profitable for them as their console games.

Let’s put that in perspective. A game like Modern Warfare XVIII sells around 60% on 360, 35% on PS3, and 5% on PC. It’s still a significant number of sales, millions and millions, but clearly nothing close to the cascading downpours of gold bullion that they source from elsewhere. So if F2P can equal this, you can bet your mum’s bum that publishers will be all over it.
In discussing whether AAA game budgets are getting out of control, Gibeau explains that EA’s own game label has dropped from 20 releases a year to six (cripes), and acknowledges the “top twenty market” of modern gaming. But then he adds,

“But at the same time we’re aggressively investing in things that are very low cost like free-to-play. The free-to-play group inside of EA Games is growing extremely fast – we’ve got 17 million users, 4-5 services stood up right now. And if you get a couple of those to scale they’re as profitable as a console game.”

Real proper games you’re going to want to play are going to launch as “free”, as developers figure out the correct way to deal with micropayments and the like. And they’re making lots and lots of money. And money attracts publishers, and that means the PC will be getting some of that attention it’s been missing from the bigger names in the business.

It’s happening.

XCOM screenshots

Xcom on the 3do was utter class, can  this live up to those dizzy heights ?

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon - Flight Gameplay

First mission of Ace Combat

Tribes: Ascend game play

Here is the first in-game footage of Tribes: Ascend, developer Hi-Rez Studios has also announced that the multiplayer shooter will be free to play. 

Crysis 2 gets a face lift

Crytek have released a new DirectX 11 and high-res texture update packs for the PC version of Crysis 2.

Here's a video showing off exactly what changes the upgrade packs have made.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation trailer

A new trailer for the third Call of Duty: Black Ops map pack, Annihilation has landed, and this one shows off the new Zombie map, set in jungle paradise Shangri-La. There’s a lot of zombies, a surprising amount of monkeys and ridiculous amount of explosive chaos.

Hitman: Absolution details

Hitman: Absolution details from the latest issue of Edge

The game is set in Chicago. 
Tons of time making core movement and controls very responsive.

• IO’s Glacier 2 engine supposedly offer fantastic facial animations.
• Optional cover system with the use of cover mechanics without actually being in cover.
• Instinct mode highlights enemies and patrols glow red through walls, similar to Arkham Asylum’s detective mode. It also replaces the map screen from the previous Hitman titles.
• Mini map will highlight points of interest.
• Threat meter is now a grey circle in the middle of the screen that flickers in directions where enemies may spot 47.
• The more eyes on you, the faster your threat meter will fill.
• Lots of environmental weapons, unique to each location such as a lamp cord being used as a garrotte.
• Taking hostages return, but the AI is smarter and wont just start shooting at you.
• Levels are divided into checkpoints for the first time in the Hitman series.
• Many levels will be as large and open-ended as the levels from previous Hitman games, but some others will be tighter, more focused sandboxes.
• IO’s goal is to build a greater variety of gameplay challenges around the core game, rather than changing it. Such as scripted action sequences.
• Some levels are very story driven and other are way more explorative.
• Having a disguise doesn’t meal you’ll be able to fool everybody or bluff your way past a group of NPC’s.
• Instinct mode increases disguise effectiveness. Cops in the demo questions 47′s movements while he’s disguised as a police man, he enters instinct mode and uses his police radio walking straight past the cops and fools them.
• 47′s handler, Diana, is now played by Marsha Thomason.
• Designated safe spots for disguises. Such as walking up to a box of doughnuts disguised as a cop.
• Safe spots will keep you completely safe for as long as you want, even if the room is filled with enemies.
• Crowds will be used very differently.
• 47′s long time voice actor will not return. No name was given for a replacement.
• Glacier 2 engine offers realtime AI editing.
• AI will react dynamically to your actions.

Battlefield 3's two player co-op campaign

Battlefield 3's online two-player co-op mode will include 10 maps, DICE has confirmed.

DICE executive producer Patrick Bach revealed that Battlefield 3's co-op mode will be separate to its single-player campaign.

Bach also said that Battlefield 3's mix of vehicles, shooting, and destructible environments make it a game "everyone claims they want".

"Something I hear a lot from people who haven't actually played Battlefield is that they'd love a modern day, first-person shooter with everything you have in other games, but with vehicles and proper destruction."

"They say, 'that would be awesome!' In other words, this is the game everyone claims they want," says Bach.

Battlefield 3 is released for 360, PS3, and PC on October 28.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will take 20-30 hours to complete

According to a rep for the game who has been in touch with Just Push Start. You may not be surprised, however, to find that play time isn't confined to the structured campaign alone.

"In terms of play length there are literally hundreds of hours of content depending on how much you explore," the rep said.

It looks like Elder Scrolls fans will be getting just as lost in Skyrim as they did in Oblivion then.

[ Source: Just Push Start ]

PlayStation 4 next year ?

Usually reliable US news site IndustryGamers claims it's heard from "industry sources at a top developer" that the PlayStation 4 will become a real thing in the next 18 months.

The claims come just a few weeks after a similar story pointing to an Xbox 720 reveal next year, with developer Crytek cited as the source of the rumour.

Industry Gamers doesn't elaborate further on its claims, but the announcement of two next-generation consoles in 2012 surely wouldn't make Nintendo, which has just revealed plans to enter the HD generation with Wii U, particularly pleased.

It'd also be quite a surprise, seeming as only a few weeks ago Sony reaffirmed its 10-year cycle strategy for the PlayStation 3.

We'll see eh ..

Defiance first in-game screenshots

Defiance is a new MMO from Rift developer, Trion Worlds.

It will be an open world shooter set on a post apocalyptic world shared by aliens and humans, and plans to tie in with the Syfy TV show of the same name.

Eve Online players protest against prices / microtransactions

Around a 1000 pilots firing upon the trade-station. looks cool all the same

Team Fortress 2 is now free, here are a few tips so you dont get duffed up

Which mode should I play?

First of all, have a play around with the offline training mode – it’s good for the very, very basics. When you’re ready to go online, click Start Playing – you’ll have to choose a game mode.

The default is Payload, but it’s a little complex. Click the arrow on the right and pick King of the Hill. It’s a mode where there’s only one control point to fight over, and whoever holds it longest wins. It’s Team Fortress 2 in its absolute simplest form, so it’s a great place to learn how all the classes work.
 
If Start Playing fails to find you a game, go back to the main menu and click Browse Servers. This is a big scary list, but once it’s finished loading, look for one that has a number less than 100 in the Latency tab. If they’re all jumbled up, click the Latency tab to sort by that.

You can make this list easier to browse by setting a few filters at the bottom: you don’t want full servers, empty servers, or password-protected servers.

Which class should I choose?

Once you’re in game, pick either team. You usually can’t join the one with the most players. Then you’ll have to pick a class.

A good starting choice is the Medic: you heal people on your team by firing a beam at them, and that’s immediately useful and appreciated by your team mates. At the basic level, it’s all you need to do. And that gives you time to watch how your team mates play, see who beats whom, and learn a bit about what the weapons do.

When you fancy a change, switch to Heavy. You’re slow, and your gun takes a while to spin up, but once you start firing someone’s usually dead by the time you stop. You’re also the first person Medics will think to heal, and since you just played Medic yourself, you know how to be a good patient and keep them protected. It’s a really satisfying relationship.

After that, it’s mostly personal preference. Soldier’s the best all-rounder, so another good early choice. Don’t stick with any of them for too long until you’ve played all nine: each new one you try helps you understand the role of the others better too. Spy is probably the hardest to be effective with when you’re a beginner, but he’s worth playing just so you understand roughly how they work.

Some classes, particularly Spy and Demoman, work very differently once they unlock certain items. To describe all the differences would be long and pointless. But if a black Scottish cyclops charges at you with a giant sword, get out of the way. And if a you hear an electronic crackle shortly after a Spy appeared to die, he’s alive, and he’s behind you.

Bored of King of the Hill now, how do the other modes work?

Payload: the attacking team must escort a cart along some railtracks to an objective. The more of then stay near the cart, the faster it moves. The defenders can stop it by killing them, or standing near the cart themselves.

Payload Race: same as Payload, except both teams have a cart. Up to you whether to focus on escorting your own cart, or stopping the enemy escorting theirs. First cart to the finish line wins.

Control Point: much like King of the Hill, but with five control points. You fight over the central point at first, then whoever gets that can try to take the next point along on the enemy’s side. You can’t capture a point if you don’t own one next to it, and you lose the game if the enemy team captures all your points.

Attack/Defend: just like Control Point, except the red team owns all the points at the start. Only the blue team can capture: once they take a point, it’s theirs forever. Red wins if they can hold out for a certain time.

Capture the Flag: each team has a briefcase in their base. They have to capture the enemy briefcase, and bring it back to their base. If their own briefcase has also been stolen, they can’t score a point until it’s returned. First team to a certain number of captures wins.

How do I get items?

Every class also has a set of weapons that can be unlocked by earning a certain number of achievements, and these are the quickest way to get something specific for a class you like.

You can see what the achievements are by clicking the rosette icon at the bottom of the main menu: there’s a dropdown list that’ll let you browse by class. Doesn’t matter which ones you go for, these items just unlock when you have a certain number: usually 10, 15, or so.
Eventually you’ll start finding items you already have, or that you don’t want.

You can reduce these to scrap metal by crafting them together, and then use that – and other weapons – to craft ones you don’t have yet. There are hundreds of recipes for this stuff, the best place to browse them is over on TF2Items.com.

To get this sword, spend fifteen years of your life developing Team Fortress games.

If you find something someone wants, you can trade it with them by going to the main menu, clicking Items, then Trading. You can trade with anyone on your friends list when you’re both online, or anyone in your current game.

Lastly, you can just pony up and buy them for real money. Almost everything is available to buy in the Mann-Co store accessed from the main menu. You’ll have to put some money in your Steam Wallet to do so, but you can do that when you check out. The cheapest items are only £0.29 or $0.49c, but be aware that the minimum you can add to your Steam Wallet is £4.
As soon as you buy anything, however cheap, you become a Team Fortress 2 premium player, and you’ll be able to find and craft rarer items.


a full list of all the promotional items and how you get them over on the official wiki.
via steam 

Saints Row: 7 minutes of in-game gameplay

Saints Row 3 is due out on 15th November this year.

Gearbox got Wii U devkits two months before E3

The game is due for release next spring (on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC), but Gearbox only received the development hardware for Wii U a couple of months before E3, the studio has revealed

Brian Burleson explained. "We didn't get the hardware for the Wii U until a couple of months ago, and we've been working on it since,"

"The software, it's pretty easy to work on, so that makes things a lot easier. When you already have something working, especially on the Unreal Engine, it's a pretty basic, straightforward port at that point. Unreal makes it easier to do that, for sure."

Burleson refused to be drawn on details of the Wii U game, but added that Gearbox is aiming to produce a similar experience across all supported platforms.

"It's too early too early to talk about the specifics on that [Wii U functionality], because we've just got things working," he explained. "We'll talk more about what that's going to be and what's going on in the future. But the goal is always to make it... for all the platforms to be the same.

"It really sucks to have a game be nerfed on one platform, or missing a feature on one platform. So the goal is always to make we're fully-featured, and that everything is the same experience."

But Burleson expressed confidence in Gearbox's work on the platform so far.

"It [the game] runs on the console, and you can do some really cool stuff with it. We'll talk more about that in the future, but just think about the possibilities."

Crytek: Crysis 2′s Direction “Backfired”

Cervat Yerli says : “Crysis 1′s intention was, if I were to play it three years later, it looks great. And it does, actually, it fulfilled that. But it made it difficult for entry-level players.

So with Crysis 2, we took a different direction, and it backfired a little bit.” Yerli explained that the forthcoming high-end 1.9 patch for Crysis 2, which will introduce clevers such as tessellation, realistic shadows with variable penumbra, parallax occlusion mapping, and “Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field”, is a “gift” to the PC high-end community.

“It lifts up Crysis 2 and gives a sneak peak of how PC gaming will evolve in the future,” says Yerli, “If you support a high-end preference.”

The high-end patch is out next Monday, June 27th.