Playstation Move…And Other Motion Sensing Gaming

On 03.11.10, In Video Games, By AC Slater

Yesterday at the GDC Sony gave a more in depth demo of their motion sensing controller dubbed Playstation Move. Basically it’s a rip off of the Wii controllers with large glowing balls on top. Now I don’t really care for this type of gaming, sure the Wii was kind of cool when it first came out, but how many of you actually still play your wii? *chirp* *chirp*… Count me amongst those that bought a Wii when it first came out, played it for a month and then went back to real gaming on my Xbox 360, PS3 or PC. As much as I feel there needs to be some sort of new breakthrough as far as how we control and interact with game systems these days, I don’t think that these motion sensing controller wands are the way to go. And honestly I don’t think Microsoft’s Project Natal is necessarily the way to go either. I just don’t think motion sensing controllers of any sort, whether it has a wand or not, is going to get the hardcore gamers to put down the normal controllers that they are used to.

For one, based on demos of the Playstation Move and my experience with the Wii, there’s not the same sense of accuracy with a motion sensing wand that there is with a controller. I tried to play Call of Duty 3 on the Wii and just found myself getting a wicked headache due to the fact that my screen was constantly flashing red from getting shot at. Maybe I’m just bad at utilizing this type of input controller for a first person shooter, but it seems more of a distraction and annoyance to have to point and aim a controller at the screen to get your gun to aim… not to mention way too tiring. There’s no way I could sit there for hours and play a Wii game like I can with a normal Xbox controller, and this is going to be the same for Sony’s Playstation Move.

Didn’t Sony revamp their Dual Shock controller with motion sensing capabilities (or at least accelerometers) once they realized what Nintendo was doing with the Wii? How well did that work out? How many games out there actually utilize the accelerometers in the six axis controllers? I can think of one, Lair, and from what a co-worker has told me, it’s a little hard to control and there’s no way to turn off the movement control and just use the thumb sticks.

There’s also a problem with lag in these games, the Wii seems to handle it pretty well and is actually fairly responsive, but it’s still there. And now from what I’m reading and what I caught on G4 yesterday regarding Playstation Move, there is quite a bit of lag between when you perform the actions and when your character on screen reacts. This would totally kill the immersion into the game for me. The brief demo I caught on G4 yesterday, before going to dinner, was some fighting game that resembled something like Final Fight (I don’t know any recent fighting games, not a fan), but obviously a bit more updated. The movements that the guy demoing the game did were fairly accurately performed by the character on the screen, but about 1/2 second after the guy did them himself. That seems like a whole lot of lag, and while it could have just been lag from the fact that it was a camera recording a TV I still feel like there is going to be some lag in games like that.

I don’t know, overall I’m not a huge fan of this “motion sensing” gaming revolution that Nintendo started, but I am kind of curious to see where it will lead. I know there’s got to be a different way for people to interact with gaming systems, but I don’t think this is the way to do it. Maybe Microsoft’s Project Natal will come out and blow everyone away, but again from the articles I’ve been reading lag seems to be a bit of a problem, so we’ll see.

What are your thoughts on all of this motion sensing that is making it’s way into modern gaming? Do you feel like these companies are abandoning their roots and their original fanbase to try to cater to the more casual gamer? Obviously it’s a business so if they can round those people up and get them to buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 they are going to, but do you really see this as the next revolution in gaming? I mean the Wii has been out for years now and most people that I talk to don’t even play theirs anymore unless they are having a party or something, otherwise it sits and collects dust…. like mine.

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Modern Warfare 2 DLC aka Expansion Pack To Be Released March 30th, 2010

On 03.10.10, In Video Games, By AC Slater

You can finally stop wondering when we’re going to get some new content for Modern Warfare 2 because the date is official, March 30th, 2010, although we still don’t know what we are getting. I think it’s safe to assume that we will be getting at least some new maps based on the new viral site that Infinity Ward has setup to promote the DLC, www.mapathy.com , but other than that it’s still a mystery. I’ll keep everyone posted here when more info leaks or you can keep an eye on the site mentioned above as I’m sure that’ll be the first place to have the info. If anyone hears anything else let us know!

Oh yeah and this is just for the Xbox 360, the PC and PS3 DLC will come at a later date…

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Blur Xbox 360 Multiplayer Beta Impressions

On 03.09.10, In Video Games, By AC Slater

Yesterday I received a code which gave me access to the multiplayer beta of Bizarre’s new racing game Blur. I’m going to be honest and say that I really don’t know a whole lot about the game, but I’m a fan of arcade racing games (don’t really care for the sim ones) so it looked interesting and hey, free beta so why not. The downloaded clocked in at a little over 1 gig and seems to include 4-5 tracks (?) and a handful of cars. I haven’t had time to mess around with all of the customization or anything like that, but I did get a solid hour and a half of playing time in so that’s basically what I’m going to be telling you about.

So seeing as how I knew nothing about the game going in I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but right off the bat I figured out that it’s kind of like Mario Kart, but with real cars. Essentially you are racing through a city, shipping yard, whatever, against other players trying to finish first, but along the way you can pick up different power ups to use against enemies or to help yourself. Just like in Mario Kart you can fire these power ups forwards or backwards, you can cycle between the different things you are carrying and the power ups themselves are similar to what you would find in Mario Kart. There’s a gun of sorts that gives you 3 bullets to fire off at people, there’s a red bomb type weapon that seeks out the person in front of you and hits them, there’s another red bomb thing that goes backwards and sits on the track waiting for someone to run into it, there’s a shockwave weapon that emits a pulse that damages any vehicle around you, there’s speed boosts, there’s shields, etc… you get the point.

So the muliplayer beta is basically just a handful of courses where you race around trying to finish first. You get different amounts of points depending on what place you finish and these help you level up which I’m assuming nets you different cars and mods and stuff. The menu interface is very clean and easily navigated, the game lobbies don’t seem to have any problems, there’s a nice voting system to choose which track will be next, overall the menus seem pretty thought out. The gameplay itself is actually pretty good, I didn’t have any problems with it although a lot of people in the game were complaining about the drifting, which I felt was alright, just took a little getting used to. It also took a few races to figure out what each of the power ups does as they are just colored icons without any description of what they are, but it’s easy enough to pick up on. The cars handled like I was expecting them to handle in an arcade racing game and I actually had a lot of fun playing online. So overall the beta seems pretty promising, but I’m not sure whether I’ll be picking this one up or not. I have quite a few games to play at the moment and am still having a hard time pulling myself away from Modern Warfare 2, so we’ll see. I’m always up for a good racing game and I’ll probably pick this up eventually, but I won’t be running out on release day to get a copy.

Is anyone else in on the beta? What do you guys think of the game so far? Does the drifting seem off to you or do these other people just need to get used to it?

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What Problems Do You Have With Modern Warfare 2?

On 03.02.10, In Video Games, By AC Slater

It seems that this blog attracts quite a few Modern Warfare 2 players (probably because I write about it so much), so since that seems to be the core audience here I wanted to post this and get your ideas of what some of the problems with Modern Warfare 2 are. Over the past few weeks all I seem to be reading on Twitter (#mw2), Buzz and other blogs, is how Infinity Ward should fix the game before even thinking about releasing DLC or expansion packs, and my question is, what problems are you people referring to?

Sure, when the game was first released there was the big issue with the lack of dedicated servers on the PC version and the smaller game sizes. Whatever, the servers is not a game play issue, get over it. You knew that there was not going to be dedicated servers before buying it, it made major news outlets (which seems weird to me) so it’s not like Infinity Ward straight up lied and said there would be dedicated servers and then changed their minds at release time. There may have been rumblings early on in production about dedicated servers being there, but it was a well known fact long before the release that they would not make it to the final product.

Now for the in game glitches, mainly multiplayer. I see a lot of people upset that there are so many glitches and they are blaming it on the fact that there was no public beta for the game. They say that if there was a public beta, many of these things would have been discovered before the game was released. I’m sure some of the stuff would have been figured out, but majority of it would not have. IW has a slew of in house testers that are paid to sit around and try to break the game, but when I say a “slew’ I mean it’s maybe 30 people (I really have no idea how many testers they have), but when the game is released, how many people bought it? Millions! So therefore, obviously millions of people are going to be able to find things that the 30 or so in house testers happened to miss. And to be honest, I think Infinity Ward has been doing a pretty good job of getting patches out there to the consumer.

The first major glitch that was discovered was the javelin glitch that allowed you to become a walking bomb. When you would die your body would explode with the radius of a javelin missile, destroying anything around you, it was quite annoying and eventually Microsoft stepped in and started banning people from xbox live, which they have every right to do since it’s part of the ULA you accepted when you signed up for Xbox Live. The next big glitch was the unlimited care package glitch which was a bit more of a problem. There were a couple methods for pulling off this glitch, 1 that was pretty easy and another that was more difficult. IW went ahead and patched the easy method, but the harder method still existed causing them to pull back the initial patch from MS approval and fixing it once and for all (it took a little longer to push out the PS3 version, PC was pretty instant I believe). But in the end it was fixed and as far as I’m aware there is no method that still works (until someone finds one). The other glitches were fairly minor like being able to place a sentry gun inside walls so that it could shoot out, but you couldn’t shoot in and same with player collisions and objects. I’m sure some of these still exist, but they have always existed in games for those willing to seek them out. There are also some elevators that they patched, but there  are still a few of them that are accessible in the game. For those that don’t know, elevators are glitches that allow your player to basically float way up into the sky and shoot down or access places they shouldn’t be able to.

So in my eyes the major GLITCHES were fixed. There were some other issues that people had with gun balance that were also changed around, in particular the range of the Model 1887 shotguns, but I don’t consider those glitches or an issue really. I never had a problem killing people that were running up on me with the Model’s. Sure I’ve been killed up close by them many times, but they are an up close weapon. I understand the issue here was the range and power, but I never found it to be an issue. Same goes for the complaints people have with Marathon, Lightweight and Commando. Sure it’s annoying to be killed by one of these guys, but it’s also not that hard to kill them. In my eyes the problem here is skill, there are some good players online in Modern Warfare 2 and if you can’t kill the guys running around like this, you obviously aren’t as good as them. Personally my only issue with the game is those damn thermal scopes… but it’s not a problem with the game itself, it’s just the fact that I still get killed by them… oh and noob tubes also… haha.

I know there are also complaints about the lobby times and getting booted out of games and I’ll agree that sometimes it takes a couple minutes to get into a game, but it’s not a ridiculous amount of time… And at least when the host of a game leaves it usually tries to find a new one, I know it doesn’t always work, but at least it tries which is more than I can say for CoD 4. And I know there are also some hacked lobbies with super fast movement and stuff like that, but I have yet to run into one of these lobbies and, as sad as it is, I usually play for a couple hours every day (Xbox 360), so I don’t know if it’s just a PC issue, but I have yet to run into one of these “hacked lobbies”.

So I’m curious as to what everyone’s problems are with the Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer? Why all the hate towards Infinity Ward? I know it comes off as if I’m trying to defend the game as a whole, but I’m actually just curious as to what problems other people have with the game since I don’t seem to have any… I really just want some new maps!

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Modern Warfare 2 Expansion Pack aka DLC aka Map Pack Rumors

On 02.19.10, In Video Games, By AC Slater

There’s no doubt that Modern Warfare 2 will be coming out with some sort of Downloadable Content in the future, but what exactly are we going to get. The obvious thing would be more multiplayer maps. In the past, for the Call of Duty games, we have gotten map packs containing 3-4 new maps to play, at a price of around $10. Some information leaked almost as soon as the game did, that MONSTER Energy Drink was sponsoring a promotion to win a new map pack in the spring of 2010 which lead to a rumored release date for said DLC. Since then Microsoft has had a few keynote presentations and has been doing away with the DLC, or Downloadable Content, word and has been touting it as an ‘expansion’. Now take that as you may, it could just be Microsoft trying to get away from the term DLC for some reason or it could mean that it’s going to have a little more than we’re used to in just a map pack, and there are actually rumors to support this… kind of.

Since the game was released people have been digging through hidden files and text files that are stored on the games disc and have found some pretty interesting things, someone even managed to rewrite a file and was able to play a possible new game mode called “Global Thermalnuclear War”. You can actually play the game mode right now if you’re lucky enough to have a friend that’s reworked whatever file you need to in order to make it active and of course it can only be played in a private match. Personally I have no clue how to even go about unlocking this mode or gaining access to it so if you know how please post a link in the comments. Anyways, there are tons of videos on YouTube with people playing this mode so you can check it out if you want. The way it’s played is kind of like Headquarters, but with a nuke. The nuke is in a crate in the middle of the map and each team must stand next to it for about 1 and a half minutes before the nuke activates and destroys everything. It sounds like a cool game mode and I’m not sure if it will be part of the spring DLC or if maybe Infinity Ward can just activate it via a playlist update which requires nothing at all on the users end. I only say that because it seems like all of the files, voices, etc are already on the game disc itself, so it’s just a matter of allowing us to play it, but we’ll see.

Similar to the above, someone also found some audio files with other game modes mentioned like Defcon, Die Hard, Arms Race, Team Deathmatch Pro, Free For All Pro, Search and Destroy Pro, and Sabotage Pro as well as Team Tactical (not 3rd person). Those seem like they could be easily implemented via a playlist update rather than any sort of DLC, but again this was all just rumors and actually Robert Bowling at Infinity Ward commented on the files and did say that they were just leftover stuff that was scraped from the game before launch. So while he could be lying and these could be introduced later, I’m going to go ahead and say that we will not be seeing all this stuff made playable in Modern Warfare 2.

Along with the different game modes there were also some weapons found hidden away in folders; G3, G36, R700, M40, M240, SA80, AW50, a power drill, Mp5, MP9 and the MP44. So take this with a grain of salt, it could just be stuff they left in the game folders when testing out which guns worked the best for balance etc, but who knows.

Now let’s talk about what everyone, including myself, are more interested in… maps. Again, from digging through files that shipped with the game, some people were able to find some map names that are currently not playable in the game. Now whether this means they will be available for DLC or they are just unfinished or unused maps that were scraped is anyone’s guess at this point. A couple of them are actually maps from the original Modern Warfare which would be really cool. As much as I don’t really care for the Wasteland map, I do like it cause it’s a clone of a map from Call of Duty 2. So to see some of our old favorites from Modern Warfare pop up in MW2 would be pretty cool. But for those interested in the map names here you go:

mp_abandon
mp_compact
mp_complex
mp_dcwh (D.C. White House?)
mp_revolt
mp_storm
mp_shipment (Shipment from MW)
mp_crash (Crash from MW)

So that’s what I’ve got in terms of rumors for DLC although I really don’t believe we’re going to see any of this as part of an ‘expansion pack’, as Microsoft dubs it, but instead we’ll get stuff that isn’t hidden on the disc. I really believe that all of this stuff is just left over stuff from testing, but who knows, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Is there anything else that’s leaked in regards to new modes, guns, maps, etc? These are just the main ones I was able to find, but there’s gotta be more info out there that I missed…

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