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Crysis Wars Summer Trial next month

Crytek has announced via their Monthly Update feature that a “Crysis Wars Summer Trial” will be starting next month, allowing players to try out Crysis Wars for free. Competitions and giveaways will be held throughout the trial, so even more incentive has been thrown out there for you. No word on an exact date.

For those of you who are already Crysis fans, a 3vs3 PowerStruggle Tournament, powered by Multiplay, has been detailed, along with an interesting interview with Senior Sound Designer Florian Fusslin.

Read (MyCrysis)

Quake Live update rolls out today

A new Quake Live update has been release today by the folks over at id Software. The focus of the patch is to work on competitive changes, such as shoutcasting. Client side updates and general fixes have been added, as well.

Here is the full changelog:

• Fixed lightning gun sound, no more loud enemies.
• Added team_say for spectators so they can chat only among spectators.
• Increased the speed of nailgun nails.
• The powerups now spawn at the same time after match start.
• cg_lagometer 2 will now display the client ping estimation along with the standard lag-o-meter graph.
• cg_chatBeep allows you to enable/disable the audible beep when you receive a message.
• cg_teamChatBeep allows you to enable/disable the audible beep when you receive a message from a teammate.
• cg_selfOnTeamOverlay toggles whether you see yourself in the team overlay.
• cg_fov lower limit is now 10.
• Changed demo autorecord naming to more easily sort and locate.
• cg_autoaction 0-3
  0 – do nothing
  1 – auto record demo
  2 – auto record a screenshot at end of game
  3 – auto record demo and screenshot
• cl_autoRecordDemo has been removed in favor of the new cg_autoaction system.
• cl_demoRecordMessage 0/1 allows you to toggle the “RECORDING…” message on the hud when recording a demo.
• cl_conTimestamps can now display values in game time.
  0 – Do nothing
  1 – Show values in game time (affected by cg_levelTimerDirection)
  2 – Show values in servertime
• Fix for several keys becoming unbound (2,e,u,o,s,m)
• Spectators will no longer get the “Internal combustion” message upon respawn after following a player that was mined.
• Fix for a dropweapon bug that could cause other players in the game to auto switch to another weapon.
• Removed setu/sets commands.
• Fix for odd sv_maxclients values.
• Warmup delay is now disabled for bot games.
• Zoomed fov calculation now takes aspect ratio into account.
• Some FireFox users were experiencing crashes while loading into maps, these issues have been resolved.

Competition mode changes:

• Added support for limiting the amount of timeouts called, and configuring their default duration. Time outs remaining are indicated on the team scoreboards.
• Server owners can deop other clients with the ‘deop’ command.
• Pause and Timeout events print to the console.

EVO 2009 wraps up, Daigo wins Street Fighter IV

EVO 2009 wrapped up yesterday, deeming Japanese player Daigo “The Beast” Umehara the victor of the Street Fighter IV finals. Of course, the other games of the event are not to be forgotten, but the main attraction of the evening was definitely Capcom’s newest fighting game. Here’s a list of the top eight competitors for the SF4 bracket:

1. Daigo Umehara (Ryu)
2. Justin Wong (Boxer, Abel, Rufus)
3. Ed Ma (Akuma)
4. Sanford (Akuma, Cammy)
5. Long Tran (Akuma)
6. Eduardo Perez (Boxer, E-Honda)
7. Dan (from Japan) (Ryu)
8. Ricky Ortiz (Rufus)

I caught a few minutes of the Marvel vs Capcom 2 semi-finals as well, and was very disappointed to find out that I’m not as good at the game as I thought I was.

Anyways, a new documentary titled King of Chinatown is also being released, focusing on runner-up Justin Wong’s road to this year’s EVO. However, the trailer makes the assumption that he is, in fact, the best Street Fighter IV player even though it was made official at EVO that he is not. Regardless, the documentary still looks very interesting.

Read (Kineda)

CoD: WaW PC 1.5 Patch and Map Pack now live

Treyarch Studios has given word that the new Call of Duty: World at War patch is now live and can be downloaded from several mirrors on the official website. If you used Steam to purchase the game, the download and installation will be automatic.

Along with the main patch, Mod Tools 1.3 is now out, in addition to the 1.5 Linux dedicated server bins. The new Mod Tools allows gamers to get started on their own Nazi Zombie maps, so expect a load of fun new environments to shoot some undead heads off soon.

The developers also gave the GGL and Clanbase a plug, encouraging competitive players to sign up for the new PC tournaments. The tournaments’ prizes offer up to $2,500 prizes and Call of Duty apparel.

Make the jump for the changelog.

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Punch Out Game Review–A Serious Pain in the Shoulder

Again Nintendo prevails on my deeply ingrained sense of nostalgia by bringing a game that I actually recognized from my original straight-eight days of gaming. See, way back when, before Mike Tyson was a gigantic practical joke / train wreck, he was a professional boxer. And a good one, too! So good that Nintendo commissioned a game around him, dubbed Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. As time went on and Iron Mike’s career went wildly off the rails (and his contract expired, unrenewed), Nintendo then sought a way to re-release their game without paying Tyson. Thus, the game was shortened to Punch Out and Iron Mike was replaced with a no-name called “Mr. Dream”.

And now, Nintendo has once again released its Punch Out line, this time for the all too appropriate Wii. You’ll once again step into the role of the Bronx’s boxing sensation Little Mac, looking to make a name for yourself along with your trainer Doc Lewis. You’ll take on a series of outrageous characters with a series of different boxing styles until you face your final opponent. You’ll also be able to completely replay the game in a whole different way by selecting the Title Defense mode, in which you’ve already won the title but are now out to hold onto it against every boxer you defeated. And they’re none too happy about the loss.

The first thing that I have to tell you, if you’re going to try this game is, for the sake of all that’s holy, STRETCH FIRST. It may not be intuitive—stretch before playing a video game? Preposterous!—but you’re going to save yourself plenty of hurt if you stretch your arms and shoulders before playing. The way this game is set up, there’s two ways to play—with the Wii controller horizontally inclined like a normal controller, or using the motion sensitivity features of the Wii to make regular air punches, and believe me, you will be throwing a LOT of punches. The boxers you’ll face are downright turtles in their capacity for blocking, and you can pretty much count on one in every two or even three of your punches landing. That is, of course, unless you’ve studied a walkthrough or videos or even practiced in advance so you already know each boxer’s pattern.

Each of the boxers you’ll face does have a pattern, and generally, it won’t take too long to learn just where to lean and where to block and where to throw punches like a lunatic, but still, in the intervening space you will be wasting PLENTY of motion. All of this can do horrible things to your arms and shoulders if you’re not careful. Trust me, I still ache from my bout with King Hippo.

But still…I’m pretty satisfied with this game. It’s got decent graphics and excellent background musical effects and fun gameplay that’ll actually be a halfway decent workout. That’s the one really interesting thing about the Wii, really—a lot of their games make good workouts. And this is a workout that’s surprisingly plenty of fun, too, making it one of the best kind: the kind where participants will come back.

Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009 Game Review–Better Than You Think

Sports games have always been a significant portion of the gaming landscape—be they football, baseball, basketball, or another other sport, there’s no shortage of people looking to step into the roles of their favorite players, racers and fighters and try and do those things that their heroes do every time they show up on television.

This is no different with the release of Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009.

I’d give you the plot synopsis for this one, but it’d take a couple pages.  See, one of the really truly awesome things about Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009 is that each of the characters will have a positively huge storyline.  Just for a for instance, if you play as The Undertaker (my personal favorite), not only will you get to pound both Santino and Finlay into the ground (possibly opening up the patently ridiculous Hornswoggle as a management character), you’ll also go into the heavyweight championship to take on the Great Khali when both Santino and Finlay will form a coalition specifically intended to take out The Undertaker.

I have never been so convinced that Transmetropolitan was right.  TV wrestling is, indeed, phallocentric soap opera for, among others, intellectually lazy intellectual people who get off by cultural slumming. I admit to enjoying  a bit of the brain candy every so often, and there’s really nothing like this for brain candy.

Of course, it’s not all about just really arrogant ways to say “brain candy”, no sir—this is also about pounding cultural stereotypes into oblivion.  Santino, for instance—he’s from JERSEY.  His accent is thicker than Olive Garden’s alfredo sauce, and he comes in with an on-screen graphic that features a waving Italian tricolor flag.  It almost—ALMOST!—felt like I was beating the hell out of Italy itself.

I will say this much for Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009—they really have captured the pomp, circumstance and majesty that this entire sport is built around.  When I walked the Undertaker in for Royal Rumble, they actually had a dozen guys wearing hooded cassocks line my path with live torches.  It was probably unnecessary, but really, I’m glad they took the trouble.  Why the Undertaker doesn’t show up in more horror flicks is beyond me.  But anyway.

Sure, the gameplay is sort of limited—pound hell out of a competitor until he refuses to continue and then attempt to pin him.  But you can’t really blame the game for this, as this is pretty much all that wrestling actually is.  That whole saw about silk purses and sow’s ears?  Yeah, that was made for games like this.

If you’re already a Smackdown / Raw / ECW fan, then you probably don’t need me to tell you that this is a fairly fun game with some interesting storylines.  Thus, this next remark goes out to those who already aren’t watching the show with any regularity, much like myself.  You don’t need to have a really intimate knowledge of the show to be able to follow the game, so if you want a quick introduction to the world of Smackdown / Raw / ECW, then you’ll have exactly what you need in Smackdown Vs Raw 2009.  For fans it’s a must-buy, and for everyone else, it’s actually a pretty good rental.

Pwned Game Review–If You Just Can’t Get Enough Chess, Bring Friends and Play

The word “pwn” is rapidly becoming a rapid part of our vocabulary, even if no one’s a hundred percent sure just how to pronounce it.  But for those of you who pronounce it “pauhnd”, then you’ll get the connection to recent Xbox Live community release Pwned.

Pwned, you see, is a chess game.  As such, there’s no real plot, and there’s also no real single player mode.  Pwned is made to be played with friends on Xbox Live Arcade.  As such, it has something of a limited appeal–you have to have a match in order to play–but for those who have friends or good online connections, then this won’t be a problem.

If you have friends and a desperate hankering for some…chess…then Pwned is the game for you.  Otherwise…well…okay, otherwise you’re going to have absolutely NO use for this game, but at the bargain price of four hundred Microsoft points, it costs less than some chess sets.  If you’re into chess, this is a good buy.

$25,000 PSP Resistance tournament

It was recently announced that SCEA and Global Gaming are offering a tournament for PSP title Resistance: Retribution. The prize? $25,000 worth of Sony gear.

The tournament will run both 2v2 and 4v4 ladders and goes today through May 10th.

Prizes, courtesy of Kotaku, are as follows:

2v2 Competition Prizes
• First Place (2 players): Leather Bomber Jacket (ARV $180), $500 in Sonystyle® Gift Cards, and PSP® TV Prize Pack (32″ XBR TV, PSP®-3000, 16GB PRO Duo and Component AV Cables. ARV $1420) for each player
• Second Place (2 players): Leather Bomber Jacket (ARV $180), $500 in Sonystyle® Gift Cards, and PSP® Pack (PSP®-3000, 16GB PRO Duo. ARV $370) for each player
• Third Place (2 players): Leather Bomber Jacket (ARV $180), $500 in Sonystyle® Gift Cards for each player
• Fourth Place (2 players): Leather Bomber Jacket (ARV $180), $500 in Sonystyle® Gift Cards for each player

4v4 Competition Prizes
• First Place (4 players): Leather Bomber Jacket (ARV $180), $500 in Sonystyle® Gift Cards, and PSP® TV Prize Pack (32″ XBR TV, PSP-3000, 16GB PRO Duo and Component AV Cables. ARV $1420) for each player
• Second Place (4 players): Leather Bomber Jacket (ARV $180), $500 in Sonystyle® Gift Cards, and PSP® Pack (PSP-3000, 16GB PRO Duo. ARV $370) for each player
• Third Place (4 players): Leather Bomber Jacket (ARV $180), $500 in Sonystyle® Gift Cards for each player
• Fourth Place (4 players): Leather Bomber Jacket (ARV $180), $500 in Sonystyle® Gift Cards for each player

More official information here.

KlickSports Launches College Basketball Championship Challenge for Free!

Gamers today are pretty much hooked up on statistics and prediction games and apparently this has set the stage for KlickSports to launch their free sports-based interactive prediction games, College Basketball Championship Challenge game, which is now open for fans to join and compete.

By visiting www.klicksports.com/promo/bracket.html, users can immediately participate in the fun by playing one game in each Region (4) in the First Round, and then continue to play one Regional game in each Round all the way through to the Final in April. Fans can play online (via automated Instant Messenger) and on mobile phones (via automated Text Messaging) during the entire Tournament. Players will be playing for prizes throughout the series, with a chance to win a PS3, iPods and team baseball caps.

The College Basketball Championship Challenge follows on KlickSports’ successful Super Bowl game in which KlickSports saw its user base increase by 48 percent. With the KlickSports’ college basketball series, fans predict team and player stats live during the game and play against their friends and other fans for points and prizes.

(Source) Press

SciFi Channel to begin search for Amercia’s best gamer

The SciFi Channel has recently released the above trailer which details a new show they have in the works; WCG Ultimate Gamer. Think MTV’s Real World, but with gamers.

The WCG Ultimate Gamer will take 12 gamers from across the country, put them in a loft in downtown LA, and see who is the best.

The grand prize stands at $100,000, along with a whole slew of top of the line Samsung products and a change to represent the US at WCG events around the world.

Sounds cool, will premiere March 10th on the SciFi Channel.

Pure–Purely Heartpounding

I’m not normally a huge fan of sports games.  Most of the time it feels like the same thing I’ve played before, over and over.  I mean, do we really need a new Madden every year?  For a while there, that’s exactly what we were getting.  Whether we needed it–whether we WANTED it–or not, we were getting it.  Sure, they’d tack on enough new features to make it feel slightly different, but it was still the same basic concept over and over again.

One place where the difference almost feels necessary is racing games.  And today, after trying Pure, I can say that sometimes, the same old same old is exactly what we need.

In Pure, you play as one of a group of racers, out for glory on the Pure circuit for their own reasons.  There’s a brother and sister rivalry, there’s the son of a seventies rock star who wants to make a name for himself and get out of his father’s shadow, there’s a Japanese wildman who just has a gift, there’s a girl who worked three jobs to afford her own ATV, and so on and so forth right down the line.  But these stories are little more than window dressing for the main event–getting on your fully customizable ATV, going to some of the most beautiful places on earth, and blasting through them at somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred miles an hour on a motorized seat with wheels that doesn’t have so much as a roll bar.

When I say “fully customizable”, I mean it–you’ll build an ATV literally from scratch, starting with the frame, going through such necessary parts as brakes and engines and even working your way up to such superfluities as hand guards and Nerf bars.  You’ll even get to decide the COLOR of most components, and add on decals and stickers and everything but a Hello Kitty bobblehead on the handlebars.  Which would be kind of cool, but I digress.

And when I was talking about a roll bar, you’ll want one.  These beautiful places–a mountainous island in Italy, an old logging camp in Montana, a crater in New Zealand–have lots of steep drops and big angles that you will, not surprisingly, use as jumps.  I’m no mathematician, but if I’m getting the scale right some of these drops are a couple hundred feet up.  And being the sort that you are, of course, you’ll take these huge drops as an opportunity to flip or spin your ATV in mid-flight or jump off it temporarily or do all sorts of irresponsible and potentially fatal things in mid-flight.  These are called “tricks”, and you will have the opportunity to do plenty of them.  The interesting thing is, if you DON’T do these tricks, you will be refused access to your nitrous oxide boosters, which is likely to put you at a serious disadvantage in the race.

This of course makes no sense in the real world–normally nitrous boosters are on a switch, and the switch really doesn’t care if you “catch mad sick air” before you use it, but this is a game so allowances have to be made.  Also, nitrous tanks will not refill mid-race because they have such respect for your ability to perform tricks…but again, game, allowances, yadda yadda.

But the key thing to take away here is that Pure is an unsettlingly adrenaline-fuelled experience.  The next-gen graphics really do help underscore the beauty of your surroundings, while at the same time also giving you the feeling of being about to wet yourself after a couple hundred foot drop off the side of a cliff.  While you’re hanging off the back of the ATV doing something called a “Superman”.  The music is a fair accompanyment, but I’d like to hear a little more variety from some more recognizable names.  Come on, guys–was Blink 182 that busy?  A little Offspring, perhaps?

Still, Pure is a surprising experience that should get your heart pumping as you do horrifying and ridiculous things you’d never do in real life.  At the very least, a fun rental, and if you’re already into ATVs then just go whole hog and get the game.

Facebreaker–Pretty Badly Broken Itself

The casual gaming phenomenon has been running for quite some time now, and it’s always a little bit of a surprise to see it segue into the console market.  What I’m about to say may be a little controversial, but I confess, it’s how I felt:  Facebreaker for the Xbox 360 is a casual console game.

You’re not alone in considering this odd–I certainly did.  Console games, unless they’re specifically marketed as such and generally packaged in collections, should not be so simple to play and so simple in construction that they can be called casual.  But this is the case–you play one of several boxers who’s out to win fame and glory and the right to punch a whole lot of people in the face.  And that’s ALL you do.  You punch. You have your choice of high punch and low punch, you can add dash moves to your punch, and you can even use SPECIAL punches called “Breakers” in conjunction with your regular punches.  But no matter how you slice it, you’re still just swinging a fist.

Some have criticized the game’s broken AI being unnecessarily difficult and thus unplayable.  And after playing a few rounds I can’t help but agree with them.  When the game itself actually TELLS you, even on the easiest settings, that you WILL lose and you WILL lose frequently until you figure out each boxer’s specific weak point, someone may have made a serious mistake designing the AI.  A game should never have to openly declare its own difficulty as though it were a box of cookies announcing its fat content!

This is actually pretty sad—the game itself is a good idea.  It’s clever, it’s funny, some of the boxers have really amazing backstories and are downright entertaining.  For instance, fighting Steve in the arcade pits you against a short fat kid in a ninja suit who’s the trivia king of his fantasy gaming guild.  There’s a Russian boxer by the name of Molotov who fights while wearing a belt of explosives.  There’s a certifiable lunatic, a giant with the mind of a child, a voodoo priest, a Japanese schoolgirl…and a legion of other great choices.  The whole thing is done in a cartoonish style, and the visible facial deformations are a riot to watch.   The character voices are nicely done—watching the audition tapes is a laugh and a half.

There are even celebrity boxers involved or at least scheduled to be; ever watch an episode of “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” and say, wow, I wish I could just slug Kim a few good ones?  With Facebreaker, you actually CAN!  Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag can actually square off via Facebreaker.

But all of these wonders together can’t quite exempt Facebreaker from its biggest problem—an AI so damaged that it’s virtually impossible to play in single player mode.  I can’t say how the multiplayer would work out—I generally work alone.  But the key point remains: playing Facebreaker is like trying to drive a Ferrari with a busted axle.  It looks great, it sounds great, it’s a beautiful system, but man…it’s not going anywhere any time soon.  And trying to go anywhere with it will only do more damage and leave you seriously frustrated.

EA’s Sports Comples Ready For Playstation Home

Sony has decided to partner up with Electronic Arts and soon we’ll be able to enjoy that EA Sports Complex from your Home. The first three games available will be a car racer game, a tournament poker game and a driving range.

Like any other Home games you will be able to unlock items for your avatar which should be really fun to do in a game like that racing game here. If you happen to be close to CES 2009 go take a look. It’s currently the only game of the three that EA has made available.

The EA Sports Complex will be launched at the end of March and it will grow more in the future. EA will bring interactivity between EA Sports Complex and EA’s Sportsworld in the future. Players will be able to interact and EA will be using Home for various timed events. Anxious to get EA Sports Complex?

via kotaku

Blizzard 2008 Tickets Going Up for Sale this Thursday

Tickets for the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational convention and tournament event will be available starting this Thursday, March 20 on the organizer’s website.

Becoming a new nerd heaven of sorts, this year’s event will take place in Paris, France, at the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center on the 28 and 29 of June. Tickets for the two-day event will cost 70 Euros, which will feature hands-on play with the latest versions of WoW: Wrath of the Lich King and StarCraft 2.

Blizzard developers and exclusives will also be present to share the latest news, meet with attendees and participate in public discussion panels. The tournaments will also see players walking away with a total of $100,000 in prizes. There will also be costume and dance contests, live musical performances and more. Additionally, all attendees will get a goody bag that includes a beta key for an upcoming game from the studio as well as an exclusive WoW in-game pet.

2008 MLG Pro Circuit is Underway

If you’ve been one to follow professional gaming then you probably already know what I’m about to tell you, but for those who don’t continue reading. The MLG ‘08 Halo 3 Pro Circuit has begun with its online ladder. Sponsored by professional athlete Gilbert Arenas the ladder is free for all to participate in. Of course, the sign up deadline was Feb 3rd, but if you were dedicated enough to be in it, you probably already are. But for those who missed the sign up date, don’t fret because it is not required to play in the normally scheduled live events.

Check back as the ladder unfolds and we take a look at who could be the next Final Bosses of Halo 3.