That Gaming Podcast.com

Posted by Ian

Ok, so I’ve finally managed to get some proper gaming time in this past weekend (the last few weekends me and the wife have been assembling various pieces of furniture). There’s been one thing I’ve been playing all weekend; Variety Pack Team Deathmatch on COD4.

WOW! I’ve never had so much fun online in a game. Whilst the maps were only playable in 3 online modes over the weekend Infinity Ward were tempting players to log-on and play by offering double XP all weekend. This was great for me, I managed to level up 5 times!

Whilst 4 maps were released in the pack: Chinatown, Creek, Broadcast and Kill House, only the first 3 were in the rotation cycle. Each of the new maps are brilliant and remaking Carentan from COD2 and giving it a modern look and feel (Chinatown) was a stroke of genius.

The Maps

The Creek map can be played in several different ways, snipers can sit on top of the rocks surrounding the gulch and pick off opponents. Players preferring to take their combat up-close and personal can opt for a shotgun and hide out in the cave, whilst troopers can run around freely with either machine gun weapons or rifles and achieve a healthy number of kills. Firefights in the confines of the cave can be very manic and it’s always satisfying to lay the odd claymore mine and then watch some fool rush in only to get blown sky high (and earn you plenty of lovely XP).

This map is the one best suited to a 12 player game.

Chinatown is my favourite new map. As stated, it’s the Carentan map from COD2, but with a new lick of paint. This made it immediately familar to me (and indeed anyone else that’s played COD2). However, Infinity Ward have made some very subtle changes to the map that can affect gameplay. For a start a few of the buildings have an extra floor, so you can get up higher, the angle from the mounted machine gun window has been slightly changed to improve the balance, (you can actually make it across the square in the street in front of the window without it being guaranteed that you would get shot to shreds). The turning axis of the gun has also been increased so you can now shoot people in the opposite window.

These changes result in more finely balanced firefights and this was demonstrated several times with games on this map often being decided by just one extra kill.

Broadcast is set in the TV station level from the single player campaign. Most of the level is indoors and combines both open plan rooms with narrow corridors. The fighting tended to centre around 2 locations on the map, the stairs and lobby in the TV studio and the roof of the building. This map tends to ‘push’ you towards these areas.

People seem to ignore entire areas of this map (the back part of it outside behind the buildings). This isn’t a bad thing though, as the feeling you get from calling in an airstrike when you know all the opposing team are on the roof is unsurpassed and your kill count can increase quickly and dramatically. Graphically this one seems the weakest of the 3 maps, though its still great looking, with plenty of detail.

Overall the Variety Map Pack is a brilliant addition, to what was already my favourite FPS of all-time. Well worth the 800 MS points (about £6.50). I can’t wait for the next batch of DLC for the game. In the meantime I’m back online in COD 4 tonight!

Word!

Posted by Ian

In a totally surprising move, Sony have attacked the 360 and put over their own machine the Playstation 3.

This latest verble bashing given by the Japanese giant sees them proclaiming that MS may have ‘punched themselves out of the fight’ by releasing all the big titles for the 360 in the first 2 years of the console’s life. Meanwhile, Sony themselves say that the recent momentum in sales for them coupled with titles like MGS4, GT5 Prologue and various new IPs they have lined up provide both a good base for existing users of PS3 whilst demonstrating that they still have a lot left to offer that we know about (Home, Little Big Planet, Motorstorm 2) and lots of new things we don’t yet know about.

Whilst I believe that the PS3 still has a lot of untapped power I wouldn’t say the 360 has shown us everything it can do yet either - not by a long shot. The recent demo of the new features in Unreal Engine 3 prove that it’s software that will be making the biggest changes to gaming this gen, not hardware. The majority of multiplatform titles look almost identical on both consoles, including titles like Burnout Paradise that was developed first on the PS3, then ported to the 360.

In the end, the conclusion I reach is that both consoles are great and we should all just enjoy gaming (unless you’re Anne Diamond, or her sons).

Word!

Posted by Ian

Unreal Tournament, Epic’s online (mainly) FPS frag-fest is still coming to 360, despite earlier reports that the title was having problem due to Microsoft not wanting user generated content (new maps and mods) on their system.

Mark Rein, the head honcho at Epic, has posted an entry on the company forums stating the title is ‘coming along nicely’ on the 360 and that members of the press will get the chance to play the game for the first time in a couple of weeks when Midway holds it’s gamers day event. However, there’s still no word on an offficial release date for the title. Maybe they’ll announce it at the Midway event?

I recently (very recently, still waiting for it to be delivered) bought UT 3 on the PS3. As listeners to the podcast will know I was waiting for the game to be available for a lot cheaper than the usual £40 price tag, and I managed to snag a (nearly) new copy of it from Ebay yeseterday for the discounted price of £19.99 - not bad at all.
It will be interesting to see how the game perfoms on the 360, compared to the PS3 version as Microsoft’s console is associated with online play far more than the PS3 (at least for us here it is).