SPOTLIGHT
- NEW SITE!Welcome to our newly designed
website created by our very own Yorick.
There's been a big reshuffle and lots of
new content added so check it all out!
Jigsaw has kidnapped our Lead Editor Hectic Glenn! And he wants us to play one of his sick games so we can get Glenn back.
If you wanna help Glenn you have to follow Jigsaw's instructions.
He's asking the members of Halflife2.net to post their best Halloween costumes while holding a sign which says 'Boo Halflife2.net".
We're offering 5 keys for SAW: The Game for the best 5 costumes. Deadline you say? Sunday, November 1st - 12:00AM GMT.
So are you gonna help Glenn live or just leave him to die? Make your choice now, the time is running out!
A group of CERN lovers have taken a trip to the CERN tunnels (where Gordon Freeman had been spotted last year). The pictures show a great resemblance between the CERN tunnels and the original Half-Life settings.
Sorry for being late to the party, but in case you didn't already know there has been a lovely Halloween themed Team Fortress 2 update! This update includes:
Brand new King of the Hill map - koth_harvest_event
5 New achievements specific to Harvest
2 New hats: The Mildly Disturbing Halloween Mask & Ghostly Gibus
The new hats can be obtained by playing the halloween update on the new map and obtaining 2 of the new achievements, so get playing, it ends on the 2nd November!
Well I wouldn't say it has been the smoothest of launches I've seen from Valve over the years, but the Left 4 Dead 2 Demo has finally been unlocked on Steam. Be aware there will be chaos with servers for a while.
The demo will include the first two maps from The Parish campaign (The Waterfront & The Park), all available melee weapons and new special infected. Note the demo is only available to those who pre-purchased L4D2, the demo will become fully public from 3rd November. Go play and...
Kill all sons a' bitches
Also I'd like to mention that we have a YouTube group now, so you can upload your videos and submit them to the group homepage, so other members can vote and comment on your fail moments. Submit your gameplay videos here.
Valve has revealed the first Left 4 Dead 2 television commercial which is created in collaboration by Valve and GameStop. This TV Spot highlights the exclusive in-game melee weapon (baseball bat) offered to those who pre-order the game at GameStop.
It will start airing across North America this week. Watch this commercial on our channel on YouTube.
If you have pre-purchased L4D2 you will be eligible to play the demo on 27th October, this applies to both Steam & 360 players. To be ready for the 27th pre-load the demo now and it will be available immediately on Tuesday.
A reminder of the dates the demo will unlock for everyone else:
Xbox 360 LIVE Gold members AND PC players (who haven't pre-ordered) can play the demo from 3rd November. Lastly, all Xbox 360 LIVE members will have the demo available from 10th November.
Delay till 28th, latest Update: Please wait for more info - current source
Team NeoTokyo have released their latest patch adding some new content and tidying up up some bugs. NeoTokyo is one of the best looking mods out there and worth a try if you haven't ever played before. You can find the entire changelist for this mod here, and a brief summary below:
7 New Maps
Fixes to current maps
Weapon balancing and fixes
Removed knife exploit
Gameplay improvements for squads & team mates
You can find client & server patches in the NT Downloads section, which also now includes a .fgd if you'd like to try your hand at mapping for this mod.
Modern Warfare 2 (already up for pre-order) is going to be using Steamworks and Steam Cloud to provide anti-cheat technology, auto-updating, achievements and the ability, using Steam Cloud, to use your multiplayer profile wherever you go without fear of losing it. In the announcement Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling said:
Steamworks will make it possible for us to have a closer connection to our fans, and enable us to support our community much more than ever before,. Steam is the hands down leader in offering a community focused experience on PC and the inclusion of Steamworks has allowed us to deliver the most feature-rich PC version to ever come from Infinity Ward, which at the end of the day will mean the most to our fans."
Gabe Newell had this to say:
"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 may be one of the biggest releases in video game history. Having a game as significant as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 using the suite of back-end services in Steamworks is a signal to us that we're making the right kinds of choices for triple-A developers like Infinity Ward."
It will be interesting to see how the game will utilise Steamworks along with Infinity Ward's custom matchmaking tools and how the lack of dedicated servers will impact on how the game performs. You can pre-order now ahead of its launch in the week commencing 8th November.
The highly anticipated sequel from Infinity Ward is now available for pre-purchase on Steam. After the huge success of COD4, this is a game many Steam users have been waiting for.
Controversy has plagued the game in the past few weeks after IW announced the game would have no dedicated server functionality, but instead would come with custom-built matchmaking, essentially killing a large gaming community.
Modern Warfare 2 is released on November 12th and is available for $60 / £35. Many people wanted to buy, but will you now?
A high quality trailer dubbed the Zombie Survival Guide has been leaked by an unknown source according to Shacknews. The trailer shows plenty of cinematic action with the four new characters, new infected and new weapons including the chainsaw. Check out the video below (also available in HD).
The assets from the Meet the Sniper video are now available in the SDK for anyone who wishes to play around with them. The Team Fortress Blog goes through the assets that are available including the bobbleheads and the camper van. One thing to bear in mind, these assets were made for the movies and aren't optimised for use in maps. You have been warned. More info.
Metal Drift, by Black Jacket Studios is available through Steam on 23rd October, however you can win a copy and gain access to the early beta for the game today! Metal
Drift isn't too distant from the old face of Wipeout, including epic multiplayer battles.
Metal Drift is a vehicular sport combat game set in a distant future. As the player, you command an agile, high powered hover tank in a futuristic sports arena. Core game play centers on intense tank-on-tank multiplayer team combat seen through an immersive, first person cockpit.
Metal Drift is set in the future with a vast choice of futuristic weaponry, but what modern day weaponry would you add to your own car to make it suitable for a scrap against other HL2.net members and their battling vehicles?
Best ideas & entertaining entries will win, good luck. Competition closes 22/10/09 @ midnight.
Looking for something to quell that seething, uncontrollable urge to massacre zombies in various locales but can't wait for DLC or the upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 demo? Look no further:
Left 4 Dead mapper and general zombie enthusiast ZapWizard has recreated the world famous Austin Texas based Alamo Theater 1:1 for us to murder zombies in. To top it all off, he's included a rather lengthy walk through of the entire painstaking process on the Austin Modders forum.
Some of the finer points of Zombie genocide at the Alamo Theater include:
Fully modeled and faithful recreation of all major indoor and outdoor portions of the actual Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
Countless new models and textures, majority of which were created from photographs of the location itself
ZapWizard is currently working with Valve to have his work showcased at the upcoming "Dismember the Alamo" film festival
So what are you waiting for? Devour the map now from Left4Dead mods.
October 27th is when customers who have pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2 will be able to play the demo. Today Valve have released details on what the demo will contain:
The Left 4 Dead 2 demo will feature gameplay taken from "The Parish" campaign, set in the New Orleans French Quarter. Playable by 1 to 4 players over local or Internet connections on both the Xbox 360 and PC (with two-player split screen available on the Xbox 360), the demo features all the new boss infected zombies and all the new melee weapons included in the full product.
If you have pre-ordered for PC via Steam or retail you should be playing on the 27th October. Xbox 360 LIVE Gold members AND PC players (who haven't pre-ordered) can play the demo from 3rd November. Lastly, all Xbox 360 LIVE members will have the demo available from 10th November.
Nothing hugely special in this update, a couple additions, mostly fixes and some community requests. The most interesting addition is the new +quickswitch command which will allow you to change your current class loadout on each weapon slot using a small panel. Sounds very handy indeed. See the full list below:
Added "+quickswitch" command, which brings up a small panel allowing you to rapidly change the loadout of your current class & active weapon slot
Added server ConVar "tf_teamtalk" to allow alive/dead teammates to talk with each other during a match (default is 0)
Added 1/2 Bonus Point for healing a teammate with a dropped sandvich
Updated the class menu to show the local player's current class
Updated server ConVar "tf_playergib" to have 3 settings for player gibs: 0: never, 1: normal, 2: always (default is 1)
Fixed disguised spies not getting ammo from enemy dispensers
Permanent gibbing is likely to become popular with the community and William. [Read More...]
