Blur Multiplayer Demo now on PS3

Okay, I don’t know if this New news, or Old news to most of you, but it’s new news to me as I only just got the Activision newsletter email:

The Blur Multiplayer Demo is now available on PS3.

The Demo gives you 20 Car on track action, 2 gameplay modes, and Twitter and Facebook functionality so you can brag to your friends.

“one of the best online experiences of the year.” – IGN UK

To Download the Demo:
1. Go into the PlayStation Store on your PS3
2. Scroll down to Demos
3. Scroll across to PS3 Demos
4. Choose A-C demos
5. Scroll down to Blur
6. Select Download and follow the on screen instructions

“leaps off the screen with its glossy power-up effects, great sense of speed, split-second strategy, and thrilling action” – Game Informer

© 2010 Activision Publishing, Inc. Activision is a registered trademark and Blur is a trademark of Activision Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners.

I’ll be having a look at that later as I quite looked the like of the game when people were putting up their vids from the Xbox. It’ll also be interesting to see how much lag there is as in my experience of online racers there is usually a truck load of it – or maybe that’s just for UK players…..

Anyone else giving this a go?

Peas and loaves

Want to know how to comment on or subscribe to this blog? Click here.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Modern Warfare Resurgence Map Pack Announced

Just when the Stimulus pack becomes available to the PS3 and PC community Infinity Ward, or Activision, or maybe Roy the intern/tea boy has announced that the new “Resurgence” map pack will be released to Xbox Live in early June…..

Good luck with that.

Three new maps and…… two CoD4 maps. Makes you wonder if this was some sort of deliberate marketing ploy to begin with, or a result of having pretty much the entire development team jump ship.

Either way, I am totally underwhelmed and not even toe deep in enthusiasm (although if I was standing on my head that could be taken as a really positive position…). The good news is that the Xbox Beta Testers guys get to try out the maps for at least a month before they are released to the other platforms. So plenty of time to decide whether or not they are worth getting on the PS3.

That reminds me – Stimulus Pack…….. nah, still not getting it.

From DigitalSpy:

The returning maps include ‘Vacant’ and ‘Strike’, while the new maps are titled ‘Trailer Park’, ‘Carnival’ and ‘Fuel’, according to VG247.

PS – Message to Activision….. I can play CoD4 maps any time I want. I only have to boot up CoD4 and voila there they are. I don’t want to pay for them again, and releasing them on MW2 only gives the constant complainers something more to complain about.

Peas and loaves.

Want to know how to comment on or subscribe to this blog? Click here.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Crazy Mirror People from Another Dimension?

There have been numerous rumours as to what will and will not be included in the much anticipated Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Pack. But none so controversial as the inclusion of Crazy Mirror People from Another Dimension. Information regarding their in game abilities has been scarce – Infinity Ward has kept that securely under wraps. But following a tip from Geoff (sasbenjr) I can now confirm that the Mirror People are known as “Snailartsua“.

You can see this clearly in the following video that Geoff sent me. It’s a Stimulus Pack video from WoodysGamertag:

Did you see it?

Here’s the still in case it wasn’t as obvious as we thought:

Snailartsua - Coming soon to MW2?

For those who may have missed it, I’ve zoomed cropped and done some other work of the devil to highlight the evidence that Snailartsua are about to make an appearance in MW2:

Ohhhh... Australians!

Obviously Infinity Ward and Activision have got wind of Geoff’s vids and decided to feature him – but in order to avoid paying him any royalties they’ve turned him into a Crazy Mirror Person from Another Dimension. *Cue Twighlight Zone music*

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

MW2 Stimulus Map Pack Controversy

Come March 30th Activision release the Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Map pack on the Xbox360 to combat “mapathy” (PS3 and PC a month later). It’s apparently going to cost 1200MS points and contain five maps (two from CoD4) and possibly some other graphical but useless content.

I don’t know how much 1200MS points are as I’m on PS3 and work in pounds, shillings and pence but it’s probably about £8 (USD$12) if the World at War map packs are anything to go by. **EDIT: from this blog I found that 1200MS points is £11.** Apparently, there is much resistance to the price, I’m not sure if it’s because there are two “old” maps or some other issue but you can get the general idea from this forum thread at codnation and this blog post at the Gaming Shed Blog – there are probably numerous other grumblings elsewhere, but these are two that came up straight away.

But the main issue with whether to buy the map pack or not is whether you want to play online or spend your time being kicked from games for not having the maps.

I didn’t get World at War until really late – Novemeber-ish 2009 – after all the map packs had been released and found online play virtually impossible. It would allow me to join a lobby…..tick tick tick down the time until game start and then – BOOT, you don’t have that map (well why let me join the lobby at all?!)!

With over 4 million players, I think that those who choose not to purchase the map pack are going to find themselves in a similar situation with no way of opting for non-map pack lobbies. Although non-map pack lobbies would resolve the issue, I get the feeling that those making the green off the game already know that, which is why it’s not going to happen (and is an issue that I’ll comment on in another post).

If you want to continue playing the game online then, realistically you’re going to have to stump up the £11. Personally I don’t think that is a vast sum of money – it’s just over £2 per map. Yes, even the “old” maps. When it comes down to it, the old maps are not going to be direct ports – they’ll be updated graphically, and probably with slight differences to suit the MW2 environments. At a time when many players are getting fed up of the same maps it will add some variety and will generally be welcomed.

The word on the street is that the new maps are:

• Bailout
• Storm
• Crash*
• Overgrown*
• Salvage

*CoD4 maps

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Blur – Mario Kart for Grown Ups?

Donncha posted about Blur – the new driving game from Activision – a couple of days ago. I’m not really a fan of driving games – done my bit on the Need For Speed series and FlatOut Ultimate Carnage on the 360. Got Race Driver Grid with my PS3 (hated it), but was never into the more popular titles such as Project Gotham or Forza.

But the more demos of this Blur game I see the more I’m liking it. It has the right mix of racing and carnage that appeals to me. According to GoldGlove, the 20 player racing is absolute bedlam! I don’t know what the game physics are like but it looks like they’ve gone for Arcade racer rather than Formula 1 – which is probably a good thing when you’re being bombarded with electric bolts and big angry energy balls. With the power ups and rewards it looks like a grown up version of Mario Kart but with more options and damage included.

There are different game modes and track types where your choice of car will make a difference to your performance.

I’m not normally interested in racing genre games as shooting people in the face is my thing, but I think I’m getting a wee bit excited by Blur. We’ll see how it goes in June when it’s released….. Will I turn to the dark side?

And in other news…( UK/EU only sorry 😦 )

TheHut.com has an up to 80% off sale on right now. I’ve used them before – got Little Big Planet for the PS3 for £15, and was looking for the cheapest price for Mario Kart Wii (which is also at The Hut). There’s loads of different things on sale other than just games – Blu-Ray, DVDs, clothing, toys……sheesh, I sound like an advert. Anyway, they’ve got loads of stuff going cheap. Check them out* – http://www.thehut.com/offers/sale.list

*As usual – this is a non-affiliated link. If I ever post a link that benefits me I will label it as such.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Infinity Ward – Is this the end for gaming?

This post relates to the sacking/quitting of Jason West and Vince Zampella by Activision for “breach of contract and insubordination”. Now the only people who currently know what really happened are Jason West, Vince Zampella, and Activision. I’m not in a position to speculate on what happened, or who did what to whom and why (there are plenty of other resources to look at if that’s your thing) but I did want to touch on one rumour that was bandied about when the news broke. Allegedly Jason and Vince had had a meeting with EA Games and Activision got wind of it. How true that is may or may not come out in the wash, but the very notion of them being in discussions with EA fills me with horror.

To understand why, we need to step back in time……..

2002 – Medal of Honor:Allied Assault (developed by 2015 for EA) was launched to much fanfare and it was for the time a relative commercial success. It was my first real online PC shooter and I had just got the wonderous new technology called broadband so I was able to pwn some noobs (that’s not strictly true, I’m as bad at shooters now as I was then). It was a great game, except for cheating, hacks and exploits online being used by certain groups in the gaming world. At one point it became almost impossible to find a decent game. EA didn’t really address the issues to any meaningful extent and promised that everything would be sorted with the Spearhead expansion pack.

So the Spearhead expansion pack came out for a small amount of time everything was rosy. The expansion pack was good, the maps and new stuff added a new dimension to the game…..but then the cheats, hacks and exploits crept back in and we were back to square one. There were calls for EA to implement PunkBuster or similar technologies, or at the very least….do something.

Then two of the 2015 Medal of Honor guys left, founded Infinity Ward and there was word of a new WW2 shooter called Call of Duty in the pipeline. There was much discussion on the forums and within the groups that I was playing online with about the title. Don’t get me wrong, Medal of Honor was a fantastic game and I spent many hours playing it, but the title was sorely let down by EA. In the end it was obvious that EA only cared about retail sales and had no interest in resolving issues that the gaming community had.

When Call of Duty came out it really was a “Wow!” moment. The game was amazing. It was innovative, it looked good (for the time) and it pushed the boundaries. But even more important was the fact that Infinity Ward actually responded to the gaming community concerns, there was PunkBuster and even more crucially – they patched hacks and exploits quickly. It was like the Golden Age had arrived and its heralds were…..Jason West and Vince Zampella.

So for them to allegedly to have been meeting with EA would have been the end of gaming for me because I no longer buy EA games. Since 2003 every EA title I have purchased has been a disappointment. On the surface the games are pretty, but after playing for a while it’s obvious how repetitive and ugly they really are with clunky controls and glitches. Sometimes when playing EA games it feels like I’ve paid £45 to be a beta tester to find bugs that won’t get fixed – in 2007 I said enough was enough and blacklisted EA.

So there we have it, potentially the end of Infinity Ward as we know it, and unless someone else steps up to bat the end of FPS gaming for me (I don’t like Quake or Halo).

And in other news:

I’ve taken the Cheap Freaks off my controller due to slippage – read the update at the bottom of this post for more info.

It’s the weekend so I’ve been getting my arse handed to me online. I’d like to blame it on the fact that I couldn’t use my headset last night for the majority of time I was online, but in reality all that would have improved would’ve been the forewarning that I was about to get shot in the face. No scores or maps listed as it really doesn’t matter – I went negative on most of them. It was so bad I was considering ringing a victim support line…..

One highlight though was playing HighRise. I decided to try and play a bit more tactically on there after watching sasbenjr’s YouTube videos. Unfortunately there was some idiot running around with commando and the tactical knife…..and it wasn’t me! So after the third time he got me I changed to my Game Rage class but he was still getting me. Using some of sasbenjr’s tips the tac knife commando numpty became my bitch as he kept using the same route! After the fifth time killing him in the same place he became a bit more wary……which just made it easier. He was even the game winning kill cam to my MP5K – HOORAY! So even when you spend the evening being violated, there’s always a bright side.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE