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“Left Behind: Eternal Forces” Video Game to Feature iTunes Links

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Corporate News, First Person Shooters, PC, Politics,

Description You may remember Left Behind: Eternal Forces as the Christian videogame where you are charged with saving souls after The Rapture. The game got a fair amount of press for its controversial content, but now reporters are pointing out this game for another reason - its ingenious advertising strategy. Left Behind will feature music by composer Chance Thomas (who has also done scores for the Lord of the Rings and King Kong videogames), but the true innovation comes in the fact that, at the end of each level the game will feature links to the iTunes Music Store so that you can download any tracks you like.

Currently, it’s not clear whether the game will feature only snipets of longer tracks that can be downloaded from iTunes, or whether the full music will be included in-game. If it turns out to be the latter, one might wonder whether “frugal” users will work out a way to simply extract the tunes from the game libraries. Still, it’s a clever use of in-game advertising and I personally think it sounds much less obtrusive then some of the tactics companies like EA have tried (such as in-game Axe billboards in Need for Speed or Honda Elements that you snowboard through in SSX). Especially with licensed music in games becoming such a phenomena, it’s a wonder a major company like EA hasn’t thought of incorporating links to digital music distribution before!

Team Fortress 2 Teaser Trailer Out: Wow Again

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: First Person Shooters, Mods/Hacks, PC, Trailers,

First Valve goes and blows our mind with the Portal teaser, and now they’ve got a new way to keep us salivating. Scant days after releasing a teaser image for Team Fortress 2, Valve now has a full trailer for the game, available through YouTube.

Comparisons could definitely be made between the art style in Team Fortress and the characters in The Incredibles, and that’s definitely not a bad thing. The characters are stylized but not overly cartoony (i.e. no Windwaker shocks here, thank goodness). The complete trailer for the game is purported to be running off the in-game engine, with only minor special effects added during certain sequences.

Preview for Valve’s “Portal” Hits The Web. Wow.

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Action, Adventure, First Person Shooters, PC, Screenshots, Trailers,

Portal Screen capture Take your plain vanilla FPS, add a goey dollop of gravity gun, and then top it off with the mother of all cherries—a gun that allows you to create portals in space anywhere—and you’ve got a mind-hemmoraghing sundae of FPS bliss. Don’t believe us? Just play the video below and sit back as your brain explodes.

Portal, to be released for the PC, equips you with a gun that creates rips in space that you can travel between. Want to get to the other side of a ravine? Just shoot a portal at the wall on either side, and it’s as simple as walking across. Want that box to hit an enemy and kill them? Shoot a portal above the enemy, shoot a portal under the box, and watch him get clobbered. Want to create an infinite loop? Shoot a portal at the ceiling, shoot a portal at the floor, and watch as you fall forever. But, as always a picture is worth a thousand words, and a 2 minute 22 second video at 24 frames-per-second is thus worth about 3,408,000 words. So just click the link below and watch!

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New Quake 4 Patch to Fine-Tune Multiplayer

Posted by Matt Haselton Categories: Activision, Announcements, First Person Shooters, PC,

Quake 4 In an announcement on their website, Id Software announced that version 1.3 of Quake 4 will incorporate “feedback from the people playing it the most.” Several of the patch’s features and gameplay changes were requested by the Quake community (improved performance and control), the patch will provide new maps, as well as a gametype and weapon. Id is currently running a private beta test of the release, with the intention to release it to the public before the August 3 QuakeCon.

This is an example of how gamer feedback should work: via direct suggestions made to the developer, unlike Valve’s recent use of Steam-gathered statistics to tweak the balance of a certain zombie fight in Episode One. With Id, it’s the fans, not the newbies, who control the path of the patches.

Limited Edition Halo Action Figure At San Diego Comic-Con

Posted by Josh Smith Categories: Accessories, First Person Shooters, Xbox, Xbox 360,

If you are heading to the San Diego Comic-Con next week be sure to stop by the Joyride Studios booth #3235, during the first 90 minutes of the show. While you are there, register to be put in the raffle for a chance to buy a limited edition Orbital Drop Shock Trooper figure. The featured ODST is inspired by the recently released Halo Graphic Novel. If your ticket is drawn then you can get one of the 1,200 ODST figures for $20. While you are at the convention be sure to pick up a copy of The Halo Graphic Novel.

Half-Life 2 for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 Announced

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, First Person Shooters, MMORPG, PC, PlayStation 3, Sports, Strategy, Wii, Xbox 360,

Half-Life 2 EA recently hosted the Summer Showcase to highlight some of their upcoming products, and Gamespot blogged a live report from the presentation.

Mythic was there, and showed off the E3 Warhammer Online trailer, but there was no information on their work on Ultima Online.

Valve’s Gabe Newell was also there. He first talked about the latest upgrades to the Source engine for Episode 2. Then, he showed off the prototype for a new game with a working title of Portal. Team Fortress 2 was shown and features a new look and feel; the game has been remade to have more of a 60’s era spy movie sensibility. Half-Life: Episode 2 will apparently hit the PC, Xbox 360, and the Playstation 3 on the same day. Console gamers will also get all previous Half-Life 2 content, so it looks like the Xbox 360 Half-Life 2 rumors were true.

Other game titles discussed include the recently announced Lord of the Rings: The White Council, and the six Wii games that EA announced earlier. Need for Speed: Carbon was shown for both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 and apparently looked very similar. There was other mystery content announced that could not be talked about, so hopefully more information about those titles will leak out in the near future.

Valve Turns Down the Pressure in Parts of Half-Life 2: Episode 1

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: First Person Shooters, Internet, Mods/Hacks, PC,

Half-Life 2: Episode 1 screenshot If you’re the kind of person that worries about companies invading your privacy, prepare to don your tin-foil hat! In response to massive gameplay statistics collected by Valve through the Steam service, the developer has decided to lower the difficulty on the slightly-intense elevator section of Half-Life 2: Episode 1. The update is delivered in the form of a patch and makes this particular section of the game easier, and as of right now it looks like Valve isn’t giving you the option of choosing which version you’d like to play.

Beyond being a bit peeved that Valve’s gone and insulted my gaming prowess like this, I don’t think this is really reaching into “Big Brother” territory. More likely, this is Valve’s way of showing off to prospective content producers how flexible their Steam system is. And under the right circumstances, changing a game to make the play experience better for the majority of users might not be a bad thing. Still, I’m of the church of Gamer Choice, so if Valve doesn’t start including the ability to turn off future mods, I might get a bit antsy. Do you think this is a good idea? Or is it time to start disconnecting the ol’ ethernet cable every time you play a single-player game?

Read More | SteamPowered.com via Kotaku.com

Red Steel Producer Blogging At IGN

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: First Person Shooters, Wii,

Marie-Sol Beaudry, producer of Red Steel, has started a developer blog on IGN. For her first entry, she discusses how the Wii controller is being utilized for the sword and gun fighting first person shooter. She states, “…everything we’re doing in the game is directly effected by the controller… everything from level design, overall game design, movement [to] storyline.”

On the development of the game: “shooting was…straight forward, point-and-shoot…the sword play…proved to be a true challenge.” From the feedback that Ubisoft received at E3, this seems clear. Still, the developers seem to have taken the responses to heart and are tweaking the controls. Sword fighting should see an improvement with “more diversity in movements and a couple of special moves…” Beaudry is coy on this point, and gamers who want to find out more will have to wait for a future installment.

Prey Gone Gold

Posted by Matt Haselton Categories: First Person Shooters, PC, Release Dates, Xbox 360,

One week after 3D Realms’ George Broussard posted “I smell gold” on the company’s forum, it’s official: Prey discs are being gold mastered. In the official press release, 3D Realms confirms the game will be in North American stores on July 11 and in Europe three days later. The buzz is good, the demo is a hoot, and Prey should, in the words of 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller, “be a major hit for gamers worldwide.”

On a tangential note, I had to smile when I read Human Head developer talk about Prey as the “cumulation of nearly five years work.” To clarify, Human Head may have been working on the game for half-a-decade, but Prey was first announced back in 1995, and I remember reading a preview in a 1996 PC Gamer. Just for giggles, I dug up an online copy of that article here, which highlights such features as “very smooth animation without the need for a 3D accelerator card,” “3D, polygon-based enemies,” and most exciting of all, an “early 1997” release date.

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