Why I Love Dedicated Servers

Yesterday I was playing on my favorite CoD4 server when this little asshole intentionally tk'd me after I informed him he was breaking a rule. Since there were no admins on at the time there wasn't much that could be done.. or so it would seem. I opened up my console and took a few screen shots, copied down his GUID number, and made a visit to the forums (to which I'm already an active member) and posted a new thread which included 5 screen shots and his info.

Here's what I posted:

"We were on wetwork. I told "pant milkshake" he couldn't stand on the railing. He got down, walked over to me, crouched, and shot me point blank, no apology. Next round several people point it out and he says "oh i'm soo sorry", then he comes up and shoots me again in the same manor, followed by "hahahahahahah". Several members try to tell him to stop the tks. Again he says "oh srrry" and does it again and leaves.

About 15seconds after leaving "JAKE THE SNAKE" joins. I check GUIDs and sure enough, same guy. He played dumb and got away with it.


taken from my console screen shots:

f919c997 pant milkshake
f919c997 JAKE THE SNAKE


Hopefully this is enough to do something."

Shortly after, one of the head admins posted the following:

"

----------------------
[2:56:50 AM] pb_sv_BanGuid "563e07ce241344d5ae5a5949f919c997" "pant milkshake" 64.46.19.94:34266 "intentional tks - hawk"
----------------------
PunkBuster Server: Ban Added to Ban List" 

That's a win in my book. (:

Fallout: New Vegas

 

I just finished this game for the first time through yesterday and I plan on playing through it again. I have to say it is fucking awesome! As a fan of Fallout 3, I really liked this game. It was more like an enormous expansion pack with a totally new story, areas to explore, and things to do. They added a ton of new items, special ammo, perks, and dynamics to the game. For example, if you played Fallout 3 you'll remember the "karma" system. If you did good things you gained karma, and if you did bad things you lost karma. Well, in New Vegas you have the karma system, as well as a rating for each individual group there is in the game (if you help the good guys, the bad guys start to hate you etc). There are many groups you can help or hurt. Each with their own ways to benefit you later.

Overall, I found this game to be just as addicting as most of the multiplayer games I play! If you liked Fallout 3, you'll like this!

Exceptions to the Sequel Rule?

Ok, so I know I've complained about games going down hill after the initial title. However, there are games that get better as they make new ones. My best example would be the Battlefield series. Remember the original Battlefield? Now compare that to Battlefield 2. Then compare that to Battlefield: Bad Company 2. They've made the game much better. Making more of a team effort kind of game. More so than Battlefield 2, because now you have certain classes with very specific jobs. Making a good squad unstoppable!

There are other games that are exceptions as well, but this is the best example I could think of. Feel free to mention some others!

Downfall of all great games..

     It may just be me... but I'm sick of seeing great games get ruined by large commercialization and the fact that all of the companies that make them are money hungry! It seems if a game comes out and it's an amazing hit, the company that made that game will for sure ruin it a sequal that simply puts the name to shame!

   Here's a couple examples of what I mean:
      Counter-Strike (a Half-Life mod), started out as an amazing hit created by some canadians with time on their hands. It was such a hit that Valve purchased the mod so that they could package and distribute it for their own profit. Not a bad idea at first. It brought the game to a lot of people that may not have ever heard of it otherwise. In fact, the company worked good with the game for a while, they regularly patched the game fixing bugs and fine-tuning the engine. They even adjusted the way each weapons recoil reacted after each patch, which added to replay value for long-term players as well as evening the playing field for newbies. However, when they made Counter-Strike: Source, everything changed. There was no more dynamic to the game-play. You could no longer master how your favorite weapon would fire, and therefore no matter how much you played it you were still just as good as the kid that just installed it...
     Another prime example is Modern Warfare. Now, I wont go into as much detail with this one since i've already said how i feel about it.. but basically you have a game that was way more of a hit than anybody could have guessed. I mean come on, they did it right, decent balance of weapons, the idea of  "perks", "kill streak rewards" and a variety of game modes to fit different people, or just the mood you're in that day! MW2 just got a little crazy.. Mainly with their crazy perks and kill streak rewards.. I can find some form of realism in almost every perk from MW.. however in MW2... well, you may try to fight it, but you will ALWAYS recieve fall damage.. and a tactical nuke that simply ends the game?! Lack of dedicated servers for me means a lot because i like playing on servers with tactical rules of engagement, which simply isn't an option anymore.

I could probably come up with more examples (L4D/L4D2), but maybe later...

Modern Warfare: Black Ops to be another flop?

So, everybody interested in the Modern Warfare fps games is looking forward to the upcoming Black Ops game. However, those of us that felt cheated with MW2 have to wonder if Activision has learned anything from their mistakes..or is this just gonna be another step down?