https://twitter.com/#!/Bashiok/status/156215812473098240 [Twitter]

Version 4.6 update adds the following features:

• They Hunger Co-op: Episode 2
• A new boss monster: The Kingpin
• Many new and improved maps
• Greatly improved HLSP and Opposing Force storyline support
• Half-Life: Uplink co-op
• Lots of powerful new mapping features
• Tons of bug fixes and changes (e.g. Shock rifle secondary fire can now charge player HEV suits)
• AI improvements
• All-new custom sounds for the Bodyguard

There is a full change-log available here.

There are download links here.

Its quite refreshing to some Half-Life 1 mod teams still active after all these years.  This mod has provided me with countless hours of fun with its Co-Op game-play, in particular the varied custom maps whether its fighting hordes of monsters, solving puzzles, or the story driven scenarios.  I will be doing a full feature of this mod soon, as this is one of my most favorite mods and would definitely be nice to see new players.

Sven Co-op 4.6 RELEASED! [Sven-Coop]

For Non Core i7 (Core 2 Duos, i5s)

Go into your motherboard bios at boot-up and find a setting called HPET.  This setting is usually under power management settings.  Set HPET to disabled.

Battlefield 3 will now run smoothly with no stutters or various glitches.

For Core i7 computers and CPU that support Hyper-Threading (i7s, etc)

Go into your motherboard bios and disable hyperthreading, usually under CPU features. Set it to disable on all cores.

It seems that you do not need to disable HPET in this case.

Battlefield 3 should now run silky smooth with little performance difference.

For AMD computers, I do not know the specifics but if you disabled similar features that are equivalent, this should fix the issues. However, it seems that most ATI cards do not have this problem as long as you are using the latest drivers.

Let us know in the comments if this worked for you!

Update: DICE have patched the stuttering problem with the December Update (Back to Karkand).  Additionally, new Nvidia drivers have been released to address the stuttering further and fix graphic corruption.

Drivers: http://www.geforce.com/Drivers

96.242.154.6:27015 – CS:S

96.242.154.6:27017 – Obsidian

Please update accordingly! Thank you

We will find a solution for this in case this happens again!

We have a dyndns address now too, so no matter what you can use this address if you want to connect.

chenzen.dyndns.org:27015 – CS:S

chenzen.dyndns.org:27017 – Obsidian

Unfortunately I don’t have a Wii.  Fortunately at school, people have the original nintendo 64’s which we play super smash bros. religiously.  Or at least we used to.  We should do that again.  Definitely.

[Content via Nintendo]

Today we’re pleased to introduce the Pet Store for World of Warcraft, a new way for players to obtain in-game pets to join them on their adventures in Azeroth…

So apparently on Wednesday of this week, WoW opened up their new online Pet Store for official business.  Players can now buy in-game pets online through the Blizzard Store (surprise, surprise).  They decided to open with two exclusive pets that can only be bought through the Pet Store; Lil’ K.T. and the Pandaren Monk.  If you’re into WoW and you have some money to blow (other than on your subscription) on a friendly companion, I suggest you check it out.

[Pet Store]

[Content via Blizzard]

Tekken 6 Update Coming To Combat Online Lag [Kotaku]

You know that whole debacle about MW2 not having dedicated servers?  It just got even worse, with Infinity Ward confirming that there is a 18-player cap on the PC version online, which is is the same cap imposed on the console versions.

Seriously? This is horrible, dedicated servers and big servers are the staple of PC gaming, and Infinity Ward thinks it can set a new standard?  We’ll have to see.

Modern Warfare 2 PC Multiplayer Capped At 9v9 [Kotaku]

Doom Classic is finally now on the App Store, available for iPhone and iPod Touch.  Priced at a reasonable $6.99, the game boasts the following additions and improvements.

• Play the legendary first person shooter, DOOM, with an iPhone or iPod Touch. Fight through 36 missions in four action-packed episodes: Knee-Deep in the Dead,
• Shores of Hell, Inferno, and Thy Flesh Consumed.
• Experience DOOM multiplayer on your mobile device, including Deathmatch and Cooperative play for up to four players via wireless internet.
• Choose from three different control types and customize the interface to suit your style.
• Explore the depths of Mars while utilizing the topdown map to help you explore and save your game on the fly.
• Listen to the original soundtrack or disable it and use your own iPod music.

Doom Classic [iTunes App Store]

Two Valve universes collide, when you pre-order Left 4 Dead 2, which nets you a exclusive hat in Team Fortress 2. If that isn’t enough, the 10% off the price might be an incentive.  L4D2 will be available November 17th.

In addition, the L4D2 demo is live! In case you’re on the fence of buying it or not.

Pre-Order Giveaway Madness! [TF2 Blog]

Want to get Borderlands a little early and stay up a little late? …Basically, you now have only one excuse for not getting Borderlands tonight if you’re into the game and you’re in the US, and that is not wanting to go to GameStop and stand in line at midnight. Which is actually pretty reasonable.

So apparently Borderlands is releasing at a lot of Gamestops tonight at midnight.  I’ve actually been interested in this game recently and plan on playing the 4-player coop mode when I can get my hands on it.  Which might be unexpectedly soon.

[Contents via Joystiq]

Starting November 11th, all WoW players will be required to login using Battle.net accounts.   Makes sense as Blizzard is really trying to push the Battle.net 2.0 platform, finally getting rid of redundancy and consolidating everything into one account.

Looking at the features of Battle.net 2.0, it does look pretty awesome.

Full Story [via Joystiq]

It seems that the leaders of the L4D2 Boycott (Agent Chaos and Walking_Target) have decided that the goal of the group was accomplished and that the group no longer serves a purpose.

Agent Chaos has this to say on the matter,

The recently released Crash Course was just the start. Future updates will continue to roll in, and 4v4 matchmaking is first in line. Valve has confirmed to us that it’ll be available before the release of L4D2. Also don’t forget, we have another DLC pack confirmed for sometime in the near future and of course, there will be bug fixes. This is as good as it can get people.

The group is filled with trolls and spammers saying that they sold out to Valve.  Valve recently flown them to their HQs to preview Left 4 Dead 2 and talka bout concerns for the boycott.

L4D2 Boycotters End Boycott!! [via Hotbloodgaming]

Killing Floor Free DLC and Free Weekend Plans [via Bluesnews]

Yesterday a Chinese site had revealed what was apparently the last two campaigns in Left 4 Dead 2, those were “Hard Rain” and “Dead Center”.  This has now been confirmed by Xbox360Achievements.org who has the juicy details about new and otherwise rumored futures, like a defibrillator to revive teammates.  Check out the rest over at their site.

Full Story [via JoyStiq]

Check out the trailer below to see him in full action.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQOXFGF-YMc

This game has a lot of hype behind it, with the promise of billions of randomly generated weapons, massive environment with dynamic missions, and of course drop-in Co-Op play with many people.

OS: Windows XP/Vista
Processor: 2.4 Ghz or equivalent processor
Memory: 1GB System RAM (2GB recommended with Vista)
Graphics: 256mb video ram or better (GeForce 8 series or higher/Radeon R8xx series)
Hard Drive: 8 GB or more free space
Sound: Windows compatible sound card

Full Story [Shacknews]

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SJPeFNbhOs

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mutm-xm2akc

PC Digital Download Charts For The Week Ending September 26

Steam

1. Aion Collector’s Edition
2. Aion
3. Fallen Earth
4. Batman: Arkham Asylum
5. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
6. Left 4 Dead
7. Resident Evil 5
8. Counter-Strike
9. Star Wars Jedi Knight Collection
10. Red Faction: Guerrilla

Direct2Drive

1. Aion Collector’s Edition
2. Aion
3. Fallen Earth
4. Neverwinter Nights 2
5. Assassin’s Creed Director’s Cut
6. Titan Quest Bundle
7. Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir
8. Champions Online
9. BioShock
10. Star Wars: KOTOR

[via Shacknews]

Currently 3 out of the 8 new characters are confirmed whom are Deejay, T.Hawk, and Juri.

Owners of Street Fighter IV will also receive a bonus when they buy Super Street Fighter IV.

Full Story [ShackNews]

In addition to the new campaign, several new survival maps were added along with a few fixes.

• A new campaign, “Crash Course”, is now available for play in Campaign, Versus and Survival modes
• In Versus mode, all weapons, pills, health packs, molotovs, pipe bombs and other items will now be identical for the second round of a chapter
• Matchmaking has had several improvements to make finding and joining games even faster
• Ten all new “Crash Course” achievements have been added

Valve has also decided to sell Left 4 Dead 50% off until October 2nd, thats only $14.99.

Press Release [L4D Crash Course Blog]

His arsenal of weapons range from baseball bats, shopping carts, zombies and of course those Servbot masks.  Not sure if he has the mega man blaster though.

]]> http://chenzen.org/2009/09/24/tatsunoko-vs-capcom-now-with-dead-risings-frank-west/feed/ 0 http://chenzen.org/2009/09/22/x-box-live-arcade/ http://chenzen.org/2009/09/22/x-box-live-arcade/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:21:58 +0000 Jacob http://chenzen.org/?p=1379 So lately I’ve been pretty busy – this week especially since I’ve been sick, tests are coming up, and I’ve gotten a healthy dose of X-Box live gaming.  One of my housemates has moved his X-box 360 downstairs to the living room, where we have a 52” HDTV setup.  So I retrieved my gamertag and introduced them to the few games I actually own on X-box live.  These include Castle Crashers and Ikaruga.  Another one of my friends here has convinced me to buy Geometry Wars 2, which is also thoroughly awesome.  So let’s sum up what me and my housemates been playing for hours on end the past week.

What we first started playing a lot is Geometry Wars 2: Retro Evolved.  This game is fun by yourself, or with others.  You will find yourselves taking turns most of the time though, in single player since all anyone wants to do is try to beat the high scores that everyone else has posted.  The only controls involve the left analog to steer, the right analog to shoot, and the triggers for bombs.  There are 6 modes, which are more than enough to provide hours of competitive fun with.  Deadline, King, Evolved, Pacifist, Waves, and Sequence.  Each one is a very different style of play, but all of them require a mastery of the basic controls.  The game is easy enough to pick up and play, but becomes very hard once you start playing competitively.  Especially when you look at some of the top scores on the leaderboards.  They’re ridiculous.

I’m pretty everyone with an X-box live account should be familiar with Castle Crashers.  The game that was created by the same guys who created Newgrounds, this game is a side scrolling multiplayer platformer for tons of fon.  You and up to 3 other friends can play along.  You’re basically one of the characters you see above (there are more too, as well as unlockable ones).  You have a weapon to melee people with, magic attacks, pets that help with different things, and a few items.  The game is easy – you walk to the right and kill everything in your path.  It’s actually pretty challenging at some parts without the right preparation, but isn’t so much where it’s not fun.  As a few of my housemates have been showing me, it definitely has replay value as well; despite the fact they’ve already beaten it 3 times over, they want to keep playing.

And last but not least, is Ikaruga.  I’m sure every gamer has heard of this notorious one as well.  This one hasn’t been as popular with my housemates and that’s understandable.  Shoot-em ups appeal to a select crowd.  Especially ones of this caliber.  A top-down shooter where you’re a ship that can absorb orbs of the same color and get destroyed by ones of the opposite.  You can change the color orientation of your ship but clicking B, but this doesn’t make the game any less challenging.  I can’t say this is the hardest shoot-em up I’ve ever played (see Perfect Cherry Blossom on Insane), but it’s still pretty challenging.  Especially since I’m by no means a serious shmup gamer.

Kicking back with a few arcade style games for a week has actually been pretty nice.  Getting away from serious games such Batman, Resident Evil 5, and the like, has probably been pretty healthy for my gamer mentality.  Not to mention much more enjoyable with a lot of people around one system too.  Playing the games over the internet is a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong; but there’s something more personal about sitting next to the person you’re trying to destroy (or help out) on the screen.  Just my two cents at least.

* The game contains violence that is high in impact and is therefore unsuitable for persons aged under 18 to play.

* It notes that this violence is “inflicted upon ‘the Infected’ who are living humans infected with a rabies-like virus that causes them to act violently”.

* The report singles out the use of melee weapons as those that “inflict the most damage” and cause “copious amounts of blood spray and splatter (sic), decapitations and limb dismemberment.. or even cause intestines to spill from the wounds”.

* In conclusion, the Board finds that the “interactive nature of the game increases the overall impact of the frequent and intense depictions of violence. This coupled with the graphic depictions of blood and gore combine to create a playing impact which is high.”

* Interestingly, the report also reveals that it wasn’t a unanimous decision and that “a minority of the Board is of the opinion that the violence is strong in playing impact and therefore warrants an MA15+ classification” instead. However, the majority voted to refuse classification.

Kotaku Australia has contacted EA for comment and they have yet to respond.

Full Story [Kotaku]

So some things I have been planning to do are videos and LOTS of them.  To accomplish this, I have purchased a Hauppauge HD PVR.  This baby is an external capture card that does all the encoding in the device itself.  This means absolutely no overhead for your CPU as you’re busy playing the game.  Previously, I would use FRAPS to record game footage, while this worked for older titles such as Half-Life, Starcraft, and Quake, new titles won’t cut it.  Fraps would virtually make the game unplayable frame rate wise.  This of course can be avoided with a quad core processor but I don’t have the money for that.

I purchased the HD PVR for 200 dollars (some places have deals for $150) and I can say it was a great purchase.  Not only can it record your game console, it can also record your PC.

Here is a basic overview of the device:

• Built-in hardware H.264 high definition encoder, for high performance, high quality TV recordings
• Component video input from most high definition cable TV and satellite TV receivers. Optical or stereo audio inputs.
• Record high definition video at up to 1080i resolution, 720p or VGA/D1
• Record at datarates from 1Mbs to 13.5Mbs, constant and Variable Bit Rate
• Make Blu-ray format AVCHD recordings, so you can burn your TV recordings onto a standard DVD disk (up to 2 hours of video at 5MBits/sec) and playback on Blu-ray DVD players
• Includes HD software video player, so you can playback recordings to your PC screen
• Audio / Video component video loop through to allow HD recording and viewing at the same time
• High Performance Noise Reduction Function
• NTSC,PAL and SECAM Support
• IR receiver for remote control
• IR Blaster to change the TV channels in your set top box

It fits all my needs of a recording device, recording at 1080i up to 13.5Mbs, is very good in my book.  My Geforce GTX 260 has a HDTV out and with that I have a HDTV to component cable adapter so it is compatible with the HD PVR.

My setup is like this, I have the video card route to the HD PVR, then I have a audio splitter that splits audio from my sound card two ways, in one port I have a stereo to RCA splitter that then routes to the HD PVR audio in. Finally, the USB connection from my HD PVR connects to my MacBook where it stores the video information.

So with this, I am currently recording every game I play, making tutorials on PCSX2 and Dolphin and other things I have not though of yet, the possibilities are endless!

Stay tuned for forthcoming videos and another post about the Sanyo Xacti CG10 I bought as well.

Remember the full refund promised by a Wolfenstein developer if the game sold more than Madden? Well you can forget about that, NPD Group has released sales for Wolfenstein and revealed the game sold poorly.

Combined sales of Xbox, PS3 and PC and you get a total of 106,000 units.  Even with Wolfenstein’s relatively favorable reviews, those sales are complete crap and not looking good for Raven (which has also laid off people recently), and Activision.

Full Story [GameSpot]

Today, it was confirmed that Final Fantasy XIII will be released on that day according to the people at Kotaku.  Well, as you may have guessed, this is only for the Japanese release of the game.  Western fans (myself) will probably have to wait for some time before seeing it in 2010.

[Contents via Kotaku]

Not anymore, since Valve is now catching on to players who decide to do this.  They are removing all the items that were achieved through illegitimate means and giving everyone else who didn’t cheat a free hat!

If you still decide to use external applications, then Valve will take all your items away.

TF2 Blog [Valve]

Red Faction: Guerrilla due for PC on September 15th will have the ‘Demons of the Badlands’ DLC included, console pre-order bonus and a total of 8 new maps (2 exclusive to PC) from the forthcoming DLC.

Seems like this time around the PC version is getting good treatment, not to mention with a price tag of 39.99, this is a solid deal.

Full Story [Shacknews]

But enough of my thoughts – what do you think?

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4PMRFkx07g

Steam’s Top Ten (by Revenue) (8/23 – 8/29)

1. Left 4 Dead / Valve
2. Aion Collector’s Edition (pre-order) / NCsoft
3. THQ Collector Pack
4. Counter-Strike: Source / Valve
5. Killing Floor / Tripwire
6. Team Fortress 2 / Valve
7. The Orange Box / Valve
8. Fallout Collection (F1, F2, Fallout Tactics)
9. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare / Infinity Ward
10. Valve Complete Pack / Valve

Direct2Drive’s Top Ten (8/23 – 8/29)

1. Champions Online (pre-order) / Cryptic
2. Fallen Earth (pre-order) / Fallen Earth, Icarus Studios
3. Aion Collector’s Edition (pre-order) / NCSoft
4. Rise of Flight / neoqb
5. Fallout 3 / Bethesda Softworks
6. Hearts of Iron III / Paradox Interactive
7. Civilization 4: The Complete Edition / Firaxis
8. Call of Duty: World at War / Treyarch
9. The Sims 3 / The Sims Studio
10. The Witcher: Enhanced Edition – Director’s Cut / CD Projekt RED

Shadow Complex is a side-scroller with heavy influence from Metroid, and powered by Unreal Engine 3.  It looks great.