Bad Company 2 has been patched on consoles. I had a quick 10 minute game and shot down 2 Apache helicopters on Isla after placing a tracer on them and seriously damaged a Blackhawk.
Wow, this is game changing. The blackhawk pilot did have vehicle smoke (I know because he killed me as soon as I entered the game) but after I planted the tracer he didn’t try to remove it by firing the smoke.
The tracer isn’t quite fast enough that you can point at a moving vehicle and hit fire, you’ll have to lead it a bit but it’s much easier than before.
Edit – Mick has listed the changes by soldier class making it very easy to see what has changed in each.
World of Goo, an amazing game by 2D Boy is one of my favourite games of last year. I originally bought it as part of a Mac Heist bundle and played it on Mac and Linux. I haven’t finished it yet, I got stuck on one level and never got back to it but I will, one of these days! Don’t believe me that this game is amazing? Check out metacritic review!
Anyway, as you may have read I bought the games in the Humble Indie Bundle a few days ago. Included in that bundle was World of Goo. As luck would have it, the guys at 2D Boy emailed their customers to tell them about the new bundle so I replied that it was too late, I had already bought it. I asked if I could give away my second copy of World of Goo and a few hours later Ron replied in the affirmative!
So, how do you get World of Goo for free? It’s very simple really. Leave a comment on this post telling me about your first videogaming experience. How old you were, what computer or console was it, what game, the fond memories.
Closing date is Friday May 21st. That gives you 10 days. I’ll close this post to new comments then and pick a winner over the weekend, announcing the result in a new post on Sunday probably. I won’t email the winner so you’ll need to keep an eye on the blog, just in case you win! Leave another comment and I’ll get in touch.
I’ll set the ball rolling with my story. It was probably around 1980, or maybe a year or two before or after that when my dad brought home a new toy. It was a dedicated gaming console. It was cartridge based, and had 10 “sports” games on it. It had a version of pong on it, kinda like the game Wall-E plays. It had a skeet shooting game, one where a ball had to be guided through the spaces in vertical bars and more. The graphics were simple character blocks but it was so playable! It came with 2 paddles so my brothers and I could play against each other.
Unfortunately I don’t know what the machine was called. The cartridge was beige coloured, the case was beige and orange (AFAIR) and chrome surrounded the game selection buttons. The paddles were grey and slotted into the machine. Bonus points if anyone can dig up a photo of it!
I think it may eventually have been traded in for a Commodore Vic-20 but it might just as easily have ended up in a skip years later.
Bad Company 2 has not been patched yet, but I think the prospect of playing the patched game has attracted all the good players back. We had a tough time of it, but we fought well for the most part. The night is a blur and my eyes are crossed from the effort.
Thanks Mike, Dave and belatedly David, you joined us just as we lost defending on Isla. It’s amazing how fast that game ended since we had got them down to about 13 tickets on the first base. We played really well on the first base. Perhaps people quit and another squad joined the other team? Then again, as I raced for Alpha I took out one guy behind the fence, and noticed in amazement as our own team stared blankly ahead at the hill, totally ignoring the bomb on the crate! I got mowed down at the crate unfortunately and we lost the game.
I loved how we took Isla in the round before. Defenders had us pinned down on the hill. We were at 32 tickets, and Dave pushed forward and took Bravo. We supported him, I died but took an enemy or two with me, and then Mike lead the charge on Alpha, with smoke swirling around us. I think Dave set the charge and the rest of us kept the enemy off it. I stopped at least two defenders and possibly got a headshot over the cement barrier!
We were very lucky on Arica Harbour too. Mike, Dave and I were defending the last crate, Bravo (the upstairs one anyway) and doing a damn fine job of it when we were overrun. The enemy were down to 3 tickets. We all spawned, the siren for the bomb was already blaring, it looked hopeless but then we won! Close thing! The other team must have been fuming! 🙂
I followed Geoff’s advice in one confrontation. I spotted a guy, got a few rounds into him but he disappeared behind a wall and lobbed a grenade in after him. Kill!
Oh, Mike got called a noob for using the heavy MG in the town. I think he pissed off someone! We did tear up the other team though. I was on the stationary AT and took out a fair number of enemy, and spotted more to see them falling, over and over again as the MG took them out.
I just paid $40 for the Humble Indie Bundle. Half of the payment goes to charity and the rest to the developers. I already have World of Goo but I’ll be downloading the other games for Mac and Linux.
The awful thing is you could buy the bundle for $0.01 but people still steal the games and pay nothing! The mind boggles. (via)
Here’s a related article on the state of Linux and Mac gaming. I’m one of those gamers! 🙂
However, they haven’t yet taken the next step: once you’ve made a Mac version, indie games show that Linux users represent an additional 6% effective market share. Once you’ve created a Mac port and divorced your code from DirectX and other Windows dependencies, it’s not that difficult to port to Linux.
I unlocked the STG.77 AUG twice tonight. First time I was having a great game and got disconnected, losing all my score! Joined another game and thankfully had another great game, which MJ joined. Unlocked the AUG again and I like it!
I popped the FPS Freek on my PS3 controller as an experiment, upped the sensitivity so I’m not moving like a glacier any more and did quite well. I’m positive it was because of the players I was against but earned a positive KDR twice, and my aim did marginally improve. Could be that I’m playing at 8pm and not 10pm and the evening has been quiet so far so I’m nice and relaxed. Who knows?
Motion mines rock when you’ve just set the bomb on a crate in Bad Company 2. Just throw it in front of you and ding ding ding, you’ll see any incoming defenders. Worked a treat on a crate in Valparaiso!
I played a few rounds with strangers last night. I lost the first game and even though people on my squad used a mic, I could hear a female voice speaking loudly and the sounds of family life in the background the whole time. I quit, it was too distracting.
The next games were more interesting. We successfully defended Valparaiso on the first base, and I think won the next game too but the final few games were tough. I noticed my team was down to 10 men when the other team had 12, maybe someone switched? Anyway, we were overrun several times. The other team were well coordinated, with recon guys sighted on crate taking out us defenders with mortar strikes and potshots. It was a rout.
I suspect both teams relied too heavily on recons however. My squad got best squad in one game, despite losing. Shame nobody used their mics.
Still, I got 2 dog tags. I hid behind a tree while retreating on Laguna Presa. I heard the whoomp and saw the smoke from an assault guy and presently he walked right past me, unawares. Unaware until I snuck up behind him! Can’t remember the other one but that player got his revenge plenty of times as I watched him on killcam way too often …
Oh, leveled up to 17, unlocked a few weapons and gadgets (12 gauge slugs, improved demolitions, SV98 and assault 4x scope), won the “Elite Battlefield Knowledge” award for 5 gold stars, KDR increased by 0.02 but most other stats remained static.
Fire up Little Big Planet and search for Mario. One of the levels is the most amazing homage to the moustached plumber ever. But ssshh, don’t tell Nintendo!
Mixed bag of gaming last night, and the fact I was tired after a long day didn’t help. Started off getting slaughtered first and then joined another game where we did much better. I touched upon the games in my matchmaking post below.
Attacking on Isla I was shot by a sniper, from the mainland. Through the killcam I noticed he was accompanied by 2 others, sitting under a tree next to their tent. Luckily they were still there when I spawned, nearly scaring the **** out of Dave when I spawned behind him and forgot to tell him!
Anyway, Dave was on the road, so I doubled back. Going carefully down the hill I spotted my friends. They had a barbeque going too and the smell of roasting meat was something to behold! Rather than disturb their camping too much I elected not to shoot, but prepared to get my knife out. Three quick stabs and the barbeque had ended, the tent was in tatters and the wookies had decided to book into a hotel next time.
Later on another map someone on our squad managed to tracer the Blackhawk and it was a delight to see my CG round fly through the air and bring down that aircraft. Got 2 kills out of it too.
Or how to get a squad of highly skilled players into a game of Battlefield Bad Company 2 with newbies.
Bad Company 2 like Modern Warfare 2, Halo and practically every other online shooter have matchmaking systems to match players of similar abilities. If you follow a few easy steps you can take advantage of that.
In Bad Company 2 you can create a squad and invite your friends to play in a game. The game then uses a secret algorithm to match your squad up with a similarly talented team and opposition. Unfortunately I noticed when a high level player was on our squad I got trounced and came out of the games with a terrible KDR.
On the other hand, when I joined a low level player in his game, and we were joined by higher level players we stomped through the game for the most part.
So, it occurred to me last weekend that this could be used this to our advantage. Have a low level player join a game and then invite his team mates in. If you really wanted to cheat the system the low level player could then logout and login again as his real player (with a much higher level character of course.)
We inadvertently verified this last night. I fired up Bad Company 2 and found that Dave (evadlive) and Geoff were already online. I joined their game and proceeded to get pummeled by the other team. We were on different squads but before long David (bigpresh) joined me. I gave up after 2 games before asking bigpresh if he wanted to move on to a game that suited our skill levels. I sent evadlive a message saying I was going to look for another game.
I joined a new game, invited bigpresh in, and a few minutes later evadlive joined us, and invited Geoff in. We proceeded to have an easier game of it. Most of the other players in the game were less than level 10, and I don’t think anyone was more than level 16 or 17 (I’m level 15). On Isla, we successfully defended the first base. The other team took Alpha but got no further, although it was close. When we were attacking we won too. Made a nice change from the previous few games.
I don’t think the match making system in Bad Company 2 is based entirely on rank. The game has separate skill level and score per minute values. Thanks to my previous games those were likely suffering which, err, explains why we were placed with such low level players. 😉
So, there you have it. We were playing on PS3 which is due to be patched on Tuesday and includes some match making changes so it’s entirely possible that the game will attempt to stop “abuse” like this in the future, but short of stopping people joining a friend’s session it’d be very hard to stop this. I know that players are juggled around between rounds, but our squad always remained as it was.
As a related reference point, watch these three videos Geoff posted on his channel. He and 3 other skilled players created new accounts and, with only newbie weapons, fought and won several rounds of Squad Deathmatch. They won so decisively that most of the other teams left the game at one stage! I posted a comment suggesting they had been matched with other players who probably weren’t very good but Geoff replied that some of the games were tough, and involved level 40+ players. I’d venture to say those players joined the game after it had started, joining the session of a friend. Either that or they were really useless players to be matched against newbie recruits.
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