10 of the best multiplayer experiences

I just spotted a two page feature in GamesTM listing their top 10 multiplayer games:

  1. Mario Kart
  2. Bomberman
  3. Street Fighter
  4. Halo
  5. Micro Machines
  6. Battlefield
  7. Worms
  8. Pac-man Vs
  9. Team Fortress 2
  10. Starcraft

What? No Modern Warfare 2? Surely they jest!! OMG WTF!

Anyway, the list above reminded me I had the Orange Box for the Xbox, and included on that compilation is Team Fortress 2. Ihaveneverplayedit! Yes, I have never played it! I also only played Portal on my Macbook with frustrating teeth grinding slow results.

Will I play TF2? I’d like to but probably not unless someone volunteers to join me in a game.

Edit: I found this video of Team Fortress 2, uploaded earlier today so looks like an active community still!

How to get on a half decent team in Bad Company 2

If you’re Billy no-mates or all your online friends are offline you’ve probably noticed when you join a game of Bad Company 2 Rush that you’ll join a team getting demolished. It’ll more than likely be defending on Nelson Bay, but it could also be on Laguna Presa.

Sucks doesn’t it? I spent an hour one night trying to find a game that wasn’t about to finish in certain defeat. When I did get into a decently matched game I was too tired to do well!

So, what to do? Join a game on one of the other maps. I chose Arica Harbour and it’s worked out for me a few times. I joined decent teams who either did well, or were evenly matched with the opposition. ‘Course, it doesn’t always work out that way. 🙂

Have you ever tried this? Think back, when joining a game solo was there a greater number of crap teams on certain maps than others?

Insane few games with Mike, Conor and Ga…

Insane few games with Mike, Conor and Gavin tonight. I’m pretty sure we won every single game. It was one of those nights where I hung back and didn’t fight as aggressively as I usually do so I didn’t get that many kills, except in the last game. 19/11 was pretty good for me! The team we joined were really aggressive and played really well. So good in fact I was catching up with them all the time!

I only got one crate, 3rd Alpha on Valperaiso. The crate was lit and I remember Mike saying earlier to throw a grenade on it so I fired a 40mm grenade and boom! I got the crate! (Sorry to whoever armed it!)

I also got a cheeky smoke grenade kill! 🙂

My KDR has gone up to 0.80, looking at this page it’s my assault and engineer classes that are dragging everything else up. Win/Loss ratio has jumped from 1.42 to 1.53 tonight. Good games!

The least observant recon player

This is funny. He replenished the enemy recon player’s ammo, and he never noticed who helped him.

Reminds me of last night’s game. Under the bridge on Arica Harbour I was killed by 2 enemies so when I spawned I went searching. They had gone around the corner but I spotted an ammo crate so thinking it might be the enemy’s one I topped up. Sure enough, yer man comes around the corner and I get the drop on him! 🙂

Microsoft, this video of Natal Natal doe…

Microsoft, this video of Natal Natal does not convince me to buy your new upgrade. After an exhausting I will not be jumping up and down, swaying side to side in the living room.

Check out the comments on that post, many more funny cynical responses.

Oh, Natal is now called Kinect, not Kinetic. After seeing a dozen headlines with the new name I still searched Youtube for “kinetic” and wondered where all the coverage was. I wonder if that’ll be a marketing problem?

Mike, Muse and myself came across our fi…

Mike, Muse and myself came across our first boosting team in Bad Company 2 tonight (err last night, it’s after midnight.)

It was on Arica Harbour and we were decimating the other team. They got nowhere near us before we killed their vehicles or shot them down but a few players still managed to get 2500 points and more on the first stage. A few did get through eventually and took both crates. Most of our team were too far forward, but Mike and I did rush back but they got Alpha just as we got them.

That may explain why someone got -1660 points in the previous round. Wish I’d taken a snapshot of that..

Good games again finally (last few days have been atrocious!), my KDR went up to 0.79 (1.62 for tonight: 73/45), I got my 5th gold star on the AN-94, my first “7 kills with a sniper” pin, unlocked the 12x recon zoom and I’m level 25 now.

On Isla I took Alpha with the help of copious amounts of smoke, and then defending Mike positioned himself on a far off island, tagged the helicopters before they launched and each heli was taken down by up to 3 rockets! I got a nice double kill when a medic sneaked into Bravo. I had my gun on him and just as I fired another medic spawned on him! Got a nice double kill!
While at Bravo again an engineer got in, I emptied my clip in his direction and he did the same doing some serious damage to me but we were both out of ammo and right next to each other! I flicked to secondary and started to reload my tracer gun and with red blood all over my screen we danced around and around until I managed to knife him. Thanks klaustaler for the gold dog tags. Hell of a fight!

I think we beat them in that round on the first base! Amazing stuff.

Thanks Mike, Ian. Needed those good games after the really bad few games of the last few nights.

I fired up the PS3 last night to check i…

I fired up the PS3 last night to check if anyone was online. Bigpresh (Dave) was there and redd_dragons but I joined Dave in his session. He was playing conquest and I spawned on him, next to an empty tank. After my previous games with a shotgun I wanted to try out the NS2000 on assault. Anyway, an enemy hopped in the tank, but of course I had C4 so moments after spawning I got a tank and enemy kill!
I didn’t last too much longer though and we all left shortly after for a game of rush.

Unfortunately I don’t think we won any game of rush. I didn’t do too well with the NS2000 though I did get one or two one-shot-kills with it. I also got my revenge on a sniper by counter-sniping him with an M24 and a measly 4x scope. I eventually switched back to the almighty AN-94 and ended the game on 22 kills for 12 deaths, a KDR of 1.83. 23 kills with the AN-94! I got numerous pins including best player with a score of 2500 and my KDR is slowly going in the right direction, despite my experimenting with shotguns. It’s now 0.78. Win/Loss ratio is heading down though, at 1.44.

The other team were all over us. We were down to 6 players at one time, and the other team had about 9, though it ended with 8 vs 9 in the end. I’m slightly worried about the lack of players. It was getting late, about 10:30pm when I started playing, but there was a lot more online activity even a week or two ago.
Maybe EA/Dice are getting desperate for players?

Oh, I played the previous night with Mike, but I played so badly I just want to forget those games ever happened. Mike played a blinder though, over 5,000 points in one game. He was at the top of the leaderboard and I was at the bottom. *sob*

Buy your Bad Company 2 Kit!

This post on the Battlefield Blog reveals the cost of the Onslaught mode (around $10/€9) but also mentions they’ll be selling BC2 kits.

Avoid the drudgery of unlocking weapons! Just give EA some of your (or your parent’s) hard earned cash!

Also this month, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Kit Shortcuts will be available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for those players who don’t have time to spend levelling up to unlock all the kit specific items but still want to be competitive with those who have unlocked everything. The Kit Shortcuts will give you the unlocks available for kit each kit while still allowing you to progress through the ranking system as normal and will be available for 560 MS Points/$6.99 individually or if you want the whole bundle of kit shortcuts including the 7 available vehicle unlocks, 1600 MS Points on Xbox Live and $19.99/17.99€. The Kit Shortcuts will be available on Xbox Live Worldwide and European PlayStation Network from 16th June with the North American PlayStation Network having access to the shortcuts from 22nd June.

Next thing the Chinese gold farmers from WOW will descend on console games and do all the hard work of leveling up for us! more on reddit

Later! The Red Dragon has a good commentary on the new map mode pack and shares a good idea about what to do with the extra revenue from those who buy the "shortcuts".