Phoar! Kick ass game of Bad Company 2 on…

Phoar! Kick ass game of Bad Company 2 on the Xbox 360 with a group of strangers, who all used their mics! It was great! We destroyed the other team while defending, holding them off on base 2 of Nelson Bay, and almost holding them off on the first base. They were down to 2 tickets and got Alpha by destroying the building!! Argh!

We had great times on Arica Harbour too. I took the second Alpha. Shot a guy point blank as he rounded the corner. CG into the garage door and set the bomb. A squad mate spawned on me and between us defended the crate until it blew up!

We were quite unlucky on Nelson Bay. We lost the first bravo quickly but held off the attackers until they were at 2 tickets. I changed to the Saiga and it rocked, but unfortunately they got the base by destroying the house. (I did the same to them on Arica Harbour!) We stopped them dead on the second Alpha. The shotgun proved it’s worth clearing out the crate time and again.

The final level was on Arica Harbour attacking, and we won again. I think we lost one game but I was placed on a great squad and it made a world of difference.

Oh, the people we played against hardly ever used tracer darts. When I was blowing Alpha 1 apart on Arica Harbour I was an easy target but not one dart to be seen. We were hit by a mortar strike and an AT rocket (survived both and repaired) but I wonder if the tracer dart is common knowledge among players?

Humble Bundle goes Open Source

The Humble Bundle of Indie games I mentioned before has raised over US$1m for the developers and charities involved. I read on Ars that the source code to several of the games will be open sourced. Doesn’t look World of Goo will follow suit but that game is available on Wiiware so it probably has proprietary extensions that might be too difficult to remove.

I’m not sure under what license each game will be released under but at least Lagaru is now GPLed which is a good thing IMO. I wonder if the original developer will attempt to monetize this in any way? That will make an interesting case study.

Steam for Mac launches

Steam launched for Mac this morning and I’ve just installed it, along with the 33MB update that downloaded as soon as I started the programme. They’re giving away Portal for free until May 24th. Thanks Alex for the heads up!

I’m downloading it even though I just got a window saying my system didn’t meet the minimum system requirements. Oddly enough it mentions “Windows driver version” so that might be just a bug. The download is very slow but it’s hit 75% so not long now. More later …

Mick and myself fairly rocked through se…

Mick and myself fairly rocked through several games tonight. We won some, lost others, had a great time and ruled in tanks and on foot.

Unfortunately the server disconnected in our last game, but I think the score remained (I leveled to 17, and I’m 21k points to 18 already!) but the dog tag I got from sneaking up behind an attacker is gone.

Our team made good use of tracers on Arica Harbour. I had one too but in one game we faced two tanks but I didn’t have to pull the tracer out. Others did the job and I locked on and fired. I think others are still getting the hang of it. We were traced in another game and yet rockets flew harmlessly past. Shame the server disconnected, we were having such a good time!

Earlier in the evening I booted up the Xbox to check if BC2 had been patched there and it appears it hasn’t. Field Operative was online though and I joined his squad after he sent me an invite. Unfortunately we were up against a very tough opposition on Nelson Bay. I joined after we took Alpha, then took Bravo. Got the second Bravo but the last Alpha was just a war of attrition which of course we lost. Too late we realized we should have flanked them. The game ended just as I got around the back of Alpha. 🙁

Later: Bah. I just checked the screenshots I took and noticed that I lost all the points earned in the last game. I had leveled up to 18 but I’m back to 17 now. I wouldn’t mind if I had done badly.

Mick blogged about the games too, concentrating on Valapariso which I had forgotten about but where we made great use of the tank and pushed hard attacking.

Killer Queen in the Opera House Cork

If you know me well, you may know I love the music of Queen. I never had the pleasure of seeing them live unfortunately but I’ve been to a number of Queen inspired events, Flash Harry played in Cobh a few years ago and there was Queen at the Ballet too. (Thanks Ken, Aisling, Proinnsias, Sinead!)

So I jumped at the chance to see Queen tribute band, Killer Queen when they played in the Opera House recently. They were good, some parts were great, and Brighton Rock was absolutely amazing even if I got the feeling some people in the audience didn’t know that song.

Killer Queen are a blast. The crowd loved them. Of the three performances I thought Flash Harry was the best but you’ll have a great time at Killer Queen too.

Continue reading “Killer Queen in the Opera House Cork”

Bad Company 2 Onslaught

Onslaught has just been announced. It’s a coop game for Battlefield Bad Company which sounds really interesting.

Onslaught is bringing co-op gameplay to Battlefield for the first time on console. The new game mode puts you and up to three friends against the enemy on Valparaiso, Atacama Desert, Isla Inocentes and Nelson Bay – redesigned with new lighting, time of day, added vehicles and other effects. Each map has a dedicated gameplay focus, requiring different levels of teamwork in order to complete the objectives against an onslaught of enemy AI. Vehicle warfare comes to the forefront in Atacama Desert while Nelson Bay focuses squarely on infantry assault. Players can compete in squads and check individual progress via the dedicated Onslaught leaderboards.


(The video is nothing special, 1/3 of it is company logos!)

The one fly in the ointment is that it won’t be free. If it gets good reviews and if my friends on PSN and Xbox Live want to buy it I’ll probably pick it up.

Unfortunately if you’re on PC, you’re out of luck due to the way they’ve deployed/designed their servers.

Bad Company 2 has been patched on consol…

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 Giveaway

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.

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