Netflix has come to the UK – read on to see what Sudogamer think about it. . .

Read the rest of this entry »

Dashing through Portal 2
An achievement on the way
Through the chambers we go
Laughing all the way
Bells on my new hat ring
Making my wallet light
What fun it is buy that thing
That I’ll never play tonight Read the rest of this entry »

It’s 1998, a friend of the family buys a new computer.  It’s a Time PC (remember them?).  I get a call to go round and help ‘set it up’ for them.  In the box with all the cables there’s the usual ‘Nero Burning Rom’ trial CD’s but with the graphics card came a free game.
It was Half Life.  I’d never heard of it – but as thanks (and because it was a PC for office use) I was given the CD to take home with me.

Fast forward 13 years.  I still think it has the best and most effective introduction to any video game to date.  Allow me to take you on my 16 minute journey as we plunge headfirst into the work of Black Mesa, Gordon Freeman and crowbars. Read the rest of this entry »

The new humble indie bundle has been released. .  For whatever you want to pay(!) you get Super Meat Boy, Shank, Jamestown, Bit.Trip Runner, and NightSky.   If you pay more than the average price (currently about $6)  you’ll also get Cave Story+ and Gratuitous Space Battles.

Read the rest of this entry »

Quake vrs Unreal, fifa vrs PES, Spy vrs Spy. For decades gamers have enjoyed arguing over games that are so similar yet very different to those who play and love them. Which is better? Unreal, Fifa and Spy of course!

But these days the debate has turned to the modern warfare shooters Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare are fighting the battle for gamers hearts and mind and both do excellent jobs at offering different yet similar experiences. Here myself and resident PC hipster Cheez will finally decide through intense debate which game is the greatest (hint: it’s MW3!)

Discuss.. Read the rest of this entry »

cheez writes:
I think I played every release of dizzy back in day, on my zx spectrum.  It was a joy to behold, listening to the analogue screeching as the game slowly crept to life from an dusty old cassette.  .  But here’s the thing, Dizzy is a tough game.  Rewarding, but tough.   The vague, non-tactile nature of the iTelephone  (or Android) phone touch screen  just isn’t going to lend themselves to a dizzy game.  Read on for a the teaser video for 2011 rehash (rescramble?) of Dizzy Prince Of The Yolk Folk!

Read the rest of this entry »

GOG.COM strikes again and releases Ultima VII.

elmurph writes:
Many years ago on a day trip to the big smoke of Galway I found an Ultima box set (Ultima Collection) that included all the first 8 Ultima games marked down to 14 punts, an Instabuy! I snapped it up and spent the rest of the day and the journey home enjoying the game manual, imagining the adventures ahead. Then disaster struck….boing! Read the rest of this entry »

If this recent wave of Lulzsec hacks has been the kick up the ass you’ve needed to change your passwords, we recommend Lastpass.

The recent hit on Battlefield Heroes took 50k user names and md5 hash passwords (which can be easily reversed).

In theory, we should all use ‘strong’, difficult-to-remember passwords, and different passwords for every site. Easy to say, difficult to do in practice, sometimes.

First watch the video from Lastpass makers demonstrating how it works:

The short version of LastPass’ safety and privacy setup, and its technology is that the only thing stored on LastPass’ servers is a heavily encrypted bundle of your passwords and the sites they belong to—a form of host-proof hosting. They don’t have the encryption key to your passwords (only you do), and the encryption and decrypting all takes place on your own computer, where a backup copy of LastPass’ records is always kept.

Perhaps it isn’t necessary for all sites / forums, but we recommend considering using a system like Lastpass to generate strong (and different) passwords for sites such as:

• ebay
• amazon
• steam
• paypal
• gmail (or other webmail service)
• facebook
• ebuyer

Basically, any site that might have your card details / personal info cached.

There’s even an app for use on most smartphone platform, too!  What are you waiting for – get Lasspass!

How to play Section 8: Prejudice

The goal of this game, in regards to Conquest, is to beat the other team to 1000 points. In order to do this, you need to capture and hold Control Points (CPs) and complete Dynamic Combat Missions (DCMs).

** Please note, this content for this guide was gathered from two sources; a Steam Forum poster Shrinkshooter, and also the official Section 8 prejudice forums.  As I add to it I will continue to credit the original sources of information as I add to it.

Control points

Control points are located in four spots throughout the map. In order to capture them, you need to get to the point and hack it (default “use” key) and wait for it to come under your control. More teammates hacking the CP with you does NOT equate to a faster hack, as most control games do; instead it offers only a layer of redundancy. If you are killed while hacking, but your teammate remains alive and is also hacking, the hacking continues uninterrupted.

Dynamic Combat Missions (DCMs)

DCMs activate based on the team’s points from completing feats (for example, finishing the machine gun killing feat, where you kill a certain amount of enemies without dying using the machine gun, will get you and your team +10 points). When enough of these points have accrued, a DCM, chosen based on the individual preferences of your teammates, will activate. It is then up to your team to complete the mission, which if successfully done will substantially increase your team score. The amount of score points given to your team depends on the DCM. The enemy team can also gain these points by stopping you from completing the missions. The points awarded for completing a mission and the points awarded from stopping the enemy from completing the same exact mission are different. Hit F4 to see how many points you will gain by finishing the mission (active DCMs shown in green) and how much the enemy team will gain by stopping you.

Control point defenses

Every control point has base defenses: usually one anti-personnel minigun, one anti-armor rocket turret, and one AA gun. If the base is neutral (start of the game), the AA gun will fire at anything in the sky within its reach: friendly and enemy players, called-in deployables, and any vehicle drops. The turrets will not shoot at anyone. If under enemy control, the base defenses will fire at anything friendly within range, and vice versa. Each base also has a supply depot where you can heal your armor and switch to a different loadout while on the ground. To circumvent these base defenses, you can use one of any variety of weapons to destroy them from a distance. AA firing range is shown as a red circle on your map before launch from orbit and on your minimap during launch. It is best to launch outside of these circles, and then move in to either hack the point or destroy the AA gun.
NOTE: A jamming beacon will block your presence entirely. If you fire a jamming beacon near you, turrets cannot detect you, allowing you to hack a control point even if completely surrounded by enemy deployable turrets. They will ignore you, and you will also not show up on the enemy’s tacnet (tactical network, sometimes referred to as the radar) even if an enemy spots you hacking.

–> Page 2: Burning in, points & money & your weapons

New gameplay video from ID’s RAGE looks nice, real nice, actually.  Particularly the driving at the start of the video, some nice lighting and physics on display.

However why do the AI of the enemies behave like they have done in all FPS’s from the past decade or so? – Its the same mannerisms and movement routines.  They hide behind and piece of scenary, and periodically bob their heads up or around giving you the chance to get your headshot.

Its boring!

I don’t pretend to understand the in’s and out’s of enemy AI in video game design, but it would be nice if they acted more unpredictably.  e.g. human players CAN play like that (cautious, slow, poking heads around corners etc) but a lot also like to ‘charge in’, often leading to death.
Mix it up a bit!

Anyway, here’s the video! :

Do you like shooters with sprinting? Are you partial to Jetpacks when you jump? Well the most sprinterly, jumpery and jetpacking shooter returns next month with the release of the sequel to two thousand and nine’s Section 8.

Section 8 Predjudice returns you to the action on May 4th at the unusally low price point of 15 American dollars. For this price you won’t just get Timegate Studios take on a multiplayer shooter but also a 5 hour single player game and a 4 player co-op swarm mode that promises elements of tower defence.

At this price hopefully more people will give it a shot as the first games unique take on the multiplayer shooter was up against it when it released as it was shortly before Modern Warfare 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U2gm0U5EUQ&feature=player_embedded

With the leaked release date of 2/11/11, Sudogamer asks – will battlefield 3 be that much different to bad company 2?   The trailer’s make it look so much like a ‘facelift’ of Bad Company 2, and Medal Of Honor (which was also a carbon copy of BC2, in its multiplayer).

We hope Bf3 will break this mould and bring the sense of scale, strategy and tension that Bf2 would bring in its hayday?  Check out the 3 ‘faultline’ videos below, and decide for yourself!

Battlefield 3 “Faultline” Episode 1:

Battlefield 3 “Faultline” Episode 2

Battlefield 3 “Faultline” Episode 3:

Films like games are great. We love em both here at Sudogamer but unfortunately when you mix the two you can have some seriously sad times. However here is a game that combines a classic movie trilogy (ahem) with point and click adventuring from the brains behind Sam & Max and Monkey Island. Luckily this potent mix isn’t powered by rubbish (garbage to our American listenership) and we have a beautiful digital copy of the the full series to give away, that’s right all five episodes!

To enter, all you need to do is:

• Follow us on twitter
• Tweet what you would do if you could travel in time. It doesn’t have to be gaming related and we will pick our favourite that makes us laugh, cry or Great Scott!
• Finally, use hashtags #ifihadadelorean #sudogamer so we can find your entry.

That’s it!
The closing date for this competition is 02/02/2011

And don’t worry. As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely 88mph the instant the lightning strikes the tower… everything will be fine.!

Update #2:

Try disabling shadows – this seems to give the greatest performance boost.

After picking this up last night and trying it for an hour, here are my first impressions;

Huge lag

This is probably due to launch-night strain on the servers, but still very disappointing.  Up to 2-3 freezes and a couple of disconnects.

Party Up?

Despite the mass opposition for non-dedicated servers, the IWnet matchmaking allowed for the following:

- Start a ‘party’ (2 or more players on your friends list)
- Join a server together
- and be on the same team  of said friends.

There doesn’t appear to be a way of doing this in Black Ops.

I can’t ‘host’ a game of zombies

In World At War, I could host a game of nazi zombies – invite a friend into the game and also allow other people to join my game, again its not clear if this possible.
If it isn’t, this is again pretty disappointing.

Haven’t played the single player though!

This is just a quick first impressions of the multi player modes, haven’t even loaded up the single player yet.

Watch this space for more further impressions.

Update:

- awful mouse lag navigating menus between rounds
- and why does it show that awful video after every single game of zombies and drop you straight back to the main menu?!   I’m sure you can replace the .bik with a blank one, but you shouldn’t have to.

Possible fixes?

For the on-line lag:
From a steam forum poster (not confirmed by me)

“Turn off steam overlay in game it worked for me. The game was unplayable now its fine.
EDIT : Steam > Settings > In Game > uncheck “Enable Steam Community In-Game”

Christmas is a great time of year for gaming, playing the Crysis snow levels while it snows outside or shivering alone while playing Cryostasis, the dark evenings and cold weather provide the perfect excuse to escape to a gaming wonderland. Halloween however is a different kettle of face gnawing, undead fish. Spending the scariest night of the year tucked up in the darkest corner of your house, all the lights switched off to avoid those pesky trick or treating kids can be the worst time to be a gamer as it is without doubt the scariest. Here at Sudogamer we love a good scare but we also love a good bargain so here are our recommendations for a Halloween Night Scareathon of gaming….dare you read on…

Read the rest of this entry »