August 04, 2005
Gamewag Ranked BF2 Server
Inspired by the guys over at Old Dudes with Guns, we've gone ahead and rented a ranked BF2 server for your enjoyment. We don't really have the time to participate in a real clan, but we do enjoy playing with people who like to work together and have fun.
If you're into TKing for planes and talking trash, stay away. If you're up for working as a team and respecting your fellow gamers, come join us!
Server name: Gamewag NYC Ranked
IP: 69.12.99.133
Here's the game-monitor.com entry.
Hope to see you there.
Posted by jb at 10:07 PM
April 18, 2005
VirTra out of ideas: seek inspiration from bad film
Whether you accept or reject "Never Say Never Again" as a true Bond film is beside the point. The Sun Herald has recently reported that VirTra Systems designers clearly watched the shock-inducing-world-domination-game scene too many times.
"If a player fails to kill an enemy in time and the enemy is able to shoot back, the simulator delivers a powerful electric shock through the player's hips. You definitely know you have been hit," Mr Haag said. "It has the same power as a stun gun. It knocks you down."
Err.. right, I really want my jimmy hooked up to a car battery while I play against a 12 year old with a wall hack and an aimbot. There are other areas of game development that I would like to see explored before entering the realm of, "How can I play a video game, and abuse myself at the same time?".
Mr Haag said it was only a matter of time and demand before the system could be sold to the public as a computer game.
Mr. Haag said, off the record, that by "matter of time" he meant decades from now when we're all so desensitized by mass media that an electrical charge is the only thing we can feel.
"Those who play on PCs would love a game that shot back", said David Wildgoose, editor of the game magazine PC Powerplay.
Thank you for speaking up for the game comunity David. Can we hook you up to a shock generator triggered by large 3rd party deposits to your bank account?
Posted by bradley at 01:26 PM
December 22, 2004
Forza Motorsport vs. Gran Turismo 4
Forza Motorsport is Microsoft's Xbox response to the upcoming (delayed) PS2 title Gran Turismo 4. I've heard claims of Forza being the Gran Turismo killer, which are often dismissed as ridiculous.
GT4 is without a doubt the king of the genre, and it would be a difficult feat to unseat it. I don't think Forza will outsell GT4. I do, however, think this could be an irrelevant comparison. If MS does 3 things right, I think we'll see people buying both titles instead of one vs. the other.
Here's what Microsoft needs to do:
1. Nail the realism. We know GT4 will have gobs of authenticity. Tracks, car appearances and handling are key. If the experience is realistic, and punishes those who drive like they're playing Need For Speed, it will provide a reward for improving their driving skills.
2. Implement Xbox Live just like Halo 2. If you haven't played Halo 2 on Live, you're missing out. I'm by no means an MS fan, but they have created the best online console gaming experience available. By far. If they adopt the same approach and attention to detail for Forza, you'll see flocks of people racing online. Gran Turismo will ship with no online component. This creates a huge gap, as the type of people who play games in this genre are the type that are itching to show others how good they are (See Live for Speed). Web-based statistics are another benefit of the tightly-integrated Halo 2 experience. Bungie.net lets players review their statistics in great detail, and even see how each game unfolded via overlaid map views. If they do the same for Forza (letting players review sector times, best laps, passes, etc.) they'll create a community of obsessive stats watchers.
3. Release new content regularly. Another huge advantage of the Live platform, the ability to make new cars and tracks available on a regular basis. This is something that is impossible on the mostly-offline PS2. Forza won't ship with nearly as many cars and tracks as GT4, but if they time new content releases well they can extend the life of the game indefinitely.
GT4's breadth of cars and tracks drawfs those of Forza. This is not necessarily a big disadvantage since it's all about the online experience. Being able to master a handful of cars and tracks makes the online component more competitive, as opposed to joining a race and never having seen a given track before.
If MS produces a visually appealing, solid racing experience and adds to it a the fantastic online piece, they will make irrelevant the success of Gran Turismo.
The official Forza Motorsport site 
Posted by jb at 09:50 AM
December 09, 2004
Nintendo ships more DS units, attacks Sony
For those of you who can't get your hands on a shiny new DS, and don't want to deal with the eBay markups, Nintendo has announced they'll be shipping 400,000 units to both the US and Japan before the end of the year. Nintendo has already sold an estimated 1.2 million of these bad boys.
At nearly the same time as the announcement, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata was quoted as saying "PSP has been created with the assumption that the golden success formula is still working. We don't believe that. We're making every effort so that people will say we were right."
Posted by jb at 06:22 PM
November 07, 2004
Halo 2 reviews are out
The restriction on Halo 2 reviews has ended, the result being you get to spend the next 90 minutes reading about how much people who are not you love Halo 2. It seems that everyone who's gotten a peek at the upcoming Bungie sequel is absolutely nuts about it.
Fantastic graphics, great storyline, solid Xbox Live implementation... we have a winner.
Update 8/11/04 - More reviews:
IGN (9.8)
Gamespy (5 out of 5)
Gamespot (9.4)
1UP (10)
Eurogamer (9)
G4 TechTV (4 out of 5)
GamePro (5 out of 5)
Team Xbox (9.9)
Daily Game (9.8)
Posted by jb at 07:02 PM
October 21, 2004
Yet another leak: GTA San Andreas
What the hell's going on? Hot on the heels of the Halo 2 leak, we find that the game that encourages you to steal, has been stolen itself. Already appearing on torrent sites, GTA: San Andreas has been leaked a week ahead of its release date.
This is crazy, in the past year we've seen pre-release copies of Half Life 2, DOOM III, Halo 2 and now this. Just about every major AAA title has suffered.
Posted by jb at 09:08 AM
October 14, 2004
Halo 2 leaked
A number of sources are reporting that a version of Halo 2 is making its way around the intarweb. Its a French, PAL version of the game and obviously won't work with Xbox Live (you'd need a modded Xbox to get this to work). Or, you could just wait a month and play the real deal.
A look at the torrent sites indicated that there is a binary being distributed. Uggh.
Having worked on large software projects, I really feel for the Bungie developers who've worked so hard only to see their big release spoiled by this.
Posted by jb at 09:22 AM
Adventure Gamers follow the hype
If you're into adventure gaming, you probably already know AdventureGamers.com. If you don't know it, let this be your chance to dig in. These folks are on top of the adventure gaming scene, so when they list the 10 games they're most looking forward to, we pay attention. Here's the first 5 on their Hype-O-Meter:
- Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
- Fahrenheit
- Still Life
- The Moment of Silence
- A Vampyre Story (previously covered here)
Posted by jb at 08:37 AM
October 12, 2004
Katamari Damacy
If you haven't heard about Katamari Damacy, you've managed to duck under the news blitz of one of the strangest games we've heard of this year. You: are a massive rolling ball of junk. Your Mission: collect more junk and grow larger. The Quest: Get Really Big.
Plenty more to read on this one, but I feel a strong need to end this blurb before I write a terrible pun involving, "a rolling stone..."
Posted by at 05:11 PM
October 08, 2004
DHTML Lemmings back (for awhile at least)
A brilliant piece of web development, DHTML Lemmings has made a few appearances only to be taken down for various infringements.
Well, it's back for awhile at least.
Posted by jb at 12:05 PM
September 29, 2004
DOOM III 1.1 patch available
A few notable changes:
- Fixed duplicate player names shutting down a server during map changes
- Made Alt-Gr (right alt) bindable separately for European versions. For english versions, right alt and left alt both bind as "alt" so that US users who currently have something bound to right alt don't have their config affected by the update
- Added mouse wheel scrolling to server list
- Fixed issue when switching between flashlight and previous weapon after using the PDA
- Bumped damage up on rocket jumping in multiplayer
- Fixed frags going negative when over 64. Maxfrags now at 100
- Fixed backpack secret exploit on d3dm5 "Lights Out"
NOTE: After upgrading, your single player saves will restart you at the beginning of the map you were playing.
Here's a link to the torrent on Filerush.
Posted by jb at 10:08 AM
September 28, 2004
Your chance to be in The Movies
It's a Lionhead-filled day here at Gamewag. Their upcoming title, The Movies, will let you choose from a number of pre-defined studios to run. Lionhead/Activision have launched a contest, in which they will select 3 fan-submitted studio logos to ship with the game.
"The best entrants, as judged by The Movies team, will be used in the final game, guaranteeing the winner immortality and smugness for all time, but note that even if you fail to be one of the lucky winners, you can still add your logos to the game at home and on your personal Movies homepage. So get creating and when you've got something you like, send it to us!"
The contest deadline is October 20th, so fire up Illustrator and get cracking!
Posted by jb at 10:17 AM
More Rag Doll Kung Fu Info
If you've heard of Rag Doll Kung Fu (the fantastic side project of Mark Healey from Lionhead), you can learn more and track development progress on the Rag Doll Kung Fu homepage.
Mark has made a load of progress in the past few months, with more to come. There have been a few new videos, screens and development updates posted recently. Go take a look.
Posted by jb at 10:04 AM
September 24, 2004
The next version of ATI's Catalyst drivers will know what you're playing
With the release of the Catalyst 4.10 drivers, ATI has added a feature called Catalyst AI. Catalyst AI, among other things, enables application detection and optimization. This means that the drivers will handle games differently to try and optimize performance.
As an example, with the release of DOOM III some clever folks figured out a way to significantly improve performance on ATI cards by tweaking some shader settings. What ATI is saying, is that they will take the initiative to figure out these optimizations and do them automatically.
This raises some interesting questions, as the types of things they are doing could cause problems when a) new game patches are released, b) new mods are created for a game that might conflict with these optimizations, etc. Of course this feature can be disabled, but it does present some interesting questions.
nVidia got into some trouble the last time they tried to do something like this.
Posted by jb at 08:29 AM
Recursive gaming is confusing
With the recent release of The Sims 2, it's now possible for your virtual life to be comsumed with the same addiction your real life is. In The Sims 2, characters can now spend their day playing The Sims 1.
What would really do it for me is if your Sim could play The Sims 2, in which your Sim's Sim could play The Sims 2, in which your Sim's Sim's Sim... Ok, I think that's enough.
Via boingboing.
Posted by jb at 07:59 AM
September 15, 2004
Snoop Dogg to host VGA Awards
Oh God.
Read
Posted by at 03:35 PM
Fall Game Previews
Via Gamespy, the lineup of the industry's best and brightest for fall have been announced. It's getting cold outside, and you weren't going to do that homework until tomorrow morning anyway, were you?
Half-Life 2 looks as though it will finally visit us. There are also some MMO's I'm interested in seeing. Yeah I said it, I'm interested in MMO's.
Posted by at 03:02 PM
September 09, 2004
MGS III Trailer Released
It's time for another installment of, "Solid Snake: Uber Cool Ninja Seal". Hideo Kojima is a master of his craft - breathing life into the dying genre of the linear, single player FPS. As with MGS II, we've got a film style trailer that serves to make the game intriguing, and also make us feel as though there's a huge backstory that we could understand more about if we played the previous games (this is not the case).
While I love that Snake sounds like Toshiro Mifune, I have the disadvantage that I don't speak Japanese. I don't know if it would make the trailer better or worse.
Posted by at 10:59 AM
August 25, 2004
Nielson knows where you camp
Nielson has decided it wants to move into the game space. They are taking the approach of trying to quantify how many ads a player encounters in-game, much like their longtime service of tracking TV ratings and commercial impressions.
It seems to me that there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here. The data that Nielson could collect early on wouldn't be that useful, as in-game advertising is hardly a major force at the moment. However, it's unlikely that this type of advertising will gain popularity until it can be proven that there is a return on the investment for those who wish to advertise.
Posted by jb at 10:40 AM
August 22, 2004
Gametrak wins best of GC
At the Games Convention in Leipzig, the Gametrak controller was awarded the Best of GC prize. The Gametrak is an interesting idea, and should lead to some novel game designs.
The Gametrack consists of a pair of gloves, with wires attached to each leading straight down to the base unit. Using mild tension on the wires, the unit can calculate the angle, position and velocity of each of the player's hands. The first game to be released is a first-person fighter called Dark Wind, with a golf game coming soon.
Posted by jb at 08:47 PM
The ilovebees nonesense moves into the physical world
The latest countdown on the ilovebees.com site will end Tuesday August 24th. The site now has a list of GPS coordinates and times. Here's a map of the coordinates. And here are some discussions.
Where is this headed?
Posted by jb at 06:00 PM
August 18, 2004
Battlefield Vietnam WWII mod this week
The previously mentioned WWII mod for BFV will be released by EA and DICE this Friday.
Here are the features:
- Three Pacific Theatre maps: Iwo Jima, Wake Island and Invasion of the Philippines.
- Improved player customization using the Battlefield Vietnam-style kit, body and head selection interface.
- Flamethrower kits can be picked up by any soldier and used to wreak havoc on bunkers and exposed infantry.
- All Battlefield weapons and vehicles from the Pacific Theatre have been rebuilt to take advantage of the Battlefield Vietnam engine.
- New animations for all kit weapons, to bring them up to the standards set with the Vietnam-era weapons in BFV.
- Battlefield Vietnam gameplay tweaks: 3D Map, capture timer, and use of kit weapons from open positions.
Posted by jb at 02:20 PM
August 17, 2004
Sixteen player Mario Kart
Via kottke.org.
The Ann Arbor District Library is organizing a once a month Mario Kart Double Dash tournament. They've rigged eight Gamecubes together to allow 16 players to compete simultaneously. The video feeds are pulled together for broadcast on a central screen.
Man, if I had this in college it would've taken me another 5 years to get out of there.
Posted by jb at 10:22 PM
Counter-Strike Source review
Now that Counter-Strike Source has seen the light of day, the folks at Gotfrag have provided a detailed hands-on review.
A few notes.
- The physics updates make a real improvement to gameplay. Gotgrag notes that it may be possible for savvy players to get information by seeing how bodies are arranged, and thus make assumptions about how they died.
- Users of the AWP may loose their "green whore" moniker, as it seems it's actually useful for something besides camping.
- Flashbangs have a significant impact on both vision and hearing, and really disorients those affected by it.
- Smoke grenades now produce a black haze, and really make vision difficult by adjusting the brightness of your surroundings.
Overall impressions are that Source is an improvement over CS 1.6, and should continue to keep CS as one of the top skill games around.
Posted by jb at 01:09 PM
August 16, 2004
John Carmack 2.0
Not game related, but the quote from Mr. Carmack justifies the entry. In the Armadillo Aerospace news item, John announces the birth of his son. The following quote is pure Carmack.
"Much to our surprise, my fair-and-pasty genes somehow put one over on Anna’s Asian genes, and the little guy has blond hair. I have never been much of a baby admirer, but through the miracle of subjective observation, he looks rather cute to me. Except when he grimaces and stretches his neck, in which case he looks like Gollum..."
Posted by jb at 06:57 PM
Pirates! and Evil Genius shipping soon
Earlier this summer, in our Gamewag Wishlist we mentioned Sid Meier's Pirates! and Evil Genius as two promising upcoming titles.
It's been announced that Pirates! will be available for the PC in November, and for the Xbox in the spring of 2005. The Xbox port will be Live-enabled and support HDTV resolutions.
Vivendi has confirmed an October 1 release date for their camp, 1960s spy game Evil Genius.
Posted by jb at 09:07 AM
Location-based games
Via The Ludologist. Here's a list of location-based games (Urban Mobile Games) that allow you to get outside to do your gaming. Some of our favorites:
(Note: for some strange reason, the URLs are all plaintext, forcing you to copy-paste. Uggh.)
Posted by jb at 08:52 AM
What can you do with a GBA linker?
Quite a bit. Curmudgeon Gamer takes a look at the Flash 2 Advance Ultra 512mb Linker for GBA, and the possible uses for it.
- Play homebrew GBA games
- Run your favorite NES roms on the PocketNES emulator
- Copy several of your favorite GBA roms onto a single cart
- All kinds of illegal things
The world of the GBA linker is a shady one. I went to a local NYC retro-gaming store and asked if they carry linkers. After clarifying that I was not just looking for a GBA cable, they proprietor wanted to know exactly what I needed a linker for. After convincing him I didn't intend to physically harm anyone with it, nor was I a law enforcement officer, he complied and showed my his... err.. wares.
Posted by jb at 08:38 AM
August 13, 2004
Teamwork in the Tropics
A mod that allows for cooperative play for Far Cry has been released. The mod allows up to 3 players to play the single-player levels. Each player can select a unique skin to simplify identification. Friendly fire can be enabled or disabled depending on how well you trust your friends.
Posted by jb at 12:44 PM
August 12, 2004
QuakeCon gets rolling
Just an FYI that QuakeCon is currently underway. According the official schedule, Thursday was mostly a bunch of talking and partying.
The real fun starts Friday at 9:00 with a QuakeJam, followed by tournaments all day Saturday.
Next year I'm getting a chopper and making my way down there via New Orleans. Oh, I've got a helmet...
Posted by jb at 11:15 PM
August 11, 2004
John Carmack knows A LOT more than you
And so do a lot of folks over at Beyond3D. And at ATI.
This past Sunday on the Beyond3D forums, an ATI engineer named Humus posted a process by which DOOM III players using ATI cards could speed up performance by 40%. He did this by digging into the D3 shader files, and found a significant inefficiency with regards to newer ATI cards. By making 2 small changes to said shaders, he made John Carmack look a little silly.
However, Beyond3D followed the thread by interviewing Mr. Carmack himself. His response indicates that he didn't expect development to go so long, and therefore underestimated the cards that would be available at the time of release. It seems that the compromise was overall better performance on all cards, vs. significant increases on modern cards.
The interview is pretty tough to read (this particular topic is covered on page deux). I had to read the original thread to get an idea of what he was really talking about.
Posted by jb at 09:24 PM
It looks like you're trying to save the princess.
The good folks over at Fark have posted the voting results for a photoshop contest with the theme, "What if Nintendo was owned by Microsoft".
Results range from funny to desperate, but there are a few keepers:
"The Operation Failed. Maybe try blowing on it or something."
"Thank you Mario, but an exception has failed at world 1-4..."
"It looks like you have a sword. Would you like help defeating the Moblin?"
Posted by at 01:47 PM
August 10, 2004
Getting excited about Fable
4tomsm4sher over at _render_ has posted some info on the much anticipated Fable RPG for the Xbox. He links to a nice preview and some videos, over which you may commence drooling.
Fable, formerly known as "Project Ego" is expected to ship September 14th in the US.
Posted by jb at 04:52 PM
CS: Source update
Some Counter-Strike: Source tidbits.
- Dust will support 20 players per side (I'm assuming the Source version of this map will be larger, as I can't imagine 40 players on the old Dust)
- The beta will be available Wednesday at cyber cafes that are members of the Valve Cyber Cafe Program. You can look here for a list of cafes. (you'll probably find their owners are disfigured from the Valve arm twisting...)
- Later this month, the beta will be available to Condition Zero owners
We here at Gamewag got tired of CS about 2 years ago, but the new engine will probably spark a renewed interest. I've lost my HL CD and CD key about 3 times now, so I guess I'll be making a donation to Valve yet again.
Posted by jb at 02:58 PM
August 09, 2004
Hello Kitty DOOM III hack
Want to soften the DOOM III experience a bit? Maybe give it a little Japanese schoolgirl flair? Well, here is your hack. Some folks have replaced the default flashlight TGA with Hello Kitty, Batman and more.
Warning: the site is getting slashdotted and boing-boing'd simultaneously.
Posted by jb at 10:00 AM
Canned fear
After a few hours of playing DOOM III, I began to tire of the things that made the game interesting at the start. In the first few levels, I would get freaked out upon hearing a noise behind me. After awhile, it became obvious that events were being triggered whenever certain points in the level were reached. This scripting, once terrifying, became routine, nay, annoying.
game girl advance has written a nice piece on this very subject, outlining the pitfalls that come with over using scripted events.
Posted by jb at 09:52 AM
August 07, 2004
Make Something Unreal 3rd round winners announced
Epic has announced the 3rd round winners of the Make Something Unreal contest. The winners are grouped into 11 categories:
- Best first-person shooter (FPS) – Red Orchestra
- Best non-FPS – Alien Swarm
- Best Level – CTF-CBP2-Pistola
- Best Level With Original Contest – DM-CPB2-KillyBilly Barn
- Best Mutator – Unreal4Ever MSU Edition
- Best Model – MonstAr
- Best Voice Pack (or Audio Modification) – Alien Swarm
- Best Vehicle – Clone Bandits
- Best Tool – Ushock
- Best Game Type – Jailbreak 2004
- Best Use of Karma Physics – Unwheel
Posted by jb at 11:56 AM
August 06, 2004
EVO2K4 shows how gaming stars are born
EVO2K4 is the 2004 edition of a three-day tournament of fighting games for the PS2, Xbox and Dreamcast.
In the Street Fighter 3 finals, Daigo "The Beast" Umehara battled Justin Wong, and a wonderful gaming moment was captured on video.
In many fighting games there is the concept of parrying. This essentially allows a fighter to block and nullify an attack by another fighter, and also allows the defending fighter to counter-attack. It's often a difficult thing to do, and requires very precise timing.
About halfway through the video, you'll see Daigo's character (the male dressed in white) get attacked with a "super" (big, repeated attack). He parries each hit in the attack (looks like a block with a blue flash), which is incredibly difficult to do, and comes back to win.
The crowd goes absolutely wild (turn your sound on).
Here is a link to the zipped video (may be slashdotted, in which case let us know and we'll mirror it). This is a must-see.
You can also read the ensuing discussion.
Posted by jb at 12:38 PM
GTR at Spa
SimBin is currently developing a much-anticipated racing sim called GTR. GTR is "The Official FIA GT Racing Game", and has been lauded for its realism and fantastic graphics.
This past weekend, the SimBin folks were at Spa-Franchorchamps (a track in Belgium with a deep racing history) for the FIA GT race. They had their "Get Real" bank of GTR racing simulators setup for folks to experience what it's like out on the track. Over at Race Sim Central, you can view videos and pictures of the event.
My favorite video is of Henrik Roos (who drives a Viper in the GT series) giving the sim a run.
You can watch some videos of the event, read a write-up or download the GTR beta.
Posted by jb at 11:59 AM
Duct Tape mod for DOOM III
Well, that didn't take long. One of the biggest complaints about DOOM III is that despite taking place in the distant future, there doesn't seem to be any technology available for mounting a flashlight to your weapon. This results in doing a whole lot of switching between the two.
Glen 'FrenZon' Murphy has written a Duct Tape mod that allows you to use both a weapon and flashlight at the same time.
Posted by jb at 10:58 AM
August 05, 2004
Myst IV: Revelation site live
Via gamegossip.com. Ubisoft has replaced their Myst IV teaser site with the full deal. The web site takes the same form as the Myst games, forcing you to click around to discover the site areas. There are also some puzzles built into this experience. Warning: very Flash intensive.
Posted by jb at 02:35 PM
The Internet Archive video games collection opens
Via bluesnews. The Internet Archive, which is attempting to archive all things digital, has opened their video games section.
The archive initially has machinima videos, speed run videos, game previews, press kits and discontinued games.
Posted by jb at 02:24 PM
Playing the new WarioWare game will draw stares
Finally, a game built for people who suffer from the "Nintendo lean" (whereby the player thinks that physically leaning to the side will somehow influence game control).
The new GBA game, titled Spinning WarioWare Inc., will take advantage of an attached sensor that detects movement of the device, which translates into player control. The D-pad is not used at all for this title.
The game will have over 200 minigames and over 100 bonus games. No availability details as of yet.
Posted by jb at 01:24 PM
Carmack: Quake 3 open source by end of this year
John Carmack posted on Slashdot that the Quake 3 engine source code will be available by the end of the year. This is in line with their current strategy of making older game engines available to the open source community. The creative assets are not usually released as such, just the engine.
"By the end of the year. There are still a lot of higher priority things, but it is coming soon.
Hopefully punkbuster will keep the source release from having any negative impact on the player community.
John Carmack"
This is a great tradition at id; which allows young game developers to learn from the experiences of the experts in the field. I wish more development houses would do the same.
Via boingboing.net
Posted by jb at 10:36 AM
Play the old Infocom games online
This is an old gem, but worth bringing up again. Elsewhere.org allows you to play any of the old Infocom text-based adventure games (and more) via telnet. You can even save games in progress. There are 39 titles to choose from, here are a few:
- Adventure
- Bureaucracy
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Journey
- Leather Goddesses of Phobos
- Planetfall
- Sorcer
- Trinity
- Wishbringer
- Zork 1
- Zork 2
- Zork 3
- Zork: The Undiscovered Underground
- Zork Zero
Don't get eaten by a Grue.
Posted by jb at 09:12 AM
August 04, 2004
Manhunt critics silenced?
Some updated news on the murder case involving Rockstar Games' Manhunt. It seems that many of the news organizations covering this are focused on proving that playing violent games leads to violent behavior. What they've been ignoring is that evidence has indicated that 1) the motive seems to have been robbery to 2) pay back a drug-related debt and 3) it was the victim that owned Manhunt, not the accused.
Posted by jb at 02:54 PM
NWN 2 announced
According to Gamespy, Neverwinter Nights is the 6th-most active online game. I've got a feeling that it will lose at least 1 place in the coming weeks.
Today, it was announced that this popular RPG will see version 2 in 2006, released for the PC.
"BioWare and Atari created an immense community of players attracted by both the immersion of an interactive gaming experience and the ability to create their own pen-and-paper styled modules. Neverwinter Nights changed the very nature of roleplaying games," said Feargus Urquhart, Obsidian Entertainment's CEO. "With Neverwinter Nights 2, we're going to take that incredible experience to the next level by combining a huge new single-player game with deep character development and many new upgrades and enhancements to the already powerful BioWare Aurora Toolset for the modding community."
Now with 20% more particle effects!
Posted by jb at 02:20 PM
August 03, 2004
The history of Habitat and Lucasfilm Games
Habitat was a Lucasfilm Games and QuantumLink (now AOL) joint project that could arguably be called the first MMORPG. Chip Morningstar was there in the beginning, and was responsible for much of the design and architecture of Habitat. He's written a great article discussing how Habitat came to fruition, and what things were like for Lucasfilm Games in the very beginning.
"Because of the phenomenal success of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, Lucasfilm existed in a weird kind of bubble that made it very different from other companies, especially companies in the computer games industry. Most of this weirdness had to do with money, or expectations about money. The basic attitude can be summed up as, "we are Lucasfilm, people will pay us." The fundamental business concept of making an investment in expectation of a future return was not part of the general mindset. The expectation rather was that people would pay us to do things, and then we would take a share of the profits of whatever resulted. In other words, we wanted a cut of the proceeds but were not interested in sharing any of the risk. This attitude is a luxury most business people would love to have, but quite correctly recognize for the fantasy that it is."
If you're interested in the game design side of things, there's a great, often cited paper titled The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat written by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer.
Via /.
Posted by jb at 11:42 PM
Massively Multiplayer Online Forklift Racing
Sega has announced it is creating an online version of Shenmue for the PC. This is the first step in an effort to gain a foothold in the Chinese online gaming market.
My favorite part of Shenmue was driving the forklift to make money. I would have been happy to just report to work every day and ignore that pesky plot. Well, okay, I liked playing Space Harrier and Hang-On too.
In addition to Shenmue, Sega plans to release Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst and CTRacer to Chinese gamers. However, I have been informed that neither of these games have forklifts.
Posted by jb at 08:51 AM
August 02, 2004
DOOM III leaked (barely)
The BBC is reporting that DOOM 3 is floating around the warez scene. Granted it can only be considered a "leak" for one day, so it's not really that newsworthy. The article also magically decides that it's been downloaded over 50,000 times.
Posted by jb at 05:21 PM
August 01, 2004
The Swedes conquer the world
Not that there was any question, given that the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) Summer '04 Counter-Strike finals consisted of two teams from Sweden.
EYE was crowned the CS world champions after crushing SK 7-5 in the first half, and 6-0 in the second. There was some drama, however, as one match was interrupted when a cameraman accidentally unplugged the router.
Head over to Gotfrag for news, interviews and videos from the tournament.
Posted by jb at 11:05 PM
'Twas the night before DOOM
"And then, in a corner, I heard a terrible howl,
Out came a Hell Knight who had been on the prowl.
As I drew out my shotgun, and was turning around,
Down from the ceiling spiders came with a bound."
In case it slipped by you, DOOM III is available tomorrow Tuesday. Follow the link for some holiday cheer.
Posted by jb at 10:12 PM
July 30, 2004
Outrun 2 coming to your Xbox in October
Oooh! Oooh! You can have your DOOM III, Outrun 2 is what I'm drooling over. Microsoft has released some details about the upcoming racer. With a few Ferraris and 15+ tracks, this should be a blast. The kicker? Xbox Live support.
The official Xbox Outrun 2 site has some nice screens and a video.
Posted by jb at 03:53 PM
History of Papyrus Racing Games
Before being shut down by Vivendi this past May, Papyrus was known for producing top-notch, realistic racing sims. Founded in 1987, Papyrus went on to produce the following:
- Indianapolis 500: The Simulation (1989)
- IndyCar Racing (1993)
- NASCAR Racing (1994)
- IncyCar Racing II (1995)
- NASCAR Racing 2 (1996)
- Grand Prix Legends (1998)
- NASCAR Legends (1998)
- NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition
- NASCAR Racing 3 (2000)
- NASCAR Racing 4 (2001)
- NASCAR Racing 2002 Season
- NASCAR Racing 2003 Season
Gamespot has created a nice look back at the history of Papyrus Racing, it's worth a look. You might also want to take a look at our post regarding the possible rebirth of Papyrus games.
Posted by jb at 10:50 AM
USB classic controllers
Via insert credit. RetroZone sells your favorite classic controllers in USB form, ready for some hot emulator action. They have NES, SNES, Genesis, Atari 2600, NES Advantage and SNES Advantage versions currently available. If you're feeling frisky, they also sell a RetroKit so you can convert your own.
Posted by jb at 09:38 AM
July 28, 2004
Nintendo DS final design
Nintendo has revealed their final design for the DS handheld unit. (heh, handheld unit..) Also, they've announced that the name will in fact be the DS.
Definitely a sleeker look than the prototypes seen previously. The DS should be available in North America, Japan and Europe early next year.
Posted by jb at 11:08 PM
Battlefield Vietnam patch 1.1 released
After the previously-mentioned delay, EA has released the 1.1 patch for Battlefield Vietnam.
- New map: Defense of Con Thien which features 3 new vehicles (OH-6 Loach scout chopper, Ka-25 attack chopper, stationary M60 emplacements)
- MapVote/KickVote/Buddy GUI from BF1942
- Server IP and name now appear on Tab screen
- Server favorites now in server list screen (finally!)
- 3D map now shows friendly mines, traps, explosives, ammo and medicine boxes
- Choppers now have a flight ceiling
- Many other fixes
Posted by jb at 10:55 PM
July 27, 2004
Playstation 3 to use OpenGL?
There is a rumor going around that Sony is may use OpenGL for PS3 game development. Much of this rumor is based on the fact that Sony recently joined the Khronos Group which is dedicated to delivering non-royalty APIs such as OpenGL, OpenML and OpenVG.
If true, this will be a major, and much needed, boost to the OpenGL community.
Posted by jb at 11:14 AM
July 26, 2004
Adventure game revival
Some of my fondest gaming memories involve random clicking and princess saving. I grew up on Roberta William's brilliant King's Quest and LucasArts' Monkey Island, and I miss the old-school adventure genre. I want my Guybrush Threepwood!
Well, it seems that some ex-LucasArts folks have decided that adventure gaming needs a revival. Forming Autumn Moon, these talented developers are working on a project titled A Vampyre Story, and it sounds fantastic. They're still looking for a publisher, and completion is a long way away.
"You have heard of starving artists, right? They starve because they have to do what they love, market be damned. Well fortunately we love adventure games and they do sell, so we won't starve. But we create them not to get rich; we create them because we love it. Adventure games are an art form, very much like films and literature. But the great thing about them is that the viewer, or the audience, is the protagonist. The creators of these games still use all the time-tested techniques and conventions pioneered in the filmmaking, illustration and story-telling professions. We feel it is a natural next step in the evolution of story-telling."
You can also read about The Vampyre Story in the June edition of The Inventory.
Posted by jb at 05:30 PM
The never-ending train of DOOM III details continues
Although I suppose we could stop posting them, but that wouldn't be much fun either. From Robert Duffy's .plan:
Image fidelity is dependent on what quality level we load the textures at.
In Ultra quality, we load each texture; diffuse, specular, normal map at full resolution with no compression. In a typical DOOM 3 level, this can hover around a whopping 500MB of texture data. This will run on current hardware but obviously we cannot fit 500MB of texture data onto a 256MB card and the amount of texture data referenced in a give scene per frame ( 60 times a second ) can easily be 50MB+. This can cause some choppiness as a lot of memory bandwidth is being consumed. It does however look fantastic :-) and it is certainly playable on high end systems but due to the hitching that can occur we chose to require a 512MB Video card before setting this automatically.
High quality uses compression ( DXT1,3,5 ) for specular and diffuse and no compression for normal maps. This looks very very close to Ultra quality but the compression does cause some loss. This is the quality that for instance the PC Gamer review was played in.
Medium quality uses compression for specular, diffuse, and normal maps. This still looks really really good but compressing the normal maps can produce a few artifacts especially on hard angled or round edges. This level gets us comfortably onto 128MB video cards.
Low quality does everything medium quality does but it also downsizes textures over 512x512 and we downsize specular maps to 64x64 in this mode as well. This fits us onto a 64MB video card.
Posted by jb at 05:15 PM
Counter-Strike Source impressions
Via Bluesnews. The kids over at Half-Life Radio recently received a glimpse at CS:Source, and were impressed.
"With the wild popularity of the original CS, and the high expectations of it’s devout followers, this game must deliver. And from what I saw, deliver it does. You will not be disappointed."
Posted by jb at 05:09 PM
Professional gaming is hard
K5 has an interesting article about the current state of professional gaming in the US. The author points out 2 significant reasons why the sport is failing:
- Lack of a proper competitive platform (eg. the game changes and everyone's screwed)
- Games aren't made for competition play
It seems to us that these two problems are closely joined, and probably could be solved through some type of game studio/organizing body joint effort.
The bottom line is that unless you live in Korea, there's not much reality in the world of professional gaming. And here we thought it was all about non-stop parties, loads of cash, free hardware and prize Ferraris.
Posted by jb at 09:38 AM
July 24, 2004
Bungie and Microsoft are messing with us
The good news is that the trailer for Halo 2 currently playing in theatres is now available for download. The better news is that there's a very high-res version available too (1920x1080).
The really strange news is that there is a subliminal message hidden within. The www.xbox.com in the Xbox logo changes to www.ilovebees.com for a fraction of a second. A visit to this site shows some strangeness that is indicitive of a weird promotional/alternate reality game like that done for AI.
A little investigation:
A quick Netcraft query shows the following:
13-JUL-2004
Windows 2000/Apache 1.3.19
16-JUL-2004
Windows Server 2003/Microsoft-IIS/6.0
17-JUL-2004
Windows 2000/Apache 1.3.19
If you look at the meta keywords on ilovebees.com, you'll see "bee hoax, bee game" among other words.
Update 24-7-04:
Both ilovebees.com and ilovebees.net are owned by Margaret's House of Bees. If you dig (domain information groper) ilovebees.net, you get the following:
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.135
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.136
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.140
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.141
ilovebees.net. 69.25.27.170
ilovebees.net. 69.25.27.173
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.133
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.134
Sounds like lil old Margaret knows how to configure a load balanced server environment. (or at least know enough to tell Rackspace she needs one)
Update 25-7-04:
It seems Bungie has a history of guerilla marketing. The whole thing seems to be indicating that the Marathon storyline will be part of Halo2.
Update 25-7-04:
There's now a netninja wiki dedicated to solving the i love bees mystery.
You can buy the t-shirt now too.
An interesting question is, what's to prevent some nefarious folks from hijacking the plotline and planting their own clues and story details? I suppose the same level of investigative work currently underway would uncover such a plot, but it could be interesting.
Weird.
Download the low-res version here.
Download the high-res version here.
There's a forum discussing it now over at unfiction.
Posted by jb at 12:13 PM
Battlefield Vietnam patch 1.1 delayed a week
The Battlefield Vietnam 1.1 patch previously reported has been pushed back a week. The official BFV site reports that EA and DICE are taking some extra time to make sure testing is complete.
To tide us over, EA has posted some comparison screens of the new WWII mod vs. the original Battlefield 1942. You can see before and after pics of the Invasion of the Philippines, Wake Island and Iwo Jima maps.
Posted by jb at 10:18 AM
July 23, 2004
Far Cry "unpatched"
Via Bluesnews. A follow-up to this entry.
"In an unusual move, Ubi Soft Entertainment has recalled the recent version 1.2 retail patch for Far Cry, due to "unexpected behaviour on specific hardware configurations. These matters are mainly due to incompatibilities with several optimisations brought lately to the code, with the intent to please a large number of users." Consequently we have restored the version 1.1 patch."
Posted by jb at 02:34 PM
EA and Crytek hook up
EA and Crytek (the developer of Far Cry) have entered into a partnership. Crytek had a one-title deal with Ubisoft, and it seems as though they're ready to move on.
"Although the new game which is being created for EA will not be the sequel to Far Cry which the team mentioned at ECTS last year - and indeed, it's not clear whether that is still even on the cards - it's expected that it will use at least some of the technology from the graphically stunning CRY engine."
Posted by jb at 11:38 AM
Worst comic adaptations
Gamespy has finished their look at the worst comic to video conversions of all time. Not surprisingly, they've selected Superman 64 as the most hideous.
"Lex Luthor has kidnapped those closest to Superman and trapped them inside of some kind of virtual world. It's then up to Superman to enter this VR world and rescue his friends, all while battling re-creations of some of his greatest enemies. Sound interesting? Trust me … it isn't. The story is nothing more than an excuse to try and get a bunch of Superman's villains together into one place."
Posted by jb at 09:59 AM
July 22, 2004
Xbox Live interview with Larry Hryb
ActiveXBox.com has an interview with Larry Hryb, the Director of Programming for Xbox Live. The inteview does a great job of shedding some light on the inner workings of the service. Some interesting tidbits from the article:
- The Xbox Live team consists of about 100 people of various disciplines
- The service has over 1 million subscribers
- Players in 24 countries have spent more than 160 million hours (or 20,000 years) playing Xbox Live
- Members are playing an average of 265,549 hours every day
- The top 15 cities worldwide boasting the most Xbox Live members are Tokyo; London; Houston; Chicago; Toronto; San Diego; New York; Brooklyn, N.Y.; Los Angeles; Miami; Seattle; Calgary, Alberta, Canada; San Antonio; Las Vegas; and Seoul, Korea
Larry also has his own blog, which can be found at majornelson.com.
Posted by jb at 01:20 PM
Modchips now illegal in the UK
Worst. Ruling. Ever. Sony just won a large victory against David Bell, a reseller of PS2 mod chips.
"The judge, Mr Justice Laddie, ruled that the defendant, Mr David Ball, had behaved unlawfully by selling 1,500 Messiah 2 modification chips ("mod chips") to customers in the UK. The mod chips which Mr Ball had sold had circumvented the copy protection measures on the PlayStation 2 console and allowed pirated copies of PlayStation 2 games, unauthorised copies of PlayStation 2 software (backups) and unlicensed Japanese and American PlayStation 2 software to be played.
The presiding judge then went further and confirmed that using such devices, knowing that they allow you bypass the PlayStation 2 console's technical protection measures to play pirated or copied games, is unlawful. He also concluded that advertising such devices and possessing them for a commercial purpose was also illegal.
Ok, so let me get this straight. It's illegal to sell modchips, it's illegal to adversise modchips; it's not illegal to own one, but it is illegal to use one. It turns out the PS2 you bought with your hard earned money isn't yours to tinker with after all.
Jackasses, all of them.
Posted by jb at 12:01 PM
Playboy: The Mansion interview
Via /. Warcry.com has a 3 part interview with Brenda Brathwaite, the lead designer for Playboy: The Mansion.
"I can, obviously, also look at it objectively," she continued. "If you could see my desk now, you'll notice that the floor is stacked with nearly 300 Playboy magazines. I can flip through those magazines and not have it effect me in the same way that it would clearly affect a heterosexual male."
Posted by jb at 10:42 AM
DOOM 3 benchmarks released by id
We're getting tired of DOOM 3 news, we just want to stop talking about it and play the damn thing. Anyhoo, id has released some performance specs, pitting ATI against NVIDIA. John Carmack, however, offers a few words of caution.
"It should be noted that all of the modern cards play the game very well, and benchmark scores should not be the be-all-end-all decision maker. Scores will probably improve somewhat with future driver releases, and other factors like dual slots or dual power connectors can weigh against some of the high end cards.
The benchmarking was conducted on-site, and the hardware vendors did not have access to the demo before hand, so we are confident that there is no egregious cheating going on, but it should be noted that some of the ATI cards did show a performance drop when colored mip levels were enabled, implying some fudging of the texture filtering. This has been a chronic issue for years, and almost all vendors have been guilty of it at one time or another. I hate the idea of drivers analyzing texture data and changing parameters, but it doesn't visibly impact the quality of the game unless you know exactly what to look for on a specific texture. On the other hand, the Nvidia drivers have been tuned for Doom's primary light/surface interaction fragment program, and innocuous code changes can "fall off the fast path" and cause significant performance impacts, especially on NV30 class cards.
A note on overclocking: it is very likely that overclocked configurations that "play everything else perfectly" will start to show problems on D3 due to new usage patterns. Everyone is of course free to do whatever they want with their own hardware, but don't complain to us..."
Posted by jb at 10:16 AM
In-game advertising gets some funding
Via Terra Nova. Massive Inc., a company focused on in-game advertising, just received $5.5 million in funding. This will supposedly help with their planned launch of a dynamic video game advertising network this October.
"Today’s announcement is the latest milestone for Massive in advance of the October launch of its dynamic video game advertising network, which promises to quickly become one of the most powerful opportunities for global brands to reach the coveted 18-34 male demographic. With this key audience increasingly shunning prime time television and print for interactive video entertainment such as online and console games, the Massive network will enable advertisers to serve dynamic, real-time ads into the environment in which young men now spend their time."
Uggh.
Posted by jb at 09:59 AM
Call of Duty 2 confirmed
Activision CEO Ron Doornink confirms that Call of Duty is planned for the 2005 fiscal year. No word on what platforms the WWII shooter will ship.
Posted by jb at 09:42 AM
Far Cry 1.2 patch is out
Crytek has posted the 1.2 patch for Far Cry. Quick list of features:
- Quicksave support
- Fixes Punkbuster problems
- Fixes some issues with headshot detection
- Various weapon tweaks
Posted by jb at 09:38 AM
July 21, 2004
Trent Reznor on DOOM III
Via Bluesnews. Trent Reznor addresses his absence from DOOM III in a discussion on the NIN site.
"john carmack and i had established a friendship while working on quake. he came to see up playing during the last tour and wanted to get my feelings on a remake of doom with a new advanced engine he was working on. we discussed how cool it would be to create a place that was immersive to the point it wouldn't need a "soundtrack" -- the technology was advanced enough to visually and aurally to create a rich environment you could truly explore and inhabit. we discussed my involvement as the overall sound producer -- from foley and voice over to ambient world noise.
later, i started work on what would be used at the e3 show 2 years ago. it was exciting working in a totally new way with new tools. i was working directly in the game editor and with the programmers refining the sound code and helping the environment come alive. tried "tuning" various environmental sound sources so they'd cohesively interact with on another in a "musical" way. the advanced technology provided enough horsepower to give me a seemingly limitless amount of freedom. it was a lot of work, a lot of thinking in a different way, and a lot of fun. i was working with the best guys in the field -- true geniuses.
out idea was to have no music, apart from a main theme i'd write for the intro. no rock, nothing current sounding, nothing to date the game.
well... eventually time and money and bad management came into play and it didn't work out. disappointing on a number of levels for me, but that's the way it went.
I have seen the engine at work and it is great. i'm looking forward to seeing what they've done with the game.
and i guess tool did the theme song"
Posted by jb at 10:33 AM | TrackBack
July 20, 2004
New NVIDIA Drivers
NVIDIA ForceWare release 60 drivers now available. Here's the feature list:
- Support for the award-winning GeForce 6800-series GPUs
- Unmatched performance and enhanced image quality for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL-based software applications.
- Support for Microsoft® Windows® XP/2000/98/Me/NT4 and Windows XP 64-bit (for AMD Athlon™ 64, AMD Opteron 64, and Intel EMT64)
- Support for PCI Express-based NVIDIA GPUs
- Consumer electronic display support for DVI-based digital displays, such as widescreen plasma screens
- Quick Zoom – ease eye strain and enable ergonomic computing with easy Windows magnification
- Updated application profiles allow users to assign multiple profiles for each application
Posted by jb at 09:58 PM | TrackBack
Carmack staying ahead of the game
Via Bluesnews. John Carmack posted an update in the X Prize forums regarding his Armadillo Aerospace venture. In the update he mentioned that he's working on the next id game already.
"Id vs Armadillo:
I am working on the rendering technology for the next game right now, so it looks like the balance will stay about the same for a while at least."
Posted by jb at 06:57 PM | TrackBack
Colin McRae Rally 2005 to be released on PC and console simultaneously
Codemasters announced today that it will launch both the console (PS2 and Xbox) and PC versions of Colin McRae 2005 simultaneously. The targeted release is late September.
Posted by jb at 04:35 PM | TrackBack
Star Wars Galaxies dancing
Massively multiplayer online dancing... that's all I've got.
Posted by jb at 10:16 AM | TrackBack
Counter-Strike Source video available
The Counter-Strike Source (the Half-Life 2 engine) video shown by Valve at E3 is now available for download in Bink format.
Posted by jb at 10:09 AM | TrackBack
July 19, 2004
Religion in games
Gamerdad addresses the topic of religion in games present and past.
"If religion and spiritual concepts can potentially add so much to a game world, why are they only used superficially? Why are they caricatured? And what will the future bring? To answer these questions we looked at games from the recent past, and considered how religion is—sometimes cleverly, sometimes clumsily—used in gaming. We invited a few top game designers to come along and show us the sights, to in effect, play Virgil to our Dante."
Posted by jb at 02:59 PM | TrackBack
Battlefield Vietnam patch 1.1 coming soon
EA reports that the upcoming patch for BFV is in final candidate testing. The patch will address:
- Vote/Kick/Buddy commands integrated into the GUI
- Server favorites added to the server browser (it's about frickin' time)
- 3D map will show friendly mines, traps, ammo, health, etc.
- Flight ceiling added to choppers (looks like no more invincible spawn choppers)
- MUTT tow rocket will be heat seeking
- Falling damage from going down stairs reduced (it's about frickin' time)
In addition to these changes, EA is announcing the official WWII mod for BFV. This mod ports several of the original Battlefield 1942 maps over to the new BFV engine, and adds a nice flamethrower.
Posted by jb at 10:22 AM | TrackBack
It's just like a PC, only worse
Alienware's upcoming DHS system is essentially a PC customized for console-like living room gameplay. Using the DISCover technology, which enables features such as zero-click installation, the idea is to compete with the console experience with PC hardware.
At $2000 it's several times the price of a comparable console and has the usual crud associated with using your TV as a display device. You could build this yourself for far less money. Not sure who they're targeting with this.
Posted by jb at 09:48 AM | TrackBack
July 18, 2004
Washington's Violent Videogame Law Held Unconstitutional
From Corante.com:
Federal District Judge Robert Lasnik of the Western District of Washington held, on summary judgement, that Washington's video game law was unconstitutional on free speech grounds. The law, which had been blocked by a preliminary injunction, "would have imposed a $500 fine on anyone, such as a store clerk, who sold a video game depicting violence against 'law enforcement officers'" to minors under age 17,"
Posted by jb at 07:57 PM | TrackBack
LOTR: The Battle for Middle-Earth preview
Gamespy has one of the first previews of the upcoming LOTR title.
"Fans of the Tolkien universe should find this game a blast to play if the game continues on its current pace. Bonin said the development team is aware of issues that could overwhelm a casual player interested in just experiencing an RTS in Middle-earth, such as the sheer number of units that have to be managed in the massive battles. But, he said, the team is dedicated to addressing them and should have plenty of time to tweak certain things before the scheduled release."
Posted by jb at 07:30 PM | TrackBack
July 17, 2004
Grand Prix Legends gets a new lease on life
Grand Prix Legends is widely considered to be the most realistic racing sim ever created and still has a large fanbase despite being 6 years old. Vivendi recently closed down Papyrus, the subsidiary responsible for developing GPL and Nascar 2003.
Papyrus co-founder Dave Kaemmer and Boston Red Sox owner John Henry have bought back the original source code for graphics, physics, multi-player and AI behind these games. Their intent is to form a new channel for providing high-end racing simulations. (somehow tied to Project Wildfire)
This is huge news for the hard-core racing sim crowd.
Posted by jb at 10:17 AM | TrackBack
July 16, 2004
Battlefield 2 previews
Here at Gamewag, we're pretty much addicted to Battlefield Vietnam. Sure, it has the second worst server browser we've ever seen (JointOps is worse), and there are a number of annoying bugs, but the gameplay is so much fun. I could sit in the Ack-Ack all day destroying Hueys...
At E3 this year, EA showed us a taste of what's to come for the Battlefield series. Battlefield 2 is much larger improvement than previous iterations; a major overhaul to the graphics engine, destructable environments (limited, for obvious reasons), support for ~ 100 players, recordable games and a modern combat setting.
There are a few previews available today:
GameSpy
GameSpot
IGN