Evening Reading: Celebrity Battlefield

This evening I'm off to my first of an LA thing I'd been told about before moving down here from SF. EA is hosting a celebrity charity Battlefield Bad Company 2 tournament. They've got OchoCinco, Marshall Faulk, Hal Sparks...hell; I think someone said Perez Hilton was going to be there. So I'm thinking to myself, seriously? What is that going to look like? And then I read the part about the professional players from Major League Gaming who will actually be doing the playing on the behalf of the celebs. A-ha.

I did just learn that Jeff Green will be there. That's cool at least. So while we're standing there, probably mystified by the whole scene, you can check out the best from today's Shack:

From The Chatty
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    February 18, 2010 6:03 PM

    Anyone else playing Shattered Horizon? It's quite fun if you give it some time, especially the new maps.

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      February 18, 2010 6:12 PM

      What's this game about?

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      February 18, 2010 6:16 PM

      I shall give it a go

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      February 18, 2010 6:27 PM

      aww. I didn't think the game was going to have shooting sound :(

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      February 18, 2010 6:42 PM

      this game needed XP support. It's like killing 2/3 of potential buyers before you go on sale.

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        February 18, 2010 7:06 PM

        Some people forget to read the requirements, too, which is fun to deal with.

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          February 18, 2010 11:28 PM

          Do you work for the company? If so - tell them thanks!

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        February 19, 2010 12:22 AM

        XP on a gaming rig can die in a fire. I don't even run my netbook w/ XP anymore. It's so...ugly.

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        February 19, 2010 2:07 AM

        XP... just let it go alreaydy. Let it go... come to modern times.

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        February 19, 2010 4:59 AM

        2001 called, it wants you to move on!

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      February 18, 2010 7:02 PM

      i thought it was awful and I loved descent1,2&3

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        February 18, 2010 7:03 PM

        well not awful but really nothing special

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        February 18, 2010 7:44 PM

        Awful because you can't kill people and don't know the maps or awful because you don't like the game?

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          February 18, 2010 10:18 PM

          i did just fine killing people and the maps were not really hard to learn. mediocre would be a better word because theres hardly any variety. one gun, couple different grenades, weak animations and sounds. the visuals were good enough and the menu was probably the prettiest menu ive seen in a game though ill give it that.

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            February 18, 2010 10:38 PM

            Not much to animate. Sounds have been improved quite a bit. Hard to do anything else with the sound really.

            The one gun thing isn't quite true. It has two modes: normal assault mode and sniper mode. Sure it's not CS with 4 million guns, but let's face it there was only one commonly used gun for each side with occasional flavor weapons.

            I guess it depends on what you want. It's a zero gravity game with some interesting ideas with the grenades. One makes them lose a lot of combat effectiveness, one completely disorients and can be used as a semi-rocket jump, and another one that blocks the sensors. All very powerful effects if used correctly.

            The variety complaint is also a bit strange. On pubs games like CS, TF2, etc, all only have like 5-6 popular maps, and in some cases are only slight variations (badwater/dustbowl/goldrush for example). Yeah all the maps here are in space, but some are very constricted and force close combat, others more open and others are a nice mix.

            It's a multiplayer shooter. There's only so much variety you can have.

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      February 18, 2010 7:09 PM

      what do they expect when there isn't a demo released?

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        February 18, 2010 7:23 PM

        [deleted]

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          February 18, 2010 7:50 PM

          MW2 is derivative garbage. This is something quite different. It has some minor problems for sure but if you embrace the full 3d nature it is very fun.

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          February 18, 2010 9:54 PM

          Call of Duty is a series by a previously well respected developer. It's formulaic and based on idTech that we are all quite familiar with - so you're absolutely correct - a Call of Duty game doesn't need a demo.

          However the Futuremark does not have a history of making "games". Why the hell does that make them above the "demo" scene - particularly since they always had demo versions of their benchmarking utilities?

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            February 18, 2010 9:56 PM

            They could spend a week or two to put a demo together - hell even a 60 minute timed demo would likely be more than enough to garner some proper interest from anyone that was further interested in their product.

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        February 18, 2010 7:28 PM

        Free weekend!

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      February 18, 2010 7:37 PM

      It looks cool, but w/o a demo I can't talk myself into buying it.

      With that type of gameplay it could be really awesome or complete ass =\

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        February 18, 2010 7:44 PM

        Free weekend right now.

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      February 18, 2010 8:04 PM

      MC IS AN IDIOT GIVEAWAY!!

      So apparently in my post-work daze today, I bought the 4 pack for this game through steam instead of the single one. My idiocy is your gain!

      First three shackers to SM me their steam IDs get a free copy! I'd make this a contest, but I'm sure I'd mess that up too.

      Remember, it's DX10 so make sure you have Windows 7 (or Vista What the hell is wrong with you... ) and a compatible card.

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        February 18, 2010 8:11 PM

        one claimed so far, two left!

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        February 18, 2010 8:13 PM

        Also, if you're not on steam right now, but still want a copy, send me your email instead so I can get it out to you.

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        February 18, 2010 8:14 PM

        I would SM you, but I don't have a DX10 capable machine. :[

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          February 18, 2010 8:15 PM

          you could have lied, just so someone else couldn't get it :D Good on you.

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          February 19, 2010 4:55 AM

          Windows 7 is cheap CrustyBro. Buy it now! :(

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            February 19, 2010 7:22 AM

            mrfunky, not 'til I upgrade my hardware. :|

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        February 18, 2010 8:21 PM

        I'll let someone else win these, I just want to say you are awesome for doing this.

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          February 18, 2010 8:26 PM

          If it was physical copies, I'd probably just build a scrooge McDuck vault and swim in them, but Steam took that away from me.

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        February 18, 2010 8:25 PM

        Two down! one left!

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        February 18, 2010 8:26 PM

        sm'd!

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        February 18, 2010 8:29 PM

        And we're done, quadeh beat zerog by mere moments. quadeh, I sent you an invite on steam since it apparently only lets you gift to people on your friends list.

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          February 18, 2010 8:31 PM

          er I take that back, quadeh I can't send you an invite, SM me your email and I'll send it to that instead.

          More fail for me!

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          February 18, 2010 8:33 PM

          awww... congrats quadeh!

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            February 18, 2010 8:39 PM

            Thank you MarkobChain :). Sorry zerog :(.

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              February 18, 2010 8:40 PM

              ... MarkovChain* spelling fail

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      February 18, 2010 8:38 PM

      I got it. I'd like to see more games from the Futuremark guys. They do good work.

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      February 18, 2010 9:52 PM

      Well it certainly looks awesome.. which is exactly why it can't run on my PC.

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      February 18, 2010 10:53 PM

      This game is so damn fun. I love the ambiance, and once you get a hang of rolling + deactivating your suit (plus the immensely useful grenades) it becomes very much about matches of skill. Just like the Homeworld games, a third axis of freedom is great fun - strafing under people is one of my favorite moves. I highly suggest you give it some time if you don't like it at first, once you get past the learning hump it plays wonderfully.

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      February 18, 2010 11:38 PM

      Well, it would be cool if the server list populated, but it wont. I get nothing.

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        February 18, 2010 11:45 PM

        Ahhh:

        "Cause found. This is/was a Steam side issue. It appears that the master servers crashed/were rebooted/got amnesia and somehow lost the information on all servers that were running at the time.

        As soon as a server is restarted and it reconnects to Steam to the master server, it reappears on the list.

        All FM servers are being rebooted as we speak. Non-FM servers will reappear as soon as they are restarted by their admins. If you have the servers in your favorites list, you can already play on them - they are still up, only the Steam master server doesn't know about them."

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          February 19, 2010 12:52 AM

          Got it working. Holy shit it' fun. I love it. Looks awesome as well. Needs more stuff, but it''s cool.

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      February 18, 2010 11:52 PM

      This game is confusing as shit :(

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      February 19, 2010 12:28 AM

      Game is good times...good times. Really puts a hurting down on my poor old GTX260 though. :'(

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        February 19, 2010 4:12 AM

        Disabling PhysX acceleration in nVidia control panel may help with fps. Also, disabling voip in the game (under audio, drag the volume slider all the way left).

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