Dearest Rockstar…

How’s life in California? The wife and kids thriving? Glad to hear it. Colorado is doing well. Unemployment is down, the Rockies have been blanketed with a foot of fresh powder, and the seventy-foot-tall series of statues portraying John Elway fighting off a horde of ninjas whilst riding a flaming bronco Pegasus and swinging Excalibur in front of the capital building are coming along steadily.

I’m writing about a matter of great importance: your upcoming blockbuster title, L.A. Noire (which looks all kinds of fancy, by the way. Good, pipe-smoking, rustic gentleman fancy. Not 80s glampop music video fancy). I couldn’t help but notice that it shares a release date with last year’s mega-hit Rockstar title, Red Dead Redemption. Does this represent a shared development timeline between the two games? If so, then I’d like to discuss L.A. Noire’s inevitable Hallowe’en downloadable content.

I’d like 50s style aliens to invade Los Angeles.

The famous ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ photo, taken during a supposed alien encounter over the city in 1942. Somehow, your conspiracy theorist neighbour will link this to 9/11.

Space music.

You may already have a plan in the works for new Hallowe’en DLC. With the rich history of corny B-movies being shot by-the-minute in 1950s Los Angeles, there are a cornucopia of zipper-suited monsters you can pull from. That said, tin-foil suited, antennaed, green-skinned visitors are the best choice. The fear of malevolent, subvertive life forms from outer space, abducting cows^[1] and plotting the destruction of humanity, beats at the heart of America’s cultural identity during the awkward pubescent years of an age heralded by changing lifestyles, frightening new technologies, and a neverending showdown with a quiet, leering enemy – the Cold War.

L.A. Noire is set during this ‘Cold War’. I’m just sayin’.

Imagine Cole Phelps, detective on-the-beat, discovering through a series of clues that the City of Angels is being secretly invaded by little green men. Without any help from the city government, he follows a trail of oddities across his urban jungle. Characters Phelps knows (from L.A. Noire’s campaign) walk and talk awkwardly, as if puppeteered by invisible strings. Quiet, black-suited federal agents tail Phelps, then disappear without a trace. Blurry photographs of levitating saucers hovering above the city skyline somehow find their way into his padlocked desk drawer.

It would work perfectly.

Alien invasion film noir has been done well before. Where, you ask? How about a forgotten short story in a tattered old anthology found on the top shelf in a dank, labyrinthine library in a quiet little hamlet known to its shadowy denizens as… The Twilight Zone.

Here’s a taste of Martian invaders, complete with Rod Serling’s famous pun-infested conclusion. As you watch, imagine a hardened human detective listening in the back of the diner, face hidden by a fedora, but for the cigarette he sits tending. As his offhand rests on his revolver, his heart threatens to hammer out of his chest at the exchange he hears.

Now conceive a different invasion scenario, in which the supposed conquerors are not conspiratorial at all, but friendly and outgoing. As the rest of Los Angeles embraces their Samaritan extraterrestrial benefactors, one doubting Thomas-in-a-trenchcoat suspects that the city’s would-be messiahs are too good to be true.

L.A. Noire’s aliens could be boldfaced warmongers, assailing Los Angeles with saucers and death rays with a head-on attack, à la War of the Worlds…

…or honestly come in peace, for the good of all living things, like those of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Hell, it could be completely zany, like Destroy all Humans! or Invader Zim. The point is, any alien-themed Hallowe’en expansion would be the greatest DLC since… well, since Undead Nightmare.

It’s in your hands, Rockstar. If you can mate this with this, then you’ll have created something beautiful^[2].

You see, Jimmy? This is why you never get in the car with strangers – they’ll fatten you up and turn you into pie. Now finish your broccoli.

You don’t have to respond right away. I know that when it comes to far-off development plans you’re a little shy, Rockstar. That’s okay, you’re human. I only suggest that you do this: go outside on a clear, moonless night, when the stars are so clear and vibrant they fill the sky and the Hubble telescope seems unnecessary, listen to some jazz, and think on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Then put on your thinking cap, light a fresh cigarette, and ask yourself whether or it’s possible that human beings are, in fact, alone in this universe (or in the saxophone-echoing streets of Los Angeles, circa-1955). Who knows? Maybe there’ll be a life-form somewhere out in that vast expanse looking back at you.

Thanks for reading, Rockstar. You’re a real pal. We’ve been through a lot together, which is why I swear to you, with Thor as my witness… if you make this alien invasion DLC, I’ll forever erase my memories of the drunken mistakes of your past.

Good luck with the L.A. Noire release, buddy. See you at the review party.

Footnotes

[1] But they’re covered in nipples!^
[2] Inversely, not doing so will make the baby Jesus cry.^

Gamer’s Guide to Life.com | we.know.games

Hi Guys,

You may have seen Beasts of War has featured our 3-up painted Orc.

We are really pleased with how he has come out, Golem Painting Studios have excelled themselves once again, we asked them to come up with a suitable colour scheme and we feel that they have created a great concept piece.

To celebrate we are going to start putting the Orcs up for advanced order this month, starting with the Orc Warriors!

Let us know what you think!

Mantic Games

Strategic Command World War I has been released for purchase and a demo is also available for those who wish to sample before purchase.

Armchair General Magazine – We Put YOU in Command! » History News

If you’re sharing common code between Windows Phone 7 and other platforms in either Silverlight or XNA, then you may run into a need to fork some code based on the platform. This is normally done with a preprocessor directive, which for Windows Phone 7 is WINDOWS_PHONE.

#if WINDOWS_PHONE
            // TODO:: WP7 specific code
#endif

It took me a while to find this, so for future reference know that you can always find this in the project’s properties panel:

Smarty Pants Coding – - Coding with a touch of flava

The biggest video game launch ever, selling 5 million units within 24 hours of release, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 isn’t as good as the hype. As a big fan of COD4: Modern Warfare on the PC, I was biased towards the game before I ever unwrapped it. However, I have big problems with the short, unsatisfying single-player campaign and the lousy multiplayer support on the PC. The increase in price from to for the PC version also does little to assuage my dissatisfaction.

There’s a large section of the MW2 Wikipedia entry which details criticism of the PC version, which I would rather cite than rewrite:

Criticism has arisen of changes made to the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 including the lack of dedicated servers, latency issues of the listen server-only IWNET, lack of console commands, lack of support for matches larger than 18 players, and inability to vote towards kicking or banning cheating players immediately. Ars Techinca writer Ben Kuchera wrote, “At launch, this will be one of the most locked-down, inflexible, and gamer-unfriendly [games] ever created.”

This is immediately evident in the Amazon reviews for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which are hovering just above 1-star. Reviewers complain about the tiny multiplayer matches (9v9 tops), the fact that Steam is required (no resale value), horrible multiplayer latency, and poorly planned out single-player campaign. The official steam forums are ablaze with outrage over the bad multiplayer, especially. Still, the game has peaked at over 95,000 concurrent players multiplayer (according to steam stats).

MetaCritic gives the game a 89% rating, but actual humans have knocked that down to a miserable 16%. On other platforms the spread is narrower–after all, this is a console game, ported for the PC. Infinityward, perhaps trying to emulate the design decisions between multiplayer in Left4Dead, screwed up on their tried-and-true FPS multiplayer scheme. On the console your bad lag, join-in-the-middle, and 9v9 matches might be OK, but on the PC we like big maps, lots of players, and dedicated servers with low latency.

We’re PC gamers. We want a long, immersive single-player campaign. We want a good storyline. We don’t want to be babied with chicken-screens for the “good parts” of the game. We don’t want to be pandered to with juvenile “shock screens.” And, we get tired of being shot in the head and dumped to die in every mission.

Video Games

Hotfile Filesonic and Fileserve Free Full Downloads – WorldsDown

In this 19 minutes video, John Mulhausen demonstrates how to create an Azure-hosted, push notification-sending web service and an accompanying phone app.

Source: Silverlight SDK

1) Do you want to see how to send/receive every kind of Push Notification that there is for Windows Phone?
2) Do you want to know the certification rules and usage restrictions involved with using Push Notifications for Windows Phone?
3) Do you want to see how to make a web service and consume it in a Windows Phone app?
4) Have you been meaning to try Azure but thought it would take MORE than 90 seconds to learn how to publish on it?

SilverlightShow: Silverlight Community

This week marks the long-awaited release of the fifth-generation of Pokémon titles, Black and White. Game Freak co-founder, Junichi Masuda, and the graphic designer who created many of the game’s 150 new Pokémon, Mana Ibe, tell us about the past, present, and future of the long-running franchise. Did you know the traditional routes found in Pokémon games were
initially created as a workaround for cartridge limitations? Did you
know that Pokémon originally didn't evolve? If it weren't for the lengthy six-year development cycle of the original games, these series staples would not have existed. Read on to learn more franchise secrets.

Game Freak’s beginnings

Masuda: First it was a gathering of people who knew each other who really liked games, “game freaks” if you will, kind of like indie developers. We all got together with Satoshi Itaji and decided to make an indie game at the time for the Famicom, Quinty (Mendel Palace in North America). After creating that game and nearing the end of its completion, we decided to come together and form the company Game Freak. From here on out, Game Freak’s philosophy is to challenge new things, challenge ourselves, and make games that make people happy, games that people can play over and over for a long time, and have a smile on their face when they play it.

Pokémon began as a vehicle for communication

Masuda: At the time the Game Boy had just come out and it had the Game Link Cable that allowed communication between two Game Boys. Itaji came up with the idea that he really wanted to find a way to use that link cable so players could trade. At the time the idea for Pokémon still wasn’t right there. The starting point of creating Pokémon came from the idea of finding a way of communicating to trade.

The six-year development cycle

Masuda: The development processes for the first two games was very long – it was a six-year development span – and at first obviously with the Game Boy the cartridges didn’t have much memory at all, as a result of that, we had to program it in a way for the data to be as small as possible.

Pokémon open world game?

Masuda: In the beginning we really wanted to make a really big world, a really big field, kind of seamless, but because of the hardware limitations we had to connect these various maps with routes and it’s become a tradition that we still use in the games up until now. It wasn’t originally planned, but because of the hardware limitations we had to implement that.

No evolution, types at outset

Masuda: During original concept, there was no concept of evolution for Pokémon to evolve and get stronger, and have their design and appearance totally change. That’s obviously an important part of the Pokémon series, one of the characteristics that wouldn’t have come if the development process wasn’t so long.

Also, stuff like individual types was something that came up later in development that really added a lot of strategic importance to battles, and the reason a lot of this was gradually added on when development went on was because the Game Boy cartridge’s memory continued to expand over its lifetime. This allowed Game Freak to increase the amount of Pokémon in the game and add the Pokédex because at that point we had so many Pokémon we wanted something that players could use to look at detailed information for each Pokémon.

Capsulmon?

Masuda: One of the original names [for the games] was “Capsule Monsters” because they go in capsules, but decided later on to go with Pocket Monsters or “Pokémon.”

From Red and Blue to Black and White

Masuda: It was actually the themes behind the games that decided the titles [for Black and White]. One of the themes is to really express two polar opposites. For example, you have the big city in one field, and then you have the countryside in the other field. The theme of the polar opposites is what brought us to think of black and white.

Pokémon RPG not designed for console

Masuda: Portability is really important for the Pokémon series. For example, in Pokémon Black and Pokémon White versions we have the new C-Gear that appears on the bottom screen that has a lot of communication features. When it’s on it’s always communicating information with players nearby, for instance, at a place where a lot of people get together or at a friend’s house. Turn it on and if other players are nearby you can find out what they’re up to, whether they’re catching Pokémon or in a battle with trainers. It’s this concept of always playing and communicating with nearby players that has always been important to the Pokémon.

Aside from that, to be able to communicate with players who are really far away or can’t be in the same area, in Pokémon Black version or Pokémon White version we are introducing the Pokémon Global Link (PGL) that allows players to communicate data from their DS to their computers, go on the Pokémon Global Link website, and view rankings for battles or communicate with players that are really far away. I look forward to seeing how well this does, especially in the United States, as a lot  more people use the internet off their computers.

Designing 150 new Pokémon

Ibe: There were about 17 designers for Black and White project at Game Freak and one of the ways we make sure we don’t have too much overlap with any of the previous Pokémon is if we have a new design, we’ll take a silhouette of it, just the outline of it, and color the rest of it in black, and make sure the shape of it doesn’t overlap with previous Pokémon designs, and make sure it still looks original. We also do that with the color palette, color combinations, and make sure that there aren’t any Pokémon in the older games that share that exact same color palette as the new ones. Some of the directions we got from planners was to not be restricted or bound by old designs, for example, just because there might be one type of Pokémon existing in the old games, doesn’t mean you can’t make a similar type of Pokémon in a different light.

Finding inspiration in real-life animals, objects

Ibe: I’ll sometimes go to the zoo and look at various animals or animals outside and study their behavior. I also get inspiration from inanimate objects as well, such as an umbrella. If you combined an umbrella with an animal, how would they use that umbrella? How would you combine that to make an interesting creature?

Never running out of ideas

Masuda: Video games haven’t been around as long as other media. In the past I was worried that once I turn 50 would I still be able to come up with new ideas? But then I look at other creators in the industry who are older like Shigeru Miyamoto, who keeps coming up with new ideas. I’m relieved to see that because even if you keep getting older you keep coming up with original ideas. There’s still a lot of stuff that hasn’t been done. In the past it was sometimes said in Japan that people over 30 wouldn’t be able to use computers because they just get too old for them, but nowadays you have grandparents, people at work in their 50s using computers. There’s still a lot of room for innovation and I hope to keep making games as I grow older. I’m always thinking about new ideas and trying to find ways to realize those ideas, and I feel confident going forward that I’m going to find ways to innovate the series and just games in general.

Future of the franchise

Masuda: Often I’ll think about what computers are going to be like 10 years from now. In movies you’ll see representations of the future. You’ll see transparent floating computer devices in the air, touch and pull screens on a transparent screen. It’s just something like in a dream. I hope that the Pokémon series can turn into something that we would dream of now in the future.

Ibe: I played the original Red and Blue games years ago, I was a kid back then, and I’m really impressed that Pokémon is still accepted by society and still popular among people. I never even imagined that I’d work at Game Freak. The ones that come out now are made by people of my generation, obviously the older people make them as well. The new games are matching this generation and I expect that they’re going to continue to evolve with new generations.

Check out our review for Pokemon Black and Pokemon White versions.

www.GameInformer.com – The Feed

If you’re into PC gaming, you’ve probably heard about Razer. Founded
in the 1990s, Razer USA is responsible for designing and producing some
of the best gaming mice on the market. In 2009, they started making
peripherals, as well- these too were met with positive reception.Fact
is, these people know what they’re doing when it comes to computer
games. 

Recently, they’ve announced plans to design a gaming laptop.

Inventor Spot – Inventions, Innovations, and Interesting Ideas for the Inventor in All of Us

Specks of rain begin to fall on a five-foot poster, flowing gently in the cold breeze. The weather seems fitting of the image itself; the clear white background is dominated by the daunting figure of an auto-rifleman, skinny arms lugging a huge light machine gun as his pale face remains emotionless. Above it, the Operation Flashpoint: Red River logo is the only loose connection between such a gritty, harsh advert and the building it stands in front of: Samarqand, the only Tajik restaurant in London, a place full of delightful, exotic food and plush, chic private rooms. Once you step inside, though, the connection becomes clearer: sixteen flat-screen HDTVs project the dusty and stunning world of Tajikistan, as imagined by Codemasters. Operation Flashpoint: Red River aims to be authentic, and if that means immersing journalists in the heart of Tajikistan’s culture, then so be it.

Excited and nervous, a small group of gamers sit down for a presentation, given by various members of the Codemasters team. There are murmurs of agreement when Sion Lenton – Red River‘s Creative Director – says he’s tired of soaking up lead on FPSs. There are guffaws of hearty laughter when the introduction video is played; most are in amazement that such a seemingly serious game has such a jovial and properly funny welcoming. And, unsurprisingly, whispers are abound when it’s announced a Kindle is up for grabs for the team with the best score. “GET SOME!” the developers shout, and everyone rushes to take a seat in one of four booths, each with space for four players and equipped with an Xbox 360 and and pre-arranged co-op lobby. After some fiddling with the Class Setup (the version we played was vanilla, so nothing was unlocked), and choosing the ‘Scout’ class (because snipers always win – fact), our plucky team of four was ready to brave the battlefield.

We were given full access to all four Fire Team Engagements (FTEs), one-off maps that add a lot of extra weight to the game, allowing almost endless replays with your three buddies. First up was Last Stand, the most familiar of the FTEs; perched on a small hill, it was a sniper’s paradise as waves of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces attempted to assault our position. The helicopters landed, the bad guys poured out into the street, and were swiftly cut down by the hot justice of American lead. Our team was overrun, as you might expect for first-timers, but I survived long enough to rack up a cool 59 kills. Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) quickly followed, as did death: searching for missing pilots and escorting them to safety, while also being given the option to go out of our way and destroy the downed helicopter was all a bit too much for new recruits, and in a matter of minutes all four USMC bodies lay in Tajikistan’s hot sand. Five minutes of Rolling Thunder, or ‘escort the convoy’, had to suffice before it was on to the chance of Kindle-winning glory.

Combat Sweep saw four wiser marines gear up (after trialling the other classes, I switched back into the sniper role) to take out every last insurgent from a sprawling hillside town. While everyone got out eventually, each life lost cut 10,000 points from our score (players have four lives), and Team Awesome retreated from that still opposition-controlled hell-hole with a measly 82,000 points and a bronze star.

Sad faces all round.

But the misery of such a resounding defeat could not drench my high spirits. Red River is fun. It’s authentic, too; certainly not as much as ArmA, and probably not quite Dragon Rising‘s attempted realism, but each one-shot kill – even with an MP5 – was immensely satisfying. Genuine-sounding radio chatter combined with faithful recreations of tatty guns and fading Humvees gave the game that extra edge that more fanciful first person shooters miss.

It’s pretty obvious that Red River is an Operation Flashpoint game: the EGO 2.0 engine shares many traits with its predecessor, and has the same slower-paced, sandbox feel that Dragon Rising embodied. However, the real surprise comes from noting how much has changed; the tempo is increased, meaning that while firefights are still conservative and deliberate affairs, there’s no need to trudge ten klicks just to get to the action. AI is now a real challenge; from time to time there is the odd fool standing still two hundred metres away, pondering the deepest questions of life as I leisurely line up a headshot, but the overwhelming majority will aim with deadly precision, flank and distract with chilling mercilessness, and gun you down like lightning in close-quarters combat.

Enemies go down much faster, and stumble and fall with each bullet to a non-kill area, making them less robotic and more – dare I say it – fun to kill. Driving now feels like driving, rather than taking a school bus onto an ice rink filled with treacle; animations look much more human; stunning vistas and more graphical charm add an obvious boost to immersion. But, most importantly, it’s just fun. It’s more deadly and serious than the Call Of Duties of this world, but it hasn’t swayed into straight-faced mundane MilSim. Every kill brings a smile to your face, every buddy you rescue prompts an involuntary, over-the-TV high five, and clearing each house knowing that these could be your last seconds is finger-numbingly thrilling.

There’s still work to be done; the 360 version looks good, but didn’t quite have the charm the PC videos and screenshots hold, and can suffer from just a little bit of lag when things get heavy. Tracers don’t look like Star Wars laser beams, I can promise you that, but there is an incredibly disconcerting sci-fi theme to the medkits; you have a seemingly endless number, and even a lethal wound can be totally healed by holding down (A), then holding down (A) again. Sure, it gets you back into the action right away, but it takes away the challenge, knowing a bullet to the heart can be patched up in seconds. It’s one of those design choices that serves a good purpose, but is certain to upset the hardcore.

Operation Flashpoint: Red River might not set the world on fire. As much as I might like it to, it won’t beat Call Of Duty and the like for sales or hype, and it won’t reinvent a genre. But it has the utter joy of those midnight runs of Left 4 Dead with your best mates, the wry humour and authenticity of Generation Kill, and its own unique blend of pure fun. Get your friends together and your warface on: on the 21st April, we’re going to Tajikistan.

Gamer’s Guide to Life.com has a host of exclusive Red River videos for you to feast on. There’s snippets of assorted gameplay, a presentation by the Codemasters team, a 14-minute raw playthrough of the Combat Sweep mission we botched and an interview with the oh-so-dreamy Tim Browne for you to enjoy. Watch the homepage for those, and follow us on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss a beat.

Gamer’s Guide to Life.com | we.know.games