Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Gaming Today

Gaming Today

New Tomb Raider Officially Official

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 09:09 PM PST

Remember how novel it was that Lara could get dirt on her ass in Underworld? OK, so that image there is the full wraparound cover for the next issue of Game Informer (click for a larger version), which should be arriving in your mailboxes this week. It also serves as the first official announcement that a new Tomb Raider game is in the works. And it is, simply, called Tomb Raider. Darrell Gallagher, Head of Studio, Crystal Dynamics:

Forget everything you knew about TOMB RAIDER; we are exploring things that have never been done before in this game. This is an origins story that creates Lara Croft and takes her on a character-defining journey like no other.

And, finally, here’s the setup, in a nutshell: “After a brutal storm destroys the boat she was travelling on, a frightened young woman is left washed ashore on an unknown beach. On her own but not alone she has only one goal, to survive.”

There you go. That seems to jive nicely with what we’ve heard about the game before. Also, the new official site for the game says it will be out on PC, PS3 and 360 whenever it comes out.

If you’re pumped — I kinda am, honestly — be sure to grab yourself a Game Informer on Thursday.

via press release

The Shape of Playstation Rewards: Quests

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 08:35 PM PST

Oh, hey, Playstation Rewards. You have competition now, in the form of Xbox Live Rewards. Time to shake up the game a little bit, no? That’s what Sony is doing today with the addition of Quests to Playstation Rewards. Whereas you can only get Microsoft Points by spending money, Quests provide easy ways for you to gain some prestige or whatever by doing small simple tasks. Nine Quests will be added to the Rewards program tomorrow for those in the beta, and among them will be tasks like playing one of a few specified Move games, watching Pulse in HD and visiting the central plaza in Home. Easy peasy. If it gets people to turn on their PS3s, so it’s a win for Sony. Seems smart, and it makes every day feel like an Oblivion-esque quest. Or not.

via Playstation blog

GameFront 2010: Year in Random Stats

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 07:05 PM PST

Looking over the pile of games we’ve gone through during 2010 at GameFront, we started to wonder. How many games did we review this year? How many had we painstakingly created walkthroughs for? How many zombies did we massacre in the course of hacking our way through Fortune City in Dead Rising 2, and how many times were we brutalized by angry high-voiced anonymous children on Xbox Live in Call of Duty: Black Ops?

So we started crunching the numbers. For your enjoyment and with absolutely no useful application whatsoever, here’s our 2010 by the numbers.

Site-wide:

Everything we wrote down and slapped on the Internet to be met by your eyeballs, by category.

Reviews: 85

Walkthroughs: 50

News posts: 2,124

Cheats posts: 303

Features: 390

Videos: 268

Stats by Writer:

Once we got bored of looking at the different kinds of posts we did, we started slogging through our Gamer Cards, PSN IDs, Steam accounts, electricity bills, game shelves and piles of non-working Xboxes to figure out what 2010 looked like for each of us.

  • Phil Owen inaugurated a new Xbox 360 S this year after a disc drive failure claimed his last box after the warranty had expired. That would make it his 12th 360 — and the system just celebrated its fifth birthday last month.

He also warmed his thumbs with 66 new disc-based games he’d never played before.

Owen’s added 10,870 Gamer Score to his Xbox Live handle this year, and snagged 418 Bronze Trophies, 85 Silver Trophies, 16 Gold Trophies and a single Platinum Trophy on Playstation 3.

He also managed to break a laptop in there somewhere.

  • Ron Whitaker lost his PS3 to the Yellow Light of Death, at the inopportune time of having Uncharted 2 stuck in the disc tray. He bought a second PS3 as a pinch hitter while the first one was being worked on at Sony.

He purchased 24 games he didn’t need for any reason this year, just because they were on sale on Steam.

He logged more than 100 hours combined on Company of Heroes, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Rock Band 2 and 3.

Ron also found time to slay some 15,573 Left 4 Dead 2 zombies, the vast majority with the Magnum Pistol. This count was down, however, from 2009′s 24,417 killed.

And finally, Ron managed to log 12 full months without renewing his subscription to World of Warcraft.

  • Ben Richardson’s Xbox 360 suffered some kind of disc drive indigestion when the bar code label on a Blockbuster disc peeled off mid-game. Chalk up one more repair.

During his 2010 tour, Ben racked up 258 disintegrations as he trekked the desolate fields of the Wasteland in Fallout: New Vegas. Back in Dead Rising 2‘s livelier Fortune City, he put down 2,129 zombies for the year. And in his service, more than 100,000 soldiers (a quarter of the U.S. losses in World War II) were KIA in Total War.

Ben’s game shelves swelled by 19 new games this year, and he managed to play two old ones for good measure.

He also put in 47 hours in Fallout: New Vegas, 67 hours in Empire: Total War and 49 hours in Napoleon: Total War.

  • Phil Hornshaw’s Xbox 360 Elite graced the worktable of a Microsoft repair technician twice during 2010, and twice the machine’s guts were splayed out on Hornshaw’s own coffee table as he attempted to fix it himself (the warranty having expired). Only one of those repair sessions was successful — those YouTube videos that suggest fixing an E74 error with pennies are incorrect. FYI.

Hornshaw murdered something in the range of 11,651 zombies in Dead Rising 2 during 2010, although the exact figure is sketchy due to files being saved over multiple times. He also suffered some 4,482 multiplayer deaths on Xbox Live during that time.

Of the 22 games he played, he turned out 16 walkthroughs for GameFront. He spent 99 hours, 4 minutes and 8 seconds playing Red Dead Redemption (not including any of the DLC), at least a portion of that for the walkthrough. Meanwhile, Kane & Lynch 2 presented the quickest walkthrough and was handled in one marathon overnight session.

Hornshaw snagged 404 Achievements and Trophies this year, and also created his own environmental holocaust by logging some 3,386 kilowatt-hours of power while working from home.

Just like the other Phil, Hornshaw also broke his computer — twice. And after HP fixed it, he broke it again, and had to fix it himself.

  • Shawn Sines managed not to have any hardware fail on him, putting him squarely in the magic 58 percent of Xbox 360s that don’t fail and 81 percent of Playstation 3′s that don’t fail (according to some fairly unofficial figures discovered in a cursory Google search). He also received 90 percent of hateful glares as he told us he hadn’t any hardware failures.

Shawn continued his proud tradition of (inadvertently? He refused to clarify…) purchasing the same game more than once. The top offender was Dragon Age: Origins — he bought the game twice, then bought DLC for both copies — twice.

  • Mark Burnham didn’t just have a PC break this year — he had one grievously wounded by a malware attack. Despite his best efforts of squashing the offending program, no mere mortal anti-virus measure was enough to combat it. In fact, as Mark tells it, it took all the abilities of his local PC repair ninja, who was nearly lost in the process and was left exhausted. One evil little bug nearly cost Mark a computer, as well as a ninja his life.

When everything finally was healed, however, Mark managed to fire through 21 new games this year.

Approximate Totals:

  • New games played: 148
  • Xbox repairs: 4
  • Replacement Xbox 360′s purchased: 1
  • PS3 repairs: 1
  • Replacement PS3′s purchased: 1
  • PC repairs: 5
  • Zombies massacred: 29,353 (with three writers reporting)

Got goofy random stats of your own? Leave ‘em in the comments.

Rob Corddry and Break Host an Assassin’s Creed Party (VIDEO)

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 06:37 PM PST

A couple weeks ago, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood came out. For that incredibly special occasion, our mothership (otherwise known as Break.com) and Rob Corddry held a big ole party at Corddry’s house. It was awesome, and that’s why you weren’t invited. You can, however, enjoy this video of Corddry being weird at the party. Yeah, you should do that.


Awesome Assassin’s Creed Party At Rob Cordry’s Crib – Watch more Funny Videos

GameFront 2010: Essential Fallout 3 Mods

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 06:32 PM PST

Bethesda softworks is one of my favorite game companies. It produces game worlds large enough to lose yourself, but as great as the games and add ons the company itself produces, Bethesda RPGs really don’t show their true potential until the mod community get their hands on them. Fallout 3 is no exception.

As this year winds down and we begin to highlight some of the best commercial games of 2010, this seems like a great opportunity to call out some of the essential modifications for Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 Utilities:

Fallout 3 Megamods:

Fallout 3 Visual Tweaks:

Fun Stuff:

Fallout 3 Utilities

Before you dive into adding new monsters, companions and content there are a few less glamorous utilities that you should make sure are installed first. These less than sexy tools will make your Fallout modding experience so much better:

Fallout Mod Manager – FOMM

Fallout 3, like Oblivion before it, has great mod support. However, the order the game loads your modules and any potential modifications caused by the add ons can cause havoc with your game. The Fallout Mod Manager is just the tool to take those worries away. Aside from allowing you to customize and rearrange the order in which the game loads various modules, the tool also notifies you of conflicts and will allow you to download a load order and share it with others. This is a  must have Fallout 3 mod tool.

Fallout Script Extended – FOSE

Aside from disabling Fallout 3′s inane integration with Games for Windows, this little tool is a necessity to add some of the most interesting features of the mega mods below. FOSE adds a lot of functionality to the G.E.C.K toolkit that mod makers are leveraging to create additional companions, new quests and other gameplay tweaks. A word of warning however, if you’re a Direct2Drive player, this is not compatible. Luckily, the main mods still work fairly well even without this.

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You can read the readme on this and not really get any idea what it does, so let me sum it up: This helps make mods work. Install it and move on to the more sexy subjects below.

Large Address Aware Enabler

Fallout 3 is a 32-bit game. as such it has a few limitations that 64-bit Windows 7 users might want to consider.. or you can add this fix to enable the game to recognize and use over 2GB of memory. Applying the fix may change the way the game reads add-on content and breaks Windows Live! integration, but it’s a small price to pay when you consider it’s required to run the highest levels of NMC’s Textures Pack.

Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch

Since Fallout 3 is at version 1.7 you can assume Bethesda fixed a good number of the major show-stopping bugs, but well in the rush to push out paid content and collect your money for their excellent work some things fell by the wayside. The unofficial Fallout 3 patch addresses those things, well a lot of them anyway. This fix makes many quest and content tweaks and fixes some broken game functions. It’s a must have, though to use it you must copy any Fallout 3 DLC into the data folder just like a regular mod.

Fallout 3 Megamods

Sometimes one small tweak or change is just not enough. For those times you have the MEGAMOD! Megamods are the closest thing to a total conversion mod without actually creating your own game and these add ons alter fundamental parts of Fallout 3 in some pretty awesome ways.

Mart’s Mutant Mod – MMM

The maker of the outstanding Martigen’s Monster Mod for Oblivion brings the special mod magic over to Fallout 3. Mart’s Mutant Mod introduces a greater variety of Fallout 3 opponents and tweaks the game’s auto-level feature to allow players to choose how and when enemies outmatch them. From the Night Vision Ghouls to the ginormous “Gargantuan” Super Mutant, the fresh new models and foes really add needed enemy spice to the post apocalypse.

FOOK2

Just as MMM greatly alters the mutant hunting experience of Fallout 3, FOOK2 is a huge change-up for gameplay systems. Along with tons of new items and some upgraded object textures, FOOK2 is gameplay toolkit that allows players to enable tweaks that will mix up the Fallout 3 formula to challenge them or to better fit an individual play style.

Fallout 3 Visual Tweaks

Project Beauty

Ever notice that Bethesda’s games feature some of the world’s ugliest people. While it might be OK for super mutants and ghouls to look like.. well.. mutants and ghouls, the  stock character and NPC faces in Fallout 3 are not very fun to look at during a 200 hour playthrough. There are a lot of nude body mods and some new hairstyles out there, but Project Beauty HD overhauls most of the stock people in  the game giving them a more natural look. No, despite the name it won’t turn everyone into supermodels.

Green World

After a few hundred years of radioactive waste, even the most damaged ecosystem would recover (just look at Chernobyl), so why is Fallout 3′s East Coast US so much like New Mexico? After wandering around in the desolate brown and grey world, it’s refreshing to add a little visual flair. Green World actually replaces many of the dead trees and brown grass areas with more natural objects. Aside from looking better, it also introduces a bit more tactical flair since hills and trees are more obscuring of approaching enemies than just barren hills.

NMC’s Texture Pack

Like oblivion before it, Fallout 3 features passable textures. However the engine is capable of so much more and all it took was a modder to spend the time making an already good looking game into something better. NMC’s Texture Pack comes in a few different versions, all including redone landscape and object textures that really do punch up the visuals even on lower end video cards. Be warned, the highest resolution textures do need a good bit of horsepower and memory.

Fun Stuff

Dogmeat Leather Armor

Not so much armor as a new saddlebag to make your favorite attack dog companion into a beast of burden as well. This is a nice little visual flair for fans of the Wanderer’s canine best friend.

GNR – More Where That Came From

Three Dog, the radio warrior of the wastelands is a pretty fun guy to listen to.. for the first few hours of Fallout 3 anyway. Aside from having limited announcements his selection of songs is more than a little limited.  More Where That Came From adds a lot fo new “period” music to the game so  you’re less likely to grow tired of Billie Holiday and The Inkspots.

CONELRAD 640-1240 Civil Defense Radio

Another add-on radio station, CONELRAD is modeled after actual Civil Defense Radio of the 1950′s. The public service announcements and cold war radio plays add a great level of authenticity to the Fallout 3 world.

Neil Patrick Harris is Hosting the VGAs

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 06:11 PM PST

The Oscars are in March. We knew before today who would be hosting. The Spike VGAs are on Saturday, and we found out this afternoon who would be hosting. I think that says more about this event than could any original thought I might have about it.

But, yeah, the VGAs have a host in the form of Hip Choice to Do Stuff Neil Patrick Harris. The guy hosted the Tonys and the Emmys last year, and now he’s slumping it hardcore to host Saturday’s thing. I have no strong feelings about this choice, but I’d guess most gamers, who latch on to something forever if they like it for five minutes, will very much enjoy having NPH on the show.

Oh, and in bigger VGA news: the cast of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is expected to show up in some capacity. This is strange, considering that show is on a rival cable net and has nothing at all to do with video games, so there’s not much of an upside to having them. You do what you gotta do for a few extra eyeballs, I guess?

Last thing: My Chemical Romance will play a song on the show. I had forgotten they exist.

All right. So can we all agree that none of use are going to be watching this show for the awards themselves? It’s all about the talent and the game teases. Remember: Mass Effect probably, Gears something, Resident Evil who the hell knows, Uncharted 3 hopefully.

Civ IV and Guitar Hero Get Grammy Nods

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 03:36 PM PST

The Grammys try really hard to be the most irrelevant awards show around, but they aren’t going to take the V. G. A.’s spot any time soon. What the Grammys have going for them, though, is that they give out one million awards, and so there is something for everybody.

The 2010 Grammys will be a landmark, though, as two songs written for video games have received nominations. The songs are Baba Yetu, which was nominated for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist and is best known as the theme song from Civilization IV, and Megadeath’s Sudden Death, which was nominated for Best Metal Performance and was written for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock.

Wait. Hold on a quick second. A song from Civ4 got a Grammy nomination? This year? I know the Grammy eligibility period (13 months this year) is weird, but come on, man! Well, it turns out Baba Yetu actually got an album release last year near the beginning of the eligibility period, and that’s why it’s here. The album on which it can be found is Calling All Dawns, and it also got a nod of its own for Best Classical Crossover Album.

That there is video game history. Neither of these awards will actually be given out on the big show at Staples Center in February, though, so don’t feel like you need to actually watch it.

32 WoW Cosplay Night Elves (PICS) (OCCASIONALLY SCARY)

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 02:30 PM PST

I can't see your eyes

I can't see your eyes
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Picture 1 of 32

Cataclysm happens tomorrow. GameFront’s Night Elf cosplay gallery happens right now, because I needed a gallery for this week, and there are some pretty attractive night elves out there. There are some unattractive ones, too, but every one of you is special on the inside, and that’s all that matters. Luv y’all. There are many different kinds of night elves present here, but feel free to call me out if there’s a pictures with no night elf in it.
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