I’ve been addicted to the demo, and now the final product sits in my hands. Sweet day of days. The DVD and CD version of the game are now pouring out of the EbGames mail-order warehouse with Free three day shipping.

Find me online. My x-fire username is “dellabitta” and my Gamespy ID is “DellaBitta”. Tricksy.

Battlefield 2 Reviews:
Gamespot - 9.3
Gamespy - 5 stars
IGN - 8.9

The Link

You can’t visit their new website cuz they are getting slash dotted… but A bunch of players literally rescued an old game from the dumpster and resurrected it. Love it. The Human Interest story

News of Chris Taylor’s spiritual successor to Total Annihilation has recently hit the press and PC Gamer’s August’s issue hosts the exclusive preview. Now - as a magazine - PC Gamer doesn’t like to post new content on their site until after the magazine circulates (who would buy the magazine if they did?), but a brave anonymous soul scanned the “Supreme Commander” preview article and posted the images for public viewing.

You can read the full article here. The link sets your browser to the bottom of the article. Scroll up and enjoy. (edit: Screenshots are gone for now.. I’ll find new ones soon)

The ideas behind the game sound fantastic. Giant robots remain the theme and maps will be a huge 4 kilometers of rendered space. An emphasis will be on grand strategy - maneuvering forces into position to enforce pressure on your opponent’s weaknesses.

Taylor says “fuck rock-paper-scissors” - referring to the foodchain-design of modern RTS unit hierarchies. Instead battles will be resolved by thinking through the strategic questions of when and where to engage. We’ve heard things like this before, but for some reason I believe Taylor when he says it. In the article he references the battle of Midway (a turning point in the WWII Pacific theater). Japan should have taken the island if the battle was based solely on numbers, but the US used timing and surprise to push them back. Taylor wants to bring sound thinking and planning that’s so common in turn based games into the fold of RTS games .

How you may ask? By scaling the map so that troop movements and their positions factor into how the war unfolds. You can zoom the 3D map at will and at the largest distance your armies will be repesented by Icons. From here you can see your overarching positioning in the world, command your units to attack, etc. Select a group of squads, set their target and your forces march off. In a nice design element your armies will alter their speed so as to converge on your target en force (there are quite a few other nice control dynamics in this title, actually. One has your surrounding troops automatically target anything your frantically clicking ). The AI will then control your forces in battle, or you can zoom all the way down the finest detail and manipulate the battle on a more tactical level. Units are rendered and animated in full 3D - giant spiders walk across the landscape and crush anything they step on, ships steam into position and engage, airplanes strafe from overhead, etc.

Unit sizes range from the minuscule to the gigantic. The battleship unit itself doesn’t fit on the screen when the game is zoomed into a normal RTS camera-distance .

I picture Axis and Allies meets a gorgeous sci-fi RTS. I won’t post the screen shots here (I don’t want to get sued by PC Gamer), but there are numerous shots visible in the forum thread. Rumor also has it that Gamespy will soon release the first online preview, and I’ll post again when that comes out.

—

In 1997 there were two RTS games of note. Age of Empires stormed the scene and redefined the depth of RTS factions, settings, and added “Ages” to the RTS genre.

But then Total Annihilation came out of left field. The game was the first 3D mainstream RTS, and unlike the human units of AoE, the mechanical units of TA blew up. They blew up good. Perhaps that was the initial draw - but after stringing network cables out the windows of our dorm and into our neighbor’s hub (we had 3 rooms and 6 people connected this way) we soon realized that the TA-fun wasn’t just eye candy, but frantic and smart mulitplayer gameplay. The 3rd floor hallway of Barlow URI echoed wih curses of Clay Johnson - a friend with a particular knack for knowing how to destroy anything I created. Addicting and enjoyable is an understatement.

Over the years TA accumulated more gaming awards than anything I can remember, including PC Gamers’ Best game of All Time.

Cavedog went on to use an updated Total Annihilation engine to produce TA: Kingdoms - a fantasy hybrid - but the game had serious performance issues and ultimately wasn’t successful. The TA franchise fell of the radar.

Chris Taylor left CaveDog to start Gas Powered Games, and released Dungeon Siege - a 3D party-based Diablo. Again he wowed us with his incredible graphics and production talent, but then Chris once again went silent.

Well now he’s back. Next year he hopes to publish “Supreme Commander” - a spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, and I’m jonesin already.

In an humorous write-up, 1UP.com sent an employee into the various game store chains to probe the savvy of the clerks. “Tough Customer” paints the EB Clerk as a gruff “I know more about games than you” jerk-hole, where as I always found them to be dorkish “I want you to know that I know more about games than you” type of folk. Must be a New England thing.

The Toys R Us clerk must have grown up in the 60’s. For Shame.

Yes it’s true. This site hosts the comprehensive list of all VG TV spots from the dawn of gaming till now. Searchable, indexed by platform or country of origin, and thumbnailed in a well designed and navigable format, this is the ad critic for VGs. Sweet holy nostalgia.

Thank you Beauchamp for bringing GamePressure.com to my attention. I’ve just wasted an hour of my life watching the zany Japanese commercial for Katamari Damacy, laughing at the doomed 64 bit Atari Jaguar , and scratching my head over the German Commercial for the SNES title “Smerfs” (roughly translated to English, that’s “Smurfs”) .

The Atari Pitfall commercial is the one spot I recall the most from my childhood - a spokesman with horrible hair and an even worse suit (but buzzy attitude!) attempts to retain ownership of his pitfall game cartridge from the klepto stagehands reachin-in from offscreen. Oh the hilarity and zaniness of it all! ‘Makes me want to buy the game all over again. That guy has zip!

Then there’s the Cosmic Ark. The costume designer for this spot over-committed his portrait of the American - je ne sais quai… ‘cool dork’. This kid can hardly bear the weight of his own clothes. Or maybe he’s just meant to personify the Cosmic Ark itself which also remains large, red, motionless and relatively unanimated. Gotta love the old school.

It’s odd though - not all of these commercials are filmed in any of the same style. Today we’re somewhat used to game commercials bordering on somewhat of the surreal. Most don’t even show gameplay, but instead extract one element of the game and place into everyday life. Ratchet and Clank: Up your Arsenal’s shock blaster commercial comes immediately to mind. (It’s funny actually, one of Steve’s friends reminds of Chris but with more hair. But maybe that’s because I can picture that Chris would do something like this in real life if given the chance, and also maybe because Chris is also a touch of surreal, too.)

Back in the day things were much, much, more business-like. Check out this little ditty about the Gravitar. It’s more like an infomercial than a commercial.. selling a single title arcade machine as if it were a car or a TV. This marketing approach ultimately short lived but probably had to be done at some point. Perahaps this promo was shown at arcade tradeshows? Its hard to tell

Anyway - there are tons of videos here. One of the site’s taglines is “We got 2479 classic and contemporary videogame TV commercials.” The text ‘2479′ is highlighted in friendly ‘hamburgers-served yellow. I don’t know for a fact if this site hosts the comprehensive list of VG Commercials from all time. But 2479 is way more than I would have guessed the total number of TV spots for VGs would be.

I should also note that these videos are only a subsection of a larger site: Gamepressure.com which also contains an amazing Gaming Encylopedia. And for those who prefer a linear progression to their gaming history, then grab a glass of scotch and set aside some time to read through AtariMuseum.com - a site that probably deserves a post of it’s own, but I’m too tired and too far through my own glass of Scotch to commit to a full writeup.

Those who of you who are not subscribed to Fileplanet should check-out the F.E.A.R official site for trailers and screenshots about this this dark and twisted shooter. The game looks to be pretty damn sweet - you encounter the paranormal in a a horror-movie like FPS. The title was nominated for numerous E3 awards, and is under development by Monolith Productions, the creators of the highly successful, atmospheric and award winning No One Lives Forever franchise.

Now for a quick word for you Fileplanet subscribers: the Closed Mulitiplayer Beta Client for F.E.A.R. is available to download!

I’m about to snag the client myself - and I might click through some NDA stuff that’ll shut me up from here-on-out, but before I do that let me urge all fileplanet subscribers to give this one a shot. Consider yourself urged.

Enjoy.

Wired News: How Gamers Can Help Cure Cancer

This is a simply fantastic idea. In this wired article, the author has the idea that console manufacturers should build in some firmware that enables grid copmputing apps (like seti@home or folding@home) to run on the space CPU cycles that all of our various consoles will be wasting.

Awesome. Let’s hope someone at Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are listening.

PSP homebrews on firmware 1.50? - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Well, it looks like the days of crying because we couldn’t emulate the SNES on our american PSPs are over.

Ahh.. and just in time since my 1g memory stick has arrived.

I’ll let you konw if i get all this stuff working!

EA released the Battlefield 2 demo this past weekend (as you may already know). Unfortunately I was away in sunny southern Rhode Island all weekend (at a freakin rocking wedding - congrats Fico!! Woot!) and I got back late Sunday evening. Hot, sunburnt, and tired, I promised myself I’d play only a few rounds of BF2 before I went to bed. Well, a few games turned into a few hours (four to be exact) and I’m happy to say that Battlefield 2 delivers everywhere I hoped it would.

There are a ton of demo reviews every which way on the web. Since the game is somewhat complicated I thought I’d skip the personal review and instead share some nuggets I’ve learned over my 4 hour romp. Hopefully it’ll work you through the ‘green’ phase faster than it took me.

Tickets Go On Your Big Toe
If you’re new to Battlefield line of games then you might also be unfamiliar to the whole ticket paradigm. Each team starts the match with around 300 tickets (the actual number is configured per server). Every time one of your teammates dies and respawns it consumes one ticket .

Your team also bleeds Tickets over time if your opponent controls 50% or more of the control points. Both teams bleed tickets if the map is split 50/50%.

A medic can revive fallen soldiers - thus eliminating the ticket penalty - but only if they get to the ‘body’ within 10 seconds. A talented Medic can save a considerable amount of your side’s tickets through the course of the match, and also keep your squad action-ready throughout the tough firefights.

The Interface and You
Some of these things aren’t so obvious:

If you want to change ‘kits’ (sniper, medic, assault, anti-tank, etc), then hit the capslock key. This will bring up a menu where you can select your kit and your spawn point. Note that you can only spawn in a friendly base or at your squad leader, and that all of the currently available spawn points are marked as large white dots on the map to the right. Once you have your kit and you’ve assigned yourself a spawn point, hit ‘done’ in the lower right hand corner. You’ll be dropped right into the game.

Also within the capslock menu are buttons to switch teams and join squads. I highly _highly_ recommend joining a squad. Without a squad you risk missing all that makes Battlefield 2 great. More on squads later.

While in battle presss the Q key to bring up the comms menu. A radial dial appears with options to send prefabricated voice comments to you team. Call out targets, request a medic, confirm orders.. it’s all there and quick to use.

B toggles your headset voice chat. Press the L key once to set your voice cms ot loop only to your squadmates - which is ideal as this cuts down the radio chatter.

Helicopters aren’t Toys
Battlefield 2 isn’t as arcadey as Battlefield 1942, and this is most apparent in the control of the game’s helicopters. My advice to you is - don’t bother trying to fly these beasts until you’ve mastered the foot soldier aspect of the game. Even then - I would highly recommend the purcahse of a joystick for flying the choppers.

Unfortunately it seems that the single player game doesn’t include helicopters, so there’s no where to train yourself except in the heat of battle. Boo.

Tanks don’t lead the way, Rangers do
Tanks are powerful units but they have limited visibility. The tank’s arch-nemesis is obviously the anti-tank foot soldier (which is popular due to their rocket launchers) - but tanks are also susceptible to Helicopters, Jets, hand grenades, rifle-mounted grenade launchers and special-ops’ C4. Even worse - a tank captures everyone’s attention when it rolls into a fray. There’s a lot going against them.

In true urban combat a tank depends on friendly surrounding foot soldiers for protection, and the same holds true in Battlefield 2. Driving a tank down the gullet of an enemy’s frontline is the sure-fire way to lose the advantage and get yourself blown-up. My advice: Stick to the battle’s periphery and lob in the shells from afar; give your grunts the close armor support and morale bonus they need.

Find a Good Server
A server with imbalanced teams is a junior-high ego-fest. Nobody volunteer to change over to the undermanned squad so don’t try to be the Martyr. Nobody will remember you.

Find a Good Squad
Squads are the best change to Online-FPS in years. Find a squad that talks - even if they suck ass. If nobody is talking then move onto the next squad. If nobody is talking on your server then find a different server.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention - squads in Battlefield 2 provide a mechanism to stick with the same group of people throughout all of the match’s firefights. Even after you die you spawn at your squad leader’s position..!

After a few engagements your squad will begin to click and soon you’ll learn to anticipate each other. When you find a squad who works well together it provides the same feeling and appreciation of teamwork without all of the overhead and timesink of a clan. This alone elevates Battlefield 2 above all other FPS shooters.

Fill a Role
Your squad should be a mixed unit. If there’s no medic, become one. If you’re in a firefight and encounter some armored vehicles that kill you - spawn an anti armor unit if your squad is missing one. Make your squad work like a machine and the enemy will fall at your feet.

Don’t play Fetch
It’s a mistake to vacate a control point you’ve just captured. Obviously you’ve just killed a bunch of people and thost bastards will already be on the move to deal you some payback - so pack up and leave! This holds especially true in those central control points. Instead stick around a few minutes to secure your position before moving-on.

Remember - Defense can be even more exciting than offense, and when you’re surrounded and taking substantial fire from all sides - that’s when the game gets good.

Communicate, bitches!
If you have a headset - talk talk talk. I cannot stress this enough. It increases the effectiveness of your squad, provides you and your team greater situational awareness, and accelerates your through the game’s learning process. 15 minutes in a good squad provides more potential for learning knew things than an hour lonewolfing it.

You’ll have a far greater sense of accomplishment when you take a base with your squaddies, and death won’t have the same negativity becase you’ll always be in the middle of the action.

Call out Targets
Just becuase you’ve spotted enemy troops that doesn’t mean the pal next to you has. Point at any newly aquired targets and hit the q key. This alarms everyone on your squad with a bright red flashing troop icon in their minimap. Your chance of dropping the target just increased by a factor of 5.

Also - when you see a tank coming over a hill - call it out! This is especially useful if you d someone in your squad has an anti-tank launcher. Your signal also alerts any nearby friendly helicopters who will can now direct their fire on your target.

All this with two simple finger gestures. Do it!

Shoot and Scoot
Chances are that someone else witness any firefight you’re in, and their on their way to engage you. To maintain the tactical balance, repositon yourself in the same area. If you don’t resposition then you risk become predictable, or worse, becoming flanked.

If you end an enagement in the middle of the field - pick yourself and find some cover. There are a lot of snipers out there.

Duck and Cover
70% of wartime casualities comes from Artillery (or so the Military channel told me). Highstep it out the area as the first shell hits your position. Preferably find a hut and get inside. If you’re in a base and getting shelled then run outside the permiter of the walls. Yes, you’ll be in the line of fire, but trust me when I saw you’re safer out there the inside.

Steel rain comes down in a random pattern for about 10 seconds, so don’t think your’re safe until the air goes silent.

Good luck, and look for me on XFire as “dellabitta”. In game tag is “MrGoiter”.

Since E3 rumors have circulated the Internet regarding the availability of old school Nintendo games on the upcoming Nintendo Revolution console system. The entire library of Nintendo games was supposedly available for download for free from the Nintendo Download Service.

But Nintendo President Saturo Iwata recently interviewed with Japanese site Famitsu.com to set the record straight. Consumers who purchase games for the Revolution will earn cash credit towards unlocking old school games at the Nintendo Download Service site. Users also have the option to purchase old school games with a credit card.

The download service is free, but the games aren’t. Apparently George Harrison didn’t get the memo. Sigh.

“Using the properties in the past, I want to take shape that the profit is paid to Nintendo to the end.” -Saturo Iwata

Cool service, but it’s not free!? And his phrasing leads me to believe that games won’t cheap. Or if cheap, then only as limited time rentals.

The interview on Famitsu.com is in Japanese, but Pro-G has more details about the story.

Nintendo had better get their act together and tell us something GOOD about the Revolution. I’m still wondering what’s so Revolutionary. Details people - details!