Gaming News

In readiness for this autumn's LAN party action, the popular BobLAN page has been ported to the mobile format.

Point your devices, as it were, at the Mobile BobLAN page to see the LAN details and schedule as it unfolds.

The DFC main site and forums were temporarily offline earlier today due to a server outage. They have been moved to a new server, running the latest versions of PHP and MySQL. No data was lost as a result of the outage.

Shacknews reported on the technology that's being developed for the sequel to Company of Heroes - the RTS game which made a couple of appearances at BobLAN a few years ago. The game stays with the WWII theme, but this time on the eastern front, where the Russians hold back the Germans.

The technology in question is ColdTech - designed to bring the realism of the snow and ice to life, and make it an integral part of the game. For example it's no longer a good idea to try to drive your tank over an iced lake or river, as that ice can be broken by the enemy.

You can read the full article on Shacknews. Also, there are plenty of Company of Heroes 2 screenshots and videos on Shacknews too.

Following on from the recent 30th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum, we now have the 20th anniversary of Wolfenstein 3D - generally regarded as the FPS that sparked the revolution in gaming in the early 90's. It marked the beginning of iD's dominance for many years, with massive titles such as Doom, Quake, Hexen, Heretic etc and the many versions of each one.

To celebrate the landmark, Steam are offering Wolfenstein for a whopping 74p. You can also get the full iD software pack at a 50% discount at the Steam Store. (offer ends at 18:00 BST today)

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum hit the ripe old age of 30 this week. For those that owned the 8-bit computer, there's nothing like reminiscing about the great games that were available back then. Indeed, many rival today's games in terms of ideas and gameplay, if not graphics.

Foxy posted this link to a list of Spectrum classics on the Facebook - well worth a read :)

A game based on The Walking Dead comic book series (later serialised in AMC's award-winning TV show) is released next week. The plot will be the survivors vs zombies fare that many of us are familiar with in the Left 4 Dead series, however the main focus of the game is the single player campaign. You will play and interact with many of the characters from the comic books.

The game will be released as 5 monthly episodes on Steam, where you can buy individually, or pay for all episodes up-front. Read more about The Walking Dead at Steam News.

In-lieu of BobLAN, there will be some Good Friday gaming on 6th April. Meet up in MSN or Steam around 8pm - games to be decided when we know numbers. The likely choice will be L4D2 though, as most people own a copy of that.

Specialist games retailer GAME/GameStation exited administration today, after having the remains of their UK operation bought by private investment firm OpCapita. Hopefully this will secure the future of the company for some years to come. The GAME story has been a particularly painful one for DFC, with the clan having a long history with BarrysWorld/GAME.

Here are some press articles about the story:

• MCV
• BBC
• Telegraph

Due to family commitments, plus work going on in the basement, this Easter's LAN party at Bob's has been cancelled. Hopefully the November LAN will be going ahead.

Time certainly flies when you're having fun. The most impressive thing this time round was the attendance - games routinely had 6 or 7 players on each team, which is great for the likes of TF2 and Day of Defeat. The range of games was also good this time - from the old classic QuakeWorld through to the latest games like BF3 and MW3 (albeit not with everyone playing).

The surprise hit was HalfLife 2 Deathmatch - a game we've all had for years but never played. There's something insanely satisfying in killing someone by hurling a toilet at them with the gravity gun :) The other popular newcomer to BobLAN was the driving game GRID. Bean spotted this on offer on Steam a few months back, and most people picked up a copy.

The old LAN favourite CS GunGame worked this time. Games are pretty quick, so it's a good one to fill a half-hour gap whilst waiting for the food to arrive.

Missing out this time were all forms of UT, Battlefield and Call of Duty (apart from a couple of people playing BF3 and MW3 online).

A BobLAN roundup can't be considered complete without a mention of the host - thanks from everyone to Bob for all the preparation and hard work that goes into it - very much appreciated fella :)

The next game in the Call of Duty franchise - Modern Warfare 3 - was released yesterday. It's already breaking sales records, with our affiliate partner GAME reporting that their midnight openings were very well supported.

The early rumours about the game hinted at the continued lack of dedicated server support for LAN play, however that appears to have been reversed. Sledgehammer, part of the Activision team who produced the game, posted this on their MW3 Dedicated Server Basics blog.

It doesn't look like the standalone server that we had for CoD4 - more like a listen server on a client, but far better than MW2 and BF3's offering.

Valve applied a raft of changes to the weapons in CounterStrike Source at the end of last week. Changes include accuracy tweaks when crouched and running, shotgun range and damage, various weapon animations, and much more. The full list of changes is on Steam News.

A second update on the same day saw some Source engine changes, plus a bunch of TF2 enhancements.

The Steam Client update this week introduced a new trading feature. You can now trade Steam Gifts and in-game items from Valve games Team Fortress 2 and Portal 2. Other titles will introduce trading over the coming months. I wonder if Wij still has any hinges going spare? :)

You can catch the full article here on Steam News.

The kill-streak system that rewards players who manage to gain several kills without dying is being replaced by a system that rewards other activities aswell. According to a Shacknews article, Infinity Ward recognised that the kill-streaks in MW and MW2 did not reward players who provided a supporting role.

This sounds like a good idea, and should prove popular at the LAN (if it's out in time). Read the full article on Shacknews.

Also, checkout details of the new game type - Kill Confirmed. In order to confirm a kill, a member of your team has to collect the dog tags from an enemy corpse. Allies can also collect team-mates' dog tags to deny a confirmed kill to the enemy.

Valve have provided some good info on the next generation of the Counter-Strike series of games. The launch of CS:GO is slated for 2012, and is still at pre-beta stage.

Here are a few sites offering information on the game:

• Steam News
• Steam Forums
• ShackNews

A major update to the Steam Client was applied yesterday. According to the release notes, they are preparing for an improved content delivery system. There is also a number of bug fixes.

The full release details are available on Steam News.

The third instalment of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series has been announced by Activision. It is slated for release on 8th November - uncannily in time for the Autumn BobLAN. The single-player campaign is based in New York - trailers can be found on t'interweb.

The Easter LAN this year was a bit lower on numbers than usual, however that resulted in a lot less mincing around imho. We tried some new games, and as a result some of the older ones didn't feature at all.

The new games includes Day of Defeat and Monday Night Combat. DoD proved really popular, and produced some very tight games - certainly got the adrenaline going at times :) MNC looked good, but none of us had any previous experience, so had no clue how best to play it. Maybe next time, we'll be a bit more organised.

The old favourites to feature were L4D2, TF2 and CounterStrike. Unfortunately, Valve released breaking changes to all the OrangeBox engine games last week, and this resulted in all the main mods (Metamod, Mani, Eventscripts, Python extensions etc) needing to be updated. The knock-on effect was that GunGame did not work properly (GunGame3 did not let the player release the old weapon when they levelled up, and GunGame5 did not equip players with a knife). There were workarounds that allowed us to complete GunGame3, but it was far from ideal. We also played a game of Frontlines: Fuel of War. This is the BF replacement we discovered last time, with the novelty of remote drones - great fun.

Not featuring at all were QuakeWorld, any of the Battlefield formats, and surprisingly there was no Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Any spare time was spent trying to find a new wallpaper for Al on widescreenbabes.com :)

Rockband and Kinect got plenty of time in the early hours of the morning. Videos of the Kinect dancing can be found on Bob's Facebook page :(

So despite the drop in numbers, this was cracking weekend once again - many thanks to DF-Lynx for hosting, catering, bar-tending etc. The next one will be in late Autumn, when hopefully BF3 will be out. Wishful thinking maybe :)

The Easter 2011 BobLAN is now well under way. Keep up with events as ever on our BobLAN page, which includes links to the forums and Twitter, and features a live webcam to allow you to experience the sights, sounds (but not the smells) as the weekend progresses.

The much-awaited sequel to Portal went on general release this week. Portal 2 returns you to Aperture Laboratories, although time has passed and the test chambers are in a state of decay compared to the first game.

Expect more of the same superb puzzle solving, with some new elements included. Add in a co-op 2 player mode and this should give plenty of gameplay. Maybe a chance of some co-op at the LAN...