Can I Get Some Assistance Here?

Looks like Nintendo is coming out with a feature that will allow you to get a little help during a game. You know I could have used this feature when I was playing Super Mario Brothers back in the early 90s. I could only get so far in that game.

I have mixed feelings about this. I think I would rather adjust the gameplay rather than sit back and watch the game play for me.

City of Heroes/Villains Architect Edition Arrives

CoH/CoV Architect Edition

There’s a new update to the MMO City of Heroes/City of Villains–The Architect Edition. (Be sure to take a look at video overview.) Now for the first time in an MMORPG, players can craft their own stories and missions for themselves or other players in the game. As a content creator gains acclaim and reputation they will unlock rewards and benefits.  Many people who had left CoH/CoV have come back to try this exciting new material. I must admit the funniest mission I have tried so far had well known Washington DC politicians as your adversaries.

User created missions have become the fastest way to level a character because you do not have to travel to go to your mission site. Also you can repeat the missions that you like. If you are a Villian travel to Cap Au Diable’s AE building. That is where everyone meets to group for missions. There are other locations for AE missions in each zone but Cap is the most popular because the trainer is closeby and so is the Blackmarket/Auction House. I’m not sure what the central meeting place would be for the Heroes side since I’m only playing villain characters at the moment.

City of Heroes/City of Villians just celebrated it’s 5th anniversary in May 2009 and is the most popular superhero MMORPG being played today. CoH/CoV has recently added Mac capability so now it matters not whether you use a Mac or a PC. Coming is soon is City of Heroes : Going Rogue. In it heroes can cross the line and become villains or, vice versa, villains can become heroes.  You can switch back if you choose.

So don your superhero gear and enjoy the fun.  I’m sure you’ll spend hours just deciding what powers and outfits you want before you even jump in the game–I know I did!

A Few Seconds Worth of Modern Warfare 2

Yup, just a few seconds. Still, it looks pretty promising. Snowmobiles and scuba diving? Count me in.

Battlefield 1943

I found this download only and multiplayer only version of Battlefield that will be available for the Xbox and Playstation in June to be very intriguing. I have a friend who loves the PC version of this game and claims it puts Halo and Call of Duty to shame. I might have to plunk down $15 and give this a try in June. The website claims that as you play the scenery on Iwo Jima is slowly destroyed until you have a battle torn map to play on. I think this really has potential.ou

Rock Band – Teen Summer Gaming Tournament 2009

This summer’s Systemwide Teen Gaming Tournament will be Rock Band 1 with PS2 and PS3. Starting June 15-August 7. The championship will be held at ImaginOn. One band will be the Mecklenburg County Rock Band champions! Check out the Rules and Song List for more information. We’ll be uploading videos soon on how to maximize your score.

Teen Taught Game Maker class

Rebecca, a teen, is great with the game design program, Game Maker. She taught a group of teens the basics of the program on a Saturday afternoon in May at ImaginOn. Here’s her PPT slideshow. Play the games they created! (Note, on Christopher’s game you have to arrow down right away. On Melvin’s game, you need to arrow right, right away). For more pics from the class, visit here. Stay tuned for an advanced Game Maker class from Rebecca coming up in the near future.

New Halo Maps

The people at Bungie recently released three new multiplayer maps for Halo 3. They are calling it the Mythic Map Pack, whatever that means. The three new maps are called Assembly, Orbital and Sandbox.

Right now you can only play these three maps on a separate playlist and that playlist only offers teams games. According to the Bungie website 23.7% of the games are straight Team Slayer, 26.9% are Team Slayer Battle Rifles, 19% are Team SWAT (which is all about the head shot), and the rest of the matches are various objective games.

If you do pick up these maps and play them be prepared to get embarrassed occasionally. I’ve noticed that the hardcore Halo gamers tend to buy the new maps first and learn them and then feast on those of us that aren’t 14 years old with hours and hours of free time available to develop strategies on the new maps. You know who you are, punks.

Assembly
As usually happens with new Halo maps the one I thought looked the most fun to play is the map I get destroyed on. That would be Assembly. It reminds me of a larger version of the Halo 2 map called Midship. I used to love playing on Midship it was complete chaos and full of plasma grenades. One of my greatest Halo 2 achievements was coming in first place in a free for all game on Midship while not firing a single shot. I used only the melee attack and plasma grenades. Those were heady times.

Assembly is an oval map with two levels. There is camouflage in the middle of the top level and you can drop down there for a gravity hammer. Similar to Midship there are two bases that face each other at each end of the oval. There is a glass wall fronting each base so you can’t exchange fire across the map from inside the bases. There are two exits to each side and a ramp in the back that descends to the lower level. There is a tower on one side of the map that houses a rocket launcher. That’s a good place to crash to early in the game if you don’t mind dying immediately. During battle rifle matches a few players tend to exit the bases high and exchange fire across the map.

An effective strategy that I have witnessed teams use, while destroying the team I was on, is one where one player gets the hammer on the bottom level and runs around clobbering people while his teammates cover him from above. That is possible because the top level of this map is open. The top level gives battle rifle experts some great sight lines. Those that can get the head shots with the battle rifle are going to love, love, love this map. The bottom is very tight and those players that have a good movement skills and are good with grenades and the melee attack can have a field day.

Orbital

Orbital is a tunnel map. It is set on a human spaceship. It’s mostly a lot of single level tunnel battles with a staircase and a corner thrown in and a balcony area that overlooks a tunnel by those stairs. I still haven’t worked out the full map in my head but if you are a fan of standoffs with medium distance rifle battles and grenades or tight standoffs with a lot of grenade mayhem then you will love this map. There’s even a nice long corridor with a sniper rifle at the end of it that should make you evil sniper experts happy.

Of all three maps Orbital is the one map where there are fewer blow outs between players that are more familiar with the map and those that are just learning it. It’s not a map that really requires memorization in order to fight and win. All you need are your Halo skills. There aren’t a lot of surprises here, it’s just a good solid map with a good mixture of sharp shooting and close range chaos.

Sandbox

Sandbox is my favorite of the three new maps.

This the map that everyone wanted. Remember how much fun you had creating custom maps on the Foundry? That was great fun. The only problem with Foundry were those pesky side rooms and tunnels that could get in the way of a map that was open. With Sandbox Bungie has solved that problem and also allowed you to create three unique styles of multiplayer maps: open, floating and enclosed.

It’s pretty easy to go into the Forge and delete all the structures that come with the default map. It took me about twenty minutes. You can probably now go to Bungie’s website and find a “canvas” version all ready to go so you won’t have to make on manually.

Floating about the main map is a flat area where you can make on of them floating maps where you’ll fall to your death if you fall off the map. This area is supposedly larger than the basic map you start out with. You can access this during the forge by flying up to a transporter that will take you up there. I think it’s pretty ingenious.

You can access a smaller enclosed area by deleting a cover at the very center of the starting map.

The middle map is a basic rectangular shaped arena that is bordered by sand dunes.

On all three of these sections you can do just about anything you can think of. I’ve played a couple of homemade maps already and there are some creative people out there in the Halo community.

The default map is actually pretty good. It’s on the middle level and it’s like a large version of the old Battle Creek maps. There are some vehicles on it and some heavy weapons and it really lends itself to some pretty chaotic and fun battles. There are times on Sandbox when there is stuff just blowing up all over the place. Once you get used to the layout these crazy battles are a lot of fun.

A Long Life

I always tell people that ask my why I like Halo so much that it is because the game has legs. In a few months this game will be two years old and it’s still going strong online. There are rumors that there are new maps coming out later this year. The reason this game has legs is because Bungie supports the game. They tweak the playlists and weapons placements on maps and they create new map two years into the life of a game (an eternity for a video game). I know when I bought Halo 3 that I would still be playing it two years later. How many games can you confidently say that about?

Game Design at South County

This Spring, four classes were held for teens at South County Regional branch library on game design. Using the system’s Alienware laptops, teens explored Multimedia Fusion 2 software. Griffin created a maze game with two levels. Launch it to play on your own! (Hint: you move the ball with your mouse, choose F2 to refresh. If the ball hits the chocolate walls, you’ll need to start over!). A teen in the class also taught a program called Roblox. It’s a free online building game where teens can share their creations and play together online.  PLCMC has their own Roblox account here and has friended the teens in the class so that their Roblox games can be played by anyone.

Check out our Flickr pics here.

Conquer the World

On April 16th, 2009 ten teens set out to conquer the world, starting first at ImaginOn. That right, you heard it here first, these ambitious teens were the first to participate in the new program called “Conquer the World” held monthly in the Teen Loft. With ten gaming laptops networked the teens were able to play through a session of computer simulation game called Civilization IV. Each player alone has to make the choices of a world leader, such as whether to be peace-loving and ally with other players, develop sophisticated technology to sell to others, to build a media-driven corporate superpower, or to become a tyrant causing war to break out. All of these choices are free for the player to make, with the realization that each choice has a consequence!  Our next time playing will be on May 4th, 2009 from 4:00-7:00pm at The Loft.  Come join us!

Good News for Gamers and a Chess Club

I saw an article today that gives us gamers yet another reason to play, it is good for your eyesight.

“Playing ‘action’ video games improves a visual ability crucial for tasks like reading and driving at night, a new study says.”

The article talks about people who play first person shooters showed the improvement, but not those who play sim type games.  I guess it is time to break out Rainbow Six again.

In other news… Here at the Matthews Branch Library, we are going to start a kid’s chess club during Summer Reading.  The club will start with three meetings on June 15th, June 29th and July 13th.  The club will be for rising 1st through 5th graders.

We are looking for donations of chess sets.  If anyone would like to donate please email me zmoore@plcmc.org.

Modern Warfare 2

Check out this trailer! I hadn’t even heard of this until today. Instead of continuing the Call of Duty franchise they are branching CDO IV: Modern Warfare into its own franchise. I can’t wait. I just finished the campaign mode on Modern Warfare last week. Yeah, I know I’m slow but I always seem to end up playing Halo 3 online instead of any single player modes on any games.