Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm surprised how quickly I settled back into sitting on the tower in Facing World with a sniper rifle. It was like a favourite pair of trainers.

Spent a while playing around with shock combos. Conclusion: Far too hard to tell distance from enemy, so even though you can hit the projectile, it's not usually close enough to cause any damage.

It was fairly notable last night, mind, quite how well we worked a s a team on facing worlds. Well, aside from that time the Gaywood took the flag from my dead hands, and proceeded to turn around and run back into the enemy base.

So long as the flag carrier calls out which side they're trying to run down (and indeed, asks if it's safe to even try grabbing their flag) we can do a good job covering them. Yes.

I've never been good enough to use them well. Sometimes I've gotten some kills by spamming them down corridors, but I've never had much luck in open spaces.

Hahha yeah! That tactic was pure fail.

I think we need to standardise on "left" and "right" being, say, "looking out from our base and into theirs".

I think we settled on close to optimal tactics for Face -- one sniper, who mostly targets enemy snipers; one defence guy in the base of our tower; two flag runners, only one of who enters the enemy tower while the other hassles the spawning enemies; and one midfield, who hangs about just under the central peak, out of fire, until the flag has been captured. Work on the basis that the flag runner will die and the midfielder should take the flag.

Yeah, that worked well. If the enemy sniper is suppressed, our sniper should work on keeping the enemy occupied (they'll try and fire up at you with everything they've got, including link guns, thus distracting them) and when the flag runner emerges, can clear their path down their chosen route and also shoot baddies getting too close (several times last night I headshotted an enemy who was link-gunning Gaywood or Random Internet Random).

Also, Stain.

ARGHH!!!! FUCKING FUCK FUCKY FUCK! It's GOT! ARGGHGG!HGH!GH!G!

I found it good for the midfield tole to wait for the charge, smack their base with a redeemer, and then run to the midway mark just in time to meet there (And accidentally grab the keg o health from the falg carrier)

Played a bit of the single player campaign (cheevos!) last night... blimey, I am NOT ready to play on 'Insane' yet. It took countless tries to defeat the evil blue merc guys in the team deathmatch, and I won't even go into what happened in the CTF match that follows. I don't think there's enough health on some of these maps...

Oh, and the cutscenes didn't quite seem right. Malcolm's lip syncing was right out and his mouth was often doing a 'SHOUT!' movement while the actual voice was just talking normally. And perhaps my mind has been contaminated by too many ludicrous action hero names, but 'Malcolm' doesn't exactly sound like a badass name to me. Rather like you'd never have an action hero called Dudley, Dale or Steve.

I also had a brief poke around some of the maps. Deck 16 is back (as just 'Deck') but with a bit too much annoying spilled nuclear waste. Warpspeed is sort of back, in the form of the far more cluttered and claustrophobic 'Deimos'.

I refuse to play the "single" player campaign. I suggest we four plebs put aside an hour a night ot something and chip away at it as An Team.

Do we still get the achievements if we co-op the campaign on insane, man(e)?

There's only one way to find out. FIGGGHTTT!

The insane ach. isn't quite as bad as it seems. You only have to complete the last mission of each chapter on insane to get them, rather than the whole chapter. Save up a few cards, and it ought not be impossible.

I'm fairly sure you'll get the 'single player' achs in coop, but ther are separate coop ones anyway.

Aw yea. It's on!

BRING IT! WOO!

Does anyone want to play some of this this evening? I'm likely to be available from, say, 5pm.

But of course.

Has to be later than that for me, soz... in work until 7. And then home for EATAGE.

Hey, even if we start at 5ish, doesn't mean we won't still be playing when you show up!

*prods* is this happening?

Yeah I'll be there in 10 min. Just eating some food.

Playing now guys!

We're having a break now -- reconvene about half eight. So far we have WullieOoster, myself, Mr Dave, Dimrill, pundy and Sir Morte playing -- with Perkies and The Egg expected to turn up soonish.

I'm back, whenever people are ready. Just thought of one consequence of using party talk in-game -- if we play, say, 4v4 CTF the two sides will be able to hear each other!

We have our new BezzieShooter!

Far, far too many awesome moments tonight to recall. I do think that 8v8 Warfare will be the bread and butter of this game; the constantly shifting tactics and weapons at your disposal as nodes are gained and lost makes for loads of variety. Plus, Darkwalkers. Darkwalkers kick ass. I didn't get to try the flying squid thing Dimrill used to own that Levi though.

One of the things that most impresses me though is that it almost feels like five or six different games. Tonight we went from a straight Team Deathmatch, to low-grav instagib free-for-all Deathmatch (entirely about the twitch), to humans-vs-bots Warfare (emphasis on teamwork and tactics), to humans-vs-humans Team Deathmatch (mostly about the smack talk) and they are very distinct experiences.

UTIII single player = utter shite. UTIII multiplayer = Wahay!

The Darkwalker is indeed the daddy... stomping around, sweeping your BEAMS OF DEATH across all who dare cross you is amazing... and you can bring a mate along to gun from a less entertaining but still useful turret!

After the arse I considered 2003 and 2004 to be, this is indeed excellent. A shame all the promotional materials focus on the utterly arse single player mode with its ridiculous outfits, impossibly beefy men and utter hokum... the multiplayer is 'right' in a way that so many other games could learn from.

The good:
-the hoverboard, so you don't have to tediously clomp everywhere at a slow pace
-the link gun, which combines two kinds of offense AND a repair tool
-very little insta-death
-a ridiculously huge variety of maps and things to do
-the orb is a brilliant gameplay mechanic

The bad:
-the maps are severely lacking in health pickups... finding one is more of a rare surprise than something you can take for granted
-the vehicle controls leave a little to be desired. But only a little!
-lag severely affects you - pull the trigger, and watch how you don't fire until a split second later, when your target has moved. Note that this could just be Xbox Live lag as it always is, but unlike other games (CoD4) it doesn't try to disguise it
-the graphics are sometimes so detailed you are so busy processing the prettiness you don't process the door you should be entering.

The ugly:
-the translocator is a stupid, ridiculously annoying thing that the bots, being bots are able to use more effectively than all but the best human players
-likewise, the bots are able to drive a single person jeep one way while firing another way. While then steering around obstacles they can't see

Rumours of a possible expansion -- Epic staffer, talking about why judging is running delayed in the Make Something Unreal contest, says
Rock on! I'd be happy with some extra classic map remakes (DM-Morpheus; CTF-LavaGiant; CTF-November) but I would object to some new mutators and whatnot too. A no-orb mutator would shut a lot of the UT3 haters up. I don't feel the need for total conversions or new game modes, which would also be the hardest to certify as DLC anyway; just maps and mutators would be fine.

Frankly, Epic may not even have to really have to write very much. I'm sure there are community maps out there they could package up and pass to Microsoft for certification. They'd have to do some legals with mapmakers, particularly if it was premium DLC, but surely that can't be an insurmountable problem?

Oh, and a new menu UI. I'm actually very annoyed about this. In numerous posts on their official forums around the time of the PC/PS3 release, they acknowledged that the menus are overly fiddly and needed work; they even went so far as to say they were rushed in. They promised a patch for them. That was a year ago! Dammit.

And dumping upon anyone stupid enough to go under you.

In regular deathmatch/CTF modes (against the bots) I really liked UT3 but that bollocks mode with the nodes killed the game for me completely.

Consider me tempted.

Get to the back of the queue.

You see! Not so der-brain now am I? I will get it on the cheap for bezzie goodness.

To be quite honest, that was a given, due to it being primarily a multiplayer game.

That turret becomes much more useful for taking out stuff like Mantas or skilled players on foot hassling the Darkwalker with an AVRIL. Same is true of the machine gun turret on the Goliath -- if that turrent is unmanned a skilled player in a Manta can take it out with no problems by jumping over it, turning, shooting, and jumping again before the slow-moving main turret on the tank can catch up with him. Indeed, under those circumstances, the driver of the vehicle is better off getting into the secondary turret with LB.

I love my Mantas (these are the hover things like motorbikes with big fans on the side). Right trigger spins the fans into reverse, hugging the ground and killing anyone you run over.

Such an amusingly ridiculous idea, too.

Critically important in Warfare, to the point where I try not to use it as a gun and conserve ammo for repairing stuff.

It does feel like a very deep game, doesn't it? I reckon we did 10 hours of play on the weekend, but we've only scratched the surface of Warfare, there are still four or so CTF maps we haven't tried, and we haven't even started any vCTF.

Heh. Lots of old school UT2k4 players hate the orb. The best thing about it is, you can make a thrilling run on the hoverboard into a contested node and turn the game around in seconds. The worst thing is the enemy can make a thrilling run and turn the game around in seconds. I think we were getting an easy ride off the bots last night; they were one level down from the level we play CTF on. As we make the opponents harder it can get aggrevating to scrap for five minutes over a node, capture, overlook an orb carrier, and lose it in a heartbeat. The moral is that you need to pay close attention to taking orb carriers down, which takes discipline if you've just taken the enemy prime node and everyone wants to go spam the core.

I think there are more around than you give credit for, but they are tucked away off the beaten track a bit. Armour helps a lot too. Even Facing Worlds has two armour pickups (thighpads behind the tower and body armour on top).

You have to put them on "direct" under settings or you can't drive a tank one way whilst firing in another. They are a touch fiddly at times, you can get snagged on scenery.

Dunno what was up with your connection. We were maxed out last night with 16 active characters, so our connections were taking a pounding. I was worried mine was going to be too slow to keep up (particularly with 8-player VOIP on top, as I'm sure Epic made it push-to-talk for a reason) but everyone else said it was fine.

I find CoD worse for this, where I frequently fail to spot people against broken outlines of wreckage.

I think there is a no-translocator mutator, although on some of the CTF maps (like that one with Grannys Random Rotating Pillar in the middle) it's a key way to get from one level to another in the map.

How do you do that?

Really? I know Warfare is pretty complex but once you get your head around it, it's the deepest of the game modes, I think. It probably helps that I played a lot of the predecessor mode, Onslaught, in UT2k4 which was a bit simpler, so I've learned it in stages.

Ooooh...some decent second hand prices on this, memories of the original UT Tournament back when I actually played PC games plus imminent payday have tempted me.

However, as it's only really enjoyable in multiplayer what kind of Beex lifespan would you say this game has left.

I don't want it to arrive the day you all get bored and move on, because I may cry. Real tears too, not just noise.

Tons. There are no other shooters on the horizon to displace it (GoW2's most interesting mode, Horde, only supporting five players is too limiting I think), we're fairly bored of all the other shooters we already own, and the game has depth by the metric fuckton we're only just getting started exploring.

Bah, I say.

You can't scrounge up £15 worth of trade-ins? And split the 2-for-£30 deal for two copies of UT3 with another bezzie, as I did with Metal Angel?

Looks like getting Mrs Jon (How come when you lot say Mrs or Mr Yourforumusername it sounds OK but when I do it, it just sounds bloody stupid?) to order that tonight.

I'll also need a replacement headset because mine is very broken. Any recommendations of where to get one on the cheap? I know I could search but I prefer genuine recommendations to just finding the cheapest price on the internet.

It certainly helped me in one the the vCTF, where I managed to rack up a 49 kill spree.

Dunno what was up with your connection. We were maxed out last night with 16 active characters, so our connections were taking a pounding. I was worried mine was going to be too slow to keep up (particularly with 8-player VOIP on top, as I'm sure Epic made it push-to-talk for a reason) but everyone else said it was fine.[/quote]

XBox certification is done so as to make it playable on 99% on connections. Given we're all fairly close geographically, and most are not on rubbish speed connections, it should be able to cope with the extra demands of VoIP.


Secondary fire. Basically punts and stuns the person rather than damages, but you can usually smack them with your death ray before they get up again.

It only works with silly nicknames, the more normal sounding the name, the more weird the "Mrs" prefix sounds.

Last one I bought was a preowned one from Gamestation for about £2. I've always found the wired headset a little quiet though, one day I might treat myself to the wireless one.



Can I have a survey of who likes or dislikes certain game modes? Pundy, you were breaking up last night; did you say that you don't like Instagib?

I said to myself I wasn't going to trade anything in anymore, because I always regret it. I can afford it, to be honest, I just feel guilty that I've spent loads of games recently and haven't even tapped into most of them yet.

If I get this then I can tell I won't play any of those, given the number of hours you guys have already played it.

But I have no friends to give me a silly nickname. And no imagination to come up with my own

More importantly, can we have a survey of whether gib should have a hard or soft 'g'? It just sounds wrong with a soft 'g'.

I hear ya, I'm still only on chapter 2 of Dead Space.

It helps that UT needs 4+ people to get the best from, as that restricts when it can be played.

Meh, let me see. My plan was to spend my games allowance on MS points this month, so I could buy Worms XBLA and some DLC for World Tour.

Buy it you scrubber.

Want to get it on two for £30? I can send you munnehs.

But the postage would bring it up to the single second hand price, no?

Plus if I get it on a 2 for £30 thing I have a moral obligation to get Ninja Gaiden II too.

I was hoping you'd love me enough to send it for free.