It' s swings and roundabouts! (about controllers and nick!)

Both the PC and the Consoles have different things going for them. Try playing a decent driving game on a keyboard and mouse. Surely shadow run must have some statistics hiding somewhere to look at how the two platforms compare kill wise? You shuold think of it like a handicap in sailing or something; Slower and faster boats race together, but they all have a handicap figure - the only difference between console and PC is that its sensitivity is scalable compared to that of a joystick - now if you fixed the sensitivity of the mouse to that of the sticks on the average console game I put money on it it would be a tie! The keyboard doesnt come into the equation - a pad wins from an accessability perspective and wont give you RSi! The consoles are getting keyboard support in game anyway? PC' s only lure is their sheer grunt!

As for the nick, I don' t plan changing it again soon, just not long after I changed it last time another few shashi / ikashi etc.. type names registered and well, even I was getting confused! - Besides, Nitro your way ahead of me on avatar / nick changes!

And yes I' ve decided that even being frantically busy isn' t going to keep me away these days!

ORIGINAL: Ikashiru

Besides, Nitro your way ahead of me on avatar / nick changes!

But i do probably have MPD...

ORIGINAL: Ikashiru

And yes I' ve decided that even being frantically busy isn' t going to keep me away these days!

Like music to my ears!

Hehehehe.... Just logged on to post the old statistics.

28 kills, 4 deaths, no waiting.

Pity I never got to play with you Nitro. What the hell was up with that lobby? Mass & I had no trouble whatsoever getting into the game, and it just sort of left you behind. Might post my impressions in a bit. I' ve had mine for a week though, so it' ll most likely be a little more composed than my usual " first impression" rambling.

ORIGINAL: Eddie_the_Hated

Pity I never got to play with you Nitro. What the hell was up with that lobby? Mass & I had no trouble whatsoever getting into the game, and it just sort of left you behind.

It probably had something to do with me being a dirty Jew. Computers can tell y' know...

We' ll sort it out when the game hits, if not before.

I too a look at our stats side-by-side though and out of the three of us you' re top in everything. I' ll be doing my very best this week to zoom past you but you have a headstart so i may never catch up :(

Love ya!

I had a 2 kill 12 death ratio for my first match though.... it was embarrasing.

It probably had something to do with me being a dirty Jew. Computers can tell y' know...

Yeah, them & those f***ing Christians. Kick em off the internet I say.

" I' ll probably get both versions because my PS3 friends list is steadily growing."

PS3 has a friends list?


Majik that was a kickass first impression' s of the game. You got me obsessed with the series again. I played so much COD2 on 360, I think it was even the game that RROD' d my first 360. I' ll probably terminate my 2nd 360 with Cod 4. Damn you Infinity Ward and your superior gameplay.

One three round burst, 2 freaking headshots! No lag, no dodgy hitbox placement. Where you aim you hit

Overgrown is actually growing on me (lol). I saw a guy coming around a corner, hit the deck in the grass, waited until he' d passed and then zip, my knife through the back of his neck.

The knife kills are probably the most satisfying melee attack in any game i' ve ever played. A quick flick of the wrist, a metallic zipping sound and a crumpled lifeless body at your feet. Glorious!

Tonight i also found the highest sniping spot on Crash and it has a stairwell leading up to it. I think i managed to rush 4 or 5 people as they appeared and slashed their throats before a sneaky bastard shot me through the wall. I need to us the C4 more often because if you set a charge and then switch weapon, you don' t have to go back to the detonator, instead you can quickly double-tap ' reload' and set the charge of. Such a simple and logical mechanic and it' s never been done before in the history of first person shooters. It' s obvious when playing it that Infinity Ward have poured their hearts and souls into making this game the ultimate online experience. I' m in awe.

Both the PC and the Consoles have different things going for them. Try playing a decent driving game on a keyboard and mouse.

Not sure why the defense mode?? but you have it totally wrong either way ..

Do You play much PC games?

Some of the very best racers in GTR and Live for speed useMouse ! and nothing else, much quicker response times than an analog pad could ever manage.!

Also on PC you can use joyad anyway.. you can even: FFS

Surely shadow run must have some statistics hiding somewhere to look at how the two platforms compare kill wise? You should think of it like a handicap in sailing or something; Slower and faster boats race together, but they all have a handicap figure - the only difference between console and PC is that its sensitivity is scalable compared to that of a joystick - now if you fixed the sensitivity of the mouse to that of the sticks on the average console game I put money on it it would be a tie!

Tie? after dumbing down the PC version which noone plays anyway?

The keyboard doesnt come into the equation - a pad wins from an accessability perspective and wont give you RSi!?

WTH? Keyboard is always lying on the table infront of the monitor waiting to be played..

keyboard has upto 130 keys and around the WASD set-up there are around 20 accessible ' digital' keys to configure to your instant access. All digital and all accessible by a lift of a finger.. rather than say 1 or two specific buttons to switch weapons on a pad and the rest you' ll have to ' cycle through .. by the time you' ve got to your weapon of choice, the keyboard player would have clicked his and killed you in a fraction fo the time.. BANG!! instantly, every weapon already configured.. have you ever played a PC FPS properly? lol?


Also on a pad the analogue triggers are actually fractionally slower to press than a digital mouse button (ie Fire) or digital keys on the keyboard..

Put it this way, if you give Fata1ity a 360 pad to play a tourney with, expect it to be thrown back at your head with the words.. you' ve got to be f%$ing kidding!!

BTW, i love pads and all, but not for multiplayer FPS' s..

I was just opening up a well treaded channel for debate - I wasnt getting defensive at al, just playing devils advocate to see what sort of reaction I got!

It' s a trick I use with a lot of the first years to get them to open up. I also have a tendancy to pick on operating systems, car marques and even women to get a reaction..

As for the comments regarding PC' s and FPS I' ve been playing online since Quakeworld and network gaming since 1992, and have a hand in development of games since contributing to MUD' s back in the early 1990' s. I' m currently putting together a games company in the south west, and I' ve been a lecturer in games design (also electronics & media courses), a games designer and software developer prior to that. I' ve contributed to a range of papers ranging through topics such as human interaction, collaborative spaces, interface design - most topics of which resinate most strongly with gamers which is why I was prodding, particularly as hardcore gamers are such a minority today.

Most importantly I' ve been a gamer since 1984 - but in the past year or so I' ve had to drop my more hardcore habits to get me through to the next stage in life. I have IP to develop and a social enterprise to establish in less than a year, as well as completing my masters. So i am sacrificing substantial games playing time for game creation which sucks completely!

Bit of an overview there, but it' s my fault for changing my nick and avatar at the same time! Sorry if my earlier comments wound you, they were / were not neccessarily my own opinions in this case! (HOWs that for mpd - Magik!! )

Yep, you definitely qualify!

If you see your doctor you should be able to get some pretty cool drugs. They' ll get your creative juices flowing!



So last night i played Team Tactical, which is plays just like Counter Strike; no re-spawns, 2 sites, one team defending and the other trying to plant a bomb.

The only real difference is that it can only be played with a maximum of 6 people. I' d have complained about the player count limitation if the maps were the same size as those in CoD3, but since they' re smaller it actually works really well.

I found myself defending a bomb planted at site B in Vacant, a warehouse with lots of cover but 2 entrances/exits to the adjacent offices and 1 to the outside. We positioned ourselves, one on a flank of each entrance figuring we' d be able to simply cut them down as they entered the building. Stun grenades (not Flashbangs) were thrown in, i was incapacitated but able to watch my enemy shoot me square between the eyes and both of my team mates ended up corpses too.

I' ll probably only play Team Tactical with people i know i can depend on to work as a team but it' s a pretty intense mode so i' m sure i' ll be playing it quite a bit..

I also tried to use the Skorpion and found it beyond useless. I think that the MP5 and UMP45 (not in the beta) will be the sub-machineguns of choice over the Skorpion and Mini-Uzi and even then only used on maps like Vacant where everything' s quite tight.

What i' ve noticed is that most players seem to be solely using the M4. I think it could probably do with more recoil to balance it out...

I havent tried team tactical yet but played search and destroy on team objective (my current favorite mode). The slower paced yet just and hectic style feels great.

Anyhow I got my Mp5+ACOG scope combo with steady aim and stopping power for the perks and it is perfect for just about every situation.

Goddammit I' m well jealous. Stop talking about COD4!!! I know it' s a bit early to ask, but what will be next for Infinity Ward?!

CoD 5 future wars?

How long is the beta going for does anyone know? I know Europe should be getting beta in the next few weeks, and I would love to give a good old run through before finally deciding where this will fit in with game purchases.

where it will fit? this has been a day one purchase since Infinity Ward was attached.

I still haven' t gotten around to typing up a full review of the Beta yet, as I have no working PCs at my house this week. I might just cave & write it down on

dun dun duuunn.....

pencil and paper.

But I' m hoping it won' t get to that.

Despite telling myself that I wasn' t going to get any more challenges done until they bumped the cap up a bit, I' ve already gotten almost all of the challenges for specific weapons themselves.

I need to us the C4 more often because if you set a charge and then switch weapon, you don' t have to go back to the detonator, instead you can quickly double-tap ' reload' and set the charge of. Such a simple and logical mechanic and it' s never been done before in the history of first person shooters. It' s obvious when playing it that Infinity Ward have poured their hearts and souls into making this game the ultimate online experience. I' m in awe.

Actually, Goldeneye for the N64 got really close, so close in fact I wouldn' t be surprised if some of the devs got the idea from it. After you placed your remote mines you could go to any gun you wanted and if you hit A then B in extremely quick succession you would set off any mines you had planted. It worked great when throwing them at people because you could use them as a grenade that you could set off as soon as it got near them.

I' d forgotten about Goldeneye...

I' m really liking Domination, but it' s hard to convince everybody to just take and keep 2 or the 3 points rather than keep running around trying to take them all. Spliting the team and taking 2 is far more managable than spreading thin and attempting to get all 3.

I' m finding Search & Destroy on Overgrown really unbalanced. It' s too easy for the attackers to just rush B, get a guy on the 50 Cal and hold until the timer runs out. It' s a great mode though.

Oh, and the EU beta starts on the 7th September. Hopefully more of you guys will get in...

I just wanna add that this whole thing about making goldeneye is also a dellusion.

Yes they worked on Goldenye,but guess what?

PD were even better,and it wasn' t done by these Rare guys still at the company.
So obviously some great developers on Rare also worked on Goldeneye and still does.

I mean only some great developers could do a game likd PD.

Yes im talking about perfect dark for n64,dont talk crap about it,its one of the best fps ever made.

I just got my invite so see you on the battlefield.

Nooooo! My console had been getting this strange banding effect across the screen, only during gameplay, and only on specific parts of the environment. I gave it no notice.

5 minutes later?

E74 Error code.

So sadly, I' ll be off the Beta for a while unless it miraculously fixes itself like last time. (crosses fingers)

My inital thought was to post a review of the Beta, but after reading Nitro' s impressions, I realised that a review would be butt-ass boring in comparison.

I got into the beta about a week ago, maybe a little more, so it' s all kind of slipped into a blurry erotic experience, you' ll have to forgive me. The first thing I took note of in the Beta is the matchmaking system. It' s similar to the Halo 3 system, although I prefer this one far more, as you have access to class changes, leaderboards and " challenges" (read as achievements) from your matchmaking screen.

It finds the players relatively quickly, so I' m assuming the actual matchmaking is just as solid, however they did tend to group you all into a party, regardless of rank. Maybe it was just because the Beta was capped so low, but it would have made sense to try to pair up the people who were actually ranked 1-10, and then let all the 11' s duke it out, as I, like the majority of the other 11s are certainly better than that. I know why they did it, it just bugs me to no end, as you get people like Mass & me on the same team together, and carnage ensues.

Finally getting in to the game, I found myself dying... a lot. I landed my first match in Overgrown, which I' d seen in the videos a couple times, so I was relatively comfortable with it... or so I thought. I take roughly 20 steps, and then watch in awe as I get knifed in the back by a sprinting enemy.

Nowhere near put-off, I decided to sneak about the map with a M40A (the bolt-action sniper rifle) and be a nuisance myself. The game really does play like a well-polished, faster-paced Call of Duty 2. All the irritating things about CoD:2 (Small match-sizes, no grenade cooking, camp-points like no other) have been fixed, and all the stuff I really loved, wicked deathmatches, team-based gameplay (if you can get somebody to cooperate), and the (almost) spot on firearms rendering. Which leads me to the firearms.

I' m really pleased with the weapon selection they provide you in CoD:4. I' ve got my pet-peeves about them, but I' ll get to those. The weapons themselves are all very well rendered. They load & reload them accurately, which I really like in a game. They all sound as close to the real things as I can expect from a game (the ones I' ve heard in real life that is). Although it' s really hard to replicate the sound of a firearm in a volume that won' t blow your eardrums, they done good.

I do have some pet-peeves about the game, all of them in the weapons department. I know they' re not going to fix them, and I know I' m nitpicking, but that' s the disadvantage of being a gun-nut & playing games with guns in them.

My weapon pet-peeves are thus. The red-dot sights are crap, plain & simple. It' s an effective sight in the game however the ones they decided to use really do work like crap in real life. They crack, they fog up, and they break-off with very little effort. There' s far better designs for reflex sights out there, & it bums me out that they decided to go with a crap product in the game. Not to mention, it' d look far cooler if they decided to go with a holographic sight that projects the reticle on to your vision itself. The technology' s been around for ages.

My second beef is the use of the word silencer. It' s a supressor dammit! I' m not usually one for political correctness, but the least they could do is make sure they get their terminology right. The same with the " Sniper" class. Marksman would have been a better choice in my opinion.

My third beef is about the supressed weapons themselves. You hear the supressed shot being fired, but they chose to not include the sound of the action being racked as the firearm is fired. It bugs me. That' s not what they sound like.

My last big issue is with the scoped rifle selection. M21 is your semi-automatic scoped rifle in the game, but the M21 hasn' t been the Army' s designated marksman rifle since the 80s. It still sees some use, but they' d have been better off with the XM110, the M24 or the M25.

Yeah, I know, I' m bitching, but Nitro' s already covered all the awesome parts. The game really is great, and I' m really hating the fact that I won' t be playing it for quite a while (if my error code is really what it says it is). Hopefully I can get on a friends 360 to take some of you n00bs head-on.