It’s been four months since Activision unleashed their unholy experiment in server-less shooting, and the results are in:  Modern Warfare 2 is a catalog of disaster. A collection of horrific mistakes inflicted on more players than there are people in Switzerland - although the Swiss don’t get pissed off with connection issues and emigrate to Bad Compania.  It’s earned Activision sales in excess of three billion dollars, i.e. more than the GDP of Greenland, so the important question is why don’t they give a rat’s ass about players?

He’s looking for a Mod to do something about the Javelin Guy.

The answer’s simple: players are expensive, annoying, and probably don’t exist as a word in Activision HQ because “sales” sounds so much nicer.  Which is why Activision have been on a quest to get rid of the troublesome things since acquiring Infinity Ward, the goose that laid the golden egg which revolutionized a stale shooter market.  First they pulled Call of Duty from the goose, painted Treyarch the same color and shouted “Make something just as good while doing exactly what we say!”

Then they went back to Modern Warfare but stripped out the most important multiplayer bit - online shooting without server control is like driving without gearbox control - and as soon as it became one of the bestselling games of all time anyway, they very publicly fired the people responsible.  Over the resulting hullabaloo they’re insisting that there will be another CoD next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and then for bonus points they erected a vast neon sign above their headquarters reading “CALL OF DUTY IS JUST A BRAND WE CAN STICK ON A BOX TO SELL WHATEVER WE LIKE.”  Effectively.

So what can we expect in the conversion of Modern Warfare servers from “Amazing shooter” to “Activision’s Q3 budget Report Powerpoint Item #2″?  Well you can permanently forget that server business for a start.  Activision’s accountants cunningly calculated that developing both a PC and XBox 360 version of a game is twice is expensive, and all beancounters know nothing more expensive can ever be good in any way.

So they chose to make the XBox 360 version for both systems.  Because why on Earth would you improve both with the option of private servers, where players can control their games, set up specific matches, or hang out with their friends?  That’s practically cyber-communism!  Private servers and modifications only leads to terrible things like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress (and TF2), insane alternate playmodes like prop hunt or highlander, none of which provide money for Activision.  Just stupid non-accountable things like “happy customers”.  If Activision want good alternate games, they’ll buy the companies making them, sack key staff, and then sell you the results as DLC and you’ll like it.

Because the scruffy “paying players” no longer have any real control of any kind, this turns every server into a wild west frontier town where civilians have their arms tied behind their backs and the nearest Sheriff lives in Antarctica.  The combination of random match-ups, code more hideously flawed than the elephant man, and the fact that the average online person is an asshole - the entire reason we build private servers and friends lists - turned Modern Warfare 2 into a “What magic powers do you want douchebags to destroy you with today?” competition.  Infinite ammo?  Suicide bombing?  The Flash charging around with a knife?  Whatever it is, you’d better enjoy it until the patch is carved from stone and everyone complaining about it is banned!

Oh, and if they happened to make a game where the knife outperforms an assault rifle?  Pay $59.99 for the sequel and hope they fixed it, because they aren’t going to do a damn thing!  They’ve announced plans for a CoD game every year without exception - why would they fix a game six months after release?  That might mean you keep playing it!

Who do you think they are, Valve?

Cries of joy substituted for shellfire across the servers last night, as millions of Allied troops celebrated victory in World War II for the three thousand and sixty-fifth time that day.

“It’s been a hard struggle” said Sergeant Martin, who first answered the Call of Duty in 2004 (and again in 2005, 2006, and once more in 2008.)  “Those dirty Huns sure are persistent, and seem to keep reappearing five-to-seventeen seconds after you kill them, but by God we pushed forward and stood on the designated map marker for thirty seconds.  Thereby resolving the entire nightmarish tangle of debts and international pressures which drowned a quarter of the world in blood.”

The Reichstag Falls (127.7 times per hour)

“We fought for this one,” agreed Private Brigs, surveying the streets of dod_avalanche - now silent as combatants rested and checked their kill/death ratios.  “When I think of the millions of deaths in this struggle - several thousand of them my own - I can only hope future generations remember what it is we did here, and why.”

The spirit of Private Jones, reincarnated into a Wolfenstein server by the intensity of the combat (and the dynamic vertex-based anchored animation technology of the  modified Quake III graphics engine) reported confusion over the victory.  “In my day, we just shot them,” he complained.  “I don’t recall ever watching a timer and shooting them three seconds later to do more damage.  Most peculiar.”

Red Orchestra units on the Gazala Line were too busy to comment as a three-man team is required to move each tank effectively, though many gunners were heard to comment on “balancing” of the Allied and Axis units” - removing any incredible technical superiority one side may have had, for example - had helped with the American victory.  Did they say American?  Sorry, they’re sure they meant Allied and no disrespect for the millions of British, Russian, Australian and other nationalities who carried the bulk of the fighting.

“It’s strange, mankind seems to keep fighting these same senseless wars over and over again,” said Martin, visibly tensing for the resumption of hostilities.  “And I don’t mean wars of greed, or fear, or against those who look different.  I mean these exact wars.  I’ve taken part in Market Garden so often I’ve left a furrow, and I’m thinking of bringing a bucket and spade for the next time through the Normandy beaches.  Desperately fighting for survival there is beginning to get a bit samey.”

“We can only hope that future generations will live in peace,” he concluded, hurrying to reload the Thompson which has been rendered by seven different graphics engines in the time he’s used it.  “That they’ll understand the importance of brotherhood, and respect, and basically not calling people you’ve never met stupid noob faggots for no reason.”

Valve are updating Left 4 Dead 2 servers with infected bots, which isn’t the first stage of an attempt to destroy the world it sounds like.  While death itself doesn’t stop zombies, disconnection does, with millions of enraged undead doomed by the loss of one player.  It’s a great help for versus modes, but - as a hybrid of AI and infected brain-munching - it’s also an incredible combination of two of the greatest video game enemies ever made.

So we got to thinking about which other game servers could co-operate:

The worst thing is, one terrorist with an AWP could still take it.

Day of Complete Total Defeat

Aperture Science is all well and good, but he solves practical problems.

After two years of trial and error, Valve have finally release the update to end all updates!

You’ve beaten out the flames with the axtinguisher, your mouth has watered for the Sandvich, and you’ve realised that steel’s final point is broken by the Force-a-Nature - but you’ve never seen an update like this.

Read the rest of this entry »

The combination of incredible graphics and low price (especially during the regular Steam sales) has created an active Crysis modding community. Crysis servers aren’t stuck with people playing Predator killing each other over a tropical island - and the fact we can write that as some sort of limited activity reminds us of why gaming is so awesome. Nomad’s Nano Suit (effectively “Lone Hero’s Sciencey Cool-Stuff-Excuse”) isn’t the only high-tech component of Crysis. In fact, it’s barely the beginning:

1. Back To The Crysis

In the single coolest and most pointless (two terms which often go together) modification ever made, CryModder Tirido has built a time machine out of a DeLorean out of a Crysis vehicle out of a physics simulation. And it is glorious.

Only and utterly YES

The mod shows off Crysis’ spectacular shading and light-level alterations, otherwise known as “different times of day.” Activating the time circuits throws your vehicle through the fourth dimension, and can be enjoyed from any viewpoint as many awesome times as you like. Particular attention has been paid to the interior of the car, complete with time circuits and the flux capacitor itself. This is the sort of thing only a love-based mod can achieve: Tirido probably spent longer on something you have to enter a vehicle and turn backwards to see than most web developers spend on their whole sub-standard flash game.

I don’t think Nomad’ll have as much trouble with Biff

2. Turbo Cars!

If the above got your engines started, install this mod to keep them running. And driving underwater. And exploding things with infinite ammo. At turbospeed. Climbing into a Crysis car is awesome fun, climbing out of it again a second later because it flipped on a pebble less so, which is why Duck delved into the code and removed everything that could reduce your speed or toughness.

Pick a car, any car. Also: UFO

The Turbo Cars mod turns your Crysis server into the ultimate demolition derby, with super-strong soldiers and vehicles racing around with unlimited explosives. Want a jeep that’ll actually survive? Feel like flying over roads apparently paved with C4 by other players? Turbo Cars is wish fulfillment and a fun night out for any clan.

3. Real-Lifesis

What Real-Lifesis loses in unwieldy appellation, it makes up for in style. Note: our website can’t actually show you how good it looks but we’re going to try:

No, you need to go see this full size.

Real-lifesis rebalances the manifold options in Crysis to more truly recreate real life (or rather, a real life where you’re the ultimate killer outnumbered but never outgunned for revenge to the death!) It doesn’t actually add any extra code, but like an artist working with well established paints, or more accurately an engineer tuning an incredibly powerful engine which happens to power pictures, Real-lifesis offers amazing visuals. Which Crysis players like, or they’d have installed something else.

4. Eyefinity Crysis

For the more traditional method of upgrading PC graphics (spending an atrocious amount of money) Maxishine Xtreme Gaming hooked a Radeon Infinity up to three 2560 x 1600 monitors, already more pixels than most people have ever seen, to top out at a truly staggering 7680 x 1600 monster. Then they loaded the graphikingiest game they could find. Crysis.

You bet we’ll include their links. They earned them.

This isn’t for everyone, or indeed anyone when you compare the total cost to almost everything else in the world, but it’s fun to know that this happened.

5. Gears Of Crysis with Bullet Time

It sounds like someone smashed a load of games together, but James-Ryan beat even the fictional US super-secret military by upgrading the Nano Suit. As well as the usual strength, speed, armor and cloak, you can convert its abilities into bullet time - to better appreciate the beautiful physics of blowing things up - or even Gears of Crysis mode, where you stand outside your armored self and admire a man wearing the national budget of most counties beating up foreigners. In high definition.

Dino D-Day hasn’t won the Lifetime “Gravity Gun Throwing BFGs” Award for Best Concept Ever, but only because that award doesn’t exist. And the award doesn’t exist only because we never knew that Dino D-Day would be invented, creating an impossible spiral of awesome which risks destroying the laws of logic by being a better concept than our universe was built to withstand.

This isn’t some trash flash web-garbage where the ‘funny’ title took three-quarters of the development time: this is a full Source engine game pitting a lone hero against the entirety of a Jurassic Reich. With a free demo already online you can go download it right now and be blasting dinosaurs within the hour, for free, effectively making the next sixty minutes an intelligence test. Because anyone who doesn’t do that is a fool.

All your old favorites from World at War, MoH, and Day of Defeat servers are present and correct: the Thompson, the stick grenade, and of course the Garand which - as always - musically ‘tings’ as it ejects a spent clip. What isn’t as always is that it tings because you’re desperately pumping those shots into a charging triceratops, which is exactly the sort of shakeup you need to make these weapons fresh after approximately one million World War II titles.

The only time it’s acceptable to NOT shoot a videogame Nazi.

Because this game doesn’t rely on its gimmick: it’s a real shooter, and if the demo level is anything to go by that’s short for “really fantastic shooter”. In a single level there are several modes of play: standard Nazi-plugging; a three-way armed misunderstanding between you, Nazis and a Triceratops; being stalked through a maze of ruins by a swarm of raptors; and a final battle against if-I-even-need-to-tell-you-what-you-won’t-get-it.

Now you tell me

Particularly pleasant is the tightness of the weapons: like Half Life 2 Deathmatch servers before it, the game really rewards accurate shooting instead of spraying. Yes, that does extend to dinosaur headshots. A phrase so incredible we’re going to say it again without even pretending to have an excuse: DINOSAUR HEADSHOTS.

You can also do this! (If you don’t want to do this please leave our site.)

There’s also real humor and skill in developing the brilliant concept. The website is stuffed with great propaganda material (including an announcement that Eisonhower is serious about sending only one man against the entire Dino horde). The full game will be released on Steam later this year, featuring a full multiplayer deathmatch (so you can see Source physics on something other than Counter-Strike servers for once) and all sorts of goodies. But don’t just take our word for it: watch this, and if you’re not excited by the end please check to make sure that you aren’t dead.

We live in the greatest gaming age that ever was: people can not only plow hours into online entertainment, enjoying every second, they can then show their love by livening up our internet with fantastic fanart on the subject. Even after you filter out the idiots who think a screenshot serves as art (it doesn’t, no matter how many photoshop filters you apply) there are plenty of pictures to decorate your desktop until you connect to your game server.

Twenty-ten’s already here and we still haven’t got HAL nine thousands, but that’s probably for the best.  For one thing he was pretty terrible at graphics (outputting only plaintext and embarrassingly limited vector graphics), and for another we prefer our AIs not to kill us in the real world.  Instead it’s time to make New Year’s Resolutions!

Don’t leave!  They may be traditionally terrible self-scourging instructions to enjoy yourself less, which - for not entirely unrelated reasons - rarely survive to see a second month, but they don’t have to be.  Here at Lowpings we actually enjoy life instead of laying guilt-trips on ourselves, so we’re releasing resolutions which will enhance your enjoyment of online game servers.

1.  Try New Classes

The great thing about game server self-improvement is that you’re never digitally deprived: you don’t need to think green when firing plasma weapons, you’re getting exercise by sprinting every second of every day, and no matter how many health kits and hunks of raw meat your character absorbs he’ll never put on any weight (unless you count all the shrapnel).  Instead of giving things up you should take more on, and nowhere is that more evident than the wallpaper while waiting to connect to a TF2 server: the “time spent as class” chart.

Resolve to do better!

Spend some time as those cursed classes at the bottom!  You might not play them because you hate them, because you only play Sniper (in which case you suck), or because of the “Medic Malady” (if a team of twelve people are stupid enough not to have a medic, you don’t want to be the one looking after them.)  But each class is a whole new way to enjoy the game.  You might find you like them after all, and more importantly, you’ll learn how they think (and how to avoid and kill them when you return to your beloved first choice.)  A few days as Spy and Sniper is the most educational experience a Heavy can have.

2.  Try New Modes

Left 4 Dead 2 servers don’t offer many classes (at least until someone unlocks a way for Coach’s mass to count as extra health, or at least as cover), but there are more modes than the average Transformers episode.  Everyone ends up with a favorite - from the movie-style slog of the campaign to the pick up and play instant enemy action of Scavenge - and they’re all awesome.  But why limit yourself?

Whichever you play, pick a different one next time!  The mechanics may be the same, and the chainsaw might always be the best thing ever, but the mood differs with playtime and the bonding experience over the whole campaign.  Spitter goo detonating the racer’s fuel is an annoyance in Scavenge, but an adrenaline-soaked catastrophe after two hours of versus play.  And adrenaline-soaked catastrophes are awesome.

3.  Counter-Strike New Maps

Not every game rewards different modes.  Counter-Strike servers occasionally offer hostage rescue maps, but you can replicate the experiment by playing bomb defuse, randomly turning on your toaster, then declaring that you lost for no reason at all when the stupid machine goes off.  This will save you from smashing the screen when the hostages ‘hide’ inside a hail of terrorist fire.

No dust at all!

But the best playmode isn’t limited to de_dust, as infinitely playable as it may be.  Sites like FPSBanana offer an awesome selection of user-generated map, many polished by thousands of hours of competitive play.  And “competitive” on CS servers is a lot like “murderous” everywhere else.  Set up a selection, and enable an add-on like mapvote to find out what your players like.

4.  New Games

There’s nothing like a new game, even if it’s old (and therefore much cheaper!)  You’ve a fantastic first-person-shooter spectrum to enjoy, from the chunky gibbage of Quake servers to the frankly unlikely DIPRIP destruction derbies.  It’s a real concentration of joy – the first few rounds of a new game are an array of incredible sensations, literally blowing things up like never before.  We live in an incredible world where we can say things like that.

Enjoy more of it in 2010!

Infinity Ward may have turned their back on the PC, half-baking an XBox adaptation which doesn’t even trust you to turn on your own game server, but Modern Warfare 1 is alive and well. Better than ever, in fact, as a whole host of players realise that if they’re ever going to get more Modern Warfare server content they’ll have to make it themselves. So they did. For free. You’re welcome.

Here we see four upgrades for your Modern Warfare server which won’t require XBox Live, won’t cripple your controls, and don’t treat you like a child who isn’t trusted with the console commands.

1. Galactic Warfare

This Star Wars style add-on is the most exciting Modern Warfare project to date and only possible with modding. Because it requires dedicated work, a real love of both subjects, and if anyone official tried to make money from it the resulting Lucasfilm lawsuit would make a Tactical Nuke look like a healthkit.

German modding group Black Monkeys have done a stellar job: to watch the trailer is to feel a deep longing for the public beta (coming soon). It isn’t the perfect Stormtrooper vs Rebel skins, or how perfectly the Iraqistan dust technologies of Modern Warfare match Mos Eisley, or even the sheer nerd joy of a Star Wars game that won’t suck: it’s the sounds. They’ve recoded all the weapons with authentic Star Wars sounds and visible blasters, and that alone makes this the most perfect mod. But be warned: the psychological shock of seeing a Stormtrooper actually hit someone while firing is pretty severe.

2. Frontlines

The Hajas M0D1F1C4T10N5 group can be forgiven their outrageously 7334 name by dint of pure awesome. They’re a perfect example of how internet rage should be applied: instead of whining about Modern Warfare 2 and playing it anyway like everyone else…

This is why no-one listens to gamer complaints

…they’ve already built their own sequel. And since Infinity Ward aren’t interested, they’re going to keep expanding on it. The Frontlines mod is everything the official sequel isn’t. It doesn’t slap your hands away from the server controls like a naughty child, it offers complete control of your own game server (and really shouldn’t be something extra in any game.) Twenty eight new game modes, optional medic and help systems, and even a full-blown War mode - where an evening of clan battles can be turned into one huge conflict to provide a real motivation for everyone involved to see it through.

3. Zombies

You knew it had to happen. It’s impossible for anything to exist online without zombies getting involved eventually. At least EHD’s Zombie Mod allows you to simulate an outbreak where the survivors aren’t idiots who insist on returning for pets, refusing to believe in zombies, and the unforgivable careless of not being fully trained SAS operatives with full air support. Taking it turn about as the unarmed undead or armed anti-undead (aka alive) players you gain a true appreciation of team work. And which end of an MP5 is the wrong one.

4. Stargate

In proof that almost anything that can exist eventually will if we only keep the internet on long enough, you can equip your COD4 server with a Stargate. Replicator Warfare is an ambitious total conversion aiming to bring multiple locations and weapons from the series into the well-established Modern Warfare server community. Since SG-1 was one of the only sci-fi series to actually feature real soldiers using guns it’s a good match, but you shouldn’t hold your breath for the mod: there’s been no news for over half a year, usually an indicator that the initial excitement has fizzled out. But that excitement did give us one awesome map!

Stargate Command! A fun location to add to your map rotation, and an objective which makes defending nuke silos look like slapping terrorists’ hands away from the cookie jar.

3D destroyed dozens of beloved characters back in dark days of the late nineties, now known as the “Plague Of Broken Polygons”, forcing them into a third dimension they weren’t ready for. The N64 Castlevania was a catastrophe of careening cameras and clumsy controls, and we’re going to have to pray our secret NES shrines forgive us for even mentioning the Playstation’s Mega Man Legends. But now we have professional 3D rendering tools, an army of innovative internet fans, and people who still love what made the titles good in the first place. Here we see how they’ve brought the old days onto modern game servers.

1. Super Gordon Bros

An awesome modification that’s half parody, half retrostalgic, showing exactly how things look for the Mario Bros in their flattened world. M0rtanius’s Super Gordon Bros teleports Gordon Freeman into World 1-1 of the greatest platform game ever made and it’s a view like no other.

It’s an incredibly fun little level despite being dangerously close to fan-fiction - but with the HEV suit coming out of the mushroom question block, and even the ability to “use” a pipe to enter the underground coin room, it’s about a minute of incredible joy. You can even load the level into a HL2:DM server for some side-scrolling shooting insanity. Not exactly the most balanced (or even possible) level but an awesome idea for a fun clan-server event.

Watch it here, or download it here.

2. TF2 Mario Kart

I don’t think we’re in Dustbowl any more

Teleporting Team Fortress 2 into a game where Mario was adapted into racing - this map involves more worlds than a Starfleet war. The team deathmatch level thrusts players into a psychedelic world of memes, mario karts and moving vehicles. TF2 servers running the map are usually heavily 4channed (meaning they’re not homes of fine teamplay or even coherent thought) but as long as you’re ready to mute the worst of the micspammers you can derive insane enjoyment from this lunatic level.

In fact, I don’t even want to know where we are

Get the files here, and thank the awesome Xenon for making it.

3. Half-Life Vania

We’re back with the best, with M0rtanius taking us to Transylvania - and giving us a crowbar. The instant you spawn you’re transported back in time, not to the days of Dracula, but the 8-bit eighties. The music immediately engages your grin response and the attention to detail is fantastic: you get power-ups by breaking candles, scanners patrol hallways in the classic sine-wave pattern, and the hidden healthpack is still in the right place for those who know where to smash up the wall.

It’s a Source server fantasy for anyone who’s taken the long road through gaming: if you’ve ever blown on a cartridge to make it work, if you’ve ever sighed and started again from the beginning after dying on the last level, if you remember the first time you saw something in 3D, then these treats are for you. And your friends. And the Garry’s Mod server applications are only limited by your imagination.

Watch it here, get it here.