The Steam store’s been chasing after Xbox Live, which is like the Mona Lisa getting made up like Lindsay Lohan. They’ve added in-game text chat, shift+tab out to the community screen, even a Steam score for those who need a fictional numerical reason to play games. As opposed to the very real numerical reason of Steam sales, as in “all the financial numbers are way lower and often missing altogether.” An accomplishment Xbox Live strangely seems to miss out on. Even for the packs which are free on the PC!

The upside is achievements, that most beautiful beep when you do something particularly cool and the computer agrees with you that yes, that was totally sweet. (And on TF2 servers it can even earn you new guns, which are even sweeter.) That’s why we’ve looked over our game catalog to find the best achievements.

Killing Floor

An achievement which creates better players is a rare and precious thing, like someone turning their baseball cap backwards that they might read classic literature more easily. Many achievements are exercises in game-ruining, where one team is effectively outnumbered because their most expert player is standing in a corner jumping up and down (we’re looking at you, Batter Up). Protip: make sure your server has a kickvote function.

Philanthropist, however, encourages team-building behavior to create a well-armed squad. And the more well-armed squadmates you have between yourself and this…

AAGH NO PATRIARCH TOO CLOSE GUN TOO SMALL ME TOO DEAD!

..the better everyone will like it. Well, except for the squadmates between you and that, but their opinion will stop mattering in about three seconds anyway.

At the other end of the expert-play spectrum, Merry Men walks right up to a squad of pro players and says “You think you’re so tough? Then why not come and fight death incarnate with nothing but pointed sticks?” Then it insults them a lot because they’ll be dead in a minute anyway.

The Ball

Our fine (and extraordinarily improbably appelled) friend Harchier Spebbington demonstrates the standard “Do what the game is all about” achievement. Which makes it onto this list despite its unoriginality because it’s just so much fun. The Ball is a sweet Source combination of Half-Life physics with a Portal-style single weapon, and while “huge boulder” is significantly lower-tech than Aperture Science’s handheld Portal Device, that’s only because you can’t flatten foes into smears of ex-eneemy with a tear in spacetime.

How do you even get a name like Spebbington? Did his ancestors piss off the first census worker?

And since Harchier can appear on Killing Floor servers thanks to a cool crossover, you can achieve the world’s first officially Merry Archaeologist!

Poker Night At The Inventory

Possibly the most unimaginative achievement name in history, but it could be called “You’ve just been diagnosed with horribly pustulent things” because it gives you this:

Unfortunately the Iron Curtain it doesn’t do anything beyond “Look Awesome.” Fortunately it looks SO awesome it doesn’t have to. And be honest: any Heavy Weapons player should be stylishly rewarded for resisting Natascha’s siren, slowing, enemy-annoying song.

Counter-Strike: Source

Counter-Strike servers running on the Half-Life engine – this couldn’t be a more perfect combination of videogaming beauty if it were presented by Joanna Dark. Normally these “you used a weapon to kill enemies” achievements are more superfluous than a third appendix, but on a CS:S server it isn’t just a message. It’s proof that you’re playing the game properly.

Though it’s odd that the makers, while talking about the most important weapon in the game, should be typing this “Magnum Sniper” nonsense instead of AWP. The most lethal acronym in existence outside of OMGIAATAB (Oh My God I Accidentally Armed The Atom Bomb.)

Achievements are both fun and terrible, not least because they’ve given puns a whole new lease of life. A life more more painful than being on the wrong end of a shrapnel grenade, and by wrong end here we mean “while you’re on the toilet you spend your last second discovering one in the bowl. ” But this one is simply so enjoyable - both to read and to achieve - we included it anyway.

Day of Defeat: Source

Taking out the emplaced guy because he’s distracted killing the idiots charging him. Such sweet joy, here the achievement isn’t a goal or even a reward, merely an electronic high-five for doing something cool.

You can view this as heroically saving the day, or mercenarily using your own teammates to detect emplaced enemies, or simple annoyance at being stuck on a team with so many idiots. “Don’t charge the heavy machine gun” shouldn’t have to be explained. Though for anyone who does need that demonstrated, multiple high-velocity ballistic death is probably the least powerful tool their cro-magnon skull will notice. Whatever the reason, a sweet snipe into someone distracted by thinking of how brilliantly they’re doing is incredibly enjoyable and the key to capturing the next point on any Day of Defeat server.

Team Fortress 2

With 368 achievements and counting, players used to be obsessed with achievements to get the new weapons. The Mann Co. store has released this pressure valve for those who simply have to have the latest items immediately, and allow the rest of us to enjoy the sheer joy of achievements like Search Engine. The Engineer’s was the last update, the delay building up so much spy hate in every mechanically minded player, and finally we can pay it back the way an Engineer should. With hundreds upon hundreds of rounds of sentry gun ammunition.

Revenge is a dish best served repeatedly at high velocity by robotic death machines

D.I.P.R.I.P. Warm Up

D.I.P.R.I.P., the incredibly fast fun and free Mad-Max-madness game you can install from Steam right now, closes out our list with the achievement version of screaming “YEEAAAAAH!” Ramming enemy cars might seem obvious, but DIPRIP servers aren’t a game of bumper cars. You have four weapons ranging from machine guns to mortars, emphasizing various non-zero distances of combat, and you’re far more likely to use your turbo to rush for a repair crate than ramming an enemy.

Which just makes those times you dare their fire to hit you and detonate a damaged enemy with a faceful of engine block that much more glorious.

KICKASSSSS!

While Xbox Live experiments with the idea of making players paying for demos (Dead Rising 2: Case Zero: When you know a game’s going to be popular you can charge before they even buy it Edition), PC players are getting entire games for free. There are dozens of excellent user add-ons for your favorite games, just waiting for new players to realize “Wait, you mean someone not only made my dream game, but wants me to have it for free? And I’m not going to wake up in a minute?”

Unfortunately people are insane. When they have to pay sixty bucks, they get so excited they’ll queue up for the chance to pay double that. When a game’s free they won’t even bother to try it. That’s why we’re using all our skills to promote these titles, and all our skills are in videogaming, and that means VIOLENCE! We’re pitting these mods in a deathmatch league, starting with D.I.P.R.I.P. vs The Hidden!

This kind of crossover only happens in videogames, which is why we love them

CONCEPT

DIPRIP is what happens when someone plays Mad Max and realizes “Every other FPS has done the walking bits.” It’s an insane kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland where there’s no law or morality but lots and lots of explosive petrol (i.e. the BEST kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland!)

Dystopian conkers is much more fun than the nut kind

The Hidden is a horror-action movie, and not the kind Left 4 Dead already did. Instead of an endless army of undead gradually wearing you down, you’re all pitted against one amazingly dangerous super-killer - except for the games where you get to BE the amazingly dangerous super-killer!

WINNER: We’re going to have to call this round a draw.

PICK UP AND PLAY

It’s important for any game to engage you instantly, especially when you’re running it through Steam (and could therefore be playing Counter-Strike instead). DIPRIP is the ultimate instant action game, where driving straight at enemies and exploding isn’t just fun but an acceptable strategy. The array of weapons is extremely intuitive, and if there’s any more understandable objective than “Be the last one not-dead” we don’t know what it is.

The Hidden isn’t as easy to grasp, if only because even door-handles aren’t, but it counters with a well-polished tutorial explaining the different powers of IRIS agents and the psychotic Subject 617.

WINNER: DIPRIP speeds into the lead, streaming flames and firing twin-linked machine guns.

LONG TERM APPEAL

After half an hour or so of everything being fine is when mad-science genetically engineered killers usually start to cause trouble, and this challenge is no different. The gasoline/adrenaline mixture of smashing vehicles to pieces is instantly entertaining, always fun, and easy to improve at, but lacks the opportunity to truly sharpen your skills as much as a full FPS. The Hidden rewards tactics and teamwork, and every time you get to play the invisible killer you’ll noticeably improve - and successfully wiping the enemy team, which involves eating their corpses, is so much fun it proves why humanity needs psychologists.

WINNER: The Hidden.

POLISH
This is where most modifications lose out, with overexcited casual gamers biting off far more than even a sumo wrestle could chew. This leads to half-finished kludges of textures with longer install instructions than an artificial heart and less customer support than the Nazis. It’s why so many players aren’t excited about modifications. It’s also utterly inapplicable here.

The Hidden is available from their website (which is also linked through the Steam store) in an automatically self-extracting file which takes care of everything, even adding itself to your Steam game list. DIPRIP turbocharges past even that (PS DIPRIP has turbochargers and they’re awesome) with an instant-install link in Steam itself.

WINNER: DIPRIP, the game so good even Valve want you to play it for free.

VERDICT

DIPRIP detonates the competition, the other players, and pretty much anything within ballistic range!

If you’re wondering why we haven’t reviewed graphics and sound, it’s because they’re both great and who cares. When the most advanced shooters are comparing polygon counts instead of play modes, it’s because they’re all so similarly grey-brown they only way they can tell them apart is by numbering the things. DIPRIP and The Hidden are both entertaining, original shooters - and in this deathmatch the spikified nitro-boosted missile-barraging DIPRIP has to be your first choice.

(Then The Hidden should be your second. You don’t have to choose one or the other when they’re both free!)

User-created content is a complicated subject, with all manner of issues like profitability, piracy, distribution rights, liability, and various other words which are the exact opposite of fun.

Which is why we’ve broken it all down into one simple question:

It’s purely a question of corporate attitude, and any “issues” raised by that company are excuses because their corporate attitude is one that says “suckers” instead of “players”. Modifications are indisputably a good thing for gaming. The question of whether mods actually add anything to the player experience hasn’t just been answered, it’s been so answered it now reveals anyone who even asks it as either a non-gamer or a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome. And at least the latter has an excuse for not knowing what they’re talking about.

Team Fortress and Counter-Strike both started off as modifications (for Quake and Half-Life respectively). Sorry, typo, I meant to say the two greatest FPS games in existence started as user-modifications. You could no more argue that mods are a “maybe” than you could claim the Sun is optional for life on Earth.

The most badass family tree in history

Smart companies take things like those and extend them into incredible new products. Team Fortress 2 and CS: Source servers are the most popular shooters online, and Valve regularly embarrasses every other company in the business with their sheer levels of sales and support based entirely on “providing great content for users, and letting them do that too.” It’s enough to make other developers ask themselves “Why the hell are we doing it our way?”

Like Modern Warfare. The first was an excellent online shooter with integrated Mod support. Modern Warfare 2 treated the user like a special needs student. They removed so many options you counted yourself lucky they still let you control the character. Tying to set up a server in ModWar2 gave you the strong impression the developers thought you were wearing a helmet.

The idea that modifications damage profits is ludicrous. Civ V took approximately infinity man-hours to make, and they’ve installed mod-support right from the first menu. No unpacking, no hacking your way through file trees, just telling the game “Hello lovely game that I bought, I would like to use you for fun things!” And the game goes “Great idea!”

Next time Activision claims mods are too hard, tell them Sid Meier disagrees.  And makes far better title screens.

You can tell somebody’s lying when people hide behind issues of “stability” and “customer satisfaction.” No company has ever failed to work out technical problems when there’s real money to be made, and unfortunately the opposite is also true: if they can make more by refusing to do something simple, that’s exactly what’ll happen. Player-made mods for popular games aren’t an abstract option, or some weird internet extra: they’re a simple binary indication of whether the company really cares about players or not.

Now we’ll look at which games don’t allow server mods. Or to put it another way: which Halo are you playing? It’s certainly not the original (unless you have a PC Halo server) despite how it that introduced the revolutionary - in fact now mandatory - shield mechanics for console shooters, or the grenade button (not so much an incredible innovation in that title but an incredible oversight in every game before that) Because the original Halo servers have been shut down (though you can still play on PC!) So has the Halo 2 support. So you’d better have bought 3. No, ODST. Sorry, Reach. Whichever they told you to buy most recently.

And people accept that! A strategically-mandated announcement “You don’t get to play anymore. It’s no longer worth OUR while to support this, so YOU don’t get to play this game you paid for - and clearly love because you’re still playing - anymore. Why not buy our sequel RIGHT NOW?”

Meanwhile, six years after release Half-Life 2 players can now now enjoy the cyberpunk class-combat of NeoTokyo, or the horror-movie hunting of The Hidden, the teamwork of Synergy and Follow Freeman, the insane Mad Max mayhem of D.I.P.R.I.P. and many more all from the same game.

You could be playing this right now, for free.
Which is why its still selling on the occasional Steam sale, while they can’t shift Halo 1 even in the Best Buy bargain bin.

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.

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.

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!

Valve’s recent adoption of “Die In Pain, Rest In Piece” is great news for those who love high speed, adrenaline and explosions.  That’s you, by the way.  A huge surge in the number of DIPRIP servers means budding Mad Maxers can find car-combat whenever they want, but the sudden bounty of vehicular violence has changed the way you have to play in two words: team deathmatch.

In the old days it was driver for themselves, and with only four or five cars flying around the refinery it was more cat and mouse than straight up combat.  Now we have teams of sixteen competing to steal each other’s flag, with only one small problem: for most players the “team” just means they can’t blow up half the cars.  On a Counter-Strike Server you’re forced into teamplay because you will just die otherwise, no question.  Team Fortress 2 servers have the idea right in the title, as well as quick-command menus so even the un-en-microphoned can co-operate easily.  But there’s something about tearing around the place in murder-mobiles that turns everyone into a rogue leather-wearing loner who plays by their own rules.

There are no voice-commands, and very few players use microphones for anything other than swearing.  So how can you take advantage of a team that isn’t a team?

1.  Run with the Herd

You spawn in your base with a horde of similarly-colored cars.  You see that lovely flashing objective on the other side of the map and the urge is to tear off and be the hero.  The only problem is that there’s another horde of slightly (but very importantly!) differently-colored cars over there and they will blast you into the stratosphere.  Stay with the pack, or at least follow other cars - that way they can “detect” incoming missiles, giving you the chance to fire back while they’re busy “exploding to smithereens”

2.  Run away!

The duel to the death is a powerful urge, but in team-based DIPRIP servers nothing is mano-a-mano.  While you’re locked in machine-gun aiming handbrake skids with an enemy one of his friends will cruise past and blow you from the face of the Earth without looking twice.  When you’re damaged it’s time to take off for a health powerup - every second you stay alive is a second you hold the battle lines away from your base.

A note on running: God, that turbocharger button is gorgeous, isn’t it?  It just calls for you to hammer it and take off at Mach 5.  But when you’re running from an enemy car charging away in a straight line is the absolute worst thing you can do - the increased distance makes it embarrassingly, and fatally, easy for guided missiles to track you.  Use the turbocharger to make a break for the nearest corner, pillar, building, teammate, anything solid that can take a missile impact instead of you.

3.  Stock Up

When you do get detonated (and you will.  A lot.) the urge is to charge right back into the battle and get some revenge.  But if you turn up at the high-speed war with nothing but the wimpy few missiles you spawn with you’re just in time for “Your Ignominious Death: Part II”.  Learn where the missile powerups are and make a quick supply-circuit every time you spawn.  Then when you get to the battle you can actually do something about it.

4.  Take one for the team

When somebody actual gets the flag barrel they have to be the priority - the points for a successful capture far outstrip those for a kill.  There’s a nasty tendency to treat the barrel like a relay baton, waiting for the current carrier to explode so you can snag the points, ignoring the fact that the reason they blew up (ten people machine-gunning him) will have the exact same effect on you.

Take one for the team instead.  It’s worth it in terms of sheer gaming joy as well as points.  Charge headlong into the pursuers, emptying your little-used mortar barrel at long range, ripple firing every missile you have (their tight formation behind your buddy makes them hard to miss) before turbo-ramming whichever car is closest to him as your heavy-machine gun chatters high calibre death into their flanks.

Shouting “WOOOOOOHAAAAAAA!” as you do so is technically optional, but you’re going to do it.

“Die In Pain, Rest In Peace” is fast, free, and makes Mad Max look like an old woman pushing a pram of kittens through a flower garden.  Proof that unofficial mods aren’t just model packs and unbalanced levels, D.I.P.R.I.P. is an astonishingly good total conversion for Half Life 2.  So good that the people who actually made HL2 recently announced “That’s so awesome we’re going to officially support it.”  It uses the the Source physics engine to kick more ass than most officially developed games and does a better job of Death Race than Death Race does.

Remember the awesome vehicle sections in Half Life 2?  Imagine that with cars which aren’t wimpy cage-constructions, don’t waste time worrying about the wimpy humans inside, and every other player is a real live human that you can blow to chunks.  The “kill everyone else for poorly explained reasons” plot is eternal as the idea of gaming, and it’s still more coherent here than in the recent Death Race remake. It’s also just as irrelevant.  Gaming like this is defined by what you end up doing, not why, and you will be doing awesometastic things: crashing through barriers and diving off bridges to avoid enemy fire, handbrake-spinning ballets of death, slaloming between crates with heavy machine-gun fire rattling all around and yelling as you unleash guided missile devastation upon ambushed enemies.

Your first game on a DIPRIP server is a learning experience.  Suddenly appearing in a field full of armoured cars with machine guns will tend to be, and at least this way you get more than one go.  The most vital skill is rapid weapon select - you’ll want to redefine those keys to somewhere closer than the number row (like those lovely extra buttons if you have a real gaming mouse).  The mortar is optimistic at best (though it’s a treat and a joy if you can range in on two people distracted by their close range battle), missile fire is for the mid-range (where you can trade between homing ability or sheer explosive force) and the light machine gun is vital for close combat as the only gun you can aim in directions other than “straight ahead”.

This is no clunky blastfest either.  DIPRIP rewards both shooting and driving, with daring skids and tight turns through the detailed environments making the adrenaline-soaked difference between life and death.  Bursting through walls, hay bales, and generally shouting “YEeeeeHAAA!” like a considerably more badassDuke of Hazzard.  The maps are varied, from the vast and lethal plains of Village to the tight turns of the heavily built up Refinery.  The scenery is vital as well as vivid, fantastically grim and detailed settings providing cover, ambush points and sheer speedrun getaways for demented drivers of all stripes.

The best example of DIPRIP destruction delight is the turbocharger.  Yes, turbocharger, as in “Jet streams of fire and jump over hills to ram into your enemies” turbocharger.  The more you turbocharge the higher the temperature rises.  In most games, hereafter to be known as “wimps”, overheating means it’ll shut down and can’t be used for a while.  Developers EXOR Studios cunningly realised that “slowing down” and “not turbocharging” weren’t exactly exciting concepts and you here can turbocharge as much as you like - as long as you don’t mind the likely consequences of overheating a system composed mainly of flammable liquids and fire.

Any game where you find yourself racing for a corner to shake incoming fire, flames streaming from your battered vehicle with “missile lock on” and “turbocharger overload” sirens competing for your attention?  Where a daring escape or overload detonation is a matter of microseconds?  That is an awesome game. A game that will be available on Steam.  For free.  If you love fast and furious firepower, you should play it.  If you don’t, I don’t wanna talk to you no more.