Battlefield Heroes Beta

I just acquired a key for the Battlefield Heroes Beta via Fileplanet. For those of you who may not have been following its long development, Battlefield Heroes is a browser-based, free-to-play, ad-supported Battlefield-style game with a cartoony aesthetic reminiscent of Team Fortress 2. Check out the official website here for further information.

Apparently all you need to get a key at Fileplanet is an account with them, (at no cost). If you're anywhere as interested in Battlefield Heroes as I am you should immediately create an account at Fileplanet and grab a beta key. I haven't gotten the chance to dive in yet, I'm still downloading the browser plugin to play, (which is basically the whole game), but once I get a couple hours of play in I'll throw down some impressions on it.

Happy Zombie Apocalypse Survivor Appreciation Day!

Hurray for fictional but cool sounding holidays, they're the new internet rage! Today we're celebrating the release of the free DLC for the insanely popular and enjoyable zombie-shooter Left 4 Dead. The DLC, entitled "Left 4 Dead Survival Pack," includes versus mode versions of the Dead Air and Death Toll campaigns, (which should have been in included in the game to begin with), and a new game mode called 'survival.' Survival will pit a team of survivors against increasingly large and frequent waves of infected with the only goal being to last as long as possible across 12 specialized maps. If you've ever played Horde Mode in Gears of War 2, you know the setup.

The pack runs at about 100Mb and as was mentioned before it is free of charge. If you own L4D on Xbox 360, it's already available for you to download and if you own it on PC, it should be up available sometime later today.

The importance of good matchmaking

I love Gears of War 2. I play at least once a week online for five hours or more with some friends and aside from Halo 3 I have more fun with Gears 2 that I have had with any other console multiplayer game. This only makes my attempts to play a public match using Gears of War 2 matchmaking more depressing. Gears 2 has been a mess of poor matchmaking and shoddy netcode since it was released in fall 2008, but some recent patches were intended to rectify the issues and slant the matchmaking system more towards the one used in Halo 3.

Earlier this week I attempted to play some public matches hoping the public matchmaking system wasn't the hellhole that it used to be. It placed me in a game with nine players whose minimum level was 47 out of 100. Since the majority of my online Gears of War 2 experience has been in private matches, my level is 3. Taking into account that the private matches don't factor into that score, I felt confident that I would be able to hold my own. Perhaps this would have been true if not for the lag. At one point the game ceased to respond to my input and when I gained control again I found that my death count had risen by three. Needless to say, (but I'll say it anyway), I was frustrated. After the game I checked out the gamercards of the other people in the match and not one of them is located in the same country as me. In fact, the majority of them are located in Mexico, (I'm in Canada).

An experience like that is unacceptable and can ruin a game. A matchmaking system has two purposes: to find other players of comparative skill and to find a game or other players that will yield a decent connection. If the system cannot achieve either of these goals, then creating and finding servers should simply be left in the hands of the players. Anyone, even blind monkey can find or set up a better server than the matchmaking system in Gears of War 2.














The king of good matchmaking.

No Escapism Here

I was playing Fable II last night in the bedroom with my wife snoring lightly next to me. My wife's name is Talitha, by the way, which is not a very common name, (it may seem strange for me to reveal her name but that information will be important in a few sentences). On my way back to Bowerstone after completing a quest, I was passing the gypsy town where I grew up and decided to stop in for old-time's sake. At the time I hadn't yet indulged in courting any of the wide variety of women Albion has to offer, so on a whim I locked on to the nearest gypsy of the fairer sex and hit her with an irresistably seductive pose. She responded favorably, yet I was dumbfounded. I had just macked on Talitha the Gypsy.

Destiny, coincidence or practical joke? I don't know, but there's only enough room for one Talitha in my life so I put the controller down, gave my wife a hug and fell asleep.