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and the reaction to one's words after a few slipped pixels is always a good sign.

Now if they hadn't disabled the hack in Sims 2 with the latest patch ... well ...

Let's just say that choosing an online avatar that actually corresponds to one's self is a good thing.

Obviously, Need for Speed Underground 2 .

No, not on a game console. I mean fighting my way through holiday interstate and city traffic.

"Battlefield 2 has given more fun to more folks?"

That's the craziest shit I've heard in days, and I've been watching the Cooking Channel, too. Battlefield 2 is THE buggiest shit-crap beta game I've EVER played.

Even the developers agree.

Steam may have had issues, but they're mostly worked-out, and Steam/HL2 are mostly mature, or close to it. You're very, very silly to put them in the same room as BF2.

Grim Fandago

Oh, what a fabulous game.

if the games industry would make games worth playing

I agree. Now that the average gamer has the income to support the gaming habit, I don't think this "Gorilla" will hurt the industry.

In fact, I'm have been a VERY devoted FFXI fan since the US release. I have a 60+ character (much harder to level then WOW.) I maintained my account when WOW came out. I dealt with all of the server issues that WOW had at launch, but I stuck with it. I now have two max level characters (60 in WOW, but you can solo easily), but I'm bored. It is a very pretty game, but in the end it is shallow.

Sure, you can start new characters, try different allegiances. But I ended up going back to FFXI.

In the meantime, I've purchased EXCELLENT games such as Resident Evil 4, GTA:SA, Battlefield 2. All on different platforms, no monthly fee.

Afterall, I need a game to play while they perform maintenance.

Sorry BF2 is Battlefield 2. Just an example whenever I don't need my bandwidth I am downloading garbage. If you think about your mp3 collection (I am not sure how much you got) but for me, there're some songs that I know the damn shuffle won't get to in my life time. We got too much stuff man :P

The memory leak issue is known, and it is not the fault of your video card. Memory leak consumes your GB of RAM, and the paging makes it run like hell. You should be aware of this: http://www.eagames.com/official/battlefield/battle field2/us/editorial.jsp?src=communityupdate_070805

from eagames.com:

we recommend that you reinstall the game and NOT the v1.01 update we released earlier this week.

Reinstalling Battlefield 2 will not affect your in-game medals or ranked server statistics. EA and DICE are committed to getting a fix for v1.01 as soon as we possibly can and will continue to keep you informed through this web space in the coming days.

Uninstalling and reinstalling are NOT the same thing. Why must Slasshdot editors re-word the headlines and make them misleading?

The game was called Majestic and it was distributed by EA Games -- can't seem to find it on their web site though :-( (http://www.eagames.com/

Review at GRRLGAMER: http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=majestic

http://www.eagames.com/official/battlefield/battle field2/us/home.jsp

PS. - Battlefield 2 is supposed to have a similar commander/troops type structure:

"Enhanced team play features allow players to enter the action on the front lines as part of a formal squad, or work behind the scenes in Commander Mode to direct the strategic assaults of their teammates."

The Simpsons: Road Rage is pretty fun, actually, despite being published by EA.

Trip Hawkins is an interesting choice, in that the other inductees were all heavily involved in game development, whereas he was more of a facilitator. There's also a great deal of debate on whether Hawkins is to be villified or celebrated. I'll throw in with the latter category, because he pulled together the "electronic artists" who created my favorite games of the early '80s.

An article written by the Dot Eaters does a good job of describing how I think of Electronic Arts when it was just a small studio. I'm still fond of those LP-style packages. And their toolbox-titles, such as Adventure Construction Set, Pinball Construction Set and Racing Destruction Set brought about my own interest in creating games with a strong building component to them. There was nothing in the world like M.U.L.E. before Dan Bunten/Danielle Bunten Berry created it. And I think it was Hawkins that made these things possible.

He may deserve the harsh scrutiny he receives -- and, certainly, he's not going to win any points with anyone for his comments earlier this year. But somehow I can't hate the fellow who brought together so many bright folks under one roof. Electronic Arts has recently published some of my favorite games, but it's the early ones I remember best.
___________________________________________
Inago Rage - Create and fight within your own FPS arenas.
Try the new demo for Windows!

First off, lemme make a lil' disclaimer: I'm one of the Core developers at http://www.runuo.com/, the largest Ultima Online emulator around, so I may be a bit biased :)

Anyways, the article seems to have been written by someone who hasn't kept up on the latest UO news. In the past month, EA/OSI released a new expansion with a large landmass, the "samurai empire" expansion. Also, just in the past week infact, They opened up a brand NEW shard, compeltely clean with no players on it. If UO was dying,it wouldn't make economic sense to invest money and time in putting up another server.

In the article, it also lists as a 'reason' for UO's demise as the lack of stores in which to purchase The latest expansions or Gamecodes without the use of a Credit Card. A little searching shows this page listing EB-Games austrailia as a place t' buy 'em.

Another thing that the author didn't take into account is the popularity of free shards. RunUO, in addition to providing highly customizable software, also sponsors 3 shards, all from differing time periods. Combined, they have over 50,000 accounts. And these are active accounts. we purge unused accounts every 90 some days.

Hybrid, Our biggest shard with about 37000 accounts, is based in the Pre-AoS era, with peaks ov over 2000 online at any one time.

Our other shards, Rebirth and Demise, are a super old school shard from the Pre-T2A area, and a Shard from the current era of ultima online, AoS/SE respectively.

Those are just 3 shards. There are MANY more out there which help keep UO alive.

Long live Ultima Online!

I understand wanting to talk smack about EA but besides making many of the best sports games that we've (we meaning gamers) played over the ages, aka EA Sports, there's also an "EA Games" label that has, you know, other kinds of games. EA is also particularly known for its driving titles, for example Need for Speed. NFS:Underground was pretty enjoyable, and NFS:Underground 2 should be much more so, if the environment is as open as promised. Personally I'd like to see a serious attempt to do a massively multiplayer game like that, based on a real-life geographic area, like a state (a small one) or perhaps you could have several servers which each served a certain area, and create an environment that represented some actual real estate with streets, roads, et cetera. That, I would pay for, if it was as good as NFS:U is.

Granted, I don't think I'd like giving EA the money, but they seem to be the only people who might be able to deliver at the moment. I'd actually far prefer Sony did it, with the Gran Turismo engine.

Well, there is also Destroy All Humans and the new GoldenEye:Rogue Agent.

In my town we have a shop dedicated to LAN games any day of the week & a large public LAN once a month.
Most of those games are never played at LANs I've been to.

The most popular games are (in order of popularity):
Call of Duty
Battlefield Vietnam
UT2004
BF1942: Desert Combat mod

When some of the students in my degree have a private LAN, we play all the above games (except for call of duty) as well as Star Craft: Brood War & C&C Generals: Zero Hour

The PS2 has 2 games now that are fairly detailed: "Crash & Burn" and "Hit & Run." While the maps are not the most accurate, perhaps, they are still immense in their scope and accuracy of detail. (at least in terms of buildings that have been featured in the show).

Burnout 2: Developer's Cut was a great game... however, the game didn't get a lot of press and the real anticipation was/is for Burnout 3 which EA Games has. The problem is that Acclaim always had great idea's, like Turok, South Park and Cruisin USA... but they where easily duplicated and someone else usually did it better.
P.s - Sorry to link to a competitors website

EA owns Ultima now, The only part of Ultima Richard owns is the name of Lord British, and I would not be getting my hopes up for an Ultima X as it was just scraped about 3 months back, check the link for details. http://www.eagames.com/redesign/games/pccd/uxo/hom e.jsp

Sadly, Ultima X is dead.

I know, all of us here in Slashdot, would find it difficult to believe, but the majority of people who buys games, are playing them off-line. Blizzard for example, who sells millions of units per game, has stated repeatly that only a small fraction of it's player base ever goes online with their games. Although that fraction turns out to be a couple of hundred-thousand players, it's still a small portion of the over-all pie.

With the recent series of MMORPG cancellations, like Ultima X: Odyssey, Warhammer Online, Mythica, and several others, it is no secret that companies are re-evaluating what kind of profit an online game can generate. It is not the easy cash cow that developement houses came to believe it to be.

I'm sorry, I replied before viewing the site (it was loading sloooow). The Flash does absolutely nothing that couldn't be done more easily with CSS and *whatever I'm thinking of but can't remember the name for*.

That said, I do like sites that use Flash well, for something that is useflu. My favorite is Westwood's COmmand and Conquer websites. They use Flash but it is mostly unobtrusive and do things that would be inconvenient up to impossible with other tools.
And, hmmm, it seems the Red Alert 2 website isn't working in Firefox at the moment. But it worked last week...

For later: Burnout 3 isn't exclusive, it was for PS2 and XBox all along and after EA grabbed them it was anounced for the GC as well.

Proof: Official site. The sample box is labeled "Playstation 2".

Nothing like a couple of years playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault to make you hate cheaters.

Pardon me. Medal of Honour: Allied Assault

ntel's even sponsored video gaming competitions in Vietnam

ya think they were playing Battlefield Vietnam?

So far, it's been two hours since this was posted, and no one's mentioned tiberium? [Okay, someone mentioned Command & Conquer, and was maked 'offtopic', even though he wasn't.]

For those of you non-gamer geeks, the basic premise for money production in the game was that there was this plant, tiberium, which would leech minerals from the ground, and you would collect it up, and you'd get a source of funding that you could use to produce troops, tanks, buildings, whatever to take out your opponents.

Of couse, the problem was, that regular troopers were harmed if they went into a tiberium field. [However, they only took damage for moving, in the original game]. Later sequels introduced a mutant army, who healed if they were in a tiberium field.

Red Alert had crystal fields, which just wasn't the same [they didn't regenerate for one], and C&C Generals uses supply depots -- no concept of tiberium at all. [The best thing about tiberium was that it grew over time, as opposed to being a fixed resource]

So far, it's been two hours since this was posted, and no one's mentioned tiberium? [Okay, someone mentioned Command & Conquer, and was maked 'offtopic', even though he wasn't.]

For those of you non-gamer geeks, the basic premise for money production in the game was that there was this plant, tiberium, which would leech minerals from the ground, and you would collect it up, and you'd get a source of funding that you could use to produce troops, tanks, buildings, whatever to take out your opponents.

Of couse, the problem was, that regular troopers were harmed if they went into a tiberium field. [However, they only took damage for moving, in the original game]. Later sequels introduced a mutant army, who healed if they were in a tiberium field.

Red Alert had crystal fields, which just wasn't the same [they didn't regenerate for one], and C&C Generals uses supply depots -- no concept of tiberium at all. [The best thing about tiberium was that it grew over time, as opposed to being a fixed resource]

I own a PS2 and won't ever buy an XBox Why not??

I'm not trying to start a holy war here, I'm genuinely curious as to why you don't want a X-Box. Is it b/c of its association with the Evil Empire? Did the lack of significant competition for the original PS ruin you for other systems? Or is there some other (possibly better) reason?

I used to want nothing to do with the X-Box simply because it was a M$ product. The first step on my path to recovery was finding out that Microsoft Games doesn't seem to suffer from the same failings as Microsoft itself does (I'm speaking of course about the world domination and the buggy software). I rented an X-Box with Halo and saw the graphics, and upon researching found that one of the geniuses behind the graphics engine for the console was Michael Abrash, the Almighty. The graphics on the X-Box are stunning. The best example I've found so far is the camera panning in Voodoo Vince (a hilarious outing from Beep Industries), it is flawlessly smooth and the environments are simply stunning.

I've also found that some people don't play X-Box because PS2 has more games. I cannot deny that, however, the vast majority of PS2 games are fighters, racers and sports games. Fighting games are fine, even my GF plays them, but in reality, once you've played one, you've played them all (and besides, Soul Calibur II for X-Box has Spawn). Racing games are right out as I don't even enjoy actually driving, why would I enjoy virtual driving (the exception is Simpson's Road Rage which, for those of you who haven't played it, is a campy outing putting a mixture of GTA and Crazy Taxi into a Springfield setting). Sports games... *sigh* why would I stay inside on the couch pretending to play football when I could grab a couple of friends and actually go play football... X-Box gives me the adventure games I crave and the RPGs that I love.

These are my reasons, but I'm still interested in hearing why people will/will not play the X-Box over the PS2 (I'll just pretend that the LameCube doesn't exist for now *Grin*).

Just to clarify, all EA talent from Vegas west to the Pacific is moving to the new digs discussed here. I know of what I was speaking. Ah that San Diego self-importance/inferiority complex. =)

Sorry to get back so late, but pretty much all of the EA talent from Vegas west to the Pacific is moving to the new LA digs.

I am a hardcore gamer who spends > 40 hours per week on games. Ranging from Dark Age of Camelot (an MMORPG), Call of Duty, America's Army and C&C Generals, depending on what mood I'm in. On top of this I try to get some programming in as well.

Today I have less time to invest 'dedicated' to one particular game, which is frustrating because you develop friends in the online gaming community that you lose when you move on. To me its saddening, and I'm clawing on to keep at the level I used to be at, but it isn't working. :(

Oh well, time to find a girlfriend, get married, and put the money spent on computers and games into a home deposit!

looking for free games? or retail games($)?
Me, personally, I've been playing Battlefield 1942, which just got Punkbuster added to it. Then there's the free Desert Combat mod for it. Also been playing Call of Duty. And Battlefield : Vietnam should be out within the next month or so.

As for free... How about America's Army? I haven't played it in a long time, but I loved it when i did play it. There's also Wolfenstein : Enemy Territory.

Freedom Fighters??

Get some boom/headset mics for you and your SO and fire up one of the free voice engines, like TeamSpeak or Roger Wilco for voice chat (in or out of games). I've used TeamSpeak with excellent results while playing Unreal Tournament and other games, as well as just for conversing with distant family members on a semi-regular basis. (Free is good!)

For gaming, you have a chuckwagon full of choices. Unreal Tournament, Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy and Need for Speed: Underground top my recent list of multi-player games for raw fun and enjoyment with minimal commitment level (and I sense a commitment issue from the OP anyway!). Then of course, there's the obligatory mentions of The Sims, Everquest, Age of Mythology and Civilization III (find your own URLs for those), if you're into that kind of gaming (these require a higher commitment level).

If you two are more cerebral in your gaming, go hunt down a board game called Settlers of Catan and its offspring (Seafarers of Catan, et. al.) and play that with some friends next time you two are together. Once you get hooked on the board game -- and you will -- start playing it online. There's a nefarious, somewhat-underground (not after /. gets wind of it!) online client called Sea3D that works pretty darn well (Win32 only, sorry -- but if this is a problem, use the Java client instead), and is terribly enjoyable for raw strategy and board game fun, although it can sometimes be difficult to get players to join hosted games (there doesn't seem to be a LARGE community of Sea3D users yet). If you host your own games and have people you know join in, this is a non-issue.

If you're side-stepping the guy-girl conversation thing, your best bet is probably one of the action games, like Unreal and its similar-engine spawn (anything based off the Quake2 or Quake3 engines). There's usually so much going on in a DeathMatch or Team DeathMatch, there isn't much time for deep chit-chat, but you can both probably come out feeling like you had a onversation.

[Note to Guys: this probably isn't going to lead to a long-term, deep relationship, mind you, but will suffice for temporary distance relationships. Chicks don't generally like games, and especially don't like the KINDS of games we guys like, so YMMV. Board games and strategy type stuff, though, are generally universally enjoyable, which is why I mentioned Catan (this is the original German site).]

Good luck!!

I am also unsure of whether or not action gamers... will buy into a title that seems to lack the excessive fiction, approachability and interactivity that drive practically all of today's modern games.

While these 'fictional' shooters are indeed fun, I've found myself quite taken with games like Call of Duty, and Battlefield 1942 whereas i used to be into Half Life, Gore, Doom, etc.. I seem play these types of games to put myself in the shoes (boots) of those that actually went to war, and less and less about just killing things.

Maybe it's just me getting a little older...who knows..

on EA's official site they have a couple 'making of' videos here which were kind of interesting.

I saw the commercial the other day and coulnt believe my eyes, quite the impressive looking game.

on EA's official site they have a couple 'making of' videos here which were kind of interesting.

I saw the commercial the other day and coulnt believe my eyes, quite the impressive looking game.

To win a BF1942 match with the odds stacked against you (Axis to Allies ratio of 2:1 or better) takes teamwork and coordinated attacks. Like counterstrike, each a player can choose between different roles (engineer, scout, etc.). One of the best matches I ever played had a "leader" as a scout coordinating the attack from far away with binoculars.

Sounded like a really different approach.

Soooo there ARE still game developers out ther TRYING.

Its just that most developers are desperately trying to survive to the transition to the consoles. I think that's why so many companies are jumping on anything that will get them a publishing deal.

They are providing hosting - its the 1st link on their offical page. If they wanted to they could not allow it to be distributed by other sites but what advantage to me as a gamer would that be? I would just have to wait forever to be able to download it. Also sites such as shacknews, 3dgamers etc would not benefit from people visiting them, seeing what the site was about and maybe returning in the future.

Actually, I find SimCity 4 quite fun, after you get the city working, and Rush Hour expansion looks like it'll be quite nice. Did you install the performance patch (patch 2)?

What were their reasons? I also wonder why twenty of the lead developers working on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault left an Electronic Arts funded studio to found Infinity Ward. Is it really the money, or is it something else? I have no knowledge in this field, so if anyone has any inside information or pertinent experience, please post, I'd love to hear it.

As far as the reallocation of talent goes, I had high hopes for Troika's Arcanum, seeing as how Troika consisted of several key members of the fantastic team which produced Fallout, but wound up disappointed at its lack of polish, whereas Inifinity Ward's soon-to-be-released Call of Duty looks by all means to be incredible even in its juvenile state. Maybe high-level-folk like doing things their way, for better or worse, without the interjections of a publisher seeking marketability. Once again, I'm only hypothesizing. Are there any game-developers out there willing to testify?

Actually, there are submarines in the game, and has been since its launch.
screenshot check the fourth shot.
And if you go to the official site and click the 'armies' link, you can read about the sub.

Don't forget about Metal of Honor: Allied Asault I've been playing this one on the mac for a while. . . Quite a stable port, too. I have to give credit to Aspyr for all the games that they are trying to give to the mac platform.

I'm not entirely sure, but some companies, such as id with Quake III, have released SDK (Software Development Kit) in order to help players create their own maps and stuff (see e.g. this Linux Quake III SDK). But other companies, such as EA with Battlefield 1942, haven't released any SDK for their game engine. But many mods have been created for BF1942 without an SDK: Desert Combat, Black Hawk Down, Soldier9's Realism Mod, and others.

If you do a search on Google for 'battlefield 1942 mod', the first thing that appears is this petition :-)