Oddworld is Back!!!

(picture courtesy of Steam)

If you've never played Oddworld, you've GOT to get over to Steam and download it! Two of the games in the series have been released in a pack for $13.49 (regularly $14.99 - so if you wait, you're not out much moneywise...)

The game's name fits... it's odd; and irreverent (including farts - how can you not love a game with farts?!) It's an arcade-style platform game that takes teamwork with others of your kind who you can "command" by the way you make your character Abe interact with them. The goal in the first game is to liberate them from slavery... and certain doom.

Did I mention farts? The second game, Abe's Exoddus lets you control your farts and use them to blow obstacles up. Too cool *Cackle!* Good times... good memories.

Demos are available for both games, so if you want to try-before-you-buy you can.

Get downloadin'!! Then come back and let us know how much fun you had.

FNG 8/23/2008

Thundr, Tsam and I joined up tonight to finally try out the "Missions" server talked about on the front page news when first entering TrackMania United.

It's a French server that contains tracks that have some sort of mission objectives to them. These range from quizzes (where the direction you take in a fork-in-the-road determines your answer to a question... if correct, you continue through a checkpoint and get to move on... if you answer incorectly, you get to turn around and go back or respawn from the last checkpoint...) to full blown missions broken into parts with an objective for each part (take out the spy, paint the target for an air strike, etc.) to tracks with an RC car view (I so miss those from Nations) and multiple paths. One included snagging Christmas gifts for the family while driving along to a Christmas song.

The thing that lured us to the server is the fact that it hosts all of Crusard's Tracks (except Trump Card II, yet...) - but we did get to try The Trump Card (original) tonight, and it ROCKED! Among Crusard's others we tried tonight are some he created for TrackMania Nations that include "The Bobsleigh Challenge", a claustrophobic wall-ride extravaganza (that, while a frame-rate killer, is quite fun) and "MicroMachines" (an RC-style track with some fun jumps and multiple paths.)

The maps were very challenging and there were some fun racers to race with tonight.

If you get a chance... find the MISSIONS server:
* Play Online
* Select "All"
... do ...
* France
* Aquitaine
* Gironde
* MISSIONS
... or ...
* Select the magnifying glass (Search)
* Type: MISSIONS (it's case-insensitive)
* Select "Search"

Once in... add it to your favorites so you can get to it faster next time. It's the worth the visit... and we didn't experience lag much. Thundr did around 1:00am and bailed... and as mentioned before the Boblseigh track was a FPS killer, but not enough to be unplayable.

Enjoy! Hopefully we'll see you there sometime.

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 Open Beta

FilePlanet subscribers got to taste the Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 beta before anyone else... but now the beta has been open to everyone.

Snag it today and see if you have better luck than I have. I've had the beta for a little over a week and have tried nearly everyday to connect to a game.

By the time I get into one I can actually connect to, I launch into the game with a black screen, some sounds and a game pointer. Supposedly this is a known bug, and I was REALLY hoping they had it fixed in the last patch a couple of days ago; but alas... it wasn't for me.

Good luck!

Old School RPG Gaming

I found some old school maps I drew while playing through two cool 80's RPGs ... Times of Lore and Phantasie III.

Check out the article on my blog at thatoneplace.net... :)

TrackMania United Forever only $20.00 This Weekend on Steam!!!

Buy TrackMania United Forever this weekend for 50% off on Steam!

If you like Nations at all, now is the time to get one of the greatest racing games ever made for only $19.99!

What are you waiting for?

New and Improved TrackMania Player Page

Nadeo has been busy again, improving the Official TrackMania United Player Page.

Don't let the logo on the sign-in page confuse; Nations Forever and United Forever players alike can login and check out status, see buddy status and even click links to join servers your friends are on.

The real cool part about the upgraded page is that it now has tabs for stats for all modes of rankings: United Solo, United Multiplayer, Nations Solo and Nations Multiplayer!

Go check it out!

The Trump Card II - By Crusard

One of the things I love most about TrackMania is MediaTracker. MediaTracker is technology built into the game to allow a track author or replay editor to do all sorts of cool camera effects and other trigger type stuff.

Crusard, one of my favorite track authors, goes above and beyond in utilizing MediaTracker in his tracks; creating full-conversion tracks such as "Sweet Dream."

Tonight, I discovered his latest Island track called "The Trump Card II" and it is amazing. It's a four-part mission with an escape sequence you'll enjoy.

Tracks like this remind me of all the reasons I love TrackMania!

Get "The Trump Card II" by Crusard from TMX!

(Crusard is a member of "Clan JMF Argentina" ... Visit their site for other cool TrackMania action, including MediaTracker tutorials!)

We Need More TrackMania In Our Lives...

ThatOneGuy on "DealBreaker"
a track by Dill
skinned with the "TMX City Nights" mod by Crusard

(large image is 7MB ... click to view)

Atholon, Tsam, Thundr and myself had a really great time tonight with TrackMania Forever. We played on a Nations server since someone, we won't mention names (Atholon), hasn't ponied-up for TrackMania United Forever yet. :)

We played on a crazy server called "RF Playground" that had wild tracks to solve that reminded me of the good ole days in TrackMania Nations ESWC when we used to play on the 440 Mods and Boost server that ZHaDuM/MoXLeY used to host (later renamed to a KOFS server.) We used to get our game on there because the tracks were incredibly challenging and uber-creative. Our passion for those tracks was the fact that the first set of fun for it was to learn how to "solve" the track. Then it was time to figure out how to nail a flawless fast ride on it. Good times.

Anyway, the last track we played on it tonight was the one you see in the image above. It was incredible. No one finished it the first time. The second time only one did. The third time the same driver finished twice in one round.

I told the group I hadn't had this much fun being owned by a track in a LONG time. After the third round and no one from FNG finished; we jumped off the server and started our own to practice that track. There was no way I was finishing the night off with a track owning me.

Thundr and I were the only ones left by then, so we played it til we nailed it. I was fortunate enough to have 3/5 finishes during my final round. I told Thundr, "It's official; this track no longer owns me. It now only has a time-share."

The "TMX City Nights" mod Crusard made is incredible. I'm going to have to seek out more of his, because we were impressed with the "Sweet Dream" track (which included a candy world mod Crusard also created) - one of the most creative mods we've seen. Crusard has a gift; a gift I wish I possessed. So kudos to you, Crusard. Thanks for a killer mod that made a great track better.

I'd post the link to the DealBreaker track, but I couldn't find it on TMX. If anyone reading this can find a TMX link, please add a comment!

It's all just further proof that we all need more TrackMania goodness in our lives. See you at the races.

GEEX 2.0 Date Announced

Well, it's official... GEEX 2.0 date has been announced...
April 17-19 2009

And it will be bigger and badder than this year.

I received an email today from Protocol 42 that mentioned: "Just over 12,000 people walked through the event and more than 180 gamers brought their PCs to the LAN party area to join in the 3 days of gaming fun."

12,000! That's more than I expected, and it thrills me. Companies apparently took notice because I heard unofficially that Intel and nVidia have signed on to have booths at the next GEEX; as well as some other companies that thought about doing it this year, but took a "wait and see" approach.

I think this bodes very well for the Utah gaming community; and if we continue to show our support, this could become what E3 used to be; and we get to enjoy the benefit of having it local every year!

Stay tuned to the Protocol 42 forums for more GEEX info and discussions on what you'd like to see there (like more love for the TrackMania tournament; like some stage time!!!) :)

FNG Takes to the Podium at GEEX Show TrackMania Nations Forever Tournament

Today, Team FNG participated in the largest LAN Party we've ever been to. It was GEEX Show 2008 and the lan party was around 150 gamers large.

If you click the image and see it in its original size, you'll notice a staple at lan parties... a bunch of Mountain Dews residing next to a gamer's computer. :) The party was packed and it appeared everyone was having a good time.

Team FNG was represented by the following:

Dan Wetzel (Tsam), back-row left; Jeff Litster (That One Guy), back-row right; Nick Gold (d60dfath3r), front-row left; Jarin Blackham (Thundr), front-row right.

Most of us arrived at the party around 11:00am and jumped right into the TrackMania Nations Forever Tournament practice server to try to feel out what we were up against (both track-wise and competitor-wise.)

The competition was good. There were some good racers on the practice servers. Team FNG took turns being on the podium (sometimes sharing) and by the time we went to get lunch around 2:00pm, we felt confident at least one of us would come home being one of the tournaments victors.

We knew we wouldn't win first place because WAT_Fallout was there, and well, some of have been served by him before online. That guy has got some seriously "mad foo" TrackMania skills; the kind that push you to be a better racer.

There was a near tragic scene when TrackMania ceased working correctly for Fallout's computer around lunchtime; but fortunately after some system configuration tweaks minutes before the competition started, the game began working correctly again.

The tournament started a little after 4:00pm with 30 racers rearing to race to success (and a free video card.) Fallout took first on all but two races, of which Tsam and myself were first. The rest of the time, many of the racers were taking turns in 2nd or 3rd place. Some racers gave up during the tourney; and by the time we finished, the count was half of what we started with.

Points were given for first through third place each round... first place earning 3 points; second place earning 2 points and third place earning 1 point.

Tsam and I were elated to find that we were in the top 3 when the tournament ended. Here are the stats: (laugh hard because Fallout got more points than Tsam and mine combined!)

1. WAT_Fallout - 31 points
2. FNG_tsam - 11 points
3. FNG_ThatOneGuy - 10 points

We each won a new ATi Radeon 4870 ... which, from what I hear, is the best model ATi card on the market today. We're pretty stoked.

In the mayhem of another tournament that started at the same time being conducted on the stage; they quickly interrupted the shoutcasting of the match to announce the winners of our TrackMania tournament... and rushed us up for some pictures before they excused us back to the lan party. Thundr was kind enough to snag my camera and try to take a picture while the other guy was trying to take his second shot. So, we may look a little dorky and disoriented; but we were stoked to be taking the podium in such a fun tournament.

(Left-to-Right: FNG_tsam, FNG_ThatOneGuy, WAT_Fallout)

(Yes we're holding nVidia cards too, but we're really getting ATis.) The gentleman on the far right of the picture is p0wd3r (Ben) from Protocol 42, presenting us with our prizes.

We again want to thank Media One, Protocol 42, Palit Multimedia and all the other excellent sponsors that made GEEX such a great experience.

Rumor has it that plans are already underway for a GEEX 09. We're looking forward to it if it materializes.

We're also looking forward to Protocol 42's annual shindig in November where another TrackMania Nations Forever tournament will be held; and maybe this time we can learn some of Fallout's moves and give him a better run for his money. :) Congrats Fallout for taking us all to the cleaners.

See you all at the next GEEX!