FNG Still the #1 Thing to do in Utah on a Friday Night

Actually, we're not only the #1 thing to do on a Friday night in Utah, we're the top 3!!!  (At least at the time of this writing.)  :)

Good times... I'm just sayin'.

GEEX is back for October 2011

I was under the impression that GEEX wouldn't be happening again until 2012, but it's back and slated for October 2011.

Team FNG has been a part of GEEX in both of its prior years. 

The first year we competed in a TrackMania Nations tournament, put on by Protocol 42; and DirtyDan and I came home with some swanky new GeForce 9800GX2's that provided us some SLI goodness.

Last year, GEEX and Team FNG brought a TrackMania United Forever tournament to the stage (2nd row, 2nd column photo features our own Thundr, DirtyDan and Atholon); with Atholon and Thundr coming home with a GeForce GTX480 and a 27" Asus monitor (all thanks to LANDesk Software, who also provided a super-sweet Asus G73JH-X1 laptop to the reigning champion "Fallout".)

Fun was had by all, and I hope it can be even bigger and better this year.  I had an extra good time because I got to write a tournament tracker application that integrates with TrackMania United Forever's XMLRPC server and got to do my first podcast (thanks again LeGrande and Kurt!)

This year, GEEX is partnering with the Pushbutton Summit conference which will bring a host of panels and workshops for those in the digital media industry.

Big name sponsors for this year's event are already lining up, including Epic Games, EA Games and Disney Interactive Studios (which, while looking up links for them all, I discovered EA has Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit on sale for $17.97 this weekend for those of you that don't have it... we're still holding out hope that Criterion and EA will work out the connectivity issues... but I digress.)

With these already on-board, I'm excited to see what other game developers/publishers will sponsor and have booths at the expo.  Maybe we'll enjoy the presence of Valve/Steam or Blizzard.

Team FNG would like to wish Media One and the Pushbutton Summit the best of success with GEEX 2011.  We look forward to tracking its progress and seeing what kind of event this will shape up to be.

Sucks to Be Us... Mirror's Edge 2 "Stalled"

GameSpot reported yesterday that DICE says production on Mirror's Edge 2 has been put on hold.

I really loved this game (aside from a bunch of unnecessary swearing...) - the gameplay is unique and refreshing and spending time trying to find new ways to traverse the City was quite enjoyable.  I have oftentimes found myself returning to play it through again.

Those of us that have been fans of the game were really hoping for a multiplayer "tag" in the 2nd one, but it seems our hopes may be dashed.

If you haven't tried the game, it's well worth the $20 (make sure to purchase it on Steam so you don't have the yucky SecuROM DRM.)

Maybe if more purchases happen, they'll continue development on the sequel.

Here's to hopin'!

MX vs ATV Reflex - $4.95 on Direct2Drive (TODAY ONLY!)

Thanks to Bomajoe for this gem... For all those FNGers that have been waiting for a sale on Reflex, it won't get much better than this.

Purchase MX vs ATV Relfex on Direct2Drive
(TODAY ONLY!!!)

Rumor has it on one of the Steam Forums that you can register the key with Steam and get that version.  I'm going to try it and see.  :)

Time to buy some licenses for the kiddies!  Go buy yourself some so we can play it during FNG!

GG...

Portal 2 - Valve's Doing it Right for All Gamers

Gamespot and others revealed most excellent news this morning (thanks DirtyDan and BomaJoe for notifying me) about the highly anticipated Portal 2, slated for release in April.

The most important in my mind, is the fact that PC gamers will be able to play against PS3 and Mac players, with online chat included.  In a sea of game developers who seem to be taking away all the features that have made PC Gaming great for all these years, it's so nice to see Valve keeping it real and going what seems to be the extra mile nowadays in keeping those features in for us.

As an added bonus, Valve will allow PS3 owners that link their PSN accounts with their Steam accounts to download a digital copy of Portal 2 on their PC.

PS3 players will also enjoy cloud support like their PC Gamer comrades for syncing their saved-game data online.

Thanks, Valve, for doing it right and keeping not only PC gaming real, but gaming just about everywhere (I say just about everywhere because it seems like Xbox is mysteriously left out for now.)  If you know more, please let us know!

The cake is still a lie... until April?!

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Limited Edition - $24.97 on Stardock

Stardock - Need for Speed Hot Pursuit: Limited Edition

For those of you who haven't bought into the craze yet, Bomajoe found Hot Pursuit for $24.97 today through Stardock.

Go get it, then come race with us!

Hot Pursuit - Thursday Night Gaming Edition

"Santa" dropped a special gift in Atholon's Steam account this morning and helped him join the other FNGers playing Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.

We "gave it a spin" tonight with Thundr, who got his settings worked out so he can play with us too.

The first several runs found myself trying to bust both Thundr and Atholon, and while I came close a few times, was never successful.

Then we switched to me running from them as a lone racer... and you guessed it, couldn't get away.  It was fun though, so we all started taking turns being the lone racer, on a quest to be the first one to evade the cops and win the race.

I was finally victorious on one run where I missed what we thought was a shortcut... Atholon attempted the shortcut only to find it was a dead-end.  Thundr ended up with a fatal crash that took him out of the race as they tried to catch up with me.  A few miles later, the finish line was finally in sight.  I checked my radar and saw Atholon quickly approaching; but it was too late.

Victory ahead!

First lone racer victory of the night.

Our final race had Thundr and myself chasing Atholon.  Thundr unfortunately wrecked out of the race, and it left me tailing Atholon for the next 5 miles.  Those 5 miles had us careening through the streets, myself ramming Atholon's car as often as possible, and Atholon hitting the brakes and letting me fly on by as often as possible.

It came down to the wire, and we thought there would be a 2nd lone racer victory for the night; but I finally got that last bash in... cops win.

Here is a shot Thundr took just before the bust, and one I took of the wreck when the bust occured:

Take that punk racer!!!

So close... yet so crashed... BUSTED!

It goes without saying that we had a good time... did I mention this game FREAKING ROCKS?!

I'm also happy to report that we had no connectivity issues as far as getting gamers into the lobby was concerned.  Jarin had one drop out of the game, but it was due to alt-tabbing out to capture the screenshot you see above... now we just need to get eight of us together at once instead of little 2's and 3's here-and-there.

Hopefully that'll happen soon...
GG!

Gaming Week Continues with Burnout and Hot Pursuit

I happened to catch SpeedMonger on IM tonight, so we decided to test some of our connectivity issues.  

We have previously had problems with Split/Second and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.  Earlier in the week, when we had our problems with Hot Pursuit, one of my computers was able to connect, so I checked my router settings to see if I'd maybe been forwarding some ports to that computer for another game that might be interfering with ports Hot Pursuit uses.

I found that I'd been forwarding Titan Quest ports to that machine, so I assume it was the cause of our dilemma the other night.  I turned the port forwarding off for that game, and we commenced testing out Burnout Paradise first.

We connected fine and spent an hour free roaming and taking each other down, as well as trying out some of the events in the game.  It was a good time.  Some of the most memorable moments of the night were us trying to get the biggest drift in free mode inside a stunt quarry.  We were constantly attempting to take each other down to stop the drift, and SpeedMonger was successful in stopping me several times.

He helped me figure out the correct jump to take to get a hard to reach billboard in the quarry, and despite doubts that my piece-of-crap car (third one you earn) could make the length of the jump to reach the billboard, we were able to barely crash through it (and epic wreck afterward.)

SpeedMonger is only missing 8 billboards before he has them all, and one of the events we played brought us to the parking garage that has the launch ramp necessary to reach the billboard. After we figured out which ramp we had to take, we both started trying to make the jump onto a building's roof across the road, required to launch through the billboard in question.

Below is the the screenshot of the scene where the billboard is.  I was first to break it, so I pulled my car next to the fragments (bottom-right of the screenshot.)  The billboard was on the edge of the canopy roof you see on the building to the right of my car.  In the distance is SpeedMonger (JCA69 on EA games) attempting to make the jump to the roof.

SpeedMonger jumping for the roof to take out the same billboard
you see lying broken in front of me.

We tried Hot Pursuit next and were successful in connecting to each other!  Since there were only 2 of us, we ran 3 Interceptor courses: SpeedMonger racer and myself as cop first, then 2 more vice-versa.  We had a blast (literally - EMP anyone?!) and I look forward to getting SpeedMonger in on some games with more players in the future, hopefully.

If only I could transform into Bumble Bee and take out the cop car chasing me...

More Hot Pursuit Fun

DirtyDan, about to be busted by WhollyMindless and Freyar.
(Click to enlarge)
Besides the two cops closing in on him,
notice the helicopter (under the yellow health bar)
ahead ready to drop a spike strip on him!

Well, I have mixed feelings about tonight's Hot Pursuit action... the action was great, don't get me wrong, but getting the action started was a hassle again tonight.

We had a different mix of players tonight... three that we hadn't connected with before:

• ThatOneGuy
• DirtyDan
• WhollyMindless
• Freyar
• Dragonflye

Like the other night when we couldn't get all of us connected in one game, and we found out that the mix of SpeedMonger and myself and/or Mando was the brutal combination... tonight it was Dragonflye and WhollyMindless.  *sigh*

I hope whatever network weirdness is going on with the game's seemingly "auto-resolving" will get worked out by Criterion/DICE or whoever was responsible for the networking code.  I'd rather do some port forwarding or something if it would let us all connect fine.  Hopefully we'll find a new patch or workaround soon so we can all play together.

Dragonflye gave up and dropped out for the night, and the other four of us were able to connect fine and race for a while.  We switched off for 2v2 Hot Pursuits, with the teams being DirtyDan and myself, vs. WhollyMindless and Freyar.  We took turns being cops and racers, swapping each round.

We had a ball and I was bummed when I had to bail for the night... but the picture you see above was of the final moments of the final pursuit.  I'd been taken out early in the game by WhollyMindless, who placed a roadblock in just the right spot to ram me into and totally sandwich me in, preventing me from backing out before the "busted" timer removed me from the game.

This left a lot of time for Wholly to catch up with Freyar and use the outnumbering advantage on DirtyDan.  I got to spectate the whole thing and witness the intense conclusion you see in the screenshot above.

One of the cops had called in a helicopter, while the two closed in on Dan.  You'll notice that Dan and Freyar were both in "Critical Damage" mode where either could have been removed from play with one more good hit to their vehicle.  Unfortunately for DirtyDan, he was the recipient of the final blow.

Once we got playing, the action was good, with rare little spots of lag.  Again, we hope we can figure what's causing some of us to not network nice together, so we can get a full game going and all enjoy this great game.

Thanks to WhollyMindless and Freyar for joining with us tonight.  We had a great time and hope they'll join us again for more FNG Hot Pursuit sessions... (TrackMania too!)

GG!

Hot Pursuit - Quickly becoming a new FNG staple

(click to enlarge)
Check out the Mumble overlay near the top-right corner.
Yes, that's my THT1GUY license plate next to my alias!  :)

Well, Christmas night was a blast.  And while Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit isn't without glitches, it's a pretty dang nice experience for the most part.

We had six people show:

• SpeedMonger
• BomaJoe
• DirtyDan
• ThatOneGuy
• d6Amefath3r
• Mando

We were hoping we could get all of us into a game, but for some reason SpeedMonger has a problem connecting to ThatOneGuy, but only with certain computers from my home.  As mentioned before, my two kids joined us, and for some reason, d6Amefath3r could join SpeedMonger and BomaJoe and play a few rounds, but anytime Mando or myself joined with them, if SpeedMonger was in the game, we couldn't join, and vice versa.  d6Amefath3r was having problems with the game crashing to the desktop with no error randomly too.

So we split into two games and had a riot for a while.  SpeedMonger opted to jump out and the five left joined together for some fun mayhem.  We played a bunch of Hot Pursuit matches, taking turns being cops and racers. (Being a cop is harder than it sounds...)

Hot Pursuit involves cops trying to stop the racers during a race they're having along the Seacrest County roadways.  If the racers reach the finish, they win.  If the cops shutdown the race by taking the racers out, the cops win.  It was definitely interesting trying to stop the racers as a cop, and exciting trying to finish the race with the "po-po" on your tail.

After midnight, I excused my children to bed, and BomaJoe excused himself; which left DirtyD and I to our lonesome.

We decided to try another mode, Interceptor, which was a perfect choice because it's meant for one vs. one (Cop vs. Racer.)

This mode is interesting, in that it plays more like Need for Speed: Most Wanted.  The cop chases the racer until they are able to take the racer out; or the racer evades the cop until they can get out of its range and go through a 30-second "cool down" timer.  It's more of a free-roam mode where you're not locked into a given way to go on the track, like Hot Pursuit.

DirtyDan and I found each other pulling a lot of handbrake 180's, trying to evade each other, and have some really funny moments I wish I'd FRAPSed some screenshots or video of.  One of the funniest moves of the night landed me one of our first "escapes" in Interceptor mode.  

DirtyDan had about exhausted his supplies of helicopters, EMPs and Roadblocks (still had some spike strips),  on this track that was nighttime and raining.  On his last attempt at unleashing the fury of his EMP shockwave on me, I used the first of my "Jammers" to stop the shockwave and disable his radar.  I can't remember, but I might have dropped a spike strip myself at that point to help slow him down too.

I then immediately kicked in my Turbo to try for a speedy getaway. In the meantime, I'd wait for one radar jammer to finish, then immediately launch another; and continued this until I'd exhausted them all... which gave me enough time to evade DirtyDan far enough to get my cool down and complete it.

We shared some good laughs over that and other fun rounds of Interceptor.

---

Thundr received his copy of Hot Pursuit on Monday, so he and I hooked up for a little more mayhem (in more than one sense of the word.)

Thundr's system unfortunately fits the mold of the minimum requirements for the game; and they proved to act like sub-minimum requirements.  Thundr had some trouble getting connected initially, but it seemed to work itself out for 5-6 Interceptor rounds.  Then it seemed to kick him out of every game after that.

One aspect of the game I forgot to mention is the Autolog.  It keeps track of the top scores of your friends in the different events throughout the career modes.  While Thundr was making tweaks, I'd periodically go back to some of the career modes and run a round or two, and was able to successfully claim #1 spots on some events, or raise my standing on the "Speedwall."  That will add some extra fun to the game when we can't be online playing each other.

---

Anyway, if you don't have it... snag it.  If your computer won't handle it, upgrade it!  :)  I think this game's going to stay for a while, and we'd love to have you join us.

Hopefully we can work out whatever kinks we've experienced so far (or that EA/Criterion will and give us a patch) so we can all enjoy the game to its fullest potential.

Happy New Year!