Ignition- End of year special (23/12/09)
In this end of year special edition of ignition the podcast team: Matt Brading, Josh Dean, Stevie Holdway and special guest James Cameron (who didn’t actually say very much) reflect on the year in video games. Going through month by month we discuss everything from January’s news that Ensemble Studios was to be shut down to the release of Guitar Hero: Van Halen in late December. We also try out four of the weirdest energy drinks that Josh could find as well as eating a slightly dodgy cheesecake.
Valve to continue AI research with TF2.
Many of us know of the awesomeness that is the AI Valve has implemented in its games. From the awesome AI director in Left4Dead and Left4Dead 2 to the mind blowing logic of the bots in Counter-Strike (a game in which pigs also drop bombs on terrorists from above).
The general reaction of Counter-Strike bots to anything in game.
Well, they certainly aren’t throwing in the towel and have recently announced they are making fully aware and intelligent bots for TF2 (sauce) which will “pound-on” even the most hardcore Fortress player (and by hardcore we do mean the paraplegic thirteen-year old who screams with a pitch higher than a Nazgul when they get legitimately killed by anyone they considerer not to be “1337″).
Shit, get the Sniper. They are Heavy rushing us again.
Now this announcement comes to some as down-right confusing as Valve seem to have taken to the idea that an entirely competitive multiplayer games needs moar singleplayer elements and have decided, instead of doing something actually useful with TF2, to spend time porting AI from one game into another which will add a feature that NOOOOOOBODY will use.
I liek mah bots.
On the bright side however, Valve have been good enough to land us with an informative 95 page PDF document telling us how the AI director from Left4Dead 1 works with the hope that this will answer all our questions about how bots will be implemented in TF2. (sauce)
How do you feel about bots in TF2? Leave a comment at the bottom and let us all know your amazing, well thought out, views on the matter.
EDIT:
Okay, after playing with the beta preview myself I can confirm that that the bots are not all bad and do provide a challenging enemy, despite being as useless as a stick-resistent horse. The bots are lacking in features, however. For example, they don’t recognise disguises so that essentially buggers the whole concept of spies. Also, the snipers are a little precise. Sticking your head out of a window is likely to get your face instantly blown off.
For your viewing pleasure, here is a little gameplay video of the bots and if you want to play with them; fire up any king of the hill TF2 map and enter into the console tf_bot_add over and over again until the server is full.
Dead Space 2 News and Art emerges
This looks awfully similar to some art I saw of the original, but hey, times are tough
Dead Space was one of the sleeper hits of 2007 and whilst it didn’t exactly shift a load of copies, it was unique and really gave some impetus to the “Resident Evil Monopoly” of survival horror games. The setting of the USS Ishimura, the inventive weaponry and the generally unnerving design really made it stand out amongst the tonne of games released that year.
However, apart from Dead Space: Extraction, an on rails, light-gun shooter for the Wii, we’ve heard nothing about a full sequel to Dead Space. Though that time is now over with a whole three screens, well, artwork things, that have been tediously leaked out to the public, through twitter and all sorts of different things.
The image you see at the head of this post is from, erm this website. Now I can’t confirm if this is strictly official, but it has still not been taken down, so may be true. This appears to be the start of a long and drawn out advertising campaign, with Spike TV Video Game Awards this month.
Arty
The one above was taken from the Dead Space 2 twitter feed, and if you have played the original and have a pretty sharp eye, you’ll notice a variety of necromorphs bursting out the picture.
Guess who could may well be back
This one will be a bit more familiar, with a dude in a mining suit, who could be Issac Clarke from the first one, with a plasma cutter. However, the armour is of a different style, so maybe they are shifting it into a different era. This will be on Game Infomer’s big revealer issue this Janurary, so check out their site for a full size cover.
That’s the lot for the moment. From what we’ve gathered from press releases coming out of EA, expect Dead Space 2 to get a bit more dead. And spacey.
[Source]
Pleased to meet you, I am much cooler than any transformer. And that’s official
For those who didn’t know, the long awaited Final Fantasy XIII gets released on the PS3 in Japan not from now. In fact, in the tradition of mad Christmas holiday imports, it is released on the December 17th.
As the general public, we still don’t know hardly anything about it, but to satisfy our desire for Final Fantasy screen shots, which Square seem to think we have a ‘thing’ for, they’ve released some more, focusing on the summon Hecatoncheir and the famous Cid Raines. Whilst we may be able to glean some more information from the trailers which keep getting put out, the bunch of screens that have been uploaded to the Game Area should hopefully satisfy you.
Here are a sample, check out the latest on the Final Fantasy XIII Game Page, and if you have some you want to add to the page, or some info, go and do it!
Ignition 5-12-09
In this weeks episode of Ignition, Stevie and Josh are very sick, Matt is Paddington Bear and we talk about Rogue F**king Warrior (Explicit), Modern Warfare 2 (SPOILER ALERT 05:00-10:00) and discuss whether we pay too much attention to graphics in the modern gaming world, and not enough to gameplay. All that and more in this weeks Ignition.
Duration: 51 minutes
