James Galvin

GTA IV trailer is out.

I mentioned in my last post that very few people these days take the time to give their views on how things are shaping up in the world of online gaming. In the days of Geocities and Gibworld, the internet was hopping in time with its myriad of animated ‘mail me’ gifs. Dozens of clan sites and tinet homepages in Ireland were poised to strike at the slightest bit of news in the gaming scene. When the boat rocked, ripples would spread giddily through the network of fluorescent static HTML pages, lovingly tended by faithful enthusiasts.

Last week, the boat rocked. When I say it rocked, I mean it crashed into an iceberg and flipped over three times before landing upside-down in the Bermuda triangle. The thundering mother of all cheating scandals emerged in a haze of furious drama. eSReality has an account of the saga involving a English gamer called Fusen and netCoders.be - a group who make aimbots, wallhacks, etc., for games such as Quake 3, Enemy Territory, CoD 2, and SOF, and sell them for up to $200. This is story of the hacker who hacked the hackers and gained access to their database via a vBulletin exploit, exposing the details of all of their customers to the public. The wild-west response, where netCoders offer a $1,000 reward for information on their attacker. The irony of the moral high ground held by the victims and their alleged legal follow-up. The hackers’ threats to hack the hacker who hacked the hackers.

The plot thickened and boiled and simmered as professional players were busted, and respected Clanbase admins ruined. But it didn’t interest me until I noticed that several members of team Ireland were caught with aimbots and wallhacks.

I have followed Ireland in the Enemy Territory nations cups a few times, and despite our small playerbase, Ireland has always had a very strong squad which was able to compete at the highest level. More recently, a new generation of players has risen to eradicate the respect that Irish national teams have accumulated over the years. If this had happened 5 years ago, there would be riots.

I was looking for the famous South Park episode, when I came across this Dragostea din Tei rendition:

Ingenious.

ClanBase brings the news that the one and only Phil Collins (still hugely popular in Chile) will be starring in the upcoming Grand Theft Auto game as a means of unleashing his genius upon a younger generation.

I would have expected this from Shatner or Hasselhoff, but Phil, save yourself before you end up doing ads for lesser-known breakfast cereals, and cameos in movies which also feature a cameo from Chuck Norris. The news has upset concerned parents in the US who have previously campaigned against the violence and obscenity in GTA games, as many of these activist groups are known to have used Phil Collins songs as their marching themes. The game will be released on 3rd November, and I think that I will be buying it despite this latest development. Hopefully it’ll run on Edgy.

The World of Warcraft is gearing up for Halloween. Pumpkins everywhere, and “trick or treats”. The inkeeper in Gadgetzan gave me a gnome mask

Vin just pointed out that the Cobra-Daa video from 1999 is now on You Tube. Cobra was a volatile Scottish Quake player. Daa was an annoying young Irish Quake player who brought out the worst in people, and liked to wind up Cobra. This is Cobra’s attempt at intimidating Daa:

I was at the WCG Ireland LAN yesterday attending the BYOC area, mainly to play a bit of Quake 3. After suffering so long on ISDN and unplayable Clearwire broadband, I was delighted to hear of a free LAN just five minutes from my house. It was refreshing to see all friendly faces running the thing - BioHazard/MindPhuck/Legion/PPC, etc., are all oldschool LAN organisers who know the Irish gaming scene very well. No power cuts, no problems with IP addresses, no ping issues… to say the LAN ran smoothly would be a huge understatement.

When I arrived at the Digital Hub I was given a bag of free stuff and a nice smoothie, ushered to my seat by a guy who carried my PC. I was then directed to SECURE parking out the back (incidentally, three more cars broken into underneath my apartment block the day after my own stereo was stolen). There was a tuck shop, a rest area with comfortable couches and bean bags, top of the range console corners with great chairs and TVs, computer doctors on site, and loads of help from staff. You’d think you were in a different country. Myself and Spaceman each bought a can of coke at the shop, and were informed that we had just won free spot prizes… I was given an xbox 360 game. This was most definitely a Carlsberg LAN.

There were a handful of reporters wandering about, I posted the Sunday Tribune’s article here, and no doubt there will be some more reviews popping up in the other papers. One thing that struck me as a bit odd were these two women from Millenium People recruitment who were going around with leaflets offering gamers their “dream job” as an MMORPG games master or team leader, etc. CV farmers perhaps?

Theres a review of the WCG qualifiers from a Counter Strike perspective over on cs-ireland.com. Even though its years since I’ve touched that game, it is nice to see a bit of life breathed back into the once-vibrant clan scene. Eight teams turned up for the qualifiers, although there were really only two possible contenders from the start… Wink and suiGeneris, who fought it out in the final with sG coming from the lower bracket to win twice for the trophy. I didn’t follow any of the other competitions, although I kept an eye on Starcraft where Bunny lost out in the final to some guy I never heard of.

I don’t know how strong Ireland’s representation at the World Cyber Games in Monza, Italy, this year will be, but the most important thing is that we are there. For too long we have had no representation while the likes of Mongolia and Qatar were present. Here is the group draw:

	Estonia
	Hungary
	Japan
	Finland
	Ireland
	Moldova
	Switzerland

I just forked out €15 for a three month subscription to Transgaming’s Cedega - the portability product that allows you to run Windows games seamlessly on Linux. As much as I hate to say it, it was money well spent. After hours of recompiling several different versions of Wine, and troubleshooting minor bits and pieces that made some of the newer games just barely unplayable, I decided that it is just too much effort and the time that Cedega would save me is worth more than €5 per month. In other words, spurred on by a blast of nostalgia, I needed a fix of World of Warcraft immediately. Cedega did exactly what it said on the tin, and it surpassed my expectations by running Civilization 4 flawlessly. I’m told that there is even support for Oblivion and Age of Empires III… if only I had the inclination to find the CDs.

Unfortunately, WoW is just as boring as when I quit playing it over a year ago… only this time around my few buddies in-game are all gone (except for Spaceman). My once-buzzing guild was empty bar one other member… and he was 8 months idle. I’ll try to give it a few hours here and there but I don’t think I’ll ever reach level 60.

This will make no sense to any of you who don’t know what a “shock rifle” is. The staff behind Ireland’s UT2K4 gaming community has let the stress get to them. A new system has been introduced, claiming to “a benevolent dictatorship similar to the very effective situation at Boards.ie”.

For some people, mainly those who tend to speak their mind a bit too often, the Boards.ie model is not one to admire. However, on a site which has seen over 1500 users online at one time, it is effective. The balance is always delicate between the “cynical power-tripping mod” and the “opressed minority”, but they’ve managed to pull it off (thanks to the general good sense of DeVore et al) to become one of the top 5(?) busiest websites in Ireland. On the other hand, in a smaller tight-knit community where passions boil and bubble and grudges slowly fester, a more diplomatic approach is advisable… particularly when the forum in question is an informal hub for a bunch of gamers. It is not difficult to moderate a board and still treat the users with a basic degree of respect.

It is unfortunate for Irish FPS gaming that our last remaining community has laid down the flagstone for their new culture with an unfriendly, inflammatory and disrespectful declaration by the admins. As a (respectfully) argumentative person (i.e., can’t keep mouth shut), I cannot subscribe to the idealogy expressed in the tactless missive which, incidentally, is not open to debate. The only option for me is to sign out for good, goaded by the message that “any individual who disagrees, or feels they cannot live, with the above restrictions may vote with their feet”.

My favourite thing about Doom 3 was that little ‘chicken fight’ easter egg - a game within the game. Waxy has a link to this project which has taken it a step further, allowing you to play Doom 1 on the little in-game acrcade screen.