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You can now download and play Red Mesa; a Half Life inspired level for Crysis.
FPSBanana are now hosting it so what are you waiting for, grab your download here! You can also see some more screenshots by hitting read more below. 
It’s that time of year again. The time when I leave gaming and the family behind for the weekend and head off to the green slopes of a small mountain boarding centre near Hereford. The event? The annual 22nd Global Gaming Clan meet part IV: The Search for Carlsberg!
I first became serious (or perhaps I should more accurately say dedicated) to online gaming around 3 or 4 years ago. I had at that time acquired, for the first time in many years, a rather shiny and supercharged new gaming PC.
The PC purchase had been ‘inspired’ by the imminent release of Doom 3 which had been branded in my mind as an absolute must have because of my love for its prequels. Needless to say my high hopes were dashed a fair bit when I eventually did play the game, but the Half Life 2 release around the same time ensured that the new PC didn’t go to waste.
Much like its excellent predecessor I played Half Life 2 to death and loved every fragging minute. But once it had offered all it could, I nervously ventured online to play Half Life 2: Deathmatch. This was in hindsight an action that would very much have a large impact on my life.
My first steps in the online world of HL2DM were not pretty. Every time I spawned, I died before I could really work out what the heck was going on and I was constantly the victim of more insults than I care to recall. ‘Noob’ was certainly the most common but it usually came after a harsher expletive!
For a while I gave up, I hadn’t enjoyed my online experience that much after all, but my love of the Half Life world eventually drew me back a few weeks later. This time though, I vowed to do things differently.
Before I went back to play, I ventured over to Valve’s very own Steam forums (itself not always the friendliest of places), and started asking questions about the game. HL2DM has never been the most popular of online pursuits (and certainly the game and community can be fairly regarded as rather niche, even back then), but I found a few friendly souls, one of whom pointed me in the direction of 22g.
22g as it turned out was a clan who primarily played HL2DM but did not play the game in a competitive (i.e.: league) manner. That’s not to say they didn’t have good players, far from it, but they were not actually bothered about how good or bad your game was. Far more important to them was your attitude and having a laugh together. Finally it seemed, I had found a place I was safe.
And safe I was. I quickly became a regular on the servers and forums and discovered to my delight that the regulars there enjoyed all forms of video games and not just HL2DM. The clan was strictly invite only so I never asked about joining although I’d be fibbing if I said I hadn’t wanted to. Not long later, my game improved enough so I could hold my own a bit on the servers and I was also lucky enough to be invited into the clan.
From that point in time I eventually graduated from ‘stupid noob’ to ‘f#*king hacker’ and played the game almost non-stop bar the inevitable need for sleep. I wrote guides on the game and helped out other players, always remembering how bad my first experience online was. I dreamt about the map layouts in my sleep. I daydreamed at work about new ways to take my opponents down. But most importantly, I made new friends.
The funny thing with online game play is that you never really know who you’re talking too. We all create our online name/persona, wear proudly our affiliation tags and quite often behave in a manner which does not reflect how we are outside of this specialist virtual world.
I’ve often wondered if this change is brought about by the fact you are around fellow enthusiasts. Perhaps here, around ‘our own’ so to speak, is where we can be our natural selves, where our passion for games doesn’t have to be hidden for fear of being labelled a geek or simply not being taken seriously at work. In this environment we can let it all out with people who understand, with people who care as much as we do.
Of course online gaming also brings out peoples worst sides to, the insults that are free (mostly) from recrimination, the one-up-manships (or should that be 1 up’s!) that you couldn’t possibly use in most areas of your offline life. Specifically, it’s pretty easy to be an arse if you choose too with little come back.
You are after all just this digital persona, someone that can act how they please with little affect on anything that’ll land you in serious trouble; something that can be changed and somewhere you can come back anew.
And it’s here (finally!) where we come full circle to the point of this post.
Because tomorrow, for my 3rd time, I’m off to actually meet my gaming comrades. And I don’t just mean in Second Life! We are actually meeting in the flesh; flesh which not long after will be hurtling down Herefords finest grass hills on little more than a piece of wood with wheels on. This time though it’ll hurt when we fall, we won’t just feel a small electrically powered rumble, screw up our multiplier and lose a tiny bit off our health bar.
And what a motley crew we’ll be. Because when you’re online, you don’t see the person – you see the persona. And what shocked me when I did this meet the first time was just how utterly diverse the whole group is.
The age range alone is fairly large; our backgrounds all for the most part completely different; personality, looks, size, views – everything. This is a group of people that you realise would never normally be put together because they are just so damn different.
And that is what makes this meet so bloody great! I couldn’t even begin to imagine meeting these people through any other means, that’s not to insult in any way who they are but just to re-emphasise how different we all are. And yet meeting with these people, my good friends, is one of the highlights of my year.
Enjoy your gaming, be passionate about it (but be nice to) and get involved. There’s so much more to it than meets the eye. But be bold too. If your part of a clan, go meet them. A group of enthusiasts? Get together.
Because sometimes the best thing you’ll ever do in this hobby is get out of the game.
Happy Fragging,
[22g] Nana
http://www.22g.co.uk/forum/
The current generation of consoles marked something of a departure for me. At any other time in my gaming life I have always brought all the new consoles at the point of (or very close to) their release dates. This time around however I’ve only just now completed the ‘set’ with our recent acquisition of an 80GB Playstation 3.
When the machine launched it was extremely expensive and given the lack of any real decent exclusive titles I decided to wait until there were some titles on the system I wanted to actually play.
Since then the PS3 has hardly set the world on fire with its games and thus I never really got round to making the purchase. A console should live and breathe in the quality of its games library and to date the PS3 has offered very little that isn’t already being done better on Microsoft’s winter heater.
Multi-format titles have on the whole been better on the 360 (The Orange Box debacle instantly springs to mind as does the more recent Ghostbusters ‘admission’ by Terminal Reality) and to date the exclusives generally have been more appealing (Halo series, Gears of War, PGR, GTA IV exclusive DLC).
Some developers such as Haze’s Free Radical have voiced complaints over the PS3 being difficult to code for, whilst heavy hitter Valve have gone one step further and simply refused full stop to code for the system. This decision alone means that PS3 owners may never get to experience the brilliance that is Left 4 Dead and potentially the up and coming (soon I hope!) Half Life 2: Episode 3.
I must admit that Uncharted: Drakes Fortune and Little Big Planet have both nearly persuaded me to part with my cash previously but unusually the sensible family man overruled the impulsive gamer’s heart.
It’s also worth noting that although I do not consider myself a ‘fan boy’, I do at times tend to think of Sony more negatively than the other two big hitters. This is mainly due to the impact Sony has had on Sega over the years; they are after all responsible for Sega’s exit from the hardware market, they killed the Dreamcast right? Well no, Sega unfortunately managed that all by themselves.
Sega failed to recognise the importance of 3D with the Saturn, produced a machine for the ‘hardcore’ (I prefer the term old skool mind you) and missed out on a whole new generation of ‘clubbing’ gamers.
They then produced the brilliant and pioneering Dreamcast, failed to market it so anyone really knew what it was and again produced old skool games. Now that’s great for someone like me but was hardly likely to entertain the newer (and by now much larger) gaming demographic.
Now you may well assume given so much negativity on my part and the minor bias towards all things blue and spiky that I’m simply writing here to bash Sony and its black monolith. But to my own surprise I’m actually writing to say how impressed with it I really am.
Whilst many will no doubt disagree, it’s not in this writer’s opinion the best out and out system for games, something I have covered enough above. It’s expensive (although at the time of writing there are numerous price cuts around due to the imminent arrival of the PS3 Slim) and very surprisingly the word Playstation is no longer synonymous to many with the phrase games console. Owning a Playstation isn’t the cool thing it was in the past.
Bizarrely we actually never really ‘paid’ for our PS3, it came ‘free’ with my partners new mobile phone contract (I’m holding off on renewing mine for the launch of the PSP Go!).
Our sole reason at the time for picking the PS3 as our freebie was that due to various circumstances we no longer had a DVD player in the main living room. Since the PS3 is both a DVD and Blu-ray player it seemed the obvious choice for us despite its gaming shortcomings.
What we never realised at the time was just how good the PS3 is at serving as our complete family entertainment centre. And it’s here that the PS3 really excels, it is because of this the PS3 sees use in our household every day and by several occupants.
We have our DVD and Blu-ray player for our films. We have a music centre which streams music from our PC effortlessly along with our photo and video collection. Then there’s Vidzone, essentially a free music video channel where you pick what plays. And of course there’s the games, finally Uncharted and Little Big Planet are getting my well deserved attention (Uncharted being the first game in ages that I’ve actually bothered to complete). Heck we can even surf the net with it during the television ad breaks.
Of course the 360 also has some media features of its own but they simply are not as well implemented.
The DVD player is DVD only and it’s intrusively noisy for a front room. The media streaming works to a point but it’s not as easy or as smooth as on the PS3. The music videos on Live are limited and have to be paid for. It can’t surf the internet and unless you own an Elite model the HDD is woefully small. And also, somehow, the 360 just doesn’t look like an entertainment centre. It looks like a games console; it looks out of place under my main TV.
My partner has never really touched a non-handheld games console before and yet with the PS3 she presents our photos to friends and family, pops music on in the morning to keep the kids quiet (our 1 year old daughter dives across her pen when the PS3 power button beeps because she loves to dance away to the videos) and even watches the odd film.
And so, it’s only now that I’ve come to realise that the old skool gamer in me has blinded me into ignoring this great machine.
No it’s not the best games console, the 360 is currently the choice here with its vast library and it’s excellent (though still annoyingly chargeable) Xbox Live. But it is a great all rounder, it serves the purpose Sony always said they wanted to serve, the central family hub of entertainment, the unseen box of tricks that quietly delivers all of your living room needs without you even realising it. And for that Sony should be applauded.
Firstly I should probably point out that this post is not about the ultimate gaming holiday for most seasoned Western gamers – Akihabara in Japan. I’ve always wanted to go but the long flight puts me off. One day maybe!
Rather this post is about going on my normal family holiday; how gaming came with us and how much it’s changed since I was a boy.
Confused? Let me explain.
You see we recently packed up for our annual holiday which this year was a trip up North to North Wales. My whole family are avid gamers (naturally!) and so to a large extent gaming does not get left behind when we head off on our annual trip.
The obligatory handhelds (3 X Nintendo DS Lite’s) were placed in the car for the journey and we already knew the caravan we were staying in (rented from family) housed a flat screen LCD TV complete with a modded Xbox. I also put out our small Asus netbook (and promptly forgot it).
In hindsight forgetting the netbook was probably a good thing. Although underpowered, its more than enough to run Steam for playing the original Counter Strike and Half Life which would have been more than enough to have Dad off hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots!
Anyway, off we went. Dad drove the 250 odd miles there whilst listening to the radio and the incessant sounds of Mario collecting his riches (just how big must his pockets be with all those coins!). When we finally got there the DS Lite’s went promptly on charge and the first trip to the camp shop was for a set of AA batteries for the Xbox wireless controllers. 250 miles and it seems nothing has changed.
But holidays have changed. And I should know because at 33 years of age I remember.
You see when I was younger, more often than not a family holiday involved a trip to a caravan located somewhere in the British Isles. So far so similar. But back then we didn’t have flat screen TV’s in caravans (or for that matter at home). You might have had a TV if you were lucky (or paid extra) but these were inevitably crap, sometimes black and white, and would never in a million years contained a gaming console or home computer.
In the early days we had no true handhelds either, there were no Gameboy’s and the best we had was either a Nintendo Game and Watch or a somewhat battered, always out of batteries Astro Wars tabletop with a knackered fire button. And the Nintendo batteries would die and nowhere would sell the specialist watch type batteries.
So my kids today are laughing! A Nintendo DS in their pocket and an Xbox in the ‘van’ takes care of their gaming needs; technological progress has ensured that their ‘gaming holiday’ would be far better than mine ever were. Wouldn’t it?
It was only later I realised just how lucky as a kid I actually was. And it was not until the evening I remembered when we ditched our day shorts and donned the night jeans for the nightly trip to the camps club.
The entertainment was as crap as ever, poor cabaret acts alongside a couple of poor bastards trying to keep a mountain of kids entertained whilst dressed as some mascot rabbit. You don’t care though, the adults drink and the kids run round causing mayhem for a while. Later the kids creep back, hands out stretched and begging for change for the arcades.
Arcades! Dad finishes his pint rather sharpish, and runs off with the kids to get in some gamage! It was then I realised just how lucky I was.
We got to the ‘arcade’ and all around lights fluttered and the sounds of coins dropping could be heard. My kids abandoned me in their quest for entertainment and I promptly grabbed some change for myself having already been mugged by the wee ones.
15 minutes later and my change pocket remained untouched. This wasn’t the arcade I had in mind. The fruit machines were there as they were years ago, flashier and more expensive but essentially the same. But now as then, they were of no interest to me.
Then there were the cranes, surrounded by kids who couldn’t understand why despite the most acute alignment, that small teddy toy could never be rescued from his glass tomb. The coin topplers were present fooling everyone into thinking they were winning complete with the ever present oppurtunistic mob strolling round looking for those machines which randomly drop a few pence when no one is playing them.
And then there were the games. Or at least there should have been. That’s how these things were in my memory.
The games were there of course but in far fewer numbers than the arcades of old. I approached several but at a £1 a go I never found anything that justified the cost for a few minutes entertainment. Even all the kids in the arcade seemed pretty non-fussed. These games were expensive, limited in choice and there were superior versions either waiting at home or in the various visitors caravans. I sighed and went back into the main club for another beer.
As I sat down with my fresh pint I shut my eyes and remembered the excitement of going on holiday as a kid. It didn’t matter that the Game and Watch had died or the Astro Wars didn’t work. For back then I had a pocket full of ten pence pieces and I was surrounded by the dark and smoky atmosphere of a real arcade.
Spaceships were being destroyed, barrels were being jumped, Death Stars were exploding. Joysticks were being bent out of shape by the more heavy handed fighter players and new friends were made when the 4th player slot was being filled by a gamer looking to explore some dungeons whilst Elf shot the food. A few pounds that wouldn’t last 5 minutes today could keep me entertained for hours.
Progress in gaming has always been mostly a good thing. Better graphics, better sound, better games. More ways to play, more ways to interact.
But sometimes, in an occasional moment of disappointment and clarity, sometimes you realise gaming was better in the past.
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