DICE rebuilding Battlefield 3 with massive upcoming patch

DICE have released a humongous list of fixes they’re planning to make in an upcoming patch on Battlelog. It consists of dozens and dozens and dozens of tweaks. A reduce in recoil here, increased bullet spray there, the individual changes seem minor, but the sheer number of should make this Battlefield 3′s most important update yet.

Almost every weapon in the game has altered which should have a significant impact on the way Battlefield 3′s fire fights feel. The changes don’t just stop at weapons. Vehicles have been altered, bipods have been significantly buffed and Battlefield 3′s most popular weapon attachments have received attention. If you’re a big Battlefield 3 fan, you’ll definitely want to take a look at this list.

Oh, and “tanks can no longer drive into the water and cross the Wake Island lagoon completely submerged,” That’s just one of many bug fixes that you’ll also find included in the patch notes below.

The weapon changes are especially interesting. It looks as though the changes are aimed at establishing a stronger sense of what each weapon does better than any other, creating a more defined role for them on the battlefield, or just pruning them for general balance reasons. Just look at their patch notes for the MK3A1 shotgun. DICE say they’ve increased the mag capacity by four and reduced the density of its scattershot, giving it a lower rate of fire with more ammo in order to give it “an edge vs the USAS.” The devs explain the precise reasoning behind most of the changes, which is a nice touch.

DICE point out that “this is still not a full update list and there will be more information on this as we go forward.” There’s no ETA on the patch just yet because the team say that they’re “sstill working on improving online gameplay for all of our dear community members.” Here are the patch notes in full, starting with those weapon changes.

WEAPONS:

• Added Extended Mags to the ASVAL. The Extended Mags can be unlocked at 200 kills with the AS VAL.
• Reduced the recoil of the SKS rifle and increased its maximum damage at close range.
• Fixed aimed firing max accuracy on the Pecheneg to be consistent with other LMGs.
• Semiautomatic and automatic shotguns firing FRAG rounds now do slightly less splash damage.
• The M26 MASS frag and slug rounds are now the more effective pump action versions.
• The M26 MASS and M320 now benefit from the Laser Sight when mounted with an Underslung Rail.
• Fixed the bolt action timer on the L96 that would cause an animation glitch.
• 9x39mm rounds no longer benefit from the Sniper headshot bonus.
• Increased the damage of the 9x39mm rounds at long range.
• Fixed the AKS74u damage at max range, it was incorrectly higher than other carbines.
• Increased the damage of the .357 and .44 magnum rounds at max range.
• All semiautomatic and bolt weapons, including all shotgun slugs, now have their maximum damage out to 15m.
• Semiautomatic weapons will no longer “jam” if the player presses fire faster than the weapon is capable of shooting. Some semi-automatic weapons have had their rates of fire adjusted to fit this change.
• Bolt action sniper rounds now have a chance to kill at close range if the player is hit in the upper chest.
• Semiautomatic sniper rifles, Assault Rifles, LMGs, and shotgun slugs now have more consistent damage over long range. At maximum range shots to the legs will not require more hits to kill.
• The spread for Flechette rounds has been reduced slightly on all shotguns.
• The spread for Buckshot has been reduced on the M1014, DAO-12, and S12k. These weapons have an accuracy advantage over the USAS12 but are not as accurate as the 870.
• Zooming shotguns with Buckshot and Flechette loads will now result in a slightly tighter cone for the pellets.
• Reduced the delay time between quick knife attempts slightly. Attacks with the knife drawn are still significantly faster.
• Fixed the Rate of Fire when the USAS and MK3A1 are equipped with FRAG rounds. All other shotguns correctly had a reduced rate of fire with frags, except the USAS and MK3A1.
• Fixed an Accuracy bug when the MK3A1 shotgun is equipped with FRAG or Slug rounds.
• Shotguns equipped with slugs will no longer automatically begin reloading if the weapon is zoomed when the clip is empty. This allows players to see where the slug lands before reloading.
• Fixed 12g FRAG rounds not breaking glass at long range.
• Players can now earn the shotgun Ribbon using the M26 MASS.
• The underslung grenade launchers for Russian rifles now properly report GP30 in the kill log.
• Fixed the AEK971 40mm shotgun round listing itself as FRAG in the kill log.
• Fixed the 40mm smoke grenade so it no longer passes through soldiers and unbroken objects before it detonates.
• Several weapons have had recoil or accuracy adjusted in orer to balance these weapons in effectiveness and also increase the feeling of individuality in each gun effectiveness and also increase the feeling of individuality in each gun.
• M27 IAR: No change. The M27 is a heavier version of the M416, giving it good all-around performance though it has worse performance on the move.
• RPK-74M: Reduced the initial recoil and vertical recoil. The RPK-74M is a more stable firing platform than the comparable M27, though it lacks the M27′s higher rate of fire.
• M249: Added an initial recoil. The M249 is the fastest firing belt fed LMG, giving it superior suppressive and damage abilities. The initial recoil makes it a bit harder to run and gun, while making little overall impact on performance.
• Type-88: Slightly increased the initial recoil, reduced muzzle drift. The Type88 fires the slowest of the medium caliber LMGs, though what it lacks in rate of fire it makes up for in controllability.
• PKP: Reduced recoil but added a slight initial recoil, increased damage at max range. The Pecheneg has a heavy vertical recoil with a hard hitting round and little drift, this makes it excellent at sustained fire.
• M60: Reduced the initial recoil, increased damage at all ranges. The M60 has a very low rate of fire that makes it the most controllable with the powerful 7.62x51mm round.
• M240B: Added an initial recoil, increased damage at all ranges. The fastest firing medium MG, the M240 has a substantial muzzle kick and drift that makes all that power difficult to control.
• QBB-95: Reduced the total recoil but increased muzzle drift and initial recoil. The QBB-95 should now kick harder but settle into full auto fire better, combined with the bullpup hip fire bonus this makes the QBB-95 a highly mobile LMG.
• MG36: Added an initial recoil. The MG36 fires at a fast 750rpm and makes a nice middle ground between the controllability of a clip LMG and the sustained firepower of a belt fed LMG.
• 870: No change. The 870 is a popular and highly effective weapon.
• DAO-12: Reduced the total pellets fired from 12 to 9. The DAO-12 has a high magazine capacity with a slow reload that makes it a solid all around shotgun.
• M1014: Increased the rate of fire from 200 max to 210 max. Reduced the total pellets fired from 12 to 9. The M1014 was underperforming compared to the USAS12 and 870, it should now be more viable in CQB thanks to a higher rate of fire.
• S12k: Increased extended mag from 8 rounds to 10 rounds. Reduced the total pellets fired from 12 to 9. The S12k larger extended magazine but slower rate of fire should make it stand out against the M1014, while the DAO-12 has a higher capacity over all, but a slowe reload.
• MK3A1: Increased magazine capacity to 8 and 12 for normal and extended mag respectively. Reduced the total pellets fired from 12 to 9. The MK3A1 has a lower ROF than the USAS12, giving it slightly more ammo makes this an edge vs the USAS.
• USAS-12: Increased the initial recoil. Reduced the total pellets fired from 12 to 9. The USAS 12 has a higher ROF than other shotguns, this recoil change better balances that advantage and the pellets balance its damage output.
• M4A1: No Change. Well-rounded carbine, with good rate of fire and controllable recoil.
• M4: Increased vertical recoil, reduced horizontal recoil. The Burst only M4 should now feel different to its automatic sibling, the reduced horizontal recoil emphasizes the greater control you have in burst fire.
• AKS-74U: Reduced initial recoil and vertical recoil. The AKS-74u’s low rate of fire is paired with great controllability. The overall increase in sustained fire control should help this carbine stand out, while the first kick gives it character.
• SG553: Reduced initial recoil and vertical recoil. The SG553 is a lower rate of fire carbine with greater controllability than the G36C. The change to initial recoil should better highlight this difference.
• A91: No Change. The A91′s high rate of fire and bullpup from the hip accuracy is offset by a poor controllability on full auto.
• G36C: Reduced initial recoil. The G36C is a well-rounded carbine, with a medium rate of fire and a medium recoil. The 2 round burst mode gives this weapon an edge at mid-range.
• SCAR-H: Increased damage at maximum range and increased max range. The SCAR-H fires a heavier round than all other carbines, giving it better stopping power at range at the cost of a low fire rate that penalizes it in CQB.
• G53: Reduced recoil and drift, recoil settle times now similar to other carbines. The HK53 is a short carbine with a lot of initial kick but a stable recoil pattern and a medium rate of fire. The changes give it more character compared to the G36.
• QBZ-95B: Reduced muzzle sway, recoil settle times now similar to other carbines. A bullpup like the A91, the QBZ-95B is steady on the move with a lower rate of fire for controllable shots at longer range. The built in foregrip is now properly reflected in the weapon’s stats.
• AK-74M: Reduced initial recoil and vertical recoil. The AK-74M sacrifices rate of fire for controllable automatic fire, the initial recoil was negatively affecting the feeling of controllability.
• M16A3: No Change. The M16 (both A3 and A4) provide a well-rounded stable firing platform with a high rate of fire that is relatively controllable.
• M16A4: Increased vertical recoil, reduced horizontal recoil. The Burst only M16A4 should now feel different to its automatic sibling, the reduced horizontal recoil emphasizes the greater control you have in burst fire.
• M416: No change. The M416 is the middle ground AR, blending a medium recoil and rate of fire.
• AEK-971: Increased initial recoil, reduced aimed accuracy slightly. The AEK has a very high rate of fire, and also a large muzzle drift that makes control difficult. The low initial recoil allowed a player to kill before the weapon’s weaknesses kicked in while the reduced accuracy highlights its close range role.
• F2000: Reduced vertical recoil, increased zoomed accuracy slightly. As a bullpup, the F2000 has a bonus to accuracy on the move and from the hip while its high rate of fire sacrifices controllability for saturation. The previous changes were an overreaction, this is a corrective update.
• AN94: Reduced vertical recoil. The AN94′s 2 round burst mode is incredibly accurate, but it suffers from a low rate of fire on fully automatic. The recoil in full auto has been reduced somewhat to offset this penalty and make the AN94 more attractive.
• G3A3: Increased damage at all ranges, reduced vertical recoil. The G3A3′s heavy recoil and heavy round are offset by a low rate of fire and a small magazine. The G3A3 was clearly outclassed at all ranges.
• KH2002: No Change. The KH2002 is locked to burst fire, with a high rate of fire and a large muzzle drift the weapon favors accurate mid-range fire.
• L85A2: Increased accuracy, reduced muzzle drift. The L85 differs from other bullpup style ARs by having a low rate of fire, the accuracy and controllability were too low to offset the rate of fire.
• FAMAS: The FAMAS combines an extreme rate of fire with extreme recoil making it very difficult to use at anything other than close quarters combat. Due to update restrictions, the FAMAS had different stats on all 3 platforms. The FAMAS is now uniform on all platforms and now has the correct 25 round magazine.
• PP2000: Reduced the initial recoil. The PP2000 has a lower ROF than other PDWs and needed the controllability to be balanced.
• UMP45: Reduced accuracy loss during full auto. The UMP45 hits hard and has a controllable recoil at the cost of a heavy initial recoil kick.
• MP7: No Change. The MP7 has a very low recoil and a high muzzle drift that favors longer bursts than the P90.
• AS VAL: Increased vertical recoil, reduced first shot recoil, reduced accuracy on the move. The AS VAL fires a long range, highly accurate, high damage projectile that favors short bursts or single fire when stationary. While still quite good from the hip, the AS VAL will suffer if fired while moving and aimed.
• PDW-R: Reduced the initial recoil. The PDW-R has high recoil and favors burst fire, the added initial recoil was making it less effective in small bursts.
• P90: Reduced the initial recoil. The P90 favors a run and gun play style using long bursts to control muzzle drift, the initial recoil was making bursting ineffective.
• PP-19: Slightly reduced the initial recoil when firing, increased base damage. The PP-19′s high initial recoil was over penalizing the burst fire needed to be effective on the low damage, high capacity weapon.

Head to the next page for changes to weapon accessories, vehicles, gadgets and game modes.

SOE announce deal with new European publisher, Planetside 2 will be region-locked

Sony Online Entertainment have announced that the running of many of their games is transferring to German publisher ProSiebenStat.1 Games Group in Europe. Games affected include EverQuest II, DC Universe Online, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Free Realms, and this year’s Planetside 2.

While SOE will continue to manage the European servers for their games, European players will no longer be able to play with friends in the US. The two providers will use separate account systems and virtual currencies, effectively splitting each game in two.

Existing European players will be asked to create an account with the new provider, and SOE will be offering a way to transfer characters and progress as well as any virtual currency in their possession. European EverQuest II players, meanwhile, will be able to use their SOE accounts as normal after the handover is complete. All new European players will go through ProSieben, however, meaning that Planetside 2 will be region locked.

SOE’s FAQ on the subject says that “generally speaking, prices for game content, in-game items and services will remain similar.” We’ve contacted SOE for comment on what this means in practical terms, and whether European players should expect a price hike. We’ve also asked what measures are being taken to ensure that patches and updates are localised quickly. We’ll let you know what SOE have to say.

The anatomy of a PlanetSide 2 battle in 2,000 words

It’s a big deal when we put a game on our cover: it’s a massive undertaking of asset-wrangling, hours of interviewing, page storyboarding, cutting, transcribing, and other tasks that make us perfect models for clichéd stock photos of “people at work.” For our PlanetSide 2 issue, I came home with buckets of good words—more stuff than we could fit in a magazine.

These are those words. I got SOE’s Matt Higby to walk me through—hour by hour—how a play for a single base in PlanetSide 2′s multi-continent map might go down. His description animates the many moving parts of PS2′s combat ecosystem, and gives a glimmer into the tough design decisions SOE has to make to produce a PvP-only massive FPS. (War) story time!

Doing the talking: Matt Higby, left; Josh Hackney, right. Ryan Elam (in red, Technical Art Director) and Tramell Isaac (Sr. Art Director, also known as the creator of Fallout's Vault Boy.)

PC Gamer: I’d love to have you talk me through a base assault from one side’s perspective. Obviously it’s always going to vary, there’s always different elements there, but as the creative lead—what might one operation look like, how would a group of players hypothetically sort of begin at those organizational decisions and then execute the attack itself?

Matt Higby, Creative Director: Sure, yeah. I would say that the genesis of a base assault is basically going to be a base defense. We’ve held you guys off when you attacked us, and again, this isn’t every base assault, this is just a base assault. We held you guys off, you weren’t able to capture the thing that you were trying to capture, and now we’re going to counterattack. From that point, some percentage of our force is staying behind to make sure that all the stuff is repaired at our facility that we were just at. The shields are up, the turrets are back online so that the base isn’t completely defenseless.

You have forward elements like the strike aircraft moving forward, taking out reinforcements as they’re moving back. You might even have skirmishes in between that are happening while these guys are still under the impression that they’re going to be able to capture the base that you’ve just successfully defended. At a certain point, you’re going to build up the amount of momentum to be able to push them back towards the enemy base. The first people that are going to be fighting there are going to be aircraft, they’re just there because they’re the fastest. They’re flying over, strafing, taking out tanks, taking out turrets, taking out battlements on the outside, and then along with them, you’re going to start seeing Galaxies flying in that are dropping troops. You’re going to start seeing the tank columns moving forward, you’re going to start seeing all the different support vehicles like Sunderers and, again, the Galaxies landing and deploying, stuff like that. On the periphery of the base.

At this point, the people who just got beaten back to this base are s$&#ing themselves, they’re calling in reinforcements from other places on the continent, saying, ‘Know what? We’re getting surrounded by these dudes, bring in some reinforcements.’ You start to see, potentially, a reverse of that situation, where these guys are getting the bulk and they’re pushing that base assault back. Or you see these guys progressing forward. They’re going to progress forward by sending infantry into the courtyards, to be able to do things like disable turrets, disable vehicle spawners. They’re going to start moving in to capture the shield generators, and then eventually capturing the base.

That’s going to be a two-step process, where vehicles are coming in first, securing the ground down below. At the same time, you have infantry people coming in and taking out guys on the walls, moving in, capturing all those terminals. Eventually you have that big infantry-only fight that’s happening inside. Now, saying it’s infantry online, you’re still going to have the peripheral elements, the strafing aircraft, the tanks up on the hills that are firing down into the base. But the real clash is going to be the defenders trying to hold on to that base by securing those shield generators long enough for reinforcements to come and start clearing this out. You’re going to see groups of people breaking off to do things like recapture the vehicle terminals so they can respawn vehicles in the front.

A base up for grabs.

One of the things that we spent a lot of time working on is, how do we keep the fight in each one of the courtyard areas alive when it gets pushed back? We don’t want it to just be, “Oh, they breached our thing, we’re now on phase three of the battle and phase three of the battle means only X and Y happen.” We want to make it more fluid. Yeah, there’s people fighting back here in this infantry courtyard, but you could send a couple guys forward to recapture the vehicle terminals and now you’re still having super active combat happening out in the vehicle courtyard. Maybe you’re pushing out and taking out the respawning vehicles out here, and now that’s going to slow down the infantry gameplay.

The eventual capture of the base is going to happen when that infantry battle turns towards the attacking team, they’re able to secure the shield generators and they’re able to get in and hack the base. But then they have a hold period, where they have to keep that hack on the base long enough, based on the peripheral territory they control, for the base to actually flip and the territory to become theirs. During that time, the defenders can no longer respawn at that base, but the attackers can’t respawn there either. So you’re still going to see people coming in, potentially trying to reverse the hack, trying to clear out the respawn and resupply stuff out front and recapture that way.

And then you end up with the exact same situation I’ve described at the beginning. We secure, and then we’re going to push out and capture those other bases. Basically you have this tug of war that goes back and forth between these pieces. Now, distracting that tug of war is all the other regions that are all around here. So rather than just going from A to B, which is a kind of boring tug of war, going back and forth like this, when these guys push back, maybe they’re going to say, “Hey, we’ll keep 50 percent of our forces here, we’re just going to defend. We’re not going to try to push, we’re going to let these guys shove their d%*#$ in the meatgrinder for the rest of the night, and then we’re going to take 25 percent of our troops to break off and capture this region, 25 percent and break off to capture this other region.

You have all sorts of different options on a strategic level that people can do, besides just this battle between the two bases. But in general, that’s how one facility to another would be captured. At least as far as my speculation on how it could. That, in and of itself, is neat, because you have all these different roles that are all able to participate. Every single one is relevant.

Josh Hackney, Executive Producer: Then you have the evolution of the battle, too. Which means, if I don’t like playing this part, I can get a piece of the pie that I really like too… Or for those that are really going to be changing from one position to another, one class to another, whatever it is, they’re going to have value.

A Reaver gunship. In the air, PS2's vehicle tiers include bombers, fighters, and large transport, each with upgrade paths that can modify those vehicles to specialize further.

Matt Higby: Yep. And if we’re in this base that’s the one getting captured, and they’re just getting hammered by Vanguards—the main battle tanks from the NC empire—one of the things that they could totally, legitimately do to stop the flow of Vanguards is jump into a Galaxy or jump into a Sunderer, escape out of this base, come this way, and disable the vehicle spawns at the base over there. Now they’re not going to be able to get any more Vanguards for a while, so when you destroy these ones, somebody from here is going to have to go back and repair that stuff, or they’re just not going to get more vehicles for a while.

There’s lots of little strategic decisions and options that you can do in there that radically change the balance of the big battle that’s happening. That’s where all the tactics and leadership is going to come in. Somebody is going to say, “You know what, we can sit here all day long slamming our heads against this wall, or we can send an Infiltrator and have him disable the shields.” Or we can bring in five Galaxies and drop 50 MAXes into the courtyards and say, “Screw it, we’re gonna MAX rush it.”

Yeah, yeah. As an Arma player, just the idea of logistics becoming a supported skill in more FPSes is really attractive to me. Being sort of prompted naturally by the game to react and organize forces, get them where they need to be—and having that be an actual skill, not some arbitrary thing that’s restricted by the game, it’s something you can exercise…

Matt Higby: Exactly. What you said means a lot to me. It’s not an arbitrary restriction made by the game. For a while, in a lot of our design, we made a mistake, in that we had a whole bunch of game systems that players were having to compete against to be able to win. We had all kinds of shields, auto-turrets, things that, when I was attacking a base, yes, they would slow me down and make it so I couldn’t capture the base right away. But that wasn’t me competing with other players, which is where the fun of the game is. It was me competing with mechanics.

Within the last few months we recognized that this was a mistake and said, “There shouldn’t be arbitrary rules that are getting in the way of me winning, there should be lots of ways to solve a base.” A base should be simple from a game mechanics perspective, it should be a very, very simple construct. And it becomes very complex, because people use it in ways that make it have multiple ways to solve. Multiple ways to solve defending it, multiple ways to solve attacking it. And let players do that stuff. Players are the thing that is keeping you from winning, not game mechanics. There’s a shield in your way, you have to go blow up the shield before you can walk in the room. That’s a mechanic that has a place, but it shouldn’t be ubiquitous. It shouldn’t be a solution everywhere. It should be a unique thing in a certain situation. Previously, we had gate shields around our entire courtyard, you had to sneak in and capture the shield generators before you could even get into the courtyard. We’ve done away with a lot of that stuff, to make it so active defense is what’s happening and that’s what’s keeping players from being able to capture the base.

Josh Hackney: It goes back to the reality for us, which is that players are content. Which is fundamentally true in 90 percent of the multiplayer games out there, but on this scale the strategies become that much more important.

The Galaxy: a 12-person air transport. The contemporary counterpart is the C-130.

Matt Higby: Yeah. A lot of it’s going to shake out when we’re in beta and we start getting a lot of players in there. We might find out, you know what, players doing 100 percent of the heavy lifting when it comes to defending bases just doesn’t work. It’s too easy for players to just skirt around combat and do things that we need to have game systems defending. We need to have hard counters in game mechanics that prevent that kind of stuff from happening. I hope it doesn’t happen that way, because I really think that the idea of players actively defending is way more compelling than auto-turrets that are actively defending a base. Yeah, you do run the risk of it getting railroaded by somebody coming in from the opposite side, but based on the way our territory design is set up, that should be a hindrance rather than a crippling blow to your team.

Josh Hackney: Hopefully, though, what makes it a little bit more exciting, if it is that dynamic experience because it’s truly players against players, rather than all of these arbitrary design constructs, is an ebb and flow across a battlefield, across a continent, can have major variation. You might have one night or one week or one month where NC really pushes and does grab two-thirds of the overall continent, they just figure out a strategy that takes that long for the TR or VS to figure out a good counter for.

Matt Higby: Totally, yeah. I think you’ll absolutely see the outfit of people that are just doing annoying tactics. That stuff happens in wars, it happens in real battles, people do things that are just irritating. During the Cold War we spat out white noise at the Russians to make them think we had some weird cypher that we didn’t really have. It’s just annoying. Running around, setting a bunch of hacks without ever even thinking that you’re going to complete them, just setting them and taking off. That’s a way to get other people to respawn and go do things. That’s irritating, but it’s valid. By allowing that stuff I think we end up having a richer gameplay experience. People are going to learn what the solution to that is, there is a solution to it. Again, I follow StarCraft, I follow eSports all the time, you’re always going to get a thread where people say, “This is overpowered, there’s no way to beat it, it’s impossible to win.” And then a week, a month, six months later… Even on the pro scene this happens, there’s a player who has a tactic, he has some build that he innovated, he timed down perfectly, he just crushes the s$*# out of players for weeks.

And then somebody figures out, okay, here’s the thing I have to do, I send in a probe, I scout it, at exactly 36 seconds, if I see that he did this, I know that I immediately do this, and then I win. There’s always a solution. And you get to those solutions, the ability for players to actually be geniuses at your game, to be experts at your game, by taking things away from game mechanics are preventing stuff and allowing it to be players that are preventing stuff.

Anyway. That’s something that we stumbled across, I think, as a “Why isn’t this fun yet?” kind of thing. “You know what, I think there’s too many barriers to it being fun.” I told the world designers when we were talking about this stuff, I said, “I feel like we’re trying to outsmart ourselves, and that we’ve succeeded.” That’s just…what’s the reasoning behind that? Okay, cool, we’ve made some really intelligent, cool game designs for these mechanics, these are really compelling, awesome designs. And they’re unnecessary and they’re preventing us from having fun. So let’s just get rid of them. And that’s what we did.

Major League Gaming’s Winter Arena StarCraft 2 tournament starts tomorrow, streams go PPV

The 2012 Major League Gaming Pro Circuit comes to New York this weekend with the Winter Arena tournament. 32 Starcraft 2 players will compete for a total prize purse of $26,000 divided among the top eight finishers. The top sixteen finishers will be invited to compete in the Winter Championship in Columbus, Ohio from March 23 – 25.

You can purchase access to the streams at Justin.tv. The events air live, starting on Friday at 6 pm Eastern. You can test-drive the stream format and get an idea of what $20 gets you at this demo page. All the matches will eventually be available on demand for free, albeit a week after the tournament.

The Winter Arena features competitors like MC, Idra, Huk, MVP, Nestea, and MarineKing. The streams will be cast by Tasteless, Artosis, DJWheat, Rob Simpson, JP McDaniel, Adebisi, Tumba, and Robin.

For those of you who follow eSports, how do you feel about MLG’s approach to the Winter Arena and its Pro Circuit? Charging $20 for pay-per-view access to the event was a controversial move, and I’m curious how much of that is just resistance to change, and how much of that is a genuine feeling that this is the wrong direction to take the MLG.

My adventures in Skyrim

Yes I went out and spent the full retail price on Skyrim. Despite all the reports about playability due to glitchy software [especially on the PS3] I took the plunge. And I don't regret it at all.  Don't get me wrong the games does have glitches, some are funny some are annoying, but my overall experience has been awesome.  

I'm playing as an Imperial mainly focusing on one handed combat combined with the blocking skill.  My imagined back story for my character Surfslayer is he was captured by Imperial forces after shortly after crossing in to Skyrim from Cyrodiil.  There was a fight with a small group of bandits and Surfslayer killed a couple of them before the rest of the group retreated.  A squad of Imperials soldiers found Surfslayer as he was looting the dead bodies and arrested him for banditry and murder.  Despite Surfslayer's protests that he was the victim of the dead bandits he was taken in to custody and transported by prison wagon to Helgen.  A fellow prisoner on the wagon was Ulfric Stormcloak, who is leading a rebellion against the Imperial rule. 

Upon reaching Helgen it become evident that the prisoners will be executed by beheading.  After witnessing a beheading Surfslayer is brought to the chopping block and is moments from losing his head when the keep of Helgen is attacked by a dragon.  Chaos ensues, giving our hero an opportunity for freedom as the Imperials and prisoners unite against the attacking dragon.  Surfslayer befriends the fellow Imperial, Hadvar, who leads him through an underground dungeon and cave system to relative safety.  The two men travel together to the small town of Riverwood where Hadvar's uncle lives.  Along the way the pair are attacked by three of the vicious wolves that inhabit Skyrim.  Although injured by the attack the two men are able to kill the wolves and take the pelts. 

Shortly after killing the wolves they reach Riverwood where Hadvar introduces Surfslayer to his uncle Alvor, who is a blacksmith.  Upon hearing about the dragon attack at Helgen Alvor asks Surfslayer to travel to Whiterun to ask the ruling Jarl for military assistance for Riverwood.    

I'll post more of Surfslayer's adventures in the future. 

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer free to play this weekend

You can shoot men for free right now in one of the most popular man shooting simulators in the world. A Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 free weekend is underway, offering all maps, classes and weapons to everyone who downloads the client from Steam.

The doors will slam shut again at 1pm PST / 9pm GMT on Sunday, but if you really loved your time shooting men in the head, you can pay slightly less than you normally would to shoot more men in the head in the full game. It’s 33% off until 10am PST / 6pm GMT on Monday. If you already own the game, now’s the time to jump back in and politely school these fresh recruits. Be gentle. It’s their first time.

Guild Wars 2 PvP to feature 300 player server vs. server battles and siege warfare

Armies of a hundred players will get the chance to fight for their server in Guild Wars 2′s massive three-way PvP battles. Each army will fight for control of The Mists, an enormous zone packed full of vast NPC controlled fortresses that you’ll have to take and hold using trebuchets, catapults and siege golems. 

It’s going to be massive. Literally massive. “We use as much space as we possibly can in order to accommodate over a hundred people from each server fighting on every map,” explains Mike Ferguson in the latest Guild Wars 2 developer diary entry. “These are the largest maps we can make in Guild Wars 2.”

Taking the castles of The Mists will earn your army supply that can be used upgrade your defences, or you can spend it on war machines that can be used to attack enemy walls. Smaller groups can take minor townships and camp sites to earn more resources, and you can even persuade groups of NPC to join your cause by completing impromptu quests for them in the field.

Ferguson gives an example of how this will work. “You might help a group of ogres protect their camp against constant harpy assaults. In return, your new ogre allies will go rampaging toward the nearest enemy objective or send out patrols to help you hold on to your territory. These factions won’t fight for you indefinitely, but they can help turn the tide of battle.”

You can jump into The Mists at any level. Your character will be boosted to level 80, but when you kill other players they’ll drop loot appropriate to your PvE build. “Any gear that is dropped for you will be level appropriate,” says Ferguson. “The player that was killed doesn’t lose any of their own equipment—that would suck—so you’ll never need to worry about losing your favorite rare weapon if you are defeated.” You’ll also earn experience that’ll help you level outside of PvP.

The really neat part is that we’ll be able to take specific forts in The Mists for our guilds. Each guild can only hold one keep at a time, but the keep can be upgraded to give bonuses to team members within a certain area. So, the PC Gamer guild could take a castle, rename it PC Gamer towers and choose a buff to apply to nearby server members, helping out the team. “These bonuses can increase stats, give allies more health, or even increase the maximum amount of supply that players can take from the supply depot at that location,” says Ferguson. “If you want to help your realm build siege weapons faster, that supply increase will be a must.”

It sounds exciting, but extremely ambitious. Ferguson says that ArenaNet “didn’t want to build anything less than the best large-scale PvP combat ever.” Have they succeeded? We’ll have to wait and see. Guild Wars 2 should be out later this year.

Mass Effect 3 is going to space and back

Big game marketing campaigns are getting more and more aggressive. If you hop into a shuttle and fling yourself into the atmosphere you still won’t be able to escape the hype for Mass Effect 3. USA Today say that EA will be sending six copies of Mass Effect 3 into space. They’ll be tied to weather balloons in New York, San Francisco, Vegas, Berlin, London and Paris and sent up into the stratosphere. 

If you find a copy when it lands, it’s yours. Unless it lands in a volcano. In that case it’ll belong to Ifrit, Lord of Fire, who is not going to give it back without a fight. Each copy has been fitted with a GPS tracker and the Mass Effect site will be updated with their progress as they gently fall back to Earth, or become dislodged and fly off into some distant corner of the universe. The lucky few who do manage to retrieve a disk will get to play the game about a week before release.

If you think the chances of a copy of Mass Effect 3 falling out of the sky onto your lawn are too slim to plan around, there’s always the Mass Effect 3 demo, which will let you try out the first couple of missions and the co-op survival multiplayer mode.

Rift breaks Guinness world record for most MMO marriages in a day

I never thought I’d come to regret putting major life decisions in the hands of my editor, but that time came earlier this week when I found myself marrying fellow PCG writer Chris Thursten in Rift to try and get into the Guinness Book of World Records. The good news: we made it! The bad news: we don’t have enough platinum coins to buy the divorce papers from the marriage NPC so we’re trapped in matrimony. Probably forever.

Trion send word that they successfully set a new record with 21,879 marriages in 24 hours. We were one of them. It was a straightforward ceremony. Vows were exchanged, rude jokes were made about Chris’s height, everyone downed ten goblets and gained the “drunk” buff at the reception, then we ran naked into a leafy life rift and enjoyed the irony of watching our hippies get hugged to death by a living tree.

In fairness, there was a benefit to getting married in Rift on Tuesday. “All participating players received the unique in-game title “The Avowed,” and hopefully snapped some wedding images to share with their children” say Trion. We did snap some pics of the ceremony, which took place in Rift’s special wedding instance. Here they are.

Sleeping Dogs screenshots kick crims in the face

Last week Square Enix announced that they’re bringing back True Crime under new name, Sleeping Dogs, not to be confused with the film in which Sam Neil tries to make peace between right wing factions in New Zealand. This’ll be set in Hong Kong instead, and instead of peace, there are meat cleavers. You’ll be able to use these, along with a selection of guns and martial arts skills, to defend yourself against the criminal factions who want you dead. Failing that, fast cars and speedboats will be on hand to help you escape in the most dramatic possible manner. It’s due out later this year, and will look a little bit like this.

Darksiders 2 release date set for summer, preorder bonuses abound

We’ll be donning death’s gloomy robes in the height of summer this year when Darksiders 2 hits shelves on June 26 in the US and June 29 in Europe. If you enjoyed the decent monster mashing of the first game, and are dead set on picking up the second, you’ll soon be able to preorder to get access to a variety of packs, some of which are much better than others. Anyone want a set of angelic scythes? How about an “exclusive visual trail” for your crow? Anyone? Hello?

Gamestop pre-orders come with a load of extra side missions that will let you “aid an ancient Construct, battle The Bloodless and retrieve Karn’s lost treasure” in a pack that adds two hours of bonus quests. The Amazon version comes with a “Deadly Despair” pack that makes Death’s horse run faster for the entire game and the Best Buy edition comes with a unique armour set, matching scythes and that visual trail. We don’t know what it looks like, but it’d better be some sort of rainbow, though I’d settle for a trail of deathly flame.

The THQ store is currently offering a free copy of Metro 2033 with every Darksiders 2 pre-order as well. The angelic armour set and a few of the characters you’ll get to meet in the Gamestop side mission pack are shown in the five new screenshots below.

And in other PC gaming news…

Putting copies of Mass Effect 3 in space is a risky business. When we flung Voyager towards the very edge of the cosmos we attached a golden record full of essential information about our species and history that would let passing extraterrestrials know that we’re a cool bunch who definitely aren’t the types to declare war on aliens as soon as they enter our atmosphere. If Mass Effect 3 gets into ET hands, they will take away a very different lesson. Entirely the opposite lesson, in fact. I just hope those Mass Effect 3 weather balloons don’t escape.

Now it’s time to wrap up other PC gaming goings on. It’s a bit of a bumper edition today because we missed the last couple. Read on for the latest list of links, including a guide to cracking car sims, Bobby Kotick’s new job, an odd new direction for Second Life creators, Linden Labs, and the latest video of the intriguing Andoran Oblivion mod, which is gradually being imported into Skyrim’s engine.

• Mark Morris on Gamasutra looks at the differing player reactions to the hacks at Sony and Valve.
• Today’s Dead End Thrills shot features the free open road of Project CARS.
• Speaking of driving things, Gaming Daily’s Craig Lager continues his guide to cracking racing sims over on RPS.
• Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick joins the board of directors at Coca Cola.
• Here’s Eurogamer on how Remedy convinced Microsoft to let them make Alan Wake.
• City Impostors players have been struggling with a recurring reset glitch.
• Tactical Intervention, from the co-creator of Counter-Strike, is due to arrive in Spring.
• Battlefield Heroes is getting mad scientists.
• promising Andoran Oblivion mod is being ported into Skyrim with the Creation Kit.
• Dawn of War 2: Retribution gets a balancing patch.
• High Moon tell Kotaku why there isn’t a PC version of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.
• A Game Informer interview with Gearbox reveals that they had the Heat license for a bit, and are exploring the idea of doing more licensed games.
• The creators of Second Life, Linden Lab, acquire LittleTextPeople, a studio that specialises in “next-generation interactive fiction.”
• Over on GamesRadar, David Houghton writes about why it’s probably a good idea just to dump the next console generation and game on PC instead. “Consoles are increasingly a place in which only the big budget, safe bet titles are nurtured. Where once consoles made games more accessible, now they’re the equivalent of an expensive, exclusive, slightly wanky night club. Only the rich, fashionable friends of the management stand a chance of getting in” he writes.

And lo, in a storm of HTML I vanish for the weekend. I shall be attacking the Tribes Ascend beta and shuffling my way towards 50 in Star Wars: The Old Republic until I return on Monday. How about you?

Exclusive Dungeons of Dredmor wallpaper

The creators of our favorite indie game of 2011 cooked up some beautiful art we’d like to share with you. You too can adorn your desktop with the form of a giant-eyebrowed adventurer seizing a Horadric Lutefisk Cube amid hordes of Dredmor’s spiral-nosed mascot monster (and occasionally hypnotized ally, if you play with the Big Game Hunter skill), the Diggle. Click within for a 1920×1080 .PNG.

Dredmor and its expansion can be had for $7.49 on Steam, if you’d allow us to recommend it as a worthy way to spend your (long, if you’re American) weekend.

And in other PC gaming news…

It’s Friday! We made it! Congratulations all round. Well done us, well done you. Yes, even you. We all deserve a pat on the back and a nice long sit down with a great PC game. There’s plenty to choose from but I can’t stop thinking about what’s just around the corner. Namely, Mass Effect 3. Because Bioware threw out six trailers in a day and all can think of is what it would be like to be a Volus.

Hmm, what’s that? Why is there a picture of Finn and Jake from Adventure Time at the top of this post? Oh, no reason, except the one at the top of today’s list of newsy links.

• Adventure Time creator, Pendleton Ward has been doodling some ideas for an Adventure Time game on Twitter. More ideas here. Mathematical!
• Our pick of Dead End Thrills today comes from the gorgeous, rain-slick streets of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV.
• Namco Bandai announce that they’re making a new Star Trek game, no details yet, though.
• On RPS, VG247‘s Pat Garret pledges/threatens to literally eat his trousers if Notch funds Psychonauts.
• Epic tell G4 they’re planning to unveil Unreal Engine 4 this year.
• Obsidian’s Chris Avellone is contemplating starting a Kickstarter project to fund … something. Help him decide.
• Remedy say they’d be up for doing more Alan Wake.
• Frictional Games tease a new Amnesia, which looks like it could be set in China.
• Gabe Newell tells We Are Multiplayer about his favourite casual games.
• New Max Payne 3 screenshots have popped up on the Max Payne 3 site.

Adventure Time fans represent! No idea what Adventure Time is? There’s a link at the top that leads to the pilot, there’s several series after that. Adventure Time would make a great game, but what sort of game should it be?

Dustforce review

Playing Dustforce whisks me away to some of my fondest and most formative gaming memories, when every ounce of my being was devoted to full completion of Donkey Kong Country 2 on my dingy Super Nintendo. Today, I’m grown up and paying off bills, but the elements that make a great platformer are pretty much the same. Sublime music, well thought-out controls, gorgeous graphics, and accessibility that scales into supreme difficulty—Dustforce possesses all these traits in glorious abundance.

Sentient treasure has no place in this world—begone!

As a member of the titular team of spry sweepers (which includes a vacuum-wielding geezer and a triple-jumping lass with feather-duster pom-poms), you’re charged with banishing colorful dust and debris in over 50 levels. Dirty floors will be spotless once you’ve swept past them, but elsewhere, grime will require a more aggressive approach with a quick smack from your broom. The scattered soot pays off in two ways: cleaning every smidgen of dust in a full combo awards you with a flawless S ranking for the level’s Completion and Finesse ratings. But while you’re still learning the optimal path for traversing the elaborate stages, the dust-, leaf-, trash-, and ooze-covered surfaces act as a guide for how to tackle each jump and wall-run.

Jumping janitors
At first glance, most players will immediately associate the nimble maneuvering of Dustforce with the brutal-yet-lovable Super Meat Boy—but they’re actually opposite sides of the same “blissful platforming” coin. Instead of SMB’s anxious intensity, frantic music, and merciless difficulty, Dustforce takes a more calm, almost meditative approach (backed up by soothing, ethereal background music that mitigates frustrating death streaks). Fluid animations and beautifully stylized character designs also contribute to the zen of janitorial service.

Purple thorns are nature’s way of saying 'step off.'

You’ve also got more movement options at your disposal than typical running and jumping—mid-air dashing and downhill acceleration are crucial to clocking the fastest times. Coming to grips with the controls is initially daunting—but master them, and you’ll feel at one with your custodian of choice.

Each level has plenty of checkpoints, and at first, you don’t need perfect execution to advance, which goes a long way toward cushioning the effort some levels take to master. But to unlock later stages in the entirely non-linear hub world, you’ll need to ace some runs for keys. Faultless play can be a bear to pull off, but by the time you reach the most demanding stages, Dustforce will have given you plenty of training. And the hub world is a stage all unto itself, letting you freely explore and discover craftily-hidden doorways—provided you’re adept enough to reach them.

In the future, traffic cones will double as deadly spikes.

Pro gamers can mop the floor with the competition via the online leaderboards, with replays for every entry to see who’s got the swiftest Swiffer. There’s also plenty of fun to be had in the local multiplayer (provided you’ve got three buddies nearby)—you get the chance to spread the filth instead of sweep it in chaotic, Smash Bros-esque romps.

Once you’ve traversed enough levels and embedded yourself in the rich atmosphere of Dustforce, you’ll appreciate how it distinguishes itself from equally brilliant platformers like Braid and Limbo: rather than putting a new spin on sidescrolling, it spit-shines the core mechanics to near-perfection. The payoff: an exhilarating sense of kinetic agility.

Spec Ops: The Line preview

Have there really been nine Spec Ops games?! Forgive me, but I haven’t played any of them, so Spec Ops: The Line was barely on my radar. And while I doubt that many of you were hankering for another modern military shooter, and yes, the franchise is a rather bizarre pedigree for a big publisher like 2K to resurrect, the results pretty much set my brain on fire. That has nothing to do with low expectations, either—Spec Ops: The Line is easily the freshest, boldest approach to a military shooter since Call of Duty went annual. There were two giant takeaways from my lengthy demo worth highlighting, the heaviest of which I’ll save for last.

Let’s start with the more fun aspect, shall we?! I can’t think of any other real-world location more perfectly suited for a game setting than Dubai. Have you seen pictures of this place? It’s essentially Disneyland for billionaire oil magnates and vacationing tycoons. Just unapologetic opulence cranked all the way up to eleven. But thanks to the current state of the economy, it’s already a ghost town, currently housing more construction workers completing the extravagant monoliths than actual tourists. There’s a repulsive creepiness inherent in something so immaculate and ostentatious, and by gosh, it’s high time it was used for something more than a set piece in Mission: Impossible 4.

Times are dire when your only cover is behind glass.

Sky-high glass towers, indoor skiing, mutli-story aquariums, and the largest arcades known to man—with almost no one around. Already sounds like the perfect setting for a game to me. This is Spec Ops: The Line’s battleground, albeit ravaged by sky-choking sandstorms. Plus, the fact that the environment throws off a vibe absurdly similar to that beloved atmosphere found in Andrew Ryan’s failed utopia, and that it actually exists, should damn well make other developers just a little ashamed to continuously set their military games in the sad Arab nation of “GENERICSTAN.”

BioShock is a pretty apt comparison, come to think. The same way that 2K game turned seeping seawater into heart-poundingly creepy terror, Spec Ops: The Line is doing with sand. No, we didn’t get to see any of those lauded, randomly generated sandstorms which can unexpectedly kick up heart rates (similar to those crescendo moments we witnessed in the “Return to Sender” portion of Modern Warfare 3’s campaign), but rest assured this earthly element is absolutely everywhere, and bolsters the motif in interesting new ways you might not expect. To say nothing of your affected visibility, everywhere you look, otherwise immaculate building are encased in snowbanks of beige filth, and damn near everything outdoors in the bizarre metropolis has been blanketed by a fresh layer of barren desert.

The hanging bodies can be even more disorienting than the sand in your eyes.

Spec Ops’ sand mechanic isn’t just a tonal harbinger of disquiet and death—the ravages of the Dubai sandstorms factor heavily into the gameplay itself. Drifts of sand can cut off traditional on foot routes or open new areas, and even be manipulated in your favor. Firing at a window can empty a mound of dirt into a building to either help you escape the inside or provide a ramp to new height. In a much more lethal scenario, you can take out a barrier behind the bad guys and drown them in grainy death and save yourself a little ammo. So sand isn’t simply a design choice, it’s a unique gameplay feature. And more importantly to the story, it’s the entire reason you’re there in Dubai in the first place. 

I also found Spec Ops: The Line to be the perfect (if not sobering) antidote to the rah-rah patriotism of your Battlefields and Call of Dutys. You’ll find no plots involving world domination or MacGuffin intel devices here. Instead, you’re called into Dubai on a smaller, much more personal mission of heartbreak and sacrifice based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. As many of you may know, this is also the basis of Apocalypse Now (which I was instantly reminded or during an early mission that takes place on a sand-drenched freeway, with cautionary corpses hanging from every light pole) and The Line spins in it into a similar tale of questionable duty, making it far more engrossing than any fictional arms race or impending nuclear cataclysm you’ve seen before.

Advice to tourists: don't take a chopper tour during times of war.

You play as Captain Martin Walker, leader of a three-person squad dispatched to locate a rogue army colonel who disappeared six months prior on a well-manned mission to stabilize Dubai in the wake of sandstorms. So while the screenshots you may have seen might’ve led you to believe you’re going to be mowing down wave after wave of indiscriminate insurgents, your primary adversary is a surprising one indeed: your fellow US servicemen.

Here’s where Spec Ops boldly distinguished itself from its contemporaries. Whereas other military shooters embolden your murderous behavior by barking out orders to “Stay frosty!” and other such bromantic clichés, you basically get to watch your Delta Force trio mentally unravel over the acts they’re committing. Spec Ops pulls zero punches here. Both sides of the battle cry out in fear and confusion; cutscenes linger unflinchingly on the atrocities you’ve committed, seemingly without choice.

This kind of ethereal imagery is rarely seen in modern-day shooters.

I say “seemingly” because moral decisions unfolded so subtly, I had no idea they were even there until I spoke to a fellow previewer who played the game less linearly. Words can barely convey how gut-wrenching it was to oblige a surviving group of charred and dismembered soldiers begging to be put out of their misery after I’d just willfully obliterated their squad with a white phosphorus mortar. Had I been aware that there was another choice, I definitely would’ve taken it. 

Honestly, I’ve never witnessed a game capture the pain and power of modern warfare quite like Spec Ops: The Line. We were informed that co-op was scrapped because that kind of light-hearted IRL camaraderie detracted from the weight of the narrative they were trying to achieve. Now let’s see if any of those bold choices carry over into the multiplayer. Spec Ops: The Line is scheduled to release on April 12 on Steam and beyond.