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You’ll hear them before you see them.

The “AAAaaaaAAAaaa” of the Headless Kamikaze. The heavy “Thunk Thunk Thunk” of the Scrapjack. The distinctive sound of a horse galloping that marks the Kleer. Perhaps even the faint whispering of a Witch-Bride of Ahriman all create a frightening yet amazing cacophony of sound.

You expect to find five, maybe ten enemies at the most based on the sounds. Instead, you round the corner to find 50, maybe 100 enemies meeting your glaze. As they charge all at once, you have only seconds to decide on a course of action. However, there is only one correct answer: shoot everything that moves with the biggest gun possible.

When that gun runs out of ammo, you’ll frantically switch to the next one as you start carving a path through this murderous horde of alien forces. As your health and ammo deplete, there is a light at the end of the tunnel as the horde is growing noticeably smaller. Once the final Beheaded Rocketeer hits the ground, you’ll exhale the breath you didn’t even realize you were holding. With only four health remaining, it’s a miracle that you even survived. With a determined look on your face, you brace yourself to round the next corner and do it all again.

Welcome to Serious Sam 3.

The product of a four year development cycle, Serious Sam 3 is a radical departure from the majority of big budget first-person shooters released this year. Sam carries his whole arsenal on his back, enemies number in the double digits — sometimes even entering the triple digits — and there are no teammates to help you out. Gamers who remember and long for the days of Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem probably already know of Sam from the previous Serious Sam games, and it is safe to say Serious Sam 3 doesn’t disappoint, though it does feature a few missteps.

The game is a prequel to Serious Sam: The First Encounter; Sam is in the present day and must power the Time-Lock to travel to ancient Egypt. Let’s be honest: The story was never Serious Sam’s strong point, and this game just hammers that point home. Characters are stereotypical, a large majority of them only exist in Sam’s headset and are never seen, and the ones that are seen are largely forgettable, such as Hellfire. No cutscene is ever more than a minute in length and there aren’t many of them, so while the story isn’t that great, it never detracts from the game and I doubt anyone will find themselves attached to any of the cast.

This includes Sam “Serious” Stone, voiced by John J. Dick. The problem is not with the voice acting; John does well emulating the rough, gravelly tone that Jon St. John popularized almost two decades ago. The problem is that John just isn’t given good material to work with. Almost all of Sam’s one liners are stale and are more pun-oriented than what I remember from previous games. For example, Sam makes a “priceless” joke, emulating the old television MasterCard commercials. Sam also tells a guy to “Eat dust” after blowing him to pieces. Making the Duke Nukem connection again, Duke Nukem Forever had one liners that suffered from age but it had the excuse of being in development hell for ten years; even in 2007 Sam’s lines would have been considered horrible. Sam is also a notorious curser and, while I have no problem with my characters cursing, it feels extremely forced into Sam’s vocabulary.

However, much like the story, it really has no consequence on the game. Story scenes can be skipped, the one liners can be turned off and then the real focus is on the game itself, as it should be. Serious Sam 3 can be summed up by using a copy of the official guide I was given as part of the review copy: “Hold down the trigger. Run backwards. Repeat.” When Serious Sam 3 follows this mantra, it is an experience unlike any other, eclipsing even the previous games in the series. Oddly, and rather sadly, it doesn’t start this way.

For the first four levels, the game offers its take on the state of the first-person shooter. Linear hallways, scripted sequences and only two guns and a melee weapon to use. Admittedly, the joke is funny for the first level, because you expect the exact opposite to happen at any moment. Then the joke carries on to the museum, where you must fight hitscan enemies, enemies who can hit you instantly if you are in their sight, again with only two weapons. Here is where the joke starts to wane; by the third level, you are becoming quite sick of the limited weapon selection, the cramped quarters and the annoying Clone Soldiers. The assault rifle breaks up the weapon monotony but by the fourth level, where you are sneaking around minigun turrets, you’re probably ready to shelve the game completely.

However, by the fifth level, “Under the Iron Cloud,” things start to tick into place. The game world starts to open up and Sam is starting to develop quite an arsenal with the addition of a rocket launcher, C4 and the double barreled shotgun. Linear spaces give way to wide open spaces and you have a full arsenal with which you can use to dispatch the large variety of enemies. The annoying Clone Soldiers seen at the beginning of the game start to disappear, only reappearing in smaller numbers later, and by the seventh level, “Unearthing the Sun,” the kill counts start to exceed 1,000 kills. You’ll continue to build your arsenal over the next few levels, and with each gun you receive the enemies are more powerful, vicious and in greater numbers, leading to a final showdown in the last level which pits you against 1,750 of Mental’s best forces. The difficulty scales well and the game always leaves ample amounts of health, armor and ammo before any major battle.

• Hard mode
• 39 new monsters
• 4 new bosses
• 222 new items
• Three new NPCs
• An NPC housing interface
• Pressure Plates and Pumps
• A new lighting system

Additionally, Terraria is receiving another Christmas themed update on the 15th along with a boxed copy of the game being published by Head On Games.

Honestly, I can’t wait. I loved Terraria when it was first released but grew bored of it when I completed everything there was to do. I’ll be jumping back into this on December 1st.

1.1 is a free update for everyone who owns Terraria. If you don’t, what are you waiting for? Terraria is available on Steam for $9.99 (€7.38) and is currently $4.99 (€3.68) during the Steam Autumn Sale.

MyInsideGamer now has an official forum! It’s centred around gaming as well as the actual site, and can be found by clicking here! Why did we introduce a forum? Well, it’s simple! The comments section of MyInsideGamer is wonderful and allows our readers to discuss the articles and features on the site, but we wanted more. We want a more discussion and community orientated system, and here we are.

With forums for all major companies and platforms, we like to think of this as a leap forward for the new year and for MyInsideGamer! You can feel free to go over there and register now, contribute to the community and just have fun – it’s what it’s there for. There are a few things you should know, though:

The forums currently require a separate account to your current MyInsideGamer account. What that means is that you’ll need to login twice if you wish to both comment on articles on the main site and post on the forums. We’re actively looking for a way to have a single login and we think we’ve found one. We will need people to register at the forums first as your forum account will replace your MyInsideGamer/WordPress account … not the other way around. We’ll give enough time for people to register again before we overright the accounts.

We have a shop! Full of chocolate and candy! Not really! Basically, it’s a points shop. When you do things like create threads, post replies to threads, send visitor messages – basically anything that you do on the forums – you’ll get points. These points can then be exchanged for things in the shop. It’s a bit bare right now, but we’ll be adding stuff regularly … watch this space. For now, though, fight over some Xbox Live codes and some games.

A forum is something we’ve been asked for a few times and something we’ve wanted to implement for a long time. Things got in the way and it went on the backburner. Well, it’s here now and they’re looking good. Feel free to read the rules, abide by them and post as much as you want – it’s what they’re there for!

Again, click here to check out the forums and register!

Gamers have reportedly been posting on various forums stating that immediately after plugging in their Kinect into the Xbox 360 console, they receive the horrifying three flashing red lights.

Microsoft released a statement denying that there is some kind of correlation between a console’s failure and the Kinect device.  The company reassured to gamers that Kinect is perfectly compatible and safe to use with any Xbox 360 console.

“There is no correlation between the three flashing red lights error and Kinect. Any new instances of the three flashing red lights error are merely coincidental,” said Microsoft.

The Kinect motion capture device had been a hot item during the 2010 holiday season.  Microsoft has sold roughly 2.5 million of the device since its launch date back in November 2010.

Source: BBC News

While this might be good news to some of you who have the game, I can assure you I’m taking the “wait and see” attitude myself on this one. The last patches broke more than it fixed and showed F: NV should have waited a few more months on the shelf instead of being rushed out for release. Just ask my character, who is still stuck in New Vegas and terrified of going anywhere without glitching or crashing.

Look for more details as they are revealed!

Source: Bethesda Softworks

Question: So, with the release date looming on the horizon, are you guys beginning to feel the heat to get it out?

Answer: Well it’s been quite a while, but it’s not too bad at this stage. Right now we’re just polishing it as we haven’t added anything new in quite a while. Obviously the game has a lot of elements that need to be balanced so we’re just trying to play it a ton to get it running as best as possible, but we’re actually able to take holiday now! Personally, I’m looking forward to having it on the shelf.

Question: You’ve got a huge queue out on the floor, the biggest consistent line that I’ve seen. You happy to watch it being played?

Answer: We always see what’s wrong with it; it’s like a work of art, you stop seeing what’s good about it. These kind of shows are good though as you see people having fun with it. The build that we’re using is a few months old so we’ve fixed a lot, but you still see the warts.

Question: Well, let’s go back to the beginning of it all. When did you guys first start development and was this always going to be a FPS?

Answer: Well we’ve always made the same sort of games, with the original guys from Splash Damage working on Quake Fortress as a mod for Quake. They then basically went pro and made a deal to make the multiplayer for Wolfenstein because their work was so good. The idea for the arc and the whole setting of this near future dystopia—for lack of a better term as everything’s a dystopia these days—that idea has been around as long as Splash Damage, but it’s a tricky thing to do a new IP as a new studio, so it has taken a while. It needed Wolfenstein and Quake Wars to happen before we had the cred to do what we wanted to do.

Question: So was the story the motivating factor behind the making of Brink?

Answer: Well coming up with the ideas, honestly, was pretty easy, it’s how you execute them that’s important. The idea for the setting has been around for a while, with the specific components being built on what we’d done previously, what the fans wanted to see, what we felt we should put in to draw more people in. That’s what we’re trying to do more than anything with this game. Quake Wars was a very hardcore game really; it wasn’t very accessible so people had a lot of trouble picking it up. People who loved it were able to get into all the nuances of it, but we wanted to make something a bit more accessible, that gets people in slowly, but still has that depth. Basically so it doesn’t scare them with everything all at once.

Question: Is the balance between making it accessible and appeasing your fan base a tricky thing to achieve?

Answer: [Laughs] Yes! They have these stock phrases like “dumb down for console!” Even if it’s not, that’s how they tend to react and we have to deal with it. Yeah I expect to get death threats! [Laughs] I think in the end people just fear change in general and don’t want anything different, but we want to evolve the games we make as well as the genre as a whole. So yeah, we’re gunna push it and hopefully in the end people will think it was worth it.

Question: So what would you say is the central, main feature of Brink that differentiates it from the rest of the market?

Answer: We think the SMART feature is really special and those that play the game a lot at the studio know we’re on to something big that’s different from other shooter cause it’s something we really miss when we pick up something else.

Question: But isn’t it a difficult element to explain? Are you not concerned about that?

Answer: I’m not worried about it once people get it in their heads and they understand how it works cause people irrationally think “it’s doing everything for me” when it really isn’t.

Question: Is this a feature that you’re going to retain in future titles then?

Answer: I don’t think we’ll ever drop it. I think it’ll be core to what our games are. I couldn’t imagine dropping it as it’s too cool.

Question: Is there anything else that you can’t imagine doing without?

Answer: The other element is the level of customisation I guess. Although this has become a standard these, ours doesn’t make you more powerful it just lets you be more creative with what you have and that translates to everything.

Question: One thing that’s clear from playing it is that there’s a need for good teamwork. Will you have to play with good players to appreciate it in its entirety?

Answer: Definitely not, because the objective wheel that lets you see what’s available and what’s going on at any given time, but it can also be used as a communication method. So if you’re not sure what to do, you can just look at this wheel and it’ll show you all these various things you can do and by picking one you’re basically saying to your team mates “this is what I’m going to do” and if the game thinks that it’s important like one of the primary objectives, it’s going to tell other people to go help you. With all these things happening, you’ll see the team work happening naturally. The hardcore gamers will be able to communicate effectively anyways, but it’ll work for everyone. Even in single player where you’re playing with bots, they’ll acknowledge that you’re doing a primary goal so will help out.

Question: So no Modern Warfare 2 run and gunning then?

Answer: The way to play will be to stick around with the other characters, because you’ll notice that on the expo floor where people who just want to be the whole run and gunner are just dying constantly as they’ll be running into 5/6 people as they’re playing in a group. You’re not going to beat that many people by yourself.

Question: Will that make it a hard sell to some of the less intelligent gamers?

Answer: Honestly, we won’t be able to reach everybody, we’re not going to do Modern Warfare 2 numbers, but we hope we’re accessible enough so people can give it a go and find that they enjoy the depth. We know the hardcore people will like it as they’ve been our fans before and they’ll appreciate the depth, it’s just the getting into it in the first place. The thing about it is that you can play it how you want so it suits your style.

Question: The visual style is almost akin to Team Fortress 2 in the fact that it actually has colour—any reason behind that?

Answer: We just don’t want to look like everybody else really. We wanted to do something artistically we could be proud of. It also gives you a certain freedom with the design to not be completely realistic. It becomes a real hindrance trying to be realistic all the time. The artists love it as they get to put colour in things as well. Our tag line should be “we’re putting the colour back in shooters!”

Question: Have there been any arguments during development about parts that have been left in or taken out?

Answer: There were a few things, but I wouldn’t call them arguments as such. We were really disappointed to not have female characters. Our two biggest regrets really are not having playable female characters and not having split screen. These are two things that if we had more time and resources we would’ve loved to have had them in, but the games got to go out at some point. There are others things that we debate like whether we should have kills and deaths displayed on the leaderboards cause we’re not really about the kills and deaths, but people are so used to it now. That’s one we go back and forth on. Actually, I disagree with the Creative Director on that one. I think we should have it because people like it so much, but we rank people by experience, because often there are players that won’t fire a shot but they’ll score the highest cause that means that they’re off helping team mates and completing the objectives which gets you the most points. But then people still want to know how many people they’ve killed so they can say “well yeah we lost, but I got a 40 kills to 5 deaths so it’s okay.”

Question: On the point of multiplayer, how many will be in every room?

Answer: 16. We know some games are going a lot higher like MAG, but we wanted to keep things a bit more intimate and with such a team based game that you have to be in communication constantly. We call it the sweet spot and I think that it’s worked really well.

Question: You only revealed weapon customisation recently—did that come in late?

Answer: No we always had it. Again, cause we have so many features, it’s hard to communicate them all at once. It all works, but it gives marketing a hard time.

Question: One thing we’ve not heard a lot about is melee—with the current fad seeming to be fancy cinematic finishing moves, will there be any in Brink?

Answer: People don’t normally ask that question, that’s good. It’s a pretty complex system and it’s a lot of fun actually. For one, you can slide into people using SMART and then knock them over. There are these states of knocked over, but not dead. You can be knocked over and incapacitated which means you need a medic to come help you up, but then people can come finish you off. So we have a melee finishing move when people are like that and you get a lot of experience for that. You can also just shoot them, but you hardly get any experience doing that and it actually takes a lot of ammo to do it. Basically we want you to go up and make that personal. We have other things like with the spy character, they have the ability to blow themselves up when they’re dead so if you’re going to finish them off and you hear a *beep**beep**beep**beep* your reaction will be “oh shit…”

Question: Does it cut to a third person camera angle when you’re finishing someone off and does it leave you vulnerable?

Answer: No and no not really.

Question: Is there a theatre mode to watch these finishing moves on then?

Answer: No that’s another thing we wish we could have. We had it originally but it’s just something that had to go. Maybe if there’s a sequel…

Question: What are the chances of a sequel then?

Answer: Obviously we’d love to do another one, but we have to see how the game does before we decide on anything.

Question: So who owns the rights to the IP?

Answer: Bethesda owns the IP rights.

Question: So what proprietary elements does Splash Damage control?

Answer: The SMART system is the biggest thing we own really.

Question: One criticism of the game has been the apparent lack of clear direction—thoughts?

Answer: Well, one of the philosophies of the game is to give people the freedom to run with it how ever they want. We’re not telling people how to have fun, we’re just giving them a playground and letting them get on with it by making it as open as possible. This isn’t a game with a series of corridors for you to run down.

Question: Another point of criticism was the recent delays—were you disappointed by the delays?

Answer: No, not at all. We want to make the game as good as possible and my job is to make it as fun and balanced as possible and I will take all the time I can get!

Question: Finally, post-release, what kind of developer are you going to be?

Answer: We have to be [a good developer] as we have fans that’ve been with us since Wolfenstein and it isn’t within the studio DNA to just leave the game alone. We look at the game as our creation, it isn’t just about money and you’ve got to support the people playing it. I don’t think we’ll have a dedicated team though; it’ll be in our own free time. I’ll look at the forums and the stats and see if anything needs changing. So will others. But there won’t be a dedicated team for the game’s legacy.

Thanks to Neil Alphonso for his time, also thanks to the good people of games.on.net for their assistance during the interview.

Let’s be honest. There are an awful lot of websites out there that limit what you’re allowed to talk about or will scrub away your negative comment before it has a chance to taint the wonderful reputation of their business. We’re not like that. We treat you like adults at MyInsideGamer, and with this comes the privilege of being allowed to discuss whatever you feel like.

Express your opinion. Be free. Talk about it, even if we disagree with it. We’re not the type to delete posts we disagree with or spark up any controversy. We’re even willing to deal with comments that point out how much pizza we eat in any given week (read: too much). You’ll want to register at MyInsideGamer, too; after your first comment, all subsequent comments  are posted immediately — something our unregistered readers don’t get. That being said, we need to display a few important rules.

As we said before, we’re all adults here. There isn’t any reason we can’t all get along and have a good time with one another. Some of our sour guests have been banned from commenting because of breaking the following rules:

1. Don’t be stupid. We’re a gaming website; we don’t need your porn, your hateful language (i.e. racism) or your spam. Heated debates are allowed, but it you take it too far with your threats, consider it the end of the line for you. Don’t do this in the comments and don’t do this in the forums and you’ll be fine.
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3. Don’t tell us about your hacking. It’s illegal in your jurisdiction and it’s illegal here.
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5. Don’t spoil the game. If you fight God at the end of the game, let us fight him in the end and find out.

That’s it! Follow these simple rules, register for an account and we’ll only have good times.

Privacy

In short, we’re adamant about maintaining your privacy. We’re pretty private people, and we wouldn’t want our information sold to spyware groups out in the western part of the world; we’re not going to do it to you. We’re not going to spam your email, nor will we sell or share it. At no point will we ask for your password, phone number, credit card or other personal information. For a full read of our privacy policy, please do so here.

There’s a point to this article, however, and it begins with what’s missing from the above paragraph. I have another console — a Nintendo Wii. I didn’t include it above because it just doesn’t fit into the what I remember from my childhood: those evenings sat on a beanbag in front of the relatively small LCD television. Each time, I’d come close to breaking my controller in a blind rage every time I inadvertently caused Sonic to careen off into danger, probably after spending 10 minutes in a breathless panic trying to traverse a particularly difficult level. The reason behind this is obvious, simple and confusing at the same time: motion controls. Gaming has changed — evolved, if you will — and although it’s definitely not for the worst, is it for the best?

Economically, this new generation of gaming, with the Wii, Kinect and PlayStation Move, has been beneficial for the industry, reaching out to new audiences. Older people who might get bemused simply looking at a keyboard or an Xbox 360 controller are now getting involved with the family to play games on the Wii. Whole families are playing a huge variety of new games together: sports games, fitness games, party games. In the past, party games like Mario Party were the only real way of reaching out from the core gaming culture of friends gathering to play Halo and out to families who want to enjoy activities together.

You could say that the introduction of these new concepts to gaming has kept the industry alive and booming, changing it for the better. Some might say that making these changes has drawn developers away from the ideals of core gaming, subsequently producing games of poor quality or lacking in original concepts. Some gamers can be critical people, and those that are tend to be well acquainted with the internet, and you can see from opinions on forums and blogs around the net that although it hasn’t been a huge effect, core games have decreased in number and quality since the introduction of the Wii, and people have noticed.

What happens when there are more, similar peripherals launched into the market? Is core gaming going to diminish into a hardcore gamer’s haven, a last refuge for the nostalgic among us, not yet ready to delve headfirst into “new gaming”? I’m being over-dramatic, but this shouldn’t take away from the point I’m making: Gaming could be changing into something a lot of us won’t like.

Despite these last few words, I look behind me to the bookshelves where I keep my rows of videogames and realise, with a sigh of acceptance, that I’m okay with Nintendo. Nintendo have, despite pioneering all of this, managed to keep a balance between their well-known core gaming titles and the new age of Wii gaming. We saw at E3 that they plan to revamp old and much loved titles, and they’ve brought original concepts to the same old games in such examples as Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. I have Monster Hunter Tri back there as well, and I bought it bundled with the Classic Controller Pro, which I’m currently using to play Mario Kart Wii.

These are both also examples of how Nintendo are balancing well core gaming and new gaming. What I’m worried about is whether, in a competitive craze or in the future, Sony and Microsoft will focus on the Kinect and Move too much, delving excessively into “new gaming” and forgetting entirely the gaming that they’ve committed themselves to so well with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. I definitely don’t want to see sit-down classic controller gaming fade into the background, and though all Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all currently keeping this type of gaming in the limelight, will that last?

On an almost, but not quite unrelated point: I’ve seen a recent surge of iPad, iPhone and Android news into the gaming industry. People are paying a lot more attention to how useful they can be as gaming platforms with the development of games like Plants vs. Zombies, and games that have also been on PSN or XBLA have definitely helped with this. I tend to agree with the interest in these devices as gaming platforms, there’s no reason why — with the recent rapid advancement of phone and tablet technology — these devices can’t be just as good with games as the Game Boy once was. Then again, one could easily look at the N-Gage and how spectacularly that failed. Perhaps these will also fail; only time will tell.

My point is that gaming is changing; there’s nothing we can do to  stop it, and my job is just to watch and comment. Even though I may not like the potential loss of core gaming, I do like some of the aspects of “new gaming,” and I know that, like everything else, everything eventually changes.

A thread posted by a user on the Xbox 360 Junkies forums has shown a video of a user trying to join a friend’s Call of Duty game, only to be denied. Here’s what the thread starter, PwnShop, posted:

I was trying to join a friend’s session on MW2 the other day and had this screen pop up. It clearly says at the top of this menu: “Modern Warfare 2 Membersh”, in which we can confidently assume that the last word is “Memberships”. If you’ll notice at the bottom is an option to “Add Microsoft Points”, clearly indicating that this was intended to be a menu for purchasing different levels of Membership, presumably memberships would have been offered in a variety of durations.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has publicly expressed his dismay at the fact that 60% of gamers on Xbox Live are playing Activision’s games, and they see no money from Microsoft’s earnings on Xbox Live – some of which he claims is rightfully his. Here’s the video of the supposed evidence:

This can, and if the evidence shown is correct, will be implemented. As I said in my Editor’s Message, it would be a shame to see such things implemented into games.

The Halo 2 Universe is being kept alive by a small band of rebels, who for the love of their game have decided to keep their Xbox’s running Halo 2, until they are forced to leave by other means.

This feat has been accomplished by a small group of friends who have left their Xbox’s running Halo 2 online, after the original Xbox Live was switched off. However their lobbies have remained open and will do so until the last person is forced into switching off their consoles. The consoles have been running continuously for thirteen days now and a post on the Bungie forums confirms this:

“A small group of dedicated Halo 2 players kept their Xbox’s on so that they could enjoy the game for a while longer. (As long as we don’t turn off our Xbox’s, or lose connection, we can stay online.) Our Xbox’s have been on for nearly 13 days straight. Each day the amount of people decreased, at a rapid rate.”

The post by one Joe Campbell continues “a lot of us became really good friends, and it’s almost like we’re family now. We will keep playing until we are all forcibly removed. It could be by Microsoft, Bungie, our Xbox’s overheating, or just lagging out. Not for competition, not for a prize, but for the love, and memory of Halo 2.”

You have to love the enthusiasm that’s been displayed, for what is considered by many as the Master Chiefs greatest hour.

Long live Halo 2!

Source CVG