By now most of you will know about the closure of Gamespy and the problems it’s going to cause to a great many games that used to have their multiplayer servers supported by the service. A lot of these games are many years old and have been left high-and-dry by their developers and published simply because of lack of resources or incompatible older software issues (even if most if not all of these games will hopefully eventually be supported by Gameranger).

However, one company has updated one of their original games which is over a decade old by now, thanks to help by community members in documenting bugs and constructing a patch for multiplayer. The game? Halo.

Bungie says that thanks to the efforts of a small number of players (named are community members Technut and kornman00, and btcc22), they’ve been able to construct a patch to take Halo multiplayer off of Gamespy and have it supported in its own official multiplayer option through a browser-server application that was built specially for the game. The update also includes bugfixes that relate to compatibility with newer software.

If you want to download the patches yourself, they’re linked below. Happy gaming!

Halo PC 1.0.10

Halo CE 1.0.10

Halo PC Dedicated Server 1.0.10

Halo CE Dedicated Server 1.0.10

The people behind the revival of Wasteland have completed a video to promote the new Wasteland 2. However instead of waiting to release it, they’ve stuck it up there right away to show off what defines the game. The footage consists of newsreels to bring the viewer up to speed on the elements that will be present within the game.

Watch it below:

Spintires is a Kickstarted project that has had a development time that’s been over a year long. It started as a tech demo which I remember seeing played back in January or February of last year at some point. The game has now evolved to the point where a trailer has been released and it looks interesting to say the least.

The main goal of Spintires is delivering your cargo, in this case loads of timber, to your destinations without getting stuck, tipping over, losing any of the cargo (or as little as you can manage) and obviously as quickly as you can manage to do without expending too much fuel. There’s a lot to take in here for a game that could be called a ‘driving sim’ under some conditions. The game is set in the wildernesses of 1980-90 Russia.

“Plot a course and navigate using landmarks whilst trying not to loose your precious cargo, becoming stuck in the mud or depleting all of your fuel reserves. Plans accordingly so that you can pass a fuelling out-post and stop by when required.” the team behind it wrote of the game, hoping that the game will become replayable simply because the physical elements of the game are dynamic. Roads can become very pitted and harder to navigate the more they are used and so on.

The game will be released on June 13^th and will be moddable.

A multi-layered series that looks back to the formative years of Ryu and Ken as they live a traditional warrior’s life in secluded Japan. The boys are, unknowingly, the last practitioners of the ancient fighting style known as “Ansatsuken” (Assassin’s Fist). The series follows them as they learn about the mysterious past of their master, Goken, and the tragic, dark legacy of the Ansatsuken style. Can their destiny be changed, or will history repeat itself?

Well, time for our first on demand/youtube review and what a doozey of a review aswell…
Season 1 of Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, the follow on to the Youtube short from 2010, Streetfighter: Legacy, which showed a night time fight between Ryu and Ken and got the whole of Street Fighter fandom around the world salivating for a real live action Street Fighter spectacle (especially after the travesty that was Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li)

This is very much a prequel to the First Street Fighter: World Warriors game/story and the years of Ryu (Mike Moh) and Ken Master (Christian Howard) training, aswell as the young life and training of their Sensei Goken (Akira Koieyama) and his brother Goki (Gaku Space), and his betrayal of Gotetsu (Togo Igawa) to become Akuma (Joey Ansah), the Demon of the No Hado!

The first thing that strikes straight away is the choreography of the training and fight scenes.  The training is utterly wonderful to watch and the fight scenes, especially the CGI added for the ingame moves, like the Hadouken and ShoRyuKen look cool.

Filmed in Sofia, Bulgaria, the locations are stunning too, the perfect backdrop for the training of two young world warriors into the video game characters we’ve been knocking heads with for nearly 30 years now

What I WASN’T expecting, yet supremely surprised about was the introduction of Ken’s father (Mark Killeen) in Episode 4: A Rough Night,  a boxer, who spends a day training with Ryu and Ken and showing them a few of his moves.  What really stood out most in this episode was the bond and training these actors and fighters have, the moves and dialect is fluid and warm and the fighting/training is quick and beautiful to watch aswell.

But they also get a taste of street fighting at a local bar against some American GI’s (and leave them in a mess of course) in this episode, of course we see Ken in full flow offering large bets, while Ryu looks out of his depth and uncomfortable being thrown into the ring.  Everything we know about these characters is there and real.

The real stand out throughout the series though is Goken, more than just their teacher, he’s a father figure and one that is respected and loved by both teenagers, and the flashbacks to his own training and trials with his brother Goki under the training of Gotetsu is part of the Street Fighter legacy that hasn’t been deeply looked into before now and it was good to get to know.

Goki’s transformation into Akuma is good to watch aswell, almost a rocky level montage of his body falling apart under the power of the No Hado and his transformation into the demon Akuma is great to watch.

The one thing that I don’t get with this series is why its even a series.  All 12 episodes were released right away and at 9/10 minutes an episode, I have to ask why…   If this was released on DVD/BluRay as a feature length episode, like  , Then I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Here’s hoping Machinima see sense to release it as a movie.

Now, to get back into the dojo myself, this gave me a definite recharge to my No Hado!

~9.5/10  Utterly Amazing!

Well, seems those details for Far Cry 4 have emerged a little bit sooner than was originally planned. Someone pressed a button they shouldn’t have and now we know just a little bit more about this game; this time from a legitimate source. Earlier someone set Far Cry 4’s store page on Uplay to display publicly, and it did get noticed by people. It got taken down again of course, but not before someone managed to cache a copy of it for the viewing of all who had the link.

So what do we know now? To further on the location of the game, the game takes place in the Himalayan region of Kyrat, and your character Ajay Ghale is there to fulfil a last request from his dying mother. This sees you getting mixed up with the plot to overthrow the self-appointed ruler of the region, Pagan Min. There also seems to be an option for a pre-order, which adds a free Limited Edition upgrade. This includes 3 single player missions that lead up to an exclusive weapon – a harpoon gun called “The Impaler”. Nice.

Google cache of the page is here.