Due for release late October

Tank wars

Platform/Engine

Multiplayer

Mass Effect 3

Due early 2012

Serious Sam: 3

Due some time this year

Due for release in August

LOTR: Rise of Isengard

Up for release in the last quarter of 2011

Batman: Arkham City

Due in October 2011

Assassins Creed: Revelations

Due third quarter 2011

inthebutt

For those unaware, the Gadget Show is a channel 5 (uk) that does what it says on the tin… it’s a show, about gadgets.

They also have a live show, a showcase of all things technological, from power tools to eco cars, USB thingamyjigs to gaming rigs and everything in between. So guess where I went…

The Gadget Show Live is held at the Birmingham NEC over almost a whole week, and the tickets are really not badly priced, (around the £15 mark for a whole day) since this was my first trip to the show I didn’t know entirely what to expect…

Wow.

The NEC had been transformed into a haven for the geek. Although there were all sorts of immense 3D and HD layouts, sound systems and home cinema/spaceship booths, it was the gaming section (surprised? I though you would be….) that kept us looking around.

Here’s a little peek at a tiny section:

We were greeted by a massive Nintendo 3DS stand, with a queue that didn’t shorten all day, a showcase of new educational games systems, masses of multi-screen and 3D gaming peripherals, and some giant simulators for F1 racing nuts. There was some impressive stuff by Razer and Steel Series, but the peripherals were won for me by MadCatz and the frikkin awesome rat mouse thing. Thats a confusing sentence. But seriously, the mouse (Rat) was awesome; it felt, looked and worked like a dream. Winners. No I didn’t get one. Yes I wanted to.

Another victim of the rat

The gaming area had an ace in the hole, there was an ominously cordoned off 18+ area. This was dominated by two things, firstly a massive straight-out-of-vegas-style casino that harboured my good friend the Duke. Yes, Duke Nukem’s return was heralded gloriously by attractive females and rows of gaming machines… I got stuck in and guess what, it’s going to blow you away. Hail to the king baby! It’s been long enough…

Next to that though was rather a show stealer, the guys and gals at WB had an EPIC Mortal Combat stand, big screen showing pro games, rows of classic style arcade machines, and announcers commentating that kept us laughing for what must have been hours as we watched to UK finals. Then the European games. Then some more. This was also helped by the actresses dressed as in game characters. But mostly the games. I promise.

The other noteworthy item was what can only be described as the gaming orb of death. It was this all encompassing surround sound full body feedback chair thing. Just watch the video in the link above to see what I mean, but seriously it was just a total experience…

Worthy of note (largely on grounds of amazingness) was the Sapphire Edge-HD Mini PC, so small it looked like it was a fake, and the Acer Iconia. The Acer (although hideously pricey) is the best toy I’ve seen. It’s not a gaming machine, but it can stream HD movies and it’s dual touch screens were so sensitive they felt like an apple product-but more that that, the thing ran smoothly, elegantly and easily; it was a real joy to play with.

IP: voice402.rtl-servers.co.uk
Port: 9915

Most people’s usernames and passwords will be the same, if it is not working chat to Alty or myself on Steam or leave a message below on this post and we will get you set up asap. This is the last vent move for the foreseeable future, you can all get comfy now.

The beta is scheduled to go live on Monday, January 31st when global press and key Dawn of War community members will be given access. It will then broaden to include everyone who has pre-ordered Dawn of War II – Retribution on STEAM to date on February 1st. Finally, anyone who has bought a Dawn of War game through STEAM or has registered a Dawn of War II product on their STEAM account will automatically receive an invite on February 8th. There will be no open registration phase to this beta.

Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Publisher: Bethesda Game Sudios
FingerSports Rating: 3/5

“They don’t like it when you shoot at them!”

Apocalypse! Guns! Radiation poisoning! Yay! It’s one of those releases that I pretend has me in two minds, but I know, I just know, I will end up buying-and I did.

Fallout New Vegas is a role playing action/adventure set in an apocalyptic future (You know, where man has nuked the world into a glowing dustbowl and almost everyone died.) This game is set some years after all this happened, and the world has some vestigial civilisations returning to it. There are various factions vying for power over the wastelands, and you are thrown into this to basically do whatever you want.

My fallout experience started on an old apple Mac yonks ago playing a Fallout 2 demo. Repeatedly. I didn’t really get it; I didn’t know what the story was or what I was supposed to do. But I did like the option of designating which eyeball to put a 10mm pistol round through as I mugged random NPC’s. I also like the miniguns. And the option to aim for the groin. After this I was introduced a few years back to Fallout Tactics, which got me properly hooked. I went back and played the original, and was beaten every which way by that bloody game. Then came Fallout 3 and I was a happy man. I only played it through twice, but for me the Fallout series have always been about buggering around. You know, you get to the new town, talk to whoever it is you came there to visit and save the game. Then you crack your knuckles, and bloodily pillage and burn the whole town looking for shiny things. In a floral dress and cowboy hat. Satisfied, you go back, load the save and do it ‘properly’.

Fallout New Vegas is essentially more of the same. The scenery is a different re-arranging of the same dusty yellow terrain from the last game. The characters are the usual motley group, raiders, traders, townsfolk, mutants and wildlife. The game engine has had few tweaks: armour is now a bastard to beat, there are different ammunition types (solid slug shotgun rounds rock!), aiming a weapon allows you to actually use the sights (rather than just a slight zoom…) and a whole overhaul of the crafting system to allow for making chems, ammo, weapons and other Gucci stuff. Apparently there were some graphical tweaks to allow for all the lights of Vegas, but I didn’t notice any significant visual difference…

The story! You are a delivery boy (and yes, my character is named Fry) who gets bad things done to him. You set out on a quest for revenge/closure, and the wasteland is your playpen. There’s goodies and baddies, hookers and raiders, robots and lasers. All the hallmarks are there, and the story takes twists and turns – the side quests are cool too! It’s very immersive. You know when you first played Bioshock, and after several hours your eyes go bleary and your bladder hurts and you realise that there is an edge to your screen again… well it’s not quite like that but close.
The thing about the fallout games (or any sandbox title) is that often the best moments in an evenings play will be somewhat unrelated to the ‘story’. For example, I found some children playing with a rat in the slums near Vegas, so (for pest control reasons) I shot the rat. Walking back through later, the same children were eating the dead rat. Probably a bug, but damn was it funny. Similarly, I had just spent quite a lot of cash with a roaming trader and was tempted to put a shotgun into him and take my cash back, when we were attacked by evil types. So what if I didn’t help till after the merchant was down? I saved his pack animal didn’t I? Along with all his goods on it! Mine now.
Suffice to say, the open world is full of things to do and stuff to save/pillage at will. And it’s well done enough to keep me playing anyway!
Bugs. Giant, angry mutant bugs. This game has them. Now I may need to update a few drivers, but my Steam purchased copy of New Vegas crashes to desktop often. It’s locked up completely once. And every now and then a body falls through the floor so you can’t look it. Also, enemies in the wasteland have a habit of spawning under the ground. All of this has got me hitting ‘quick save’ almost every other minute. There are issues with doors and sometimes your character won’t shoot. It hasn’t been crippling to my gaming (I hear it’s worse on the Xbox), but I play flash games and thus my opinion is void.

Some things you should know:

A very cool game, one of those that you out of what you put in – I recommend it.

DukesOfDevon

We have deployed two new “Community Mix Servers”

As the name suggests these are open to any and all community members and friends, these should be used instead of clan servers for mixes, to help get our name out and to provide our clanless floaters somewhere to peddle their skills. If we find that we need more mix servers we will just put more up! They are running z-block, sourcemod, KAC and normal match configs.

If you would like match admin to these servers follow this link to the forum thread and drop your steam ID in, we will get it on the servers asap, please also use the relevant mix channels in Vent.

We have also taken on a new team.
They are lightsout of www.lo-gaming.eu. Nice bunch of lads, hoping to help them develop and looking forward to mixing and playing with them in the future.

Their forum section is here

Lets start with your PC

what you should have running and how to make sure it doesn’t get infected.

Firewalls and Routers

Software and Hardware firewalls are the easiest way to control incoming traffic to your PC or home network.

Firewalls are designed and configured to regulate the flow of internet traffic to a computer, based on the properties of the traffic. For example, if someone tried to scan your system for open ports (think of ports as windows), the firewall would kick in, automatically intercept that packet and drop it from the network.

Windows firewall vs Commercial firewalls – Windows firewall, although very basic is in fact quite comprehensive as basic protection, the only problem with windows firewall is that is can be very annoying, it will prompt you at the most silly times and updates can also be annoying as well. It is a good idea to turn windows firewall off and get yourself another form of Software Firewall from a more “gaming friendly” company. I use Kaspersky Internet Security personally and have had quite a few in the past, I find Kaspersky to be extremely good, it is lightweight and so doesn’t eat system resources and it also has a “gaming” profile which when turned on will stop all firewall and anti virus prompts while you are in full screen applications (games mostly). The only catch with Kaspersky is that it does cost.. barely anything perfect in this world comes for free unfortunately. If however you are one of the hordes of gamers who outright refuse to part with a tenner for a years worth of protection there are some *free alternatives which will help to keep you safe.

*free – Most come with basic features, make sure you check that a firewall is in the list of features on the free version of your software.

Another alternative is of course a hardware firewall – These obviously cost more but are generally better at intercepting and dealing with network packets, they can also not be “tainted” like software variants and are therefore better overall. Firmware updates are usually free which means that the purchase of a hardware firewall is a one time affair.

For a list of free and paid Anti-Virus and Firewall software click this link

Malicious software

Virus, Spyware, Keyloggers, and the like.

Viruses

Just what is a virus? It is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user.

Viruses can be spread in the following ways:

-Downloading and executing attachments from email files that are sent by unknown persons.
-Downloading and running files from dodgy websites (i.e. skin packs, programs) without virus scanning them first.
-Some viruses can infect your computer, stay in memory, and infect other disks (Such as floppies/usb drives). This method is very uncommon nowadays.

Viruses cannot be spread in the following ways:

-Downloading models/sounds/skins from a Counterstrike server or any server for that matter.
-Be transferred from one player to another in a server.

Keyloggers

Keyloggers are programs that run in the background without your permission, and log every keystroke that you make.

Keyloggers may be spread in the following ways:

-The same ways that viruses can.

-A hacker can invade your system and install one without your knowledge.

Keyloggers cannot be spread through any game servers or from player to player.

Trojans

Trojans are programs that are designed to install malicious software while disgusing themselves to look like a harmless piece of software.

Trojan horses must be executed in order to infect a computer. Their actions can range from installing a virus or keylogger to opening ports, to changing your homepage. They can be spread in the ways listed above under the virus section. As per keyloggers, they cannot be spread in-game in any way.

Spyware

Spyware is a program which secretly records a computer user by capturing all keystrokes, websites visited, and chat conversations.

You may be thinking, “Isn’t that what a virus/keylogger does?” The answer is yes but with one key difference. Spyware is installed without the user’s informed consent. What is “informed consent”? It means you install the spyware without actually knowing that it is spyware. It may be disguised as a browser helper (BonzaiBUDDY is a good example), or a program (SpySheriff). Both of these programs decieve the user and record certain browsing activites. The difference between spyware and trojans is that spyware doesn’t necessarily destroy your data or replicate itself. It just makes your computing experience much worse.

Things spyware may do to lower your computing experience:

-Change your browser homepage to something else (commonly advertisements).

-Constantly display popups which contain ads.

-Consume valuable system resources.

-Report your activites to a website for data collection.

-Annoy the living crap out of you

How to protect yourself

In this subsection, I will show you how to protect yourself from the various baddies on the internet. The first thing you should always do, is make sure windows is fully updated. This is crucial when securing your computer as Microsoft occasionally sends out vital security patches. The second thing you should do is:

-Never open up email attachments from people you do not know.

-Do not use pirated software (if you have to, install them in a Sandbox first)

-Don’t go to dodgy websites (I.E. Websites that offer you free CD-Keys and the like)

Anti-virus software

The best defense against viruses is a good anti-virus program. These programs have a list of virus definitions which they compare scanned files against. If any part of the file’s code matches a definition, it is flagged as infected.

For more info on how Anti-Virus software works, click this link. You should run a virus scan on your PC every three days or at the bare minimum, every week.

For a list of free and paid Anti-Virus and Firewall software click this link

Anti-Spyware programs

Anti-spyware programs work the same way that Anti-virus software does. For more info on anti-spyware software visit this link.

Password Protection

In today’s world of computing, nothing is more important than choosing a good password. Even if a hacker can get past a firewall and anti-virus software, he can be stopped in his tracks by a secure password. In this section of the guide, I will show you how to create a secure password.

How do passwords work?

Let’s use Steam as an example. When you enter your password into Steam, it sends a hash that password to an authentication server. The hash of the entered password is then checked against the password hash stored on the server, and if they match, you can login. The password you enter into Steam is never stored on your computer. So the only way a hacker can get access to it is through social engineering or keyloggers.

Choosing a secure password

Choosing a good password may seem like a hard task. In reality, it really isn’t. Just follow three basic rules when creating a password:

1) Your password should be something memorable. Try not to use anything that is personal to you.

2) Don’t use the same password for everything.

3) Don’t base your password off of your username. Mix letters, words, and numbers together.

Ways passwords can be cracked

Passwords can be cracked in a variety of ways. One such way would be brute-forcing. Basically, a computer works through and tries every possible password combination :O . It’s a time-consuming process, but, given enough time, any password can be brute-forced. Another way that passwords can be cracked is through a dictionary attack. This time, a computer tries a predetermined list of words in a dictionary file (hence the name) to guess the password. This process can be very fast, but is not guaranteed to work. Your password will inevitably cracked if you choose an easy to guess password.

Examples of weak passwords are:
-Admin -123456
-p@s5\/\/0|2D -qwerty
-ANY SINGLE word found in the dictionary.

Examples of strong passwords:
-t3wahSetyeT4 -MoOoOfIn245679
-4pRte!ai@3

You may notice that these passwords would not be common in a dictionary file. Also notice the fact that numbers, letters, and symbols are used to generate a password that is long, yet somewhat memorable. One more thing you must know about passwords:

VALVE WILL NEVER ASK YOU FOR YOUR PASSWORD!!!!!

Social Engineering

Social engineering is the number one reason people lose steam accounts, Social Engineering is a set of techniqes used to manipulate the victim into giving personal information. MANY people fall for phishing. This is because they are either unexperienced, or because they are not paying close attention to details. In this section of my guide, I will alert you to the dangers of Social Engineering, and show you how to avert them.

Techniques used to “phish” information

There are an immense number of ways phishers can get passwords from people. Sadly, many of these techniques succeed in getting sensitive information.

The first technique that we will talk about is Website Forgery. The number of people tricked into giving info to a fake website is HUGE! What happens is, a scammer creates a fake website which looks and functions almost exactly like the original website, with one key difference. All the info entered into the site will be recorded and sent to a phisher. Observant users may note that the URL of the imitation website looks just like the original website. This is because clever scammers may use scripting to cover up the real url, and replace it with original site’s.

So how do we get around this? Well, its quite simple actually: Turn on your phishing filter! Depending on what browser you are using you should have a filter to nail this kind of activity, turn it on and you should be 90% covered, the other 10% comes from being vigilant yourself, make sure the sites you are visiting are legit, be careful when following links provided by others and if you are in doubt just don’t go to the content.

Friends list/email phishing

Lately, there have been a lot of phishing attempts over the Steam Friends List as well as e-mail. Sadly, most if not all hijacked accounts are phished using this method. The user is contacted via His or Her Friends List and is then thrown the bait. Most of the time, it is someone impersonating a VALVe employee, claiming that “something happened to our database and we need to reconfirm your account or else…” The user is then prompted to enter His/Her account details.

Keep in mind that these sorts of scams require a lot of patience on the part of the phisher. They will do anything possible to make their pitch sound believable. I cannot stress this enough: VALVe will never ask you for your account information.

Facebook/Twitter/Etc Phishing

Keep your passwords separate!

An increasing way for phishers to get your information is to “study” your other means of internet communication. Often enough people can guess your password based on information phished from other sources, such as social networking sites. Your steam account can have hundreds of games on it, which all have value. To secure this information it is very wise to have a separate and completely unrelated password for steam. If your PC is at home and you are the only person with access to it, it’s a good idea to have steam remember your password, that way keyloggers will not be able to get your information without “guessing” it from other sources.

If something is missed please post below and I will add it.

This information has been gathered from loads of sources, including the Steampowered Forums and VALVe website.

We are looking for like minded, mature individuals and teams who have a sense of humour and are regularly active. People who join up need to be aware that we are a community, not an organisation. That means we need people to take part, in return we offer servers for most games, vent (and hopefully soon mumble) access as well as a decently populated and sufficiently ridiculous community forum. We have a variety of members from all over the place playing most games you could think of, current big titles at the moment are TF2, MW2 and CS:S however some of us play everything else you have on your steam list.

Please use the contact form on the main site or post your desire to join on our forums.

Upcoming FingerSports events include:

Community fun tournament – with a unique twist
i40 Community team (16 people booked, paid and seated so far)
Webbo’s naked webcam dance v2
Starcraft 2 giveaway draw

Platform: PC, Xbox 360
Publisher: Hidden Path
FingerSports Rating: 3/5

Anyone who’s ever screwed around in the world of flash games knows there are a LOT of ‘defence’ games out there; from the venerable ‘Desktop Turret Defence’ to ‘Gemcraft’ and their hundreds of illegitimate spawn.

The basic premise is that waves of monsters/soldiers/aliens/generic enemy or geometric shapes will try to kill you in some nefarious way, and you have to construct a defensive path for them to walk down whilst being shot. The trick is to find the right combo of towers to form the longest ‘maze’ for the enemies, whilst dealing the most damage. Now I like these games, some of them are way too easy and some kick you all over the place before you work out a reasonable strategy.

‘Defence Grid: The Awakening’ takes this concept and makes it into a more polished, more marketable 3D indie title. Firstly, lets get this out of the way, the game is around the £7 mark. So it’s not going to compete with Modern Warfare 2 for your spare time, but it might make you giggle for an evening or two.

The game lays out a series of well built and interesting maps that you build rather swish little turrets on and shoot the really quite nicely modelled baddies till they explode. The sound is nothing to write home about, but during the campaign mode there’s a very British man doing the narration/tutorial, and he’s actually quite funny. The humour is relatively dark and he won’t stop going on about how much he misses raspberries. Seriously, at one point the talky AI man asks you to eat berries and describe the sensation to him. Odd fellow, but entertaining.

Visually, the game is really pleasing (for less than a tenner). Explosions and lasers, fling stuff and complex-looking twisting levels with decent texture quality. The animation is surprisingly nice, things stomp and chain-guns spin… you know what I mean. The interface is odd at first, (after all, it was designed for a control pad) but easy to get used to. Babble aside, the game looks and handles like they could have charged more-not that I’m complaining.

The game starts off as you would expect, insultingly easy – but the difficulty curve is steep. Some of the levels require serious examination and planning to set up your maze, the multi-layered ones are a bastard. The turrets are quite well balanced, (although the AA weapons are WAY too powerful, and there are levels you can complete by just spamming cannons.) and the alien enemies come in an amusing variety of shapes and flavours. The single player is a nice build up for the challenge maps (although the last few levels of the single player are a nice challenge – good to see a game that’s not afraid to beat you. Repeatedly. With a stick.) and the challenge modes and maps add a decent lease of life into the game. Mind you, I spent the best part of a month playing Dolphin Olympics 2 so maybe I’m not the best judge of re-playability…

Right, is it worth your cash? It Depends just how much do you need seven quid?

If you enjoy little games that will make you think, and if you’ve ever enjoyed a ‘turret defence’ style game – this really is well worth it. If you’ve never played a defence game, then this simple set of instructions will tell you if you enjoy Defence Grid.

1. Buy it and see.
2. Go online and play a few flash defence games for free.

Now you know if you will like the game.

I’ve been having great fun with it, for it’s genre it’s a masterpiece. The DLC is so cheap it’s not worth worrying about, and I’m glad I took a chance on a cheapo game.

DukesOfDevon