You've only got three days to kick his arse, UK readers.

Fact: you’ll enjoy Mass Effect 2 a lot more if you’ve played Mass Effect 1. Going by early reviews, at least. Reportedly, the brawniest of the game’s strong points is its carrying-over of plot dynamics and characters, filling in the picture between the destruction of the Sovereign and Shepard’s reanimation at the hands of shadowy pro-human organisation Cerberus. New allies (and new enemies) are doing the rounds, but you’ll also reunite with former comrades and adversaries, now scattered across the galaxy, visit familiar locales and find answers to some of the original’s pressing questions.

I don’t know about you, reader, but I don’t intend to start this sequel – perhaps Bioware’s best title to date, and a definite GOTY candidate – on the back foot. LevelSkip’s most advanced survey probes have been trawling the ether, scooping up choice Mass Effect haxploits (”Mass Exploits”?) to hasten your progress to the end credits, and thus to a thoroughly well-informed first playthrough of Mass Effect 2.

Don’t read on if you’re a goody two-shoes, or you’re happy to enjoy Mass Effect’s charms at leisure. Do read on if you’re anxious for a glimpse of Miranda Lawson’s underwear.

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Posted by Ed on 26/01/10 in Essential Guides, Hints & Tips, Spotlight, and tagged with BioWare, cheat, exploit, hack, RPG, shooter, Xbox 360.
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Well here’s something you don’t see every day. Among what is reportedly a rather embarrassing number of Final Fantasy XIII bugs, there’s one which makes computer-controlled characters hop forwards and backwards like a kangaroo with its braces caught. Wheee. Tigger would be proud.

Posted by Ed on 05/01/10 in LOLbugs, Spotlight, and tagged with comedy, FFXIII, Final Fantasy XIII, Japan, Square Enix, Tigger.
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Just been watching Trumpf’s latest Modern Warfare 2 blowout on Youtube, embedded above. In it, the goodly pro and close chum SeaNanners talk us through a Search and Destroy match over Xbox Live on the Favela map.

The vid’s a little under eight minutes long. Too long? Here’s our scalding hot digest: never take the same route twice, think before you shoot and double back a lot.

Over and out.

Posted by Ed on 04/01/10 in Essential Guides, Expert Play, Hints & Tips, and tagged with Call of Duty, Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 2, PC, Xbox 360, Xbox Live.
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I'm too young to die!

Poor old Left 4 Dead. Just over a year old, and already consigned to the backseat of history by Valve’s uncharacteristically headlong rush to sequel-dom.

Well we’re not quite ready to let go, chaps – as befits the PC version at least. Here are some reasons to put off uninstalling the original zombie co-op FPS for a few months longer.

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Posted by Ed on 24/11/09 in Essential Guides, Mods, Spotlight, and tagged with feature, fps, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Mods, PC, Valve.
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If Jesus Christ were still in the miracle business today, and had chanced to lay his hands on a copy of Unreal Tournament 2004, the results might look something like Long Nguyen’s long-awaited solo project Out of Hell. Forget “water into wine” – any mod that can make a five-year-old first-person shooter engine out-perform most recent equivalents is Biblical material indeed.

Out of Hell courteously invites you into the town of Grinwood, lately plagued by the walking dead. Broken up into 15 maps, it’s a plausibility-soaked exploration of classic zombie horror cliches like abandoned motels and carparks. You’ve got 10 weapons – five of them up-close-and-personal, five marginally less so. We like the sound of pitchforking somebody through the nostrils.

The mod’s 100% free to download, but you’ll need something a little meatier than the average 2004 box to power it: a Core 2 Duo E8200 at 2.66 GHZ, three gigs of RAM and a Geforce 9600 GT 512 MB, for preference.

Screens here, survival guide here, install FAQ here. Just to reiterate, everything on show (less the music) is the work of one man. Ye gods.

Posted by Ed on 06/11/09 in Mods, Spotlight, and tagged with fps, Long Nguyen, mod, Out of Hell, Unreal Engine 2.
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Walking tall with the aid of a cheat or two.

Hola, bonjour and welcome to the inaugural issue of Cheat Sheet, in which we lump together a bunch of codes and exploits from recent or upcoming games for your breathless perusal. In this episode: Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, Borderlands, Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2 and Tekken 6. Go crazy with gratitude and relief.

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Posted by Ed on 05/11/09 in Spotlight, Video Game Cheats, and tagged with Ballad of Gay Tony, Borderlands, cheat, Modern Warfare 2, round-up, Tekken 6, Uncharted 2.
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Now you don't need to buy Left 4 Dead 2, see.

BFG gathering dust? Get your fingers into Skull Tag, an intimidatingly well-equipped “sourceport” of Doom II, featuring new items, bots, modes, weapons, maps and at least two or three kitchen sinks.

It’s classic Doom gunplay with the addition of jumping and freelook. New modes include “Invasion”, a wave-based defensive affair, “Possession”, in which players score points by keeping hold of a Hellstone for as long as possible, and “One Flag CTF”, which is like CTF except you have to return the flag to your opponent’s base, rather than your own.

In a departure from the original Doom II, you can drop in and out of games in progress. There are no dedicated servers. Time for another petition, Modern Warfare 2 fans?

Blurb here, download here, installation FAQ here, screenshots here. You’ll need a copy of Doom II, Heretic or Hexen.

Posted by Ed on 03/11/09 in Mods, and tagged with Doom 2, kitchen sink, mod, Skull Tag.
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My body’s at work, but my head and heart are sprawled in front of my desktop at home playing the Dead Before Dawn beta. After all, life’s too short not to spend a sizeable portion of it sniping at Boomers from the cover of a faux-Hawaiian coffee stand.

You can download this user-built Left 4 Dead campaign here. Initial player feedback seems mixed, with some picking on the size of the five included maps (a sixth, the finale, is still in development) and others the prevalence of bugs. The campaign is standard co-op only at present, but Versus functionality is on the way.

What else? 200 custom models and props, new AI-Director-controlled music and some “professional” voice-overs. If you ask me, they missed a trick by not titling it “Dead B4 Dawn”.

Posted by Ed on 02/11/09 in Mods, Spotlight, and tagged with beta, campaign, Dead Before Dawn, Left 4 Dead, mod, user-created, Valve.
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Not the best place for a chinwag.

From Software’s Demon’s Souls is an abusive, hard-drinking bitch of an action-RPG, and if you’re caught in her clutches you’ll need all the help you can get. Here’s a cunning way to bolster your inventory, courtesy of IGN reader SunnyStollen.

For this cheat you’ll need two people, Legendary Heros Souls, and an item you can drop from weapons to other souls etc.

Summon a blue phantom or black phantom. Have the phantom drop the items. Then, have him either quit game with the PS button or pull his ethernet cable out (not recommended). Summon him back in and have him drop more of the items and leave again. Each time he does this he’ll keep his share of the items like he never dropped them and you can collect the copies.

You can do this with Legendary Hero’s/Soldier’s Souls. You can only do this with items you can drop. Not boss souls, sadly.

And with that, the world is a better place.

Posted by Ed on 27/10/09 in Spotlight, Video Game Cheats, and tagged with .
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Thanks to years and years of undead-themed gaming, we all know how to put down a zombie plague. But what’s the best response to a mass Tellytubby infestation? Answer: much the same.

Our only excuse for not featuring this brilliant Left 4 Dead mod earlier is that LevelSkip didn’t exist at the time of its release. Not good enough.

Download the mod here.

Posted by Ed on 22/10/09 in Mods, Spotlight, and tagged with fps, L4D, Left 4 Dead, mod, Tellytubbies, zombie.
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