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Modern Warfare 2

I’ve been playing quite a lot of Modern Warfare 2 a lot since Christmas. As has been reported in the media, the game has smashed sales records – in part, due to its addictive multiplayer mode. However, after giving the online a good playthrough and reaching the first prestige, there are some glaring problems with this sequel:

First of all, the matchmaking system is abysmal. It is downright awful. Whereas in Halo or Gears of War, you would get paired with other gamers also looking for a match, MW2′s matchmaking servers just drop you into an existing game where there’s a spare slot. So lo and behold, not only do you get put in a match halfway through, most of the time you’re on the losing team because people tend to leave when things aren’t going their way.

Also a major problem with the matchmaking is the game connection distance. If IW’s community manager is to be believed, then the game automatically picks a session with the most ‘optimal’ connection. How then, is it possible that the only games I end up in are distant matches with USA players, when I’m pretty damn sure that many gamers in the UK are also playing MW2′s multiplayer…

The second big issue I have with the multiplayer is the weapons imbalance. The secondary weapons are just too powerful at short range. What happened to the good ol’ days with a pistol, not over-powered Akimbo Model 1887 shotguns (or for any dual-wielded shotguns for that matter). The amount of people who take to camping at the top of stairs with those buggers is unbelievable.

As a gamer who paid for the game on release day (despite the high prices), I think Infinity Ward/Activision have a moral right to sort out the botch job of a matchmaking system already there. Either overhaul it completely or give us some options for it – possibly the “Local Search” option featured in Treyarch’s Call of Duty: World at War.

As far as the over-powered weapons go, I can live with that, but it’s irritating when you feel cheated out of a few kills because someone is just sitting in the corner tapping both triggers when you run through a door. Having said all this, I still think MW2 is a good game, with an enthralling (but short) single player campaign and some extra sprinklings of co-op alongside. The multiplayer just needs a bit of work so that it can live up to its predecessor

Merry Christmas!

Yes, it’s another one of those posts…

Joking aside, have a good one and best wishes for 2010. You never know, I might post more frequently next year

Jordan

Facebook, privacy, and why they've got the wrong idea.

I’ve been a member on Facebook for a long while. I don’t use it addictively, but it’s been the private social networking place between me and my friends, where we can discuss things we wouldn’t be comfortable with doing if the rest of the world was watching. This is unlike Twitter, which has been my place to rant my thoughts to the rest of the world. It seems like this is about to change.

You’ve probably all been prompted by now to “review” your Facebook privacy settings in their latest update rolled out yesterday. In this dialog you’re nudged towards sharing select things with “Everyone”, but you can keep your current settings if you wish. Since I’d like to keep my private profile to stay how it was, I chose to stick to my existing settings and was on my way.

However, I’m the sort of person who (usually) knows what I’m doing with these sort of things. Already I’ve seen today people unaware they’ve accidentally published their entire profile, pictures and updates to the world, and in today’s all-encompassing digital age where nothing ever completely disappears from the internet, this is a very dangerous area. We’ve all heard of cases where people have posted insulting statuses about their boss, then realised they’re actually their friend. Now it doesn’t even take a friendship with the boss for him to see your incriminating statuses if you’re using Facebook’s “recommended” settings.

Even more infuriating is the now standard amounts of information which are shown on your profile to the public. I have no control over who sees my friends, my pages or even worse, the events I’m attending with the specific times and dates. Surely this stuff should be under the same controls as everything else?

It’s clear why Facebook are doing this – as already explained on various websites, they’ve struck a deal with Microsoft’s Bing search engine to provide public status updates to its searches. They are expected to do a similar deal with Google next year. To do this they’ve nudged their members to share all and covering it up by saying how much more streamlined it will be.

For me, Facebook was a private place I could chat with my friends, but if they can’t guarantee the privacy of my posts, events and profile, then I’ll think twice before posting that update or RSVPing to an event. I think they’ve got the complete wrong idea.

Jordan

Clans

I’ve been in a clan (off and on) for almost a year now. It’s been great fun playing games with them on the Xbox and I’ve met a load of great people who I’m good friends with now. However, it has been one heck of a rollercoaster ride.

First, let me tell you about the clan. It’s called The Yakuza and has been running for around a year and a few months. There are about 30 members in the clan. Since I joined, we’ve gone through about three different leaders and eventually back to the original one. Every time a new leader comes around we have a sort of probationary period where everyone gets along, and then it all slowly turns back into an argument.

However, we’ve had our good days too – we’ve done a lot of fun games and even made a movie and some other short videos together. We’ve played tons and tons of CoD5 and now MW2, as well as the long classic GTA.

It’s safe to say I’ve had some great times being in a clan, but after the experiences of being in a clan, I don’t think I’d join another one.  :)

BarCamp Blackpool SVN Slides

My slides from my talk at BarCamp Blackpool about Getting Started with Subversion have been uploaded to SlideShare:

PHPNW 2009

PHPNW 2009 was AWESOME

This year it was held at the Manchester Conference Centre which seemed a much more suited venue than last year at the G-MEX, with two theatre-style rooms and a nice hall used for food and exhibitors.

Since I was helping out, I couldn’t see all the talks I was hoping to see, but they were all recorded and I think they will be online soon. However, the talks I did see were really interesting and I came away from the event with a load of things I’m meaning to follow up on!

Probably one of the best talks was ‘Tools and Talent’ by Plusnet developer Rowan Merewood. It was quite insightful into how to pester a development group into using a new tool and how to prepare for a large-scale migration between platforms. It was also rather humorous

It was quite good to see Microsoft doing a talk today. Despite the heckling, they showed off their new WebsiteSpark program and a new program called SketchFlow part of their Expression Studio series. They also had a prize draw, in which I won some Microsoft Points (and was also given some more by Phil – thanks!)

The day finished off with a meal and a free bar sponsored by Sun. There are further events on in the morning at the Museum of Science and Industry – I’ll try to get there but can’t guarantee anything.

On the whole, the event surpassed the expectations set by last year’s conference, and had a great line-up of talks and speakers as well as an equally-awesome group of attendees. See you all next year!

Jordan

Upcoming Games…

There’s a ton of games coming out soon in the pre-Christmas rush – quite a few I expect will be drivel as usual, but there are a few ones I plan to buy:-

FIFA 10:- First of all, my excuse for this game is that I’ve not bought a football game in a while… as much as I hate EA for their unfair DLC practices (and this one is no exception!), if the demo is anything to go by then they’ve hit the nail on the head with this one – i’ve never played a demo so much.

Alpha Protocol:- This for me will be the one to watch – it could so drastically go either way. The previews look promising, but I will probably wait for a review for this one to help me make up my mind on if it warrants a purchase or not. The concept itself looks really good though.

Modern Warfare 2:- Of course, I’ll be getting this This should be quite good but I’m disappointed that Activision have decided to try and milk it for £55 – a price i definitely won’t be paying for a game (I hardly ever pay £45 for a game on release!) Not to mention the countless map packs etc..

GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony:- Albeit not a game, it’s gonna be a really good add-on to Grand Theft Auto with parachutes and countless more great things. I do think it’s quite a shame it’s 360 exclusive because it’s quite unfair on PS3 owners – but there again it all comes down to business in this day and age!

Assassins Creed 2:- If it’s as repetitive as the first game, I’ll give it a miss. If anything, I’ll wait for reviews, or just wait for it to come in stores pre-owned. Mind you, Jade Raymond aside, it could be quite a good game.

I know there are quite a few I’ve left off this list, but that’s mostly cause they are 360 exclusives and I don’t want the discussion to be too weighted. I could be radically off the mark with my opinions though, as I apparently was with my music post not so long ago, so feel free to correct me

Soo, 2 years eh?

This blog has turned the grand old age of two. Well, two years is a long time I guess, but it’s flown by pretty quickly. Here’s to another good year of (occasional) ramblings about something not the least interesting, and goodness knows how many design changes

Young Rewired State

This weekend, around 50 or so teenagers gathered at Google’s London HQ for an event hosted by Rewired State – an organization dedicated to making better government websites using data they provide through APIs and the like. The task for the weekend? To build an uber-cool app from government data or anything else you can find, then present it to a panel of people from the government and other, well-respected, organisations. The entire weekend was free and I got accommodation and a train ticket down to London and back too!

The train journey to London was awesome – first time I’ve taken the train anywhere far away. Preston to London in something amazing like 2 hours and 10 mins. Tube, of course, was busy as usual (not to mention half-closed… as usual) but it’s quite exciting getting it everywhere.

Google’s offices were located in Belgrave House, a fancy new office building a stone’s throw away from Victoria station, and inside you could find sofas, deckchairs and bean-bags galore (: Tons of free chocolate and drinks and crisps and sandwiches and Google Cupcakes too!

Right, back to the hacking. The morning started off by discussing ideas. I was interested in doing something transportey so I went and discussed ideas with other people interested in the same. There, I met up with Horatio Caine who wanted to make a real-time bus info website for use on mobiles etc. (Currently this isn’t available on the TfL website.) We started work, and later was introduced to James and Lawrence, who arrived later on in the day and decided to work with us too.

We soon had our idea being developed – called, quite jokingly, TFHell – we scraped bus route information and generated the times ourselves, as a proof-of-concept of what could be done quite easily, if Transport for London would release their data on buses like many other councils have around the country. Take a look at Oxford’s Buses for example.

The final day, we narrowly missed launching a demo for our presentation, so we had to work with screenshots of our mockups for our pitch. Since we lacked a demo, this made our project look like it had just been mocked-up for the presentation, and so it didn’t really reflect the effort gone into the project generating the random times etc. However, we won the award for “most likely to be bought by Google”, and now have a cool demo online you can check out here.

The project that won “best in show” was SchoolRoutr 2.0 Beta, an ingenious app which could find the safest route to school from your house, routing around crime locations mentioned in news articles. This was developed by Stephen Mount.

It was quite sad to see the weekend come to a close, it was so cool being in Google and with loads of other people all focused on developing awesome new ideas. In the case of TFHell, I hope we can lobby Transport for London to release the data they have on live buses, and then we can take it further to do a proper launch. Thanks to everyone who came to the weekend, organised it, and to the judges for giving our project an award. (:

There is also talk of another Hack the Government day next May. I’ve pencilled that one into my calendar!

Guitar Hero Zombies?

If you’re a fan of the Nazi Zombies game mode for Call of Duty: World at War, you might know who Kevin Sherwood and Elena Siegman are. No? Well, they are the awesome people who produced the zombie songs used in the trailers and hidden inside all the DLC zombie maps. Kevin (who goes by the Twitter username @newdnewbs) has launched a joint campaign with WeTheGamerz to try and get the three zombie songs so far into the next Guitar Hero game. Now that would be cool

I’ve heard there’s a website on the way soon in support of the idea – I recommend you keep your eyes on http://www.zombiesongs.com/ and also @ZombieHeros for updates.

Jordan