Karrde's Beer Reviews #1 - Deschutes Brewery - Hop in the Dark

~Surf314

Editor's note: we being well rounded individuals (snicker) enjoy more than just games. By popular request, and popular affection of beer, I now present to you the first beer review by Karrde. If you are over 21 and can find this beer, take a sip and tell us what you think at the official beer tasting thread



Name: Hop in the Dark Cascadian Dark Ale
Brewery: Deschutes Brewery - Bend, Oregon
ABV: 6.5%
IBU: 75
Size: 1 pint, 6 ounces
Price I Paid: $7.99 + tax (France 44th Wine & Spirits in Minneapolis, MN)
Availability: May to September
Website: http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/brews/bond-street-series/hop-in-the-dark/default.aspx

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Mod Night - PVKII

~Surf314

This week we'll be playing Pirates, Vikings, and Knights II

What's there to know about this mod? They pit three of the most badass.... badasses from history against one another!

I will go on record and say Pirates > Everything else. No other class can throw a parrot at someone.

Anyway, I hope a lot of you turn out for this, the more people, the more fun!

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

Time: 9:00pm EST
Server IP: 205.237.100.92:27035
Password: littlecart (if server gets too empty, will open it)

Who's all planning on showing up?

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Front Page Challenge #1 - Nerf Pets

~Surf314

For this challenge I had to pick the one that made me laugh immediately upon seeing it:


The little bastard can use the damn thing 8 times in a row before it finally dies.

If you tie this guy in a sack with rocks and throw it over the bridge then kitty is behind you and he has a knife! Run him over and kitty is in your backseat and he has a gun. If you are very still maybe you can live a bit longer but I wouldn't guarantee it. This kitty has a sophisticated watch and a serious attitude problem.

Hit the jump for the rest.

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The Brave New World of MMOs

~Surf314

MMOs will be the future of multiplayer if only someone could do them right. Think about it. Multi-player is becoming more and more important now that most people who play games have access to broadband Internet. But regular multiplayer games have distinct drawbacks. Servers have to be community provided or hosted locally on a player’s machine.These can have a wide variety of lag and stability issues, which will give significant advantages to the host and sometimes the server provider. Another issue is player interaction. Games are social by nature, but with traditional multiplayer games you are either thrown in with a bunch of people you don’t know or you have to find your own group of people before you even play. Sometimes you can get lucky and pop into a server with great people, sometimes you aren’t. This creates the need for large internet cliques which can create great communities (BRBU), but are mostly limited to who you stumble across by luck.

This brings us to MMOs and the promise they hold for the future of gaming. With an MMO, the developer can craft the player experience from beginning to end. They control the servers, they provide avenues for socializing and forming groups, and they shepherd these players from action to action. They can keep a close eye on how everyone is playing the game and fix bad experiences while adding new good ones. Truly this is the way to do things. Everyone gets thrown in together and then they divide themselves into groups to play together. It’s a smooth and logical process. Unfortunately I have yet to see a developer really understand the opportunities available to them. This article will attempt break down the key issues of MMOs to see what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.

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What is a girl gamer?

~Luinbariel

I had planned to start this with “The gaming industry tells us that the female gamer is a scarce individual” and then go on from there, but I couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be true.  “Tells us” would imply that a male gamer is speaking to other male gamers about the female demographic. No, I can’t assume that position and pretend I fit in with that group, no matter how much I think I do (at least in spirit).

The next logical, antithetical headline seemed to be “Insights on the elusive girl gamer” and yet I still couldn’t go that route. That would be jumping right into a subject that I couldn’t adequately outline, and that even the most hard-core girl gamer could identify, thanks to a fundamental flaw. How can you offer insights into something that no one can really define? Sure, you could say it’s as simple as “there’s a girl, and she likes games” but there are so many questions left unanswered, like does she fit the other typical gamer stereotypes? How did she get into a market that is largely male? What sort of games makes a girl gamer? The questions seem endless and unanswerable.

So that’s where I plan to start.

What is a girl gamer, exactly?

Like any self-respecting denizen of the internet, I thought I’d better check Google first. That seems like a stupid thing to do, but if enough people have asked this same question, there was at least some hope that an answer was out there, somewhere. Of course one of the first links available was a Wikipedia entry, and this was pleasing. We know that even though wiki’s aren’t necessarily reliable sources of information, at the very least they’re a collection of what everyone else thinks. So, maybe, I could get a good idea of what everyone else thought a girl gamer was.

The very first thing I noticed about this article was that it was marked for deletion.

Seriously?

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New BC2 Server live, old one on life support

~Surf314

Yesterday we set up a new Bad Company 2 server with the game server host Nuclear Fallout. This server is much higher performance and should fix a majority of our lag and hit detection problems. However until the client update is released various network problems will make it hard to maintain population so all are encouraged to seed. As it is superior it has taken the name Gold Version with our original server downgraded to Silver Version. To find our servers just do a server search for "brb" and both should come up, or use the information below.

The old server has been canceled but it is paid for through 5/5. I've downgraded it to R8 for easy seeding using the clean soldier trick. Overall it will probably best serve as a Squad Rush and Squad Deathmatch server, but I'm leaving it up to you to help find the best uses for it. We can run some squad scrimmages there, use it to goof off in, or give pilot training. It's up to you. As always make sure to use mumble when you want to play even if our server is empty at the time. It is still the best way to gauge how many BRBUers are online and playing at any given time.

New Server Info:
brbuninstalling.com NFO server Vanilla Gold Version
brbuninstalling.nuclearfallout.net:19567

Mumble Info:
72.9.158.17 : 34788

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Review: Just Cause 2

~Spore

Name: Just Cause 2
Developer: Avalanche Studios
Publisher: Square Enix
Release Date: March 23rd, 2010
Platforms: PC (Reviewed), 360, PS3
DRM: Steam


  Just Cause 2 stars Rico Rodriguez, the US agent from the first Just Cause, who is dropped into the fictional island nation located in Southeast Asia called Panau. Your goal as Rico is to oust the new dictator of Panau from office, Baby Panay, who has squandered all ties to the nation's former ally, America. Your means of achieving this are by causing chaos in any way possible to instigate a revolution from the Panau people. That could be destroying statues of Baby Panay's likeness, blowing up government owned gas stations, or sabotaging Panau military bases among dozens of other things. During your mission, you will ally with three different faction leaders in optional missions. Each with their own, but not conflicting agendas. You will meet The Ular Boys who are trying to remove any foreign influence from Panau and give rule back to the natives, The Roaches who are attempting to remove all government control from trade in Panau, and The Reapers who wish to create a communist revolution of the people. The story goes deeper than this, but trying to understand the admittedly poorly written plot delivered to players with bad dialog and cringe-worthy voice acting is a lost cause. Let it be known that this game, like a summer action blockbuster, is not something you go to for moving dialog.

Read the rest of the review after the jump!

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Front Page - Official Launch

~CaffeinePowered

Huge thanks to HeK and Backfire for all the work they put into this and right on the community's second birthday too. We now finally have something that isn't just the plain simple machines forum to see when we visit the site.

As in my previous post, I'd like to ask you to add us to your adblock amnesty list, any ad revenue generated goes immediately into the fund for the servers.


Thanks for playing and here's to another great year!

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Front Page - Almost Ready to Launch

~CaffeinePowered

As you are reading this the front page is in the final deployment.

Its been almost two years since we first discussed having a front page and its all finally coming to fruition. If you notice any bugs here please report them directly to HeK or myself.

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