The death match is the oldest and simplest from of multi-player fps gaming. You drop X number of people into a pit, and first one to Y points wins. It’s fun, it’s a classic, and it works. However as teamwork based games become more popular the classic free for all is beginning to disappear.

If we look at some of the biggest first person shooters of last year, games like Call of Duty 5 and Farcry 2. While they both feature death match, they have a much larger popularity in in team death match and other team based game modes. Other games from last year, like Gears of War 2, Army of Two, and Left 4 Dead don’t even have it as an option. If we look back into the year before, we had Team Fortress 2, Call of duty 4, and Halo 3. Two of witch are still big in on-line gaming, and of them, Team Fortress 2 is strictly team based. Now the fact that there might be a trend is great, but what does it mean?

On the most basic level, it means gamers like working with other people more, and from there, I can come up with two ideas for what this trend could signify, one interesting and the other, more likely. The first being that gamers like working together more because it is more rewarding, and fosters more of a community. Many people I know enjoy fragging their friends, but they say it’s so much more satisfying when you and your friend save the day together. I second this opinion whole heartedly. Team fortress 2 is one of my favorite games because of the times when I’m forced to work with my team mates to progress. Team matches also reward people who play together more often as they work more and more cohesively as a team, and since your friends are not on all the time, you start to make connections with other gamers as you work together, and a solid community is formed. This community then adds to the staying power of a game, which would hopefully lead to gaming companies spending more time on games that have already been released, to keep the community at that game instead of moving to a new one.

(continue reading…)

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard of the Dawn of War 2 beta. So far, the reception of it seems very one sided, people love it. I have yet to hear someone say anything bad about it. So when the Beta went open last week, I leaped at the chance to try the game out, hoping my past prejudices were wrong.

I went into the beta fully expecting a festering pile of crap. Everyone I know, myself included, felt the last DOW expansion was possibly one of the most brutal affronts to gaming ever made my a mainstream company. Bugs, unbalanced units, and the lamest RTS gimmick that never worked are the things that come to mind when I think back to it. Then to drop my expectations even more, I read a review equating DOW2 to Soulstorm, and saying this was a good thing. However, I was pleasantly surprised my the beta. My first impressions of the game were quite good, but sadly, this optimism wore off after a few rounds of play and the problems began to show themselves.

Before I get too far into my opinion of the new game play, heres a general rundown on how it works. Before the game starts, you pick your race, and hero. Then when it gets going, you get your hero, your main building, a squad of a basic unit, and a defense building(or two). From there you go around capturing points for either requisition, or power. You use that to build your army, and upgrade your men and main building. Using these forces you then try to either destroy your enemies base, or hold the capture points, depending on the game type. As your units kill enemies, they gain experience and add to an enemies killed resource. As Experience builds, your squads will eventually level up and become more powerful. The enemies killed resource allows you to use special “Global Powers” that depend on your race and hero chosen. They range from spawning units to orbital barrages.

(continue reading…)