Saracen

I can just see it when Tiberium comes out. Every member over there will program themselves to buy a certain re-enforcement squad drop, run a particular route religiously like they're being guided by Satellite Navigation, use a particular gun, choose the only optimum spawn point on the map... everything will be covered in a one track strategy that all should use, and none should break! In fact the only choice GameReplays will offer you is in how you end up dying!! But no doubt their will be a one and only mega strategy to prevent that happening too! Talk about killing the fun from your Multiplayer Gaming! Actually I could just imagine a GameReplays Tournament. Everyone mirroring and mimicing each other drop for drop, move for move, religiously following the guide. The select route means that eventually the forces will clash into each other, everyone will die, and it'll be rinse and repeat. There will be no winners because everyone will have the same points and kill/death ratio... all because the so called hard working strategists at GR.org say you have to play that way!

Time for someone to shed some semi-official light here. One of my mate's a Manager at my local GAME store, so I asked him today about it all. Firstly, is it a GAME exclusive? Yes, it is... No other UK game retailer will be receiving such a special edition. The reason? Publishers will often pay GAME a lot of money to help market their products. Electronic Arts & THQ respectively happen to be the publishers that pay the biggest amount per title. Thus it is common for publishers to make these special editions for GAME to significantly cut down on the payment for GAME's initial third party marketing fee. Then when GAME purchase them in bulk, they'll pay the same price as any standard edition title, and still only give back the revenue, per title, as a standard title would make also. So in turn the higher price difference GAME set for such an SE title, that extra gets put back straight into GAME's pockets rather than going to the publisher.... if you see what I mean. Chances are though, whatever the biggest game retailer is in your region (eg. GameStop) chances are that, that particular company might also be selling a similar style special edition. Although this is at the discretion of the publisher and retailer. So that's all you can hope for... As is clear, South Africa's main retailer already have agreed with EA to the fee sidestep option.

It must be broken then The Sea wing has no form of attack other than anti-air, and proves extremely vulnerable to most sea units. Not only that, but it is extremely lightly armoured so it doesn't take much to knock it out. Ideally they work best in packs of 3 or more while in the sea. As for them being Sky wings, they are only really a menace to infantry and light recon units, and thus work best for taking out commando attacks or scouting parties. As for medium and heavy units, they don't make much of a dent at all, and because of its weak armour, will not stand up to any anti-air enemy units for very long. Far from imbalanced

As I have read, a lot of work goes into these maps, and many are well thought out for the sake of balance. But I hate to say that I hold no appreciation for purely symmetrical maps. Such maps as A Path Beyond, were perfect.... a huge map that was not entirely symmetrical, and it had trees, rivers, a couple of bridges etc... all such features were well spaced out, and the balance was poised beautifully... In fact there were loads of damn good maps in the original Red Alert, and even some in Red Alert 2 which were perfect for MP, and tournament play and didn't need to be like what's been previewed here. I just hope this trend doesn't continue across the whole Multiplayer map range, because it even means comp stomp Skirmishes become huge yawn fests. I just hope the RA3 single player campaign has maps which are crafted as well as those in both BfME games, they we're really well done, those are the maps I like... Loads of balanced randomly, well crafted maps in all game modes will score huge points in my book.

My only interest is that Eric the Eel guy who came last and took around 4 minutes to swim the 100 meters freestyle in the last Olympics. If I remember rightly he was taking part on behalf of the developing nations events, and obviously came last.. Since then however he's had a tonne of training, Nike sponsorship, and is apparently back again to prove his worth. No doubt he's had his 15 minutes of fame and will probably be overlooked, but I wanna see his transformation since he's been guided by professionals over the last 4 years. Other than that... I really couldn't care one bit. The winter olympics gets a lot more of my attention, duly because those events are actually more fun to watch.

That should please many people without a doubt. Also, on the subject of GTA, I wish I still had my Nintendo DS... They announced GTA: Chinatown Wars at E3. I'd love to have a go at that.

Anarchists don't believe in Religion, we're all Atheists to the core! We also call for the abolition of religion since it's widely regarded as another form of control. And Mina, your contribution to this topic is rather destitute in acute contention. In fact, sometimes you come across as rather dolt!

They sound quite decent from what I can gather.... Just had a preview of "Devour" on youtube, but didn't think much of that. However I had a look at some of their other stuff, and it's much more decent quality than the aforementioned song. I might have to take a look around the shops tomorrow and see if their CDs are over here. They'll tie me over until Papa Roach's new album comes out in 3-5 weeks.

Successful marketing almost goes hand in hand with sex appeal... if she was wearing shoes, sandals or hell even pink fluffy bunny slippers it wouldn't be the same. I've done marketing as a job, trust me... bare feet are powerful weapon when combined with a pair of long, gorgeous, smooth, luscious legs. I mean, also the position of such a short skirt is key and really is the icing on the cake. There is a cherry to go with that, but for once the images she's in, we don't actually see masses of cleavage. Although, I imagine there will be images of from Zoo magazine giving us that cherry!

Still hasn't happened yet. It's on Saturday 13th September. Which reminds me, I've gotta go to the Bath Activist Network meeting tomorrow.

My God......She has Clothes on!!!! Well, at least it's official now. It's Milla as Tanya without a doubt. This only strengthens the case. I could go as far as saying Jet Li for the Emperor's son!

Mind the pun, but I'm just gonna slide this in here....

She's one for you Luk3us. A real pin up to make about 6 million RA3 related sigs from. Cos I have to be honest, it's impossible not to find this woman fully clothed.. she's always in a bikini or underwear!! She's a British Actress whom of which starred in a crappy teen soap called Hollyoaks... She's moved on a bit since then. But there was also a British reality show called "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here"... and to my knowledge almost won that. You've probably heard of that at least. Probably the most Safe for Work image I could find..... And That took some time I wouldn't call this news worthy as yet, until it is confirmed. Because as far as British Tabloids go, The Sun contains more bull**** than you'll find up a bull's own ass!

I found this on PlanetCnC's main page... But it's about as news-worthy as me doing a moony out a car window with a piece of paper sellotaped to my ****, with a Nod logo on it. It's called mission briefings from Hell: Darkest fears

Saracen26 or [CNCNZ]Saracen Primarily the former though.

On the last day of July, we finally slip in this month's CNCNZ.com Roundtable for your reading pleasure. This is edition number 10 of our Roundtable Discussion here on CNCNZ.com. This time however, Sonic steps back this month and I head the panel by asking this month's questions. In this edition we cover topics such as Empire of the Rising Sun, Yuriko Omega, Outsourcing of Kane's Wrath, Kane's Wrath SDK, ZoneRunner's Departure, and Renegade X. This month's panel are all returnees from previous discussions: Saracen - CNCNZ.com Co-Webmaster Sonic - CNCNZ.com Webmaster Chickendippers - CNC World Banshee - Project Perfect Mod HeXetic - Planet CNC Blbpaws - CNC Generals World Mighty BOB! - CNC Source Hagren - CNC-Files Thank you to everyone for taking the time to participate this month. Click here to read Roundtable Discussion #10.

For those in the Red Alert 3 Beta Test, EA have a patch for you already. However, don't go jumping for joy about balance fixes for the dreaded Soviet Sickle & Stingray rushes just yet. The patch only fixes a couple of minor User Interface problems and a game exploit. As follows: Fixed an error with the online lobby chat window text becoming corrupted. Fixed graphical bug in main menu screen where the Statue of Liberty was missing and there was a green square at the bottom right of the same screen. Fixed a bug which allowed hacking the game to allow LAN play. At time of posting there is not currently an executable available, so if you're in the Beta, log in to the lobby to download it. The patch weighs in at around 18MB.

After playing the Red Alert 3 Beta over the last few days, I actually decided to sit down with chickendippers of CNC World to test out the new Empire faction, have a few battles, and perhaps even grab a few Beta screenshots for our Beta Gallery. Here's a sample of a few. There are currently 15 images up at this present time. There would have been more on offer, but most unfortunately the Beta decided to crash in the middle of a hugely satisfying ground skirmish. However we will be adding a lot more as time goes on, so keep checking back. So to view these great looking screens head over to our Red Alert 3 Beta Gallery now.

I like what I see so far yes. But I will reserve judgement for the final product. After all we wouldn't want a repeat of last year now, would we? But no, that's not likely from what I've seen so far. The game does show some impressive promise. The Mechanics are different, it's inspired by some of the greatest RTS clones of yesteryear, it's a more micro-intensive game and it somehow has a more sweet tasting C&C formula to it that works. Let's just hope the single player is strong, the acting is solid, and the script writing is even more so, or I will have something to say about it. Of course the balance is still somewhat off, bugs and graphical glitches are everywhere, and my micromanagement sucks... But this is a Beta, and naturally doesn't reflect the final product. Of course I expect all the little nuances to improve, with exception to the latter, because that always sucks!

Another 15, uploaded tonight... It was quite a fun experience!

Having played with all 3 women (that sounds bad doesn't it!?) I prefer miss Omega. The only thing that can really stop her dead in her tracks is a good few anti-infantry armour units. I know balance doesn't count for anything right now in the Beta. But on a 1 vs 1 scale of commandoes Tanya is actually the worst, then Natasha, then Miss Omega. But each commando has to used in different scenarios, one scenario where Tanya can kick ass, Omega would probably wet herself and die... and vice versa. I dunno really, but I feel out of the 3, I can Micro Omega more efficiently than the others. Also I'm gonna chiuck this in.... The RA3 Beta... Tanya's profile has a black box across her eyes as not to give away the identity of the actress playing her... Ironic really when it's looks exactly like this picture stick a black box over her eyes, and it's a spitting image of the game profile.

I'm currently running the Beta at that resolution. Primarily because there's a 50/50 chance at a higher resolution, some form of graphical error such as this comes up: Which basically means my card (despite all recent driver updates) decides to break down and die and/or crash the Beta at any given notice. I've reported the issue a few times now since the crash keeps replicating.... so it appears an on-going issue. I was going to increase the resolution on these since the BMP screenshot file kicks out at a large 2.25MB, but for the filesize you recommend for screenshots of this nature, too much image quality gets lost in the fold.

I actually support this move by EA. If you think about it (not too hard though, you don't wanna hurt yourselves) the First Person Shooter genre is probably the most difficult market to launch a game into. So unless you have a heavyweight marketing campaign, a hugely anticipating fan base outside the initial community and top remarks from about each and every gaming magazine both online and offline.... then you're not really going to pull the punches to make the game a success with consumers. Case in point really. most First Person Shooter titles since 2004 (across all formats) have been good, but not great. The only games have have gotten over a 90% consistent across the board average score are The Orange box, Crysis, Halo 3, CoD4 and BioShock. For 4 years in the gaming industry, that's pretty poor. Of course the irony is that these were all last year's titles too. It's the other end of the spectrum this year, as the industry hasn't exactly released anything in 2008 worth shouting about yet. Also if you consider EA developed FPS games, the last decent game of theirs worth the gamer's time and their praise was Medal of Honour - Allied Assault on the PC. So indeed, they have their work cut out to make something which will remain in gaming history for some time. So yeah, this delay is worth it if they are going to manage to push the envelope somewhere.

Tiberium will probably be the shelved as well.... The UT3 engine is rather a tough cookie to get to work on the PS3l. It took Epic Games another 3 full months of development to crack the PS3. And a couple of developers who have attempted FPS games on the PS3 with the UT3 engine have all but failed to get it working. It has been said by numerous developers who have managed to get titles out on the system, that once you get to grips with the PS3's complexities and start digging, it's an absolute realm of possibility. Although may be harder work, it is work well paid off for the challenge that the system presents. But as we all know, EA's development cycles don't offer the time and money that such a challenge creates. If Tiberium is to get out on time, and if any C&C title is to ever grace the PS3, it's going to take a lot of corporate teamwork and advice from EA developers who have PS3 games under their belts.