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Camping in first person shooter games is a legitimate strategy. I don’t know why so many people dislike it. I am not a full time camper, but I still think there is nothing wrong with it.

Let’s take into account Counter Strike Source. You are down to 20 health, 75% of the opposing team is dead, and 50% of your team is alive. Why rush and get yourself killed when you can camp it out and then continue rushing next round? It doesn’t make sense, and it will only ruin your kill to death ratio.

If you’re sniping, camping might be your only option. You can’t do close combat with a scout or AWP, so you must camp across the map. Same thing in Team Fortress 2 and other first person shooter games.

The only situation where I think camping is completely wrong is when you’re one of the last people left on your team. Even if you are sniping or are low on health, in this situation you have to stop camping. Making people wait for you to die or to kill the last guy is annoying and will even get you banned in most servers. Don’t camp if you’re holding up the game for the rest of the team, even if it means you having a high chance of getting killed.

Camping is actually harder than most people think. When you get a few kills camping in the same location, the other team will know you’re camping there and will kill you. You have to constantly find new strategic spots to camp. Camping does take skill, unlike most people think.

I think it is wrong for admins to ban campers if they’re camping legitimately. If they’re holding up the team, they can get warned or kicked. But don’t hate on campers just because they frequently kill you.

Again, I am not a camper and I don’t camp. I play low gravity gungame 99% of the time, so camping isn’t even an option. But in some maps and in some situations, it is the only option. So either learn to camp right, learn to take out campers, or don’t trash talk and ban the campers.

Recently the Gold Rush update was rolled out for Team Fortress 2. I spent most of my free time today playing it, so here is my quick review on it. But before that, if you don’t have Team Fortress 2, you can play the full game for free this weekend.

Gold Rush is a new map and gameplay type in which you have to stand around a cart and move it along the tracks. The more teammates standing near the cart, the faster it moves to each checkpoint on the tracks. The other team is defending. Players on the attacking team need to be constantly pushing the cart forward to keep it from automatically moving backwards – after 30 seconds it starts moving backwards.

Since the object of Gold Rush is to stand around the cart while the defending team is attacking you, it sure sounds like the attacking team would always be made up almost entirely of heavys. I thought this too at first, but actually it’s not like that at all. I played as a sniper most of the time, and I had a score of 183, being the highest on my team and the second highest of both teams. Even if your team is attacking, you can stand a good ways behind the cart and snipe the defenders.

A heavy teamed up with a medic is how the cart is moved forward most of the time. The thing about Gold Rush is that the whole opposing team is attacking a single area. If you camp, you won’t move the cart forward. And if you’re defending, you know where the attackers are going to come from by looking at the tracks. This is about the only thing wrong with Gold Rush though – everything else is gold (no pun intended).

I played a couple of rounds as each class, and I can say that each class can be useful in Gold Rush. A couple of good spies can be extremely useful. You can go invisible and sneak through the line of fire and go behind the other team. The other team is facing one way the whole time, so if you get behind them you can get a few stabs before being shot.

The engineer becomes very useful to set up turrets along the track, if you’re defending. Once again, since there is only one track, you know where the main group of attackers are going to come from. Placing a turret after a turn can get you a nice number of kills.

Medics are absolutely necessary when moving the cart in TF2 Gold Rush. The cart gets attacked very heavily when moved, and without a few medics the whole team can be destroyed with a couple of stickies from an opposing demoman along the tracks. This is good though, as now maybe someone will have a chance of actually unlocking the almost impossible medic achievements that just came out.

The one class that I would say is almost completely useless in Gold Rush though is the scout. When attacking, scouts get destroyed by explosions. When defending, well.. you can’t really defend with a scout. Gold Rush is for the heavy classes such as demoman, heavy, soldier, etc. Scouts are for close up combat, but they just can’t survive the bombardment of rockets, stickies, and heavy fire flying at them.

In conclusion Team Fortress 2 Gold Rush is an extremely fun new map and gametype. Although I have only played it for one day, I think I can say it is the best map and gameplay in Team Fortress 2. The fun level is just off the charts. So go play it now if you have Team Fortress 2, and if you don’t, either buy it or play this weekend for free.

Although Grand Theft Auto IV is out, many people won’t be able to play it because they don’t own an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3. So for those of us with a PC version of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, here are some mods that will make it look more like Grand Theft Auto IV.

You might need a good computer to run some of these mods, as they use much higher quality textures. I have an 8800GTS, 4GB of memory, and a Core 2 Duo processor, yet the game still lags a bit for me when in heavy fog in a crowded area with all graphical settings turned to maximum.

Be careful when modding your game, as it might corrupt your install. If anything gets corrupted, you will probably just have to reinstall, but you might lose your saved games. You are on your own when installing mods, and I am not responsible for any data loss that you may cause.

San Andreas Retextured 3

This mod includes textures for most everything in San Andreas. It also includes some new sounds for the weapons and high resolution weapon textures. I wasn’t able to test out the car quality and sounds as I have custom cars already installed. This mod left my previous modded cars untouched. This is one of the best mods because it is so detailed. Train tracks look photo realistic in San Fierro, and the textures everywhere are very high quality and high resolution. The new weapon sounds are more realistic too, and the weapon skins are great. Download this mod here.

San Andreas Multiplayer

This is a well known mod that gives San Andreas a multiplayer option. SA-MP, in short, lets you play with up to 200 people from anywhere in the world. There are several fun game types. This mod has been a little buggy for me, but it’s still a ton of fun. But the amazing thing is you get all of this in just around 3.5MB – now that’s some great coding! Download this mod here.

10x Draw Distance

This mod increases the draw distance ten times. Pretty self explanatory. This makes the game more realistic. This one will really slow down your system, especially if you’re flying in the clouds. Download this mod here.

Individual skins for vehicles, aircraft, buildings, and everything else

You can skin each car, boat, airplane, helicopter, person, building, and just about everything else in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Check out The GTA Place for hundreds of individual skins.

These mods will greatly increase the visual quality of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Of course it still won’t be like GTA IV since it has new physics, a new city, and many more new features, but at least now you won’t have to cringe when looking at the terrible (by today’s standards) graphics in San Andreas.

If you know of any other good GTA San Andreas mods, post them below.

As midnight approaches today, April 28th, I am wishing more and more that I had a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. So now I am wondering – what will all the PC gamers that don’t own current generation consoles be doing tomorrow (or in some parts of the world, today)? I’m sure not many people will go out and buy a console just for one game, but I do know some people that will. Grand Theft Auto IV is one of those games that will make some people buy a console just to play it.

I simply have no choice. I will have to wait it out for the PC version of GTA 4. Hopefully it will come this year, but that will be in anywhere from four to eight or more months of waiting. Why does Rockstar have to make the deals with the consoles first? It’s not fair for PC gamers, as they could have easily released GTA 4 for Windows at the same time as consoles.

So what do we PC gamers do now? Watching trailers, reading reviews, and playing on our friends’ consoles is the only choice left. Now sure the PC version is probably going to look a lot better than the console versions and will have a ton of unofficial mods, but is it worth the half year wait? I actually can’t decide that one, since mods have added so much more content and replay value to previous Grand Theft Auto games, such as San Andreas.

And now I am off to find some new mods for my PC version of GTA San Andreas. Meanwhile, for us PC gamers, the GTA 4 storyline will be spoiled in the next half year. We will see thousands of gameplay videos, screenshots, and reviews that will spoil the game. So I’ll just be hoping that the PC version will be much better, like the past PC versions of GTA. Until then, we can only wait.

image from Rockstar Games

According to various sources I have found on the internet, Grand Theft Auto IV might be coming to the PC this year, sometime around October. Previous Grand Theft Auto games have come out about 6 to 8 months after the console release. If this news is correct, GTA IV might be coming only four months from the console release. I don’t know if this will actually happen, but since I’m a PC gamer I will be following more news about the PC release.

Hopefully the PC version will feature user made content and mods. Currently there are thousands of unofficial mods available for the PC version of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, and these add value to the game, even though Rockstar might not be happy with them. I’m looking forward to custom content for GTA IV.

I’ll post more information about Grand Theft Auto 4 for the PC if or when the info becomes available.

BoomsticK pits you and your trusty shotgun against a relentless onslaught of insane shapes. 21 Tiers of shape shooting, particle blastin, power-up grabbin madness! Compare your sick score to the entire world and flaunt your BoomsticK skills. (more…)

Is on-the-fly sensitivity switching needed for gaming mice? I find it to be a very useful feature. I have a Logitech MX518, which has on-the-fly DPI changing. A lot of people say this is a useless feature. I game almost daily, mostly playing FPS games like Counter Strike Source and Team Fortress 2. I find that it is very useful to be able to switch from high to low sensitivity when sniping or trying to shoot someone from far away.

I like to play at a very high sensitivity setting in Counter Strike Source. I play at 1600DPI, which is full on my MX518, and 4.8 sensitivity in-game. This lets me make about three 360 degree turns while moving my mouse six inches. This is considered very high, and most people like to play on very low sensitivities. But I like it like this because with this setup I do very well in both close combat and sniping, mainly because if I want to get a headshot from across the map, I will quickly switch my mouse to the lowest DPI setting, and proceed to get my headshot.

The MX518 doesn’t need software to enable DPI switching. However you can use Logitech software to change the default DPI settings, but I choose not to as the defaults suit me well. There are three settings, and I use the highest for gaming, lowest for sniping, and middle for Windows.

I find on-the-fly sensitivity switching to be a great and very useful feature, and I definitely will not buy a mouse without it.

Crysis was one of the most over hyped games ever. People were flooding forums with Crysis related talk before the game came out. Everyone was eager for leaked info, footage, screenshots, and anything else that would make their wait easier.

And then Crysis was released. People found out they couldn’t play it on high settings, even if they had the latest hardware. They thought Crytek was kidding when they said computers wouldn’t be able to completely max it out for two or three years.

Now there is no more talk about Crysis. People found they couldn’t make it look as great on their own machines as in the release videos. And Crysis became a tech demo and benchmark. EA claimed sales exceeded their expectations, and while they probably did, I bet it’s not selling many copies anymore.

Crysis singleplayer is boring, and in multiplayer you won’t find a server without any hackers. For me, it’s just a tech demo now; the only fun I get out of it is downloading custom maps people make any playing them, mainly for the physics and graphics. The game makes an incredibly fun tech demo, but I wouldn’t play singleplayer anymore, and multiplayer is doomed. I wouldn’t purchase this game again.

People aren’t talking about it anymore in gaming forums. No one is posting Crysis screenshots anymore, while they’re still posting F.E.A.R., Call of Duty 4, and Battlefield 2 screenshots. Crysis has almost been forgotten by the gaming community.

<--- click picture to view gallery. Crysis isn’t the only game that you won’t be able to max out. Trackmania Nations Forever is the new release of the popular Trackmania Nations games. TmN is a completely free game for the PC. It is an online multiplayer racing game. It features very fast-paced races and excellent graphics.

TmN Forever has a completely new menu interface and will require a new account – normal Trackmania Nations accounts will not work with it. The graphics are slightly better, but still require lots of processing power. I was only able to play on High settings with no AA and opponent cars on medium, no motion blur, no bloom, and 4x anisotropic filtering. The highest settings are Very High with 16x MSAA and Anisotropic filtering. I am not sure if a 9800 can max this game, but my 8800 can’t.

The gameplay seems the same to me, while the website seems to say that physics and some other things are improved. Tracks have improved – you can make more complicated tracks and you can customize them more.

The game is still hard. You need to be very good if you want to come in a high rank on a top server. The top servers have hundreds of people playing on them, so you’re playing with many people at the same time. TmN does a great job of handling ping, as most players have good ping and don’t lag on your screen. If they do, it doesn’t affect you. I am pretty good and on my best run I came in 21st out of about 200 players.

The chat in the big servers is pretty crazy. People swear and insult each other every half second, and there is an unstoppable stream of racial insults. I find it hilarious but some people will find it offensive. If you don’t want to see the ingame chat, you can disable it in the menu.

Overall Trackmania Nations Forever is a very fun game that I recommend you download. It is only around 500MB so there is no reason you shouldn’t give it at try – after all it is free. Click here to download Trackmania Nations Forever from the Trackmania website.

Here are 100 screenshots from GTA IV for the Playstation 3.

View more screenshots for Grand Theft Auto IV