ShootMania Interview: Frantic and TCM Gaming

Last week, TCM Gaming became our second European team qualified for our $100,000 ShootMania: Elite tournament at IPL5 at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas! They were kind enough to answer some questions for us, so please check out Frantic, diddix, and luxxiz's responses in the following interview:

How did you first become involved in ShootMania?

TCM.Frantic: Hypno (from k1ck) had a few alpha keys to give away and I happened to be one of the lucky ones to get one from him. When I installed the game I started off playing some public Royal, which was quite fun. But the next day is what made me play ShootMania.. I played some Elite games with luxxiz and phoen|x versus some other mixed teams. We were having so much fun for so many hours. Facing many known names from different games, trying to prove who's the better player/team in such an early stage. It really had been a long time since I played a game that long without having a break, til the morning hours. This is also where my first ShootMania team was created, pure-esports (luxxiz, phoen|x, and myself).

How long have you been playing with your teammates, and have any of you played on different teams in the past?

TCM.Frantic: In ShootMania we've been playing together for about 3 months now I think. I have played with diddix in UT2004 a bit in an instagib CTF team, but nothing serious. With luxxiz on the other side, I have played quite some UT games with and against. We also played CoD4 competitively together, so we knew eachother pretty well. (might be fun to know that kowa from Team Dignitas, was also in our CoD4 team). To answer your second question, I started off with pure-esports and joined Eclypsia after that (playing with Jiepie and Lekaim). After I left them, I joined up with luxxiz again, we took in diddix and joined TCM.

What about ShootMania appeals to your competitive side?

TCM.Frantic: What I like about Shootmania is the pressure as an attacker. A good "crowd control" is needed to avoid all incoming fire, a great aim is needed to eliminate the opponents and good map knowledge comes in handy to create alternative ways towards the pole area. On the defensive side I really like the team play you can build up and play with different kind of tactics and positions.

Tell us about your IPL5 qualifier experiences. You got to the semi-finals of the first qualifier, did that make you and your team train harder?

TCM.Frantic: Yes, it did actually. When we joined the first qualifier we were doing our best to perform well. Having lost a map to Traffic lights (k1ck) did not do us good though. Winning versus the French side of Millenium gave us good hopes, eventhough aKm had just left them. When we lost versus Eclypsia in a close match, this opened our eyes and we indeed started to practice really hard. We watched the VODs of our games and eliminated some flaws in the tactics and thought of new ones to implement. We had two weeks to get this done and we trained our asses off.. In the second qualifier it all worked out nicely and now we're going to Vegas baby! :)

And this last one is for everyone:

How do you feel about beating some of the best ShootMania teams in Europe, and how do you feel about earning your trip to IPL5 in Las Vegas?

TCM.Frantic: We had a tough road ahead of us, with Question mark, GamersLeague, Team Dignitas and Eclypsia waiting for us. We knew it was going to be tough, but we practiced well and we just played our game. All these good teams kept us really sharp and made us play our top game. In the end we managed to beat them all and all the adrenaline in my body was going crazy haha. Our management immediately called us on Skype and everybody was screaming! Such an awesome feeling that was! :D We are really looking forward to compete in IPL5, it's such a big tournament and a bit of a battle between Europe versus USA. The prize money is just absolutely insane and the location.. amazing! This is going to be one big great experience.

TCM.diddix: It feels good to beat some of the best teams in Europe because that's what I together with luxxiz & Frantic are aiming for. The great competition and good teams are two reasons why I play ShootMania. It was really nice to win IPL5 EU Qualifier. I always want to go for 1st place when I play and I know luxxiz and Frantic feel the same. It felt really great when we won the qualifier tournament because after EU qualifier #1 we practiced and checked all the mistakes that we did. And then to come back to the 2nd qualifier and just feel that you've made progress from the practice matches was just great.

TCM.luxxiz: This is exactly why I play competitive. Winning those crucial matches, that feeling! Even better when you come into the match as an underdog and win 3-0. Also winning 3-1 vs dignitas felt really good. Even though it's for $100,000, just going to Las Vegas is a prize for itself. I am really looking forward to it. I am gonna leave Las Vegas as a millionaire!

Is there anyone you'd like to thank for helping you dominate at ShootMania?

TCM.Frantic: First of all I would like to thank luxxiz and diddix for being amazing team mates, without them we wouldn't be traveling to Vegas next month! We're having a great time together, playing this awesome game. I would also like to thank our management for giving us all the support we need. They've been nothing but great help to us since we joined TCM. Also a big thanks to CMStorm, BENQ, CCL, Coolermaster and Multiplay for upgrading our gear and supporting us for this and other upcoming events! Last but not least, thank you for having this interview with us! :)

Big thanks to TCM.Frantic, TCM.diddix, and TCM.luxxiz! Keep practicing hard and stay in top condition for IPL5 in Las Vegas! To see VODs from the EU qualifier that they won, check out http://www.youtube.com/iplshootmania!

Source : ign[dot]com

Ben and Kate: "Pilot" Review

Advance Review: From creator Dana Fox (What Happens in Vegas) comes a sweet, but not too sweet, comedy about a pair of grown siblings who, long ago, formed a unique bond due to an unhappy home life while growing up. Kate (Dakota Johnson - daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith) wound up getting pregnant at an early age and is now the sort of typical young, quirky "trying to make ends meet" TV mom that we've all come to expect. Unlucky in love, but lucky when it comes to the simple, genuine things in life. Like her extremely precocious five year-old daughter, Maddie. So far, so what, right? Kate's a somewhat typical klutzy, "rom-com" leading lady. But then comes Ben.

Ben, played by Academy Award-winning screenwriter (he co-wrote The Descendents with Community's Jim Rash) Nat Faxon, is Kate's older brother. And whereas Kate "grew up too fast," Ben "never grew up at all." He's a big, doofy man-child who's constantly making Kate's life more complicated with his crazy, random antics and, honestly, your enjoyment of Ben and Kate is primarily going to depend on whether or not you find Ben annoying or endearing. I happen to be fall into the latter category on this one, although I can totally see people not enjoying Ben's juvenile mania. I understand if he gets under your skin. In fact, I've seen this pilot twice now and I think about the Bill Murray movie "What About Bob?" each time I see it. Because, drawing from that film, you either love Bob or you totally empathize with Richard Dreyfuss.

So, much in the same way that FOX presented us with Zooey Deschanel's quirky Jess last year when New Girl premiered, Ben's naive dreamer qualities will either excite or irritate you. I think Faxon does a wonderful job of playing a lovable idiot and there were more than a few scenes here that I found pretty damn funny. In this first episode, Ben discovers that his ex, the love of his life, is getting married and decides to come up with a last ditch effort to win her back. Of course, none of this gels with Kate's plan to finally go out on a normal date with her boyfriend George and, possibly, have "the sex" for the first time since her daughter was born.

And while I brought up "What About Bob?" earlier, my thoughts also shift into darker territory when I'm reminded of Laura Linney's character from Love Actually. Remember her? The woman who had to be at the beck and call of her mentally ill brother and couldn't maintain a normal relationship because of it? I probably think of that because A) I just recently watched that movie again, and B) Kate's total acceptance/surrendering to the fact that the comically-obtuse Ben will always be a giant, dominating chunk of her life.

The spotlight might be on Faxon's Ben, but it's Johnson's Kate who does the heavy lifting. She's the other main reason why I feel this show works. If she were just the "straight man" put-upon sister, this would fall apart. These two have a goofy connection and by the end of the episode you feel as though they actually compliment one another. Ben, despite his life-disrupting ways, is protective of Kate a way that has no equal. Which comes in handy since Kate herself winds up in screwball situations of her own.

The rest of the players here - Lucy Punch's full-of-advice bimbo BJ, Echo Kellum's Kate-obsessed Tommy - are fine. Young Maddie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones), when not spouting wisdom beyond her years, makes a great, doe-eyed sounding board for Ben's lunacy. Again, depending on your personality there's a chance that Ben might frustrate you, but I think Ben and Kate is one of the most promising new comedies of the season.

The Ben and Kate pilot can be seen on Hulu. The series premieres on Tuesday, September 25th on FOX.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and IGN. WARNING: No Nudity!

Source : ign[dot]com

Futurama: "Viva Mars Vegas" Review

Warning: Full spoilers from the episode to follow.

In this week's episode "Viva Mars Vegas," the Planet Express crew paid a visit to Mars Vegas for a wind down, courtesy of Amy and the Wong family. It was only an added bonus that Zoidberg was our protagonist for the adventure, going from rags to riches -- and then rags again.

It was actually kind of fun to see the gang all hanging out at Amy's family casino, and Zoidberg's lavish money montage had some nice chuckles, too. His "let it ride" bit proved to be one of the stronger scenes of the episode, justifying his losses by adding, "Easy come, easy go. But for one brief moment, I made everyone on Mars happy. If you ask me, that makes me a winner!" ("Category 5 loser now departing.")

But it was the Donbot's takeover of the casino that really set the story off on its way. Having Zoidberg covered in ink and subsequently turned invisible provided its fair share of clever sight gags, particularly his bathroom scene with Amy.

From there, the episode made a sharp turn into Ocean's Eleven territory as the Planet Express crew formulated a heist plan to take back the casino from the Donbot and his mob squad. The chart room sequence was the real standout here ("Um... How come we've never been in this room before?"), especially given the sheer magnitude of charts prepared by all the characters.

The heist itself had some okay moments as well. But more than the crew's various disguises, it was the Donbot's nonchalance that made it so great with lines like, "You know, I think I'll close the safe a little prematurely today," and, "I'm enjoying the casino business. You meet a lot of colorful characters."

Overall, it was a pretty fun show this week. Zoidberg, the Robot Mafia and even Amy all delivered on their respective arcs, and it was nice to see another episode where the entire crew gets involved in the story. More so than the last couple weeks, "Viva Mars Vegas" was tight, fun and had a solid amount of good laughs throughout.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Vegas: A New Kind of CBS Crime Series

The new CBS series Vegas is a change of pace for the network – a period piece, set in the 1960s, with more of an overreaching plotline than most of their procedural dramas.

Dennis Quaid stars as Sheriff Ralph Lamb, a real life person who Vegas co-creator Nicholas Pileggi (Goodfellas, Casino) originally had written a feature film script about, after executive producer Arthur Sarkissian met Lamb and agreed his story was incredibly compelling. Speaking at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour this week, Executive producer Cathy Konrad said she felt that as a feature, they were trying to cram so much of this man’s life into two and a half hours and she suggested it might be better as a TV Series instead.

Vegas centers on the ongoing struggle between Lamb and mobster Vincent Savino (Michael Chiklis). Discussing their dynamic, Walker said, “Lamb is trying to preserve what he believes the values of the Old West are in this area while not being against progress, per se, and Vincent Savino is trying to change the culture of Vegas as well - not necessarily as a mobster, but also as a man who has a quest for legitimacy. They find themselves on the same side of the law – not often, but often enough because there are worse people out there that are coming into vogue. So in order to kind of preserve this delicate balance, both of them move. It's a shifting target. So they are not always against each other. We certainly don't want Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner every week. We found enough tension so far to keep them going after each other.”

While certainly back into darker terrain, following No Ordinary Family, Chiklis said he felt Savino was very different from his memorable role as Vic Mackey on The Shield. “I just think that the potential of this character is fascinating and exciting to me.”

As for what drew Quaid to his first ongoing TV series, the movie star said, “I came in because a lot of exciting things are happening on television now, I think. A lot of the best writers have come to television. I think they feel like they have more control, and the storylines get continued. And when I was offered this, it was really about the team more than anything else, and the story really interested me. But, you know, Nick Pileggi and Greg and Jim Mangold and everybody that was in it, it just seemed really authentic and a chance to really play a character and let him unfold over a long period of time.”

Quaid noted that Lamb, “had quite a life, you know, and that was certainly part of the attraction, to be the sheriff of Las Vegas for 20 years, and especially this period of time because this is really when Vegas became Vegas as we know it today. And Ralph had a lot to do with shaping that, and he was also part of the landscape before all of this happened. He’s a fourth generation rancher, I think, going back to the Indian wars. And so I think we all have kind of a fascination with Las Vegas, and I thought the idea of playing this era would be a lot of fun.”

Quaid added, “Ralph also represents the people who really lived in the area of Las Vegas and had been around for generations. And to have these outside forces coming in vis a vis the mob -- really kind of coming in, in their minds, to take over in their town is sort of an invasion. Ralph and the locals really want to keep as much control as they can over their own town.”

Walker admitted it was always a challenge using real people on a TV show, mixed in with fictional characters. “That’s always the challenge. As my partner Cathy says, we don't want to let the truth get in the way of a good story, but the amazing thing about Vegas in 1960 in these men's stories is that the truth is the best story. Nick Pileggi showed that in the way that he portrayed Casino - that these stories are vibrant. These are larger than life characters who pop off the screen. So as a writer, it's a gift. It's literally the chest you keep on opening and find the glittering coins because there's so much value and depth and meat in those stories, we just try to use as much as we can.”

Vegas -- which also stars Jason O'Mara, Carrie-Anne Moss and Sarah Jones -- will mix weekly investigations for Lamb with an overreaching story. When it came to CBS tackling this series, Konrad said, “I think that the interest was to paint a broader palette, to make a bigger world, and I think that the networks were seeing the savvy [audience] and how cable has been playing in that arena. And I think that this fit in a really nice basket for them, and it's been energizing for everybody to be able to have that freedom as filmmakers to make something, to not be put in the procedural bucket and have to live there, to know that you can get that story across but to have continuing stories for our cast that can grow I think that's the reason why we have this amazing cast, because they see that potential as well.”

Vegas premieres Tuesday, September 25th on CBS.

Source : ign[dot]com

Fallout: New Vegas Devs Take on Sexism, Social Games

A team of developers that formerly worked on Fallout: New Vegas is creating a new town-building game called Steam Bandits: Outpost. While the term “town building” is one that scares off many hardcore gamers, the team behind the game assures fans that Steam Bandits is more Civilization than Farmville, calling it a “pay to style” game along the lines of League of Legends or Team Fortress 2 as opposed to the “pay to continue playing” model of Zynga games.

“If we make money, great, but I just want people to play,” creative director Jason Fader told IGN. “I hate pay-to-win, I hate pay-to-continue-playing. I’m in it for fun. If people want to spend money they can, but they never have to pay to have fun.”

This philosophy is just one way that Fader’s Iocaine Studios is looking to bring hardcore ideas to a traditionally casual market. Fader previously served as lead producer at Obsidian, working on Fallout: New Vegas and its downloadable content, as well as a sci-fi RPG that never saw the light of day and a canceled next-gen project codenamed North Carolina. Prior to that, he spent time at Blizzard and developed the Atari-published ThreadSpace: Hyperbol. Fader knows the hardcore audience, and so does his team.

Many members of the team working on Steam Bandits are veterans of multiple rounds of widespread layoffs at Obsidian that took place over the past two years. Regarding reports that Obsidian layoffs and bonuses were affected by the Metacritic score for New Vegas and that developers continue to hire based on that metric, Fader said the practice isn’t fair. “Why Metacritic?” he asked. “It’s like saying ‘you must have an IQ of 140 or higher’ on a job application. We like distilling things down to numbers, but scores vary, and there are opinions and preference involved. Royalties are fair, but Metacritic isn’t fair. I hope [that practice] goes away.”

Looking back to his time at Obsidian, Fader also noted that many of the employees affected by the layoffs were female. While he doesn’t think the layoffs were based on sexism (many of the most junior team members just happened to be female, and senior members were kept on since they’re harder to replace), Fader did mention that many of the female employees had trouble finding jobs post-Obsidian.

“If you took two artists, one male and one female, that applied for the same job, the male could end up getting it while the female never even got called back for an interview,” he said. “You don’t want to believe discrimination like that goes on, but statistically it does.” Many of those women have now been brought into the fold at Iocaine, where 10 of the 12 current team members are female.

According to Fader, the team at Iocaine is mostly ex-Obsidian, but has also been built on the connections of team members who knew other developers looking for jobs. “If someone had a friend who was a good fit, they’d fill a role,” Fader explained. When it comes to friendships, Fader is loyal to a fault. When he was at Blizzard around the time of World of Warcraft’s launch, a game he worked on independently with friends who didn’t have full-time jobs in the industry yet was nominated for an IGF Award. After an interview regarding the game appeared in a local newspaper, Blizzard gave Fader a choice: keep working on the game and leave the company, or stay at Blizzard but stop working with his friends. He chose his friends. (Fader notes that in the years since, Blizzard has changed its policy on outside projects.)

As the industry continues to embrace free-to-play, Fader said he expects all games to adopt that model in the future -- including consoles (a prospect that Microsoft appears to be looking into). “I’m surprised there aren’t more. The console market is already prepared for it,” he said, noting that “Microsoft Points already exist” and would make perfect sense for quick micro-transactions. He feels the problem is that there’s a “long list to satisfy for consoles” in terms of development, which “creates a barrier of entry for indies.”

For now, Steam Bandits: Outpost is seeking funding on Kickstarter, which Fader notes will support one of the three locales the team has envisioned. An original version of the Kickstarter sought three times as much funding, but Fader notes that the current funding goal will allow for one one locale, and Iocaine will be able to add in the other two areas and additional new features if the funding goal is exceeded.

Concept art from Steam Bandits: Outpost.

Fader and the team at Iocaine have big plans for Steam Bandits, and if Outpost does well, the plan is to follow-up with multiple games in different genres. In the next game, players might play as an airship captain in a League of Legends-style real time strategy game. Players in that game could run missions for players in Outpost, with money and items transferrable between the games. It’s an ambitious idea, but Fader believes if anything can allow it to happen, it’s Kickstarter.

“Kickstarter was our first choice for funding,” he said. “It’s sort of like when iTunes came around for MP3s. It cut out the record label and distribution, allowing music to be delivered directly from the people making it. Crowdsourcing works.”

As of this writing, Steam Bandits: Outpost has approximately 25% of its $30,000 goal on Kickstarter, with 17 days of funding still remaining.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com