Biggest story of the day was obviously the Call of Duty: Elite announcement that you’ve doubtless already seen here on The Average Gamer ;) What you may have missed was the Wall Street Journal publishing it a full 14 hours before the internal online and print embargo that the rest of us were given. Cue this cathartic rant by MCV’s Ben Parfitt:

Of course, if the press really wanted rid of this practice we’d refuse to cover any games or information protected by an NDAs. Perhaps if Activision had told us all that WSJ was getting special treatment a few of us might have torn up the agreement and left the Elite event right there and then.
But who’s going to do that? Gotta get dem clickety-clicks, innit.
– Ben Parfitt, OPINION: Who’s the more foolish?

And because I’m a shameless self-promoter, I shall point out that this is just another ugly side to the gaming press’s dependency on PRs for content that I talked about in my personal blog last week.

That’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it? …Who advertises on games websites? Games companies. Who provides the content? Games companies. Everybody knows this.
– Debbie Timmins, Am I Destroying Games Journalism?

In other news:

The Official PlayStation blog announced that the PlayStation Network will be fully functional again by the end of the week. It’s not quite the previously-reported May 31st but it’ll do.

This beautifully strange live-action Portal video has been making the rounds:

RockStar and/or Xbox announced an L.A. Noire Rockstar Pass which gives you all forthcoming LA Noire downloadable content but at half the individual price.

GTA.net have released an amazing map of Liberty City made in Google Streetview.

And finally, Falmouth-based café Loading has created a fabulous Resident-Evil-inspired cocktail.

[hat tips to Joe Barron and Sinan Kubba]

• Team Instant Action (aka team deathmatch)
• Crash Site – Battle for control of alien drop pods (aka control point)

Here is a tactical overview of the Skyline map so you can start familiarising yourselves with the battle field:

It is unknown at the moment how long the multiplayer demo will last, so play it while you can. In the full Crysis 2 multiplayer there will be six gameplay modes set across 12 New York based maps. You will be able to earn up to 50 different multiplayer ranks and unlock weapons and upgrades to your nanosuit.

Personally, I’m bad enough at online multiplayer games when I can see my opponents, so the bit in the trailer when a whole group of soldiers “appear” behind a poor solider before blasting the crap out of them fills me with dread! On the flip side, killing a player by pushing a car on their head from the building above looks like great fun.

Crysis 2 is due for release on the 25th March 2011 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the Paradise City map:

Those avid TAG readers will notice that the map shown above has changed somewhat since we first revealed it nearly a year ago.

Here’s what the Paradise city map looked like 12 months ago:

Amongst all the route changes, large chunks of the map have been chopped, including the airport. Did you have to cut the airport, Criterion? I quite fancied going all GTA 3 and driving recklessly between all the planes. Boo. Anyway, the map is still pretty big, as anyone whose played the Burnout Paradise demo will testify.

You can download a hi-res version of the map from Criterion’s Burnout Paradise Downloads page.

Update 2nd Mar 08: Here’s a great interactive Burnout Paradise map. It contains all the locations of the super jumps, smashes, billboards etc.

Update 2nd Jan 09: Criterion is releasing the Big Surf Island download pack in 2009 to expand the Burnout Paradise map eastwards (the bit where the airport used to be on the old map). From the media that Criterion have released about this pack it looks like the airport has gone, to be replaced by a hotel, palm tress and a construction yard (with jumps).

Burnout Paradise is out now on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3

I do apologise. Here is part 4 of How To Write an RPG Journal – Maps. Turns out maps are quite big enough to warrant their own section. For those of you who missed the series back in January, have a look at RPG Journal Part I – The Basics, RPG Journal Part II – The Categories, and RPG Journal Part III – Information.

Maps

Maps are important. Incredibly important. Even when your game isn’t the size of World of Warcraft. I know, it’s not the sort of thing that gets mentioned in reviews. Trust me, the map feature is sorely missed if it’s not there.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. If I recall, it didn’t have a map. If it did have a map, it was next-to-useless. Remember that giant bird cage in the menagerie? I climbed all the way to the top of that. Then I went on holiday. When I came back a month later I had no idea where I’d been or where I was going. I spent a few days running around in large but unproductive circles before moving on to a more rewarding game. Seamlessly-blended levels are pretty and immersive but make everything look very samey.

In other words:

Distinguish between explored and unexplored areas. Please do it. I don’t care if you use a fog-of-war or just change the colour. Choose the best internally-consistent logic for you. If I’m in a city then it makes sense to have a visible map. If I’m wandering around unexplored countryside, it’s fair to hide the fine detail of an unexplored area. ’tis all good as long as I can tell where I’ve already been.

Make notes: Notes are the second most significant part of mapping. Please, if you’re going to say things like “Meet me at Moire’s house” then have the courtesy to mark it on the map. If you can’t be bothered to do that, let me add my own notes. I have to say, the Cartographer add-in for World of Warcraft is indispensable. With the number of ‘get me x amount of y‘ quests, I don’t know what I’d do without the ability to mark “Here Be Sunscale Scytheclaws”.

Well, okay, I do know. I’d look it up on Thottbot. I don’t like doing that because it breaks my immersion and is sort of cheating-ish. Give me the tools to do it myself.

Come back next week for part 5 – Inventory. I promise it will be here. I’ve already written most of it.