After the release of Infinity Ward’s and Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 one can only question what will be up their sleeves next. Several clues point to production of a Vietnam based game. It makes sense as World War II has been covered, covered again, and then some more, followed by the coverage of Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty Vietnam would make a nice addition to the collection. (What about World War I?)

One of the obvious clues that point towards its production and game design is recent casting calls in California for voice over and motion capture. The casting call also describes some of the characters specifically naming: Frank Barnes, Joseph Lewis, Jason Hudson, and Kristina Ivanova. Interesting how a Russian is named; she apparently is a martial arts expert. The new game will feature Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies And Observations Group, which was a real unit during the conflict which took part in several missions conducted behind enemy lines. Xboxic has the official casting call document for you to peruse. Check out their article here. Activision will be using Treyarch to develop the game, the same developers they used to create Call of Duty World At War. Other rumors also indicate that this could be a game on a larger scale possibly covering events in Cuba. Call of Duty Cold War perhaps? Either way the game is said to be released this year around the holidays.

So with the release of Bad Company 2 there have been some serious issues with the game as far as servers, random crashes, and freezes go. The latter of which has plagued my personal gaming experience. After doing a Google search I found some very good fixes to many of the problems. Having just put together a new computer I knew that it could be any of the problems that came up in the search results. The freezing problem that I tried first and worked, thankfully, were due to my soundcard. Apparently there may be some issues with the latest version of DirectX, which is installed automatically with BBC2.

Freezing Issues With BBC2

If the game freezes on you, about an hour or so into play, try the following: Look at your playback devices and see if their is a particular one set as the default. For me I have an on board soundcard on my motherboard as well as a Creative Audigy one. I had to disable one of them in order for the freezing to stop. So if you have multiple playback devices, disable one of them and it may stop the freezing.

Another solution is to unplug any recording devices you may have. Again this may be caused with the latest DirectX version released with the game. This solution has also worked for several gamers.

A third solution is to try the following: Turn “Hardware Acceleration” for sound from “Full” to “Basic”. This option is available by selecting “Start” and then “Run” – type in “dxdiag” and press Enter; select the “Sound” tab and then just move the slider to the appropriate setting.

Server Problems

This apparently is something that EA and Dice are currently working on. If you can’t connect to the EA servers you may just have to be patient and wait. However, if you don’t like waiting forever for the server browser to show online games there is a small trick to get quicker results. When you click to begin searching, wait a few seconds and then click cancel. After another few seconds a list of servers will show up. This has worked quite nicely for myself.

PunkBuster Issues

There have also been many issues dealing with PunkBuster. This was also a problem for myself and I found that reinstalling it was the best option. Go to your control panel and uninstall PunkBuster. Since the game is through Steam you will have to install the service again. Go to their site here and click on the link in the middle of the first paragraph. Run the install service and you should be good to go.

I hope that some of these options work for you and if you find any other problems or other fixes, please feel free to post them here or in our forums. In the meantime I hope you can continue playing this amazing game and kick these issues to the curb.

Alright so its been a really long time since I’ve posted on here so its time to change that. Having a full time job, being married, attending grad school, and helping coach a high school hockey team have been keeping me extremely busy this past winter. Now that Spring is here and hockey is over I’ll have some spare time to contribute to the site. Battlefield Bad Company 2 after the break…

Supposedly these are two legitimate posters from the remaining campaigns set to be unveiled for Left 4 Dead 2. The first, Dead Center, seems to be appealing to popular demand by featuring what looks to be a shopping mall. The second seems to be using the newly implemented weather effects in Hard Rain.

I’m probably the most interested in Hard Rain, since the weather seems to me the most compelling addition in terms of creating tension. It makes me think of the screen shots they released earlier to the public of the zombies coming through the dense sheet of rain, and how cool that seemed. I think it will add a lot to the atmosphere for sure. Dead Center, well, I’m sure it’ll be great, but I got a lot of the shopping mall interest taken care of with Dead Rising. I guess the truth has yet to be known, like what will the special infected be for those two campaigns? I’m excited to find out.

On August 19 in Cologne Germany, thousands will gather for Europe’s GamesCom conference in hopes of becoming Germany’s leading trade show for interactive gaming and entertainment. This debut event hopes to attract the entire industry, as well as anyone interested in video games or computers.

BioWare will certainly gain a lot of gamers’ attention with its new Massively Multiplayer Online RPG, Star Wars The Old Republic. Set thousands of years before Darth Vader and the Rebellion, Star War The Old Republic takes place in the middle of a raging war that divides the galaxy between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire.

Now I haven’t gotten the Left4Dead vs. Left4Dead2 debate up on this site yet, but already the tides are turning. Valve has been trying to fend off the naysayers with reports that they will still incorporate new content into the original game despite a sequel on the way. Well, here we go.

So I’ve wanted to post something about this game practically since I started working on Pixel Well. Edge of Twilight is going to be a 3rd person hack-and-slash, and Syndic and I have agreed it resembles something like a Gears of War/Arcanum hybrid. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a great thing. Whats more is the soundtrack has violins in it, which I love. I’ve watched this trailer about twenty times now, and I can’t get enough of it. Video after the break