Valve is busy again with their upcoming iteration of Portal 2. I am very excited for the release of this game as it will play a large role in the upcoming story line for Half Life 2: Episode 3. Game Informer had the opportunity to interview Valve’s concept artist Matt Charlesworth on how the character designs are coming along. The first character that he discusses is the main character from the last game, Chell. All of the designers explored other character ideas for Portal 2 but ultimately came back to using Chell again. The team decided that she needed the same type of look, clean and simple. “Some of the images started with a sporty look – almost like motorcycle gear.” The designers are also looking for a different color scheme and not the orange suit from the first game. Along with the cosmetic look and feel of Chell they also discussed changing her appearance to have a more recognized nationality.

The best result so far is the concept art you see here. Matt states that “The stuff that was more successful was the really minimal approach, and that’s sort of led us to this concept. This just seemed to strike a chord with everyone, because it really seemed like it belonged in the Portal world. It made her look physically capable, but at the same time, there is a vulnerability about her. That’s what is attractive to everybody.” The suit that Chell wears is supposed to represent her as a test subject among the machines of GLaDOS. The design of the suit, along with the hat (which Matt described as reminding him of test pilots) make it so the machines can easily recognize her without having bar codes all over her. That was something the designers felt had been done before. They are all about originality when it comes to Portal 2. “We’re still not entirely sure what we’re doing with the spring heels. They were always something that was in Portal 1, and some of us are attached to them, and some of us aren’t, so I’ve experimented with how we can do with them right this time around, and how we would go about replacing them. Everything should look 10 times better than the first Portal, that’s the goal.”

In Portal 2 there will be a new Co-Op feature where you can play with a friend. In this version of the game the characters are robots made from salvaged parts from personality spheres and turrets. The concept art for the robots looks great and something that will definitely fit into the Portal story line. Matt finishes the interview by saying “We drew them holding hands because it just kind of describes the whole co-op idea, if slightly tongue-in-cheek. Portal’s got a sense of humor. It’s quirky, but it shows that one of the biggest things that is important to Portal 2 will be that you’re playing with a friend. It’s one of those weird things, where somebody just kind of did it, and we had the sort of team moment where we were like ‘yeah that’s pretty cool.’”

Portal 2 is shaping up to be an amazing game. As usual Valve is taking their time in developing all aspects of the storyline and characters. According Gabe Newell from and interview with 1up, Portal 2 is “the best game we’ve ever done.”

So Steamworks is going to offer developers the option to use microtransactions. You as the player will be able to buy digital equipment much akin to the extra content for Dragon Age, albeit at a rate perceived as more palatable. Instead of buying that cup of coffee, save your money and buy something electric.

Though this is certainly a model for the future, what kind of future are we looking at as gamers? Further, not only gamers, but a digital population? This concept is nothing new to the internet veterans. I recall being tempted to buy items on Everquest, though the cobalt armor sales via Ebay were eventually prohibited by the Terms of Service. Even then, however, the thought struck me: what if someone pulled the cord on Everquest and my Cobalt armor that I paid a Jackson for was erased? The question becomes, then, when do we equate digital property with real property?

The trend of microtransactions is, at least, the beginning. We as consumers slowly break away from the concept of a 50$ game and begin to see the purchases of digital content more like the small purchases of everyday life. Beyond the implications in the sales realm (where consumers spend more on small items as a whole than a 50$ purchase), we become more comfortable buying digital knickknacks. When we begin to jack into a real world simulation, we won’t feel as wary when buying those digital shoes, especially if we can feel them through a virtual reality simulation.

The trend is that slowly we can see the breakdown of digital packages (computer games) into digital items, which sometime down the road may share their real life counterpart’s cost. A visual metaphor is that real life, in terms of monetary value (which, shoot, can be said is all value), is slowly balancing out the scales with virtual value. I’m not saying that we should save some money for kung-fu lessons, but will we even flinch when a virtual suit of armor costs in excess of 100$? Here’s to hoping robots don’t figure all this out.

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.

Another great reason to get Modern Warfare 2, besides being able to play it at midnight on release, is the implementation of Steamworks throughout. This will allow players to hop from one computer to the next, or one Xbox to the next, and retain all of their profile’s properties, such as achievements and, I’m guessing, things like killstreak configurations. Here’s what Infinity Ward said with regards to Steamworks:

“Steamworks will make it possible for us to have a closer connection to our fans, and enable us to support our community much more than ever before. Steam is the hands down leader in offering a community focused experience on PC and the inclusion of Steamworks has allowed us to deliver the most feature-rich PC version to ever come from Infinity Ward, which at the end of the day will mean the most to our fans.”

This is a huge move forward for Steamworks, which I whole-heatedly support. The concept seems simple, and I actually wish that more games would use Steam’s budding technology. Recently I’ve gotten into Steamworks through Left 4 Dead, retaining my game settings even when I had uninstalled the game. Whats next will be the implementation of Steam Cloud, which as I recall will keep your saved games.

What has yet to be seen is whether or not the dedicated server boycotters will get their wish and we’ll see a retrofitting of dedicated servers in game. I’m thinking its a long shot.

So you may have seen by now that Modern Warfare 2 is available for pre-purchase on Steam. We here at Pixel Well have discussed to a large extent the way we will partake of the gift that is to be Modern Warfare 2, and I personally think I’ll opt for the Steam version. I was pretty excited to see that its finally up on Steam, having check a few days ago, but similar to others of you on teh webz I felt like the $60.00 price tag was a little stunning. But why? Steam gives us this really interesting paradigm shift. I remember being well-prepared to pay $60.00 for a game in the days of yore, heading off to Best Buy as soon as someone could give me a ride. And now I feel its obviously a rip-off; the game is worth it, but wont the price go down sometime soon, like before Christmas? Can I wait? Now the adept shopper may say that they just waited for retail, but the thing is, back then, that was work. Steam makes everyone a bargain hunter, nay, assassin. In fact, oddly enough, I just bought Assassin’s Creed off of Steam a couple of days ago because it was just $5. I had been waiting for it, and I knew I would know as soon as it happened.

So theres the folks preordering the night-vision goggles limited edition, reserving it at Gamestop… Me, well, maybe I’ll just wait a week or two and see if it goes on sale. How do you feel about it? I mean, that Left 4 Dead 2 trailer almost made me impulse preorder the game, especially at a discount. And that’s where this is really going. With so many games coming out, can companies afford to throw out a $60.00 price tag? The end result is that we as gamers win; Steam is the bargain tool of the future. Lets just hope Modern Warfare 2 drops in price in the near future. Not that we have anything to complain about, when everyone in Australia will have to shell out $90.00 to get there hands on a copy.

I just caught wind that Interplay, publishers of games like Kingpin and Sacrifice, are releasing content to Steam. This means that those and other titles will be available for purchase via Steam, so everyone who missed some of those great titles will have a chance to play them again. For the full news posting, hit this link to the Interplay website. I’m personally excited enough about Sacrifice that I could buy it again. I wonder if Steam will have better multiplayer support…