Maybe I'm just OUT OF LOOP or something but I seriously haven't seen people talking about this game at all. I don't really know how well it has been received, and I don't know if it's popular or not, or how many people have played it but I hadn't even heard of it before buying PS3, and I only heard the game's name because it was coming with the console. It surprised me that Uncharted is made by Naughty Dog because I seriously had no clue they were working on a new game. Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter are both among my favorite platformers so this of course was very good news for me. But anyway, I suppose it's just me who didn't know about Uncharted, and I was really, really positively surprised when I finally got to play it. If you have a PS3 but don't have this game, I really recommend you to get it. And if you are looking for a reason to buy PS3, I think you definitely need to add Uncharted in the list of games to buy.

SCREENS:

Uncharted is a hybrid of many genres. It's mainly an action/adventure game with heavy emphasis on Gears of War-esque gunfights but there are also a lot of platforming and puzzle elements plus cool driving and water scooter sequences. I'm not really a big fan of console shooters so I was kinda pessimistic about the gunfights but it was actually pretty fun to hide behind objects, pop out and quickly shooting your enemies while they surround you from each direction and you'll constantly have to reposition yourself while evading bullets and grenades. There's really nothing new here, and the weapons are all pretty basic (various pistols, rifles, shotgun, rocket launcher and sniper) but the game is always fun to play, mostly because of the really good level design. It's also awesome to see bullets and grenades destroying your cover in midst of hectic gunfights.

The main reason I like Uncharted is not the gunfights though, in fact, gunfights were my least favorite parts of the game on most part, but that's mostly due to the fact that I don't really like shooters on consoles that much, as I already mentioned. What I really liked about Uncharted above all is the fantastic level design and this feeling of exploration you get. It's actually a very linear game, there's pretty much only one path to take at all times but it didn't bother me one bit because there are some large areas as well and it's always fun figuring out what you have to do to proceed. Unlike in most platformers, there isn't really any challenge in timing your jumps or anything of the sort, it's really all about finding where to go. Most of the puzzles are really simple and it's also usually easy to figure out what to do next (I never got stuck for more than a few minutes) so the platforming parts are usually pretty easy but surprisingly fun, believe me. I'm sure you'll be dying at least a few times in the platforming parts but they never get annoying because the controls are really smooth and you just have to make the jump in the right direction and that's all there really is to it. I'm not sure if it sounds fun, but I enjoyed it a lot, and I definitely prefer the way Uncharted is doing things to, for example, Tomb Raider's precise and annoying controls. Again, I will put emphasis on the clever and fantastic level design, it's really what made this game so much fun. And as for the feeling of exploration, it really helps that this game has absolutely fantastic graphics for a console game and the game is really cinematic so it just gives you this really nice feeling I can't quite put in words. The graphics, voice acting and music are all top-notch and while the story and the characters are all but original, the story is interesting because the cutscenes are so well done and the characters have a lot of personality.

The game doesn't really come without flaws though. It's pretty short (took me around 7-8 hours to beat it) and like I told before, very linear. This didn't really bother me though as the game didn't feel too short for me and the linearity wasn't really that apparent, or at least I didn't really think about it during the game. The gunfights can get tedious because there are a lot of them and for majority of the game, you will be fighting the same enemies. I also I think there are a bit too many checkpoints which ultimately make the challenging parts too easy since you have unlimited lives and there's practically no replaying any earlier parts. I'm not someone who wants games to be annoyingly difficult but Uncharted just didn't feel challenging, despite that I died at least a dozen of times and that there were some fairly difficult parts. At least for me, since I'm not used to playing shooters on controllers. Though in Uncharted's defense, I think it's really a game which is about experiencing the world and in that way, I can see the reasoning behind Naughty Dog's decision.

Links:
Gamerankings page
Wikipedia page

Well, this actually turned out to be a bit more similar to a review than I actually meant it to be but oh well. I'm just kinda interested in if anyone else has played it and what they think about it. I think it's one of the best games I have played in a while (would make it to my best games of 2007 list) and if you haven't played it and you have a chance to try it out, you should give it a go.

It's been quiet for a long time on the main site front and we apologize for the lack of updates. When it was becoming more and more apparent that it would still take a while to get our new main site finished, we decided to launch a community blog instead of having a boring coming soon page for an undefined period of time.

So, here it is. Naturally we'll use this blog to announce important news but more importantly, it's really a blog dedicated to our community. It will be used for informing you about community events, contents and just generally interesting topics. We'll of course include articles concerning game development and games developed here on GW. Basically the blog will have all kinds of random articles and debates about whatever our community finds interesting. Games, music, movies, art, politics, food, literature or just some random fun, you name it. If you're new here, hopefully this blog will help you to get to know our community a bit better. Despite not having a main site up right now, we are still alive and kicking and hopefully you'll decide to join us as well!

Users will be able to submit articles as well, but this feature is not ready yet so more about it later.

We also have good news concerning GW6. Up until now, leafo has been coding the site on his own and it's a huge amount of work for one person to do, especially when he's doing it on his free time. We have finally managed to get a team to work on the site together and developed a system which should hopefully speed up the process of finishing the site. leafo, ramirez and dom will be doing their best to get the site done in the upcoming months. We still can't say when the site is going to be ready but we'll keep you posted when we have something more concrete to show or say. In case you still haven't seen the main site, here's the most recent image we have:


[size](Click the thumbnail for a larger image)[/size]

Thanks to Dada for making layout for the blog and ramirez for coding it! The mainsite layout was designed by east.

http://blog.last.fm/2008/01/23/free-the-music

Free the Music
Wednesday, 23 January 2008

A few days ago we sent out some cryptic invitations to a press conference in New York that Felix and Martin are presiding over. We’ve had fun in the office reading the rumors and speculation, but it’s time to spill the beans:

As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.

Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.

Full-length tracks are now available in the US, UK, and Germany, and we’re hard at work broadening our coverage into other countries. During this initial public beta period, each track can be played up to 3 times for free before a notice appears telling you about our upcoming subscription service. The soon-to-be announced subscription service will give you unlimited plays and some other useful things. We’re also working on bringing full-length tracks to the desktop client and beyond.

Free full-length tracks are obviously great news for listeners, but also great for artists and labels, who get paid every time someone streams a song. Music on Last.fm is perpetually monetized. This is good because artists get paid based on how popular a song is with their fans, instead of a fixed amount.

We will be paying artists directly.

We already have licenses with the various royalty collection societies, but now unsigned artists can put their music on Last.fm and be paid directly for every song played. This helps to level the playing-field—now you can make music, upload it to Last.fm and earn money for each play. If you make music, you can sign up to participate for free.

We’re not printing money to pay for this—but the business model is simple enough: we are paying artists and labels a share of advertising revenue from the website.

Today we’re redesigning the music economy. There are already millions of tracks available, and we’re adding more every day. We will continue to work hard to bring this to everyone in the world.

I think this was a really good move by last.fm and it's definitely great news for both listeners and musicians. I'm not sure how much they have to pay artists and labels but I suppose they have planned it so that they will make profit in the end. Either way, it's great that they are trying something like this.

EDIT: Applications are closed.

First of all, no, GW6 is not finished, I bet you all had that in mind when you saw the topic title but read further and you'll know what this is about!

We have decided to put up a temporary site until GW6 is finished. Currently our main site isn't interesting at all and we really want to have something to attract new members and also let our current members know about what's going on in the community. The site we'll be using works like a blog, it's going to have community related articles about different forum events, updates on GW's situation and just generally interesting forum topics (links included) and so on. Plus it's not only limited to what's happening in the community right now. For example, articles about GW's past events or history are good too. We welcome anything which people would be interested in. That's really the only criteria our temporary site is going to have for articles. It's not going to be something overly serious, it's there to show that we have a very interesting community. A way to increase activity. We have had plans for a community section once GW6 is eventually finished and our aim is to bring forums and main site together.

Which brings me to my next point, we are looking for a few temporary (possibly permanent) staffers who are interested in updating the main site with various interesting community related articles. There aren't going to be any kind of weekly updates and it's a spontaneous kind of thing. Still, that doesn't mean we want people who are going to post one or two articles and then leave it at that. We want staffers who are genuinely interested in keeping the site updated and care for this community. Members who aren't selected for staff can still contact us admins or the staffers if they want their articles posted on the main site or have ideas to share.

Things we require from the staffers:

• You need to know what's going on in the community and you need to have a good understanding of what people could find interesting or funny. This means that we need to know at least something about you so that we can trust you on this task. Of course you are allowed to like different things and we definitely want staffers with different personalities who can provide various kind of articles on many different subjects.
• Decent English is something we absolutely require. The more interesting articles you can write, the better.
• Willing to dedicate time for this. I don't know when GW6 is going to be finished and since it could take months, this site needs to be frequently updated. This doesn't mean you need to be posting news all the time and if you have a few busy days or even weeks and you can't do much work, that's fine, there are still other staffers helping you out. And you don't have to force yourself to make articles if nothing interesting is happening or you don't have any good ideas. Like I said, it's pretty spontaneous. We just don't want our staffers to stop posting articles after a week or two when the novelty wears off. That's all.
• You are absolutely not allowed to post offensive articles or ridicule any of our members. This is a bit difficult one to explain but we trust that you know what's offensive and what's not, and if there happens to be some unclear situation, you can always contact the admins. For example, stuff like Amanda Landale Saga and I swallowed a small piece of aluminum foil would be okay to post since they aren't really that offensive (especially Amanda Landale Saga in retrospect). But pranks like that could get out of hand though so you really need to be able to use judgement with possible borderline cases.

Send your applications to DragonSlayer via private message. You can also contact me on IRC (#gamingw) if you want to talk about a staff position or have questions or anything of the sort but send an application as well. I'll be accepting applications even after the site is up (unless we already have enough staffers, we'll most likely get 5-6) so there's no definite date when I won't accept them anymore. When applying try to tell a bit about yourself, what forums you frequent and what kind of articles interest you the most. If you just want to generally write about everything, that's fine too. It's OPEN FORMAT so don't worry too much about that.

IMPORTANT:
We really want to cover everything what is going on in the whole community so we want people who can cover different forums and subjects. So even if you don't visit General forum or you don't know what's happening with the "core community", that's not a problem. We could still use your help!

IMPORTANT2:
The staffers we choose will not have full moderator rights. You do not get access to staff forum and you won't get a pretty blue name. However, you will be moved to a special staff group and made moderator on a community news forum which will be created after the site is up. This group will receive all the premium features so if you aren't a premium yet, there's that too. Note that premiums and moderators are also allowed to send their applications and they can also be chosen, just like anyone else.

Lastly, thanks to Drule for helping out with everything, he's also the one making the temporary site.

And feel free to post comments/suggestions/whatever here.

The Pax Cecilia are an ambient metal group who recently relocated to Rochester NY. They released their first album together in 2003 titled "Nouveau: A Theater of Air". It was a promising first release that combined elements of screamo, classical, and metal. The band released their second full-length album "Blessed Are The Bonds" in May 2007. This release shows the band expanding into completely new territory, and displays a maturity and cohesiveness that is far beyond their first album. "Blessed Are The Bonds" uses a heavy mixture of string arrangements and alternate instrumentation to further expand the sonic landscape, and is once again set in a conceptual environment with the song titles, lyrics, music, and artwork all contributing to the story. Like their first album, "Blessed are the Bonds" is being offered free of charge, including full artwork and custom packaging.

YES THEY ARE GIVING THEIR ALBUM FOR FREE

http://www.paxcecilia.com/

And yes, it's not bullshit or anything. I received my copy of Blessed Are The Bonds in August or September when I was still in army. I have told about them on #music before but I never actually considered making a topic until today. Oh well!

I think it's one of the best albums of 2007 and for a free album, that's pretty amazing. Even though they are considered metal, I think for most people that is somewhat misleading because Blessed Are The Bonds is not just GHRHRHR METAL GROWLING HEAVY GUITAR RIFFS. It's actually a lot more, and I dare to say that it's got just as many CHILLAX parts as it got heavy parts, if not even more. Most of the tracks are pretty lengthy and it's a really versatile record and the style varies from ambient to classical to metal to hardcore and it's an extremely well crafted mix. There are a lot of build ups and in that way it kind of reminds me of a post-rock record and I have actually seen people recommend them to GY!BE fans so figures. But they aren't post-rock and their sound is closer to, say, maudlin of the Well but still clearly different. You don't have to be a fan of metal to enjoy this but I'm absolute sure that people who listen to stuff like maudlin of the Well and Kayo Dot can appreciate it more than people who don't really like metal, but they can still appreciate The Pax Cecilia for other things.

They are a difficult band to describe so just listen to the songs on their site, The Tragedy is one of the favorites on my album for example. The other song isn't as good but it's still a pretty good and is one of the heavier songs on the album and shows the screamo influence for example.

Also, even though it's free, I really hope you guys will at least listen to the songs on their site first and if you like them, then send them mail and ask for the CD. There are no shipping costs or anything so they are probably paying for all this shit (they have no label) so ordering the CD when you don't even like the music would be a really shitty thing to do.

Crysis finally came out this week and it would be nice to get some games going on with GWers. Vesper and I were playing the multiplayer today and the default maps are really huge so it wasn't much fun playing with just the two of us but once more players joined, it was freaking awesome. The maps are fantastic and it's so much fun. We haven't played power struggle together yet but it's probably going to be just as much fun.

We don't have our own server yet (cliff said he'll host one once dedicated linux server comes out) but if we get players, I can host a server for at least Europeans. Or we can just use the public servers, it's still fun to play with each other. I don't know how many of you guys have actually bought Crysis since it's pretty demanding but I suggest buying it because it's a great game and multiplayer makes it all the better. Right now there are only 9 multiplayer maps in total but since Crysis has so awesome modding tools, I'm sure we'll be getting some really neat custom maps soon enough.

Anyway, if anyone got the game and wants to play with us, that'd be great. For now we don't have a channel so just come on #gamingw or #gwsoldat if you want to play with us. If we'll get enough players, then let's make a channel.

I'll try to remember to take some screenshots the next time I play.

EDIT: It's a shame that if you want to play MP in a breakable environment, you need to play on dx10 server so you'll need vista and a dx10 card.

The public demo was released today and I have to say, it is pretty awesome. But before that, here's some information on Crysis in case someone still doesn't know about it:

Crysis is an upcoming science fiction first-person shooter computer game, that is being developed by Crytek, and published by Electronic Arts. It will be released on November 15, 2007 in Australia, and the next day in Europe and North America.

Crysis is based in a fictional future, where an alien race has invaded Earth. The single player campaign has the player assume the role of Jake Dunn. Dunn is a United States Delta Force operative, who is armed with various futuristic weapons and equipment, most notably a "Nano Muscle Suit", which is an artificial and technologically advanced exoskeleton, inspired by the United States' Future Warrior 2020 program, according to Bernd Diemer, one of Crytek's senior game designers. In Crysis, the player fights both North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in four different locations: a tropical island jungle; an American aircraft carrier; inside an "Ice Sphere", which will consist of the same jungle, but frozen; and the alien ship itself, some parts of which will be zero-gravity. Crysis will utilize Microsoft's new API, Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering, and will include the same editor that was used by Crytek to create the game.

That's enough about that. Basically I just made this topic to let people know that there's a demo out now so I'll just stick to talking about the demo.

Even though the gameplay in the demo isn't WOAH INNOVATIVE, it is still really good and the game is a lot of fun to play. I love the physics and the full game is going to be even better because you can do so much with all the cool weapons you get. Then, the graphics. As you might know, this game is pretty demanding and it takes a really high end computer to run this game on high settings. I don't have a DX10 card plus I played the game on 1024*768 with medium settings and anti-aliasing off, and it still looks great. I think I can play the game on higher settings once better drivers come out for Vista though.

Some screenshots I took:

So anyone else tried this yet or is going to get the demo?

You can find demo download links here.

[topicinfo topic=2060]Move target[/topic]

This topic is really simple. I think there are a lot of interesting music news you feel like sharing but often they don't really warrant a topic on their own. I have had this feeling many times and I just found out about something extremely cool and thought of making this topic.

The news:

After shows in New Zealand and Australia' date=' The Mars Volta toured a few West Coast venues as the headliner, then entered the studio to record the fourth LP entitled The Bedlam in Goliath.[6'] The album is currently being finished in New York and it is tentatively scheduled for release in late August or early September.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bedlam_in_Goliath
http://www.goldstandardlabs.com/news.html
http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=152162

Can you say fuck yes??

We have changed our general forum layout in order to make it a more organized and working entirety compared to what it was earlier. Some of the forums remain in their former locations but many of them have been moved around. Below you can find the layout we are using now:

http://yhbt.mine.nu/t/n220.torrent

The last episode of Naruto part one. It's still partly filler but it's also the first canon episode in a very long time. Starting next week, Naruto Shippuden (=Hurricane Chronicles) will start airing with a double episode. Here's the preview for the first Naruto Shippuden episode (no subs):

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/s6LXUjWfl-E" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed>

The fillers lasted for 85 episodes but finally the wait is over.

I'll sticky this topic for 2-3 days so people will know about this upgrade.

I talked with ramirez about the "Warn of new replies made while posting?" feature and he upgraded the feature a bit. You can now switch it on or off as you like from your User CP, under the Look and Layout Preferences menu.

Thanks to rami once again

We tried to fix this with scrollbars but since everyone didn't like it and it had some problems and bugs with different browsers, we removed the feature.

That's why I want to request something. This isn't a rule but I recommend you do this. If your post will stretch the page on 1024*768 resolution, USE THE HIDE TAG because otherwise your post will make viewing the page very annoying. This isn't absolutely necessary if your post stretches the page by a bit but use it as much as possible for easier viewing. We'll see what we can do about the whole stretching problem but this might be the permanent solution as well so get used to this for now.

For those who don't know how the hide tag works:

Soldat's homesite
#gwsoldat @ irc.whahay.net - Our Soldat channel.[/color]

Links:

Soldat 1.4 (not the latest version)

Hello. As probably many of you guys know, Soldat is a fairly popular game here on GW, we got own sub-forum as well. It's been played here for over 3 years. However, lately, it hasn't been as active as it used to be. Partly this is because ramirez and I don't play as much Soldat with others from GW as we used to and partly because we haven't really tried to do anything about the lack of activity for some months now. However, it's time to revitalize GW Soldat and I hope we'll get new players and maybe some old players back as well. This will be a long yet informative topic about Soldat, and I hope you'll read through it and consider playing with us because I guarantee you Soldat is a great game once you get into it. If you are really too lazy to read this all, you can find movies and screenshots at end of the topic. I suggest you'll at least read the community part because it's important if you are willing to play with us!

So, many of you surely know the name of the game, but what do you know about the game itself? One purpose of this topic is to explain what Soldat is, how it works and show it in action. The other purpose, like mentioned, is to get new players to play with us.

---

Story[/color]

A couple of guys decided to kill each other and you can be one of them.

Gameplay[/color]

In short, Soldat is a quite unique fast paced 2D online shooter. And it's totally free.

The basic gamemodes are:

- Deathmatch:
As the name implies, it's a simple deathmatch where you play alone against the other players, trying to get as many kills as possible. I'd like to point out that many of us are fans of dueling, and it's quite different from DM with a lot people, or even few. Deathmatch is really hectic with a lot of players.

- Pointmatch:
Pointmatch is not much different from Deathmatch. You fight against the other players and try to get as many kills as possible. The only difference is that there's a flag and the one who is holding the flag gets kills two points from a kill instead of one.

- Teammatch:
Pretty obvious. You play with your teammates against the other teams. The team with highest amount of kills wins.

- Rambomatch:
Another variation of Deathmatch. There's a so-called rambo gun in this game mode and only the player who carries the gun and kills with it gets points. It's a one-hit kill weapon with almost no reload time, speed and range. But when you are holding the bow, all the other player are after you so surviving isn't as easy as one would assume.

- Capture the Flag:
By far my favorite game mode. Two teams play against each other and try to get other team's flag and score. This is most likely the most played Soldat game mode.

- Infiltration:
In this gamemode one team defends and the other attacks. As long as the defending team can keep the flag in their base, they will get points as the game goes on. Attacking team has to steal the flag and score with it to get points.

- Hold the Flag:
The newest game mode in Soldat, and yet another team based game mode. There's one flag and the point is to hold the flag as long as possible and get points while holding it. The other team tries to get the flag. The team which has hold the flag longer wins.

That's for the basic game modes. There are, however, more game modes invented by the community itself. I'll get back to them later in this topic.

Game options:

There are also a few game options which more or less signifantly change the way Soldat is played. The options which don't affect the gameplay that much are such as special bonuses (cluster grenades, invisibility, flame thrower, vest), friendly fire, respawn times and so on. Nothing big. Then there are some options which will affect the gameplay in a much larger way:

-Realistic Mode:
Using realistic basically takes away the fast pace of Soldat and makes it much more realistic. Imagine the difference between Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike. It's something like that. Players have low health, weapons kill much faster, there is recoil, falling damage, you can't see players behind objects and walls and there are no special bonuses.

-Survival mode:
This is often used in Realistic Soldat. When you die, you won't respawn instantly and you will have to wait until there is only one player left or your team has won the round (by capping or killing everyone in the opposing team(s)).

Advance mode:
In this mode, there are no primary weapons when you start, only secondaries. As you kill players, you will randomly get different primaries. In this mode, it's good to be skilled with many weapons because you never know what you'll end up with.

---

Some gameplay related stuff:

I don't want to make this topic too long so I'll keep this section simple. I won't go in-detail how the game's physics work or what all is possible to do in Soldat. If you are going to start playing, we'll help you with stuff like that if needed.

DEFAULT CONTROLS: (taken from soldat manual)

[size][A] - run left
[D] - run right
[W] - jump
- crouch
[Left Mouse Button] - fire
[Right Mouse Button] - fly
[E] - hold down or release after a while to throw grenade
[F] - throwaway current weapon
[X] - go prone position
[Q] - change weapon to secondary
[R] - reload weapon
[T] - chat
[Tab] - activate/deactivate weapons menu while waiting for respawn
(There are also other moves such as backflip or throwing flag)

[/] - enter command
[F1] - players list with scores
[F2] - hide player names / [ALT + F2] - switch on/off sniper line
[F3] - statistics (FPS, ping, network bandwith)
[F4] - take screenshot (saves it to Soldat\Screens)
[F5] - stops/plays music
[F6] - previous music track
[F7] - next music track
[F8] - record/stop demo / fast forward while playing demo
[F9] - minimize the game
[F10] - pause game
[ALT] - + a,b,c... or 1,2,3...0 keys - chat taunts or commands
[ESC] - stops the game and shows the game menu[/size]

WEAPONS: (taken from soldat manual)

-Primaries:

[size]1. Desert Eagles
Akimbo weapon! An automatic hand-gun that can break a man's arm. That's why it doesn't fire so frequently but the bullets can easily pierce thick armor.

2. HK MP5
The most popular submachine-gun in the world. Fast and furious. In short ranges it can defeat heavy weapons.

3. AK-74
Modified version of Automat-Kalasznikov from 1947. Weapon of terrorists and most of world's army forces. The best rifle in the past 50 years.

4. Steyr AUG
This weapon looks like a toy but it sure isn't. With great speed it spits out bullets killing everything in a fast attack.

5. Spas-12
This Shotgun makes a massacre with its 12-Gauge bullets. The best weapon for close-contact.

6. Ruger-77
A hunting rifle. Very fast and accurate. Good for hunting deers and people.

7. M79
The famous grenade-launcher from the Vietnam War. Viet-Cong quickly ran to the bushes when they heard its characteristic sound. The 40mm grenade can blast anyone into pieces even after a shot behind a hill.

8. Barret M82A1
This sniper weapon has incredible power. It was designed to pierce tank armor. The Army didn't even plan to use it against people. But who cares?
Sniper mode available if you crouch or go prone.

9. M249 (FN Minimi)
The best machinegun with great firepower. Can be very helpful for backing-up your team.

10. XM214 Minigun
The famous "O'll Painless" from the movie Predator. This chaingun is mounted on army helicopters. It uses a tremendous amount of ammo and can kill the same amount of enemies.[/size]

-Secondaries:

[size]USSOCOM
 Standard US special forces weapon. You get it always after respawn as a secondary weapon.

Combat Knife
 Standard infantry combat knife. One direct hit with this little thing eliminates the enemy at once. Best for covert operations.
Can be also used as a throw knife with the throw weapon button.

Chainsaw
 A chainsaw used for cutting piles of wood. If somebody finds a different use for this please let everybody know.

M72 LAW
 Anti-tank weapon, fires an explosive missile. Can be used only from the crouch position.

Fists
 After throwing out your weapon you can play Rocky.[/size]

-Other:

[size]Fragmentation Grenades
 A good tactical throw can harm or kill a couple of enemy's at once.
 On start and when you pickup the green box grenade supplies.[/size]

More random crap:

I know, stupid title but I want to separate this from the other gameplay shit. I'm talking about modding and such here. Although Soldat's community isn't very large compared to those large commercial games, the community is constantly creating new ideas, maps, mods and tools to make playing more fun and varying. I'm not going to bother listing any of the custom maps, tools or mods here though. You'll find out about those things if you play with us. We have plenty of great custom maps for example.

Graphics

... Are shit. (not really)

Community

I REALLY REALLY REALLY SUGGEST YOU TO CHECK OUT THIS TOPIC BECAUSE IT HAS ALMOST EVERYTHING WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW ABOUT OUR COMMUNITY. IT IS VERY INFORMATIVE AND VERY HELPFUL!!!!

Now, on to the important part, our community. You can find most of this information in the link I posted above so I won't make this too long.

We have two servers (thanks to Belross for paying the US server), one in Europe and one in North America. We mostly play on the European server but both servers can be used by GW players whenever there is a free server.

CHANNELS:

#gwsoldat - Our main channel.
#gwsoldat.admin - Try joining if you want. :d
#gwsoldat.eu - Here you can see what happens in the EU server and talk in the server using mIRC (talking requires voice on #gwsoldat).
#gwsoldat.us - Here you can see what happens in the US server and talk in the server using mIRC (talking requires voice on #gwsoldat).
#gwsoldat.ae - Here you can see what happens in the AE (ramirez's and dragonslayer's clan) server.
#gwsoldat.cw (our second clan war server) - Here you can see what happens in the CW server.

SERVERS:

EU server:
NAME: eu.gwsoldat.net
PORT: 23073

US server:
NAME: us.gwsoldat.net
PORT: 23073

ADMINS:

Head admins:
ramirez (Finland)
DragonSlayer (Finland)

Normal admins:
Belross (US)
Jeff (US)
MysteriousWanderer (Canada)
Cliff (The Netherlands)
Bablo (Finland)
Untitled (UK)
Noz (Canada)
Chaka (Germany)
Sol (America)

That's it for the most important information. I don't even bother of making a list of active players but we have plenty. Not everyone is playing all that much right now but I hope you can change that. We aren't just looking for new players but you are also welcome to come to the channel any time you want to and talk about with us. It's not just Soldat we talk about, in fact, we talk about everything. We have a friendly community and the channel is the second most active channel on the network and everyone is welcome. Hope to see you there.

As for other community stuff, remember when I mentioned other game modes? Well, I ought to explain what I meant, I suppose.

Challenge maps:
There are two kind of challenge maps, CTF and Teammatch. In CTF challenge maps you join a team and try to finish the map without dying. Since there are no checkpoints, dying means you will have to start over. Teammatch challenge maps work in exactly the same way but there are 4 teams and checkpoints. Red, blue, yellow and green teams. Once you reach a checkpoint, you can switch team and you don't have to start from the beginning if you die. Challenge maps are a good way to test your movement and how good you are with game's physics. I don't recommend them to new players though. They can be pretty irritating. Anyway, challenge maps are pretty popular on GW Soldat.

There are other modes too but they aren't as noticeable so I'll just mention two which come in my mind.

Race maps, can also be played in normal maps, but it's different and not as fun. The point is to finish the map faster than other players. Usually weapons are turned off in race maps but on some occasions they are on so you can sabotize other players. I don't think our servers have race maps at the moment, though. We used to have them though.

King of the Hill. UPRC and I came up with this a long time ago. Two players in a same team will try to drop the other player from a platformer. We made a few King of the Hill levels but it never got popular and it hasn't been played in a long time.

Well, I don't know what else to say about the community. I would write about our history but I'm going to make an article about it for GW History sooner or later so I'll just skip that. Moving on.

Movies[/color]

Ah, finally here. I really suggest checking these movies out because the screenies don't really speak for the game. These movies feature some really skilled Soldat players and although some of this stuff might seem easy, it's not all that easy at all, especially considering the fact that they are playing against other good players (ok, not project X).

The movies are pretty large so first I'll show some short clips by me. They are just some random kills and shit like that. But they aren't too bad so I suggest checking them out.

DS short clips:

[size]Knife kill 1
Knife kill 2
Bouncing bullet with Barret (sniper)
Chainsaw skills
Throwing flag in REAL ACTION

All of these are fairly old but yeah. I got tons of demos so maybe one day I'll make a movie, dunno.

>>> Soldat Veterans Movie (created by antiCamper) <<<
GET THIS

Link: http://own-age.com/vids/mirrors.aspx?id=6118&dlmirror=8898 (if it doesn't work, try to go here and download it.)
Size: 205.6MB
Length: 12 Minutes
Cool information: DS dies many times in this movie.
Screenshots:







This is the best Soldat movie made, in my opinion. Very good players, good editing and overall very well made. It's large but I really suggest this. Really. Even if you aren't going to play this game, get this.[/size]

Project X:

[size]Link: http://www.selfkill.com/webv3/content/sd_redir.php?id=131
Size: 56MB
Length: too lazy to check
Cool information: It's pretty old but it's still a solid video. I suggest it even if it's not as good as Soldat Veterans one.
Screenshots: -

Another good video. The material for sv|movie was taken from clan wars and high level ctf rounds so it's much more impressive than Project X, which was mostly recorded in random public servers with more or less skilled players. It still has some cool frags and tricking so I recommend it as well.[/size]

And that's it for movies. There are tons of more movies but I don't have any on my PC and I'm not going to find any because these are enough. If you still want to see more, I suggest heading over to Soldat forums and finding them there.

Screenshots: (taken from Soldat's site)
















---------

Well, that's it. I hope some of you got even a bit interested in Soldat and are considering playing with us. Once again, I really recommend Soldat. It's extremely fun and there's no other game like it. I warn you that there are a fair share of bugs (most of them were fixed in the newest version, however) which are pretty annoying sometimes. But it's my third favorite game ever and that's saying a lot.

Thank you for reading this.

It's been a while since we had one of these so let's have another one since they are pretty fun.

This game works like this. First a person posts a screenshot of some game. If you think it's too hard to get it right based on just the screenshot, it's okay to give a tip but don't make it too obvious. Once the screen is posted, others will try to guess what game it is. Once someone gets it right, he will post a new screen after his answer has been confirmed by the one who posted the previous screenshot. However, if the one who posted the screenshot is not on around when you answer and you are absolutely sure that your answer is correct, you can proceed and post the next screenshot. If someone gets the answer right and does not post a screenshot during the next three hours after his answer was confirmed, anyone can post the next screenshot. One last thing, you can post a new screenshot if no one gets the last one right in 12 hours. However, if someone has guessed, you will have to wait for confirmation because he might be right. And that's all there is to this, pretty simple.

I'm not going to count points or anything and there will be no winner. I'm going to delete any posts which ignore the rules and  if someone posts a screenshot without getting last one right, they will have to meet furious dragonslayer for not reading the first post in the topic.

The first person who posts in this topic can start this.

EDIT: By the way, the point isn't to post a screenshot NO ONE CAN GET RIGHT. That's why I want you to stick with games which have been released outside Japan or rest of Asia as well, unless they are popular enough so someone can actually know the game.