Jonathan "Tempest" Phillips

Monkeys running a LAN. What are you? some kind of primate techie? Oh your not? Your actually a gaming group called Malevolent Monkees that do Lan parties every so often and invite people from the TF2 community. Oh well thats much better. Sure I’ll gladly come along to your LAN party.

This was a conversation I had several months ago. And boy am I glad I did. This led to me having one of the most enjoyable weekends of gaming I’ve had in a long time. I packed up my PC and all of its electronic counterparts, crammed them into my car along with a inflatable mattress, pillow and covers and headed to rugby. What was waiting there for me was a long list of people I have been in need of meeting for some time. Mogs, Alex, Flamecut, to name a few. Not to mention meeting up with Agro and Miss Meow again. yes thats right, it was a KK/VGN celebrity line up. Good times.

What I was expecting to be a simple sit down with your PC session turned out to be so much more. Firstly it was AMAZING weather and so we actually spent time outside. Yes that’s right, a bunch of gamers in the presence of the day star. Thank deity for BBQ’s a meat. I also got to play a bunch of really good games that would have flown straight pass me otherwise. Flatout 2 (I R Curling master), Attitude (SWEEET) and Grid. was great to pic up a game and have everybody suck at it and learn togeather. Really refreshing experience.

When the sign ups happen for MMLAN 12, My name will be down on that list, and so should yours.

A few weeks ago, Valve updated L4D2. This update added the new Passing campaign that you’ve been hearing so much about. Yep thats right, the one where bill gets killed for some reason. Well with that update they also added something called Mutations. Each week there will be a new mutation mode available for that week only. Each mutation is based on an already existing game type, but with a minor twist. For example. The first mutation was realism Versus mode. All the properties of realism mode but in a versus environment. Not much long term play value in the idea, But great fun for a week.

But what does this mean? It means that I have to give valve another 50 Star points. They have said in countless interviews that they want to change the way people think of entertainment. Instead of looking at a game on the shelf as a product, they want you to think of it as a service. This means that once you have bought it, played it and finished it, Their goal is to keep updating and changing it often enough to keep you coming back and playing it over and over. They have tried to do this with TF2 and for the most part have done really well, But the time it takes between each update is not that time frame they were looking for.

But with these Mutations they have achieved something special. Each week it will probably take them about 10 man hours to create a weeks worth of fresh game play. For minimal effort and cost, they have maximised your gaming time. Pure perfection.