GGL’s Virtual Racing Season, sponsored by Bosch, has reached its final four stage and only the most grizzled competitors remain.
Let’s have a look at the remaining matchups. Trust me when I tell you that they are comprised of familiar names…
Two Trackmania titans will collide after carving a swath of destruction through the bracket. Who’s will be the best player on the day they meet?
NFSxMaster has made it this far, but is he ready for KiFire? There’s no telling anymore and all bets are off.
Stay tuned to VRS as we head down the stretch to the finish!
GGL’s Virtual Racing Season has whittled down its competitors to the elite eight phase, with most of the big names remaining in the field. At the end, there can be only one, but for now, here are our remaining matchups:
eMJay has lived up to his #1 seed in making it this far, while zsta has also 3-0′d all of his opponents to reach this point. I’m calling it a toss up…we’ll see.
I’ll put $100 on G2_Wolf. Any takers?
Polas already advanced to the final four after winning this match, so, I’ll predict a win for him! Way to get it done early, though…
The multigaming master has advanced to face…who is willy456? Is he a dark horse contender or a pretender? We’ll find out on this edition of…As the VRS Turns!
Dutch filmmaker Jos de Putter will debut his e-sports documentary, Beyond the Game, Nov. 21 at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 2008 in (where else?) Amsterdam.
The film focuses on the competitive Warcraft III scene, depicting the World Cyber Games rivalry between top Human player Li “Sky” XiaoFeng and his Orc rival Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen. Additionally, retired pro SK|Madfrog takes a look back at his career, while his parents reminisce that their major concern was his health.
Beyond the Game is particularly pertinent given that it will debut after this year’s World Cyber Games Grand Final (currently ongoing in Cologne). While Grubby is in the field, Sky didn’t make it due to visa issues.
GGL contributor Jos “Zerter” Buyvoets served as the Technical Supervisor and chief fact-checker for the film, so give props where they are due for the accuracy of the information in this documentary!
More information about Beyond the Game can be found at the Beyond the Game blog site.
The final bracket of GGL’s Virtual Racing season, sponsored by Bosch, has entered its sweet sixteen phase.
Much of the first round consisted of byes, and the second round weeded out some of the playing field.
Note: Trackmania Nations Forever is the game for this bracket, but some players progressed from brackets that used different games. That means the TMNF players are at a huge advantage in these matchups. Here’s the list:
eMjay got here though the Forza 2 ladder, while Racefan took a more traditional TMNF-based route. The smart money would be on Racefan, but eMjay already knocked off #33 franklinsoto to get to this point. This could be anyone’s race to win.
Zsta2k5 is a talented multigamer who has competed in many titles, while DigitalShot made his way through the TMNF ladders to get to this stage. Once again, we have a potentially close match that I can’t call.
Read more »
The second bracket of GGL’s SoulCalibur IV tournament has progressed quickly, whittling down the playing field to 16 gamers. Two finalists from this bracket will be flown to Los Angeles to compete on an episode of G4’s X-Play.
Some recognizable names are still in the bracket, so let’s have a look!
CNP lived up to his #1 seed (random though it may be) so far, running the bracket, while Shadekill doesn’t seem to have much confidence in his abilities. See the match details page here for the full story.
OffBeatNinja is a sponsored professional gamer. You know who my money is on; can the good doctor pull off an upset?
EJ is a well-known Dead or Alive 4 player who frequently makes his way to LAN tournaments. Who is Azn Fury 85? He’s made it this far in our second bracket, but he may be looking at defeat. Still, because this is a single-elim tournament, it could go either way. Read more »
Razer’s newest mouse, the Salmosa, has received much fanfare in the gaming community for its old-school approach. The mouse is billed as a light, small alternative to the gigantic spaceship mice of recent years, and reaches 1800 DPI at a polling rate of 1000Hz. It boasts a 3G infrared sensor that is one step above previous optical mice, and promises not to skip like laser mice.
One of the biggest selling points of the Salmosa is the ability to switch DPI and USB polling rate via switches on the underside of the mouse. This doesn’t require any drivers.
These features are great as long as they work properly, but I’ve always felt that the shape of the mouse is the determining factor in whether or not I’ll use it. With that in mind, Razer sent GGL a Salmosa to put through my (admittedly subjective) tests, which consist of headshotting people in Call of Duty 4.
The test system
AMD 64 4000+
Asus A8N-E Motherboard
GEForce 7800GT
2GB RAM
Windows XP SP2
Read more »
GGL has teamed with Namco to bring you the Soulcalibur IV Xbox 360 Tournament, with $5,000 in prizes and a televised final on G4’s X-Play!
Darkness and Light alike are invited to join the SCIV Xbox 360 Game community now to pre-register – simply go to the SCIV Xbox 360 community page on GGL, log in, and click “Add Game” on the left menu. You will need to be a registered user to join; register here.
Next week, registered group members will receive a private invitation to join the 1v1 tournament on a first-come, first-served basis – there are only 512 spots so pre-register now! Participating players can then join one of two brackets and compete in the single-elimination competition from October 18th to November 2nd, where all 512 skillful swordsmen will battle it out for their spot in the live final.
Having proven their skills in the online tournament, the final 2 players in each bracket will be flown out to G4’s headquarters in Los Angeles on the weekend of November 22! Greatness awaits the semifinalists who will compete live in G4’s studio, with their ultimate showdown to appear during an episode of G4’s X-Play. Whoever emerges victorious will not only have proven themselves to their opponents but also to a television audience!
Show that your soul still burns and join the Soulcalibur IV Xbox 360 Tournament!
Click here for the official rules.
Only two days remain in the second ladder of GGL’s Virtual Racing Season, which ends Sunday, Oct. 5.
modestas1988 still leads in the Burnout Paradise, Need for Speed ProStreet and Forza 2 ladders, while G2_Wolf maintained his stranglehold on the Trackmania Nations Forever ladder. The second round of ladders will advance seven people per ladder.
Remember that the third ladder is for Trackmania Nations Forever only and will advance eight players to the final bracket.
Registration is still open for the ladders. You will need to be a GGL member to participate. Hit this registration link to get started.
GGL has teamed up with GSC Game World to bring you the Stalker: Clear Sky team ladder tournament and giveaway!
The team sizes are flexible, so teams can mutually decide team sizes up to 32 players. Here are dates and times:
Schedule:
9/22/08: Registration and practice ladders begin (registration is open for the duration of the ladders–already underway)
10/15/08: Official ladder begins
12/14/08: Competition ends
Prizing:
1st: $750
2nd: $300
3rd: $200
Giveaway:
We will also give away “a game a day” for 30 days from 10/15/08 – 11/13/08. In order to be eligible to win a game, you have to be a member of the Stalker group and have to have completed at least 1 of the following types of activities on the site: played a match in the Stalker tournament, posted news/forum/video/review on the Stalker: Clear Sky game page, written a blog (anywhere on GGL), or invited someone to join GGL (with conversion).
So what are you waiting for? Join us at stalkertournament.ggl.com!
Ray Jimenez, associate producer on Capcom’s Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, has confirmed that the game will hit in 2008.
When? Jimenez can’t finger a specific day, saying only: “We are in the home stretch. We’re basically closing out all the bugs that came up in the open beta and a few other open issues.”
He added: “There were many issues with networking that got a lot of the help from the beta. We used the beta as a test bed to roll out new tech on our side and the beta identified what we were doing right and what needed to be adjusted.”
(The SSF2THD netcode discussion is a highly interesting one, and you can read more about it at Capcom-Unity.com)
So there it is. SSF2T with updated graphics courtesy of UDON will be out this year. Personally, while I think this is great, Street Fighter IV is my holy grail.
Read: Capcom Says SSFII Turbo HD Remix Will Release in 2008
It’s been some time since we reviewed a keyboard here at GGL, and to be honest, quite some time since any “gaming keyboards” have been released. The nice guys at Steelseries have aimed to rectify this problem with the $149.99 USD Steelseries 7G keyboard. Featuring no-click keyswitches, 18K gold plated connectors and a projected lifetime of 50 million keystrokes, the 7G definitely talks the talk.
Does it walk the walk? In order to find out, Steelseries sent us a review sample of the 7G.
I was amused to hear a couple of loose keys rattling around in the box when I was opening it, though this probably says more about DHL’s shipping practices than Steelseries’ QA. Regardless, the loose keys popped back on easily and I continued on my way.
The Shape and Feel
My initial impression of the keyboard: Heavy and quite large (18.9 x 9.8 in) with the optional wrist rest attached. The solidly-manufactured feel is commendable, but (with the wrist rest) the keyboard was almost too long to fit on my desk. It’s not a wrist rest as much as it is an arm rest, and I recommend not attaching it to the keyboard for ergonomic reasons.
Read more »
Continuing a decade-long trend of updating StarCraft, Blizzard has released its newest patch for the game.
Patch 1.5.3 adds these fixes:
- Game now works correctly on versions of Mac OS X which do not support 256-color mode.
- Fixed a communication bug affecting third party leagues.
- Alt-F6 no longer stalls the game on Windows.
The patch can be downloaded from the Blizzard release notes page.
Also, here’s a small note for those of you competing in the game at the moment. Kage wrote on SK-Gaming: “Keep in mind though that if you wish to continue playing on ICCUP and ChaosLauncher, then you might just have to sit out on this one for a while, as this patch removes the possibility of playing on the ICCUP ladder.”
