Today Valve released a bunch of achievement statistics collected via Steam for their latest shooter, Left 4 Dead. They’re interesting to look at, especially at the surface level where you’ll notice that the most popular unlocks are mainly on the human side of the equation. Below is a bit of a sample of the discrepancy:

• Drag and Drop (Rescue a Survivor from a Smoker’s tongue before he takes damage) 76.3%
• My Bodyguard (Protect any Survivor from an attacking Infected 50 times) 66.8%
• Double Jump (Pounce two different Survivors on one life as a Hunter) 37.3%
• Chain Smoker (Constrict two Survivors on one life as a Smoker) 29%

One of the loudest criticisms about L4D is the balance of the Versus mode. Specifically, players feel as though the Special Infected are too poorly equipped to take out the Survivors. Do these statistics reflect that such is the case, or is this just the result of unbalanced achievements? I'm of the mind that it reflects both of these issues, but neither greater than the other.

Regardless, these are just the stats from the first week of play and probably indicate nothing significant. Valve tossed these up for all of us to see and added in the note that they’ll be using it to further enhance or tweak the game if needed. Those guys at Valve sure are swell.

[via MTV Multiplayer]

So we’re getting… Jack Black as a host. World premiere gameplay footage from Black’s “Brutal Legend” game. “God of War III” gameplay footage of some sort. And more. On Spike on December 14th.

Plus the winners of Awards I voted in. Not bad!

More details and game debuts announced in the press release below:

JACK BLACK TO HOST SPIKE TV’S 2008 “VIDEO GAME AWARDS”

6th Annual Celebration To Include Mind-Blowing World Premieres Of God Of War III, Brütal Legend, Fight Night Round 4,

Mafia II, Terminator Salvation, Uncharted 2, Watchmen: The End is Nigh, A Special Gears Of War 2 Announcement

And Other Surprises

Premieres LIVE Sunday, December 14 At 9:00 PM ET

New York, NY, December 2, 2008 – On Sunday, December 14th, the future is in play when Jack Black, one of the entertainment industry’s most versatile and talented stars, takes viewers on a trip to gamer heaven as host of Spike TV’s 2008 “Video Game Awards.” Recognizing outstanding artistic and technical achievement in the gaming industry, plus premiering first-looks at the hottest games of 2009 and beyond, the 2008 “VGAs” debuts LIVE and in HIGH-DEFINITION on Sunday, December 14 (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/tape delay on west coast) from Sony Picture Studios in Culver City, CA.

In emceeing the night’s festivities, Black will be capping a 2008 which saw him star in two Hollywood blockbusters, “Tropic Thunder” and “Kung Fu Panda” that grossed over $800 million worldwide combined. Also, he will star opposite Michael Cera in director Harold Ramis’ June 2009 release of “The Year One.”

“Jack is a huge gamer and a former performer and winner on the ‘VGAs’ having taken home Best Performance By A Human – Male in 2005,” said Casey Patterson, Spike TV’s senior vice president, event production and talent development. “We’re thrilled to have him as our host. With a record 10 world premieres including Brütal Legend starring Jack, it will be a big night and wild ride!”

In addition to the world premiere of Brütal Legend gameplay from designer Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango and Psychonauts) and Double Fine Productions, the 2008 “VGAs” will be stacked with an unprecedented number of wall-to-wall world exclusives. Games scheduled to make their global debut include the first look at the gameplay of the PlayStation 3™ exclusive God of War III, Uncharted 2, EA’s Sports Fight Night Round 4, Mafia II, Terminator Salvation, Watchmen: The End is Nigh, a special announcement regarding Gears of War 2 and more blockbuster surprises set to be revealed shortly.

At the show, legendary game designer Will Wright will receive the first-ever Gamer God award for his achievements in the gaming industry. Other industry luminaries set to attend include Game of the Year-nominees Hideo Kojima (designer, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots), Cliff Bleszinski (design director, Gears of War 2), Todd Howard (executive producer, Fallout 3), Alex Evans (co-founder, Media Molecule, creators of LittleBigPlanet), Rockstar Games and more names soon to be announced.

The official sponsors of Spike TV’s 2008 “Video Game Awards” are Burger King®, GameStop™, Gillette®, Energizer®, Mountain Dew, Stride® Gum, U.S. Army and Verizon Wireless.

On Sunday, December 14th, Jack Black will take viewers on a trip to gamer heaven as host of Spike TV’s 2008 “Video Game Awards.” Recognizing outstanding artistic and technical achievement in the gaming industry, plus premiering first-looks at the hottest games of 2009 and beyond, the 2008 “VGAs” debuts live and in high definition on Sunday, December 14 at 9:00-11:00 p.m. EST (tape delay on west coast).

In emceeing the night’s festivities, Black will be capping a 2008 which saw him star in Tropic Thunder and Kung Fu Panda that grossed over $800 million worldwide combined. Also, he will star opposite Michael Cera in director Harold Ramis’ June 2009 release of The Year One.

In addition to the world premiere of Brütal Legend gameplay from designer Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango and Psychonauts) and Double Fine Productions, the 2008 “VGAs” will be stacked with exclusives featuring the first look at the gameplay of the PS3 exclusive God of War III, Uncharted 2, EA’s Sports Fight Night Round 4, Mafia II, Terminator Salvation, Watchmen: The End is Nigh. A special announcement regarding Gears of War 2 and other surprises are supposed to revealed at a later date leading up to the festivities.

At the show, legendary game designer Will Wright will receive the first-ever “Gamer God” award for his achievements in the gaming industry. Other industry luminaries set to attend include Game of the Year-nominees Hideo Kojima (designer, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots), Cliff Bleszinski (design director, Gears of War 2), Todd Howard (executive producer, Fallout 3), Alex Evans (co-founder, Media Molecule, creators of LittleBigPlanet), Rockstar Games and more names soon to be announced.

Nominees and winners for Spike TV’s 2008 “Video Game Awards” were determined by the VGA Advisory Council, made up of a group of the top journalists in the industry. Games released between December 2, 2007 and December 1, 2008 were eligible for nomination. The Best Independent Game Fueled by Dew winner will be selected by fans who vote on VGA.Spike.com.

---
Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• Video Game Awards on Spike TV Will be a Game Itself for Viewers
• Brutal Legend Not Being Shown at E3 Nor Activision Pow-wow
• Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes - Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
• Mind of Mencia: Video Game Hell - Comedy Central
• Jack Black and Mos Def as Ghostbusters in "Be Kind Rewind"

But the feature doesn’t mean anything if no one’s playing it.

Developer Valve recently leased an initial batch of game usage statistics for “Left 4 Dead,” based on achievements unlocked one week after release, providing our first hints towards an answer.

Here’s what it tells about Versus Mode, where you play as zombies:

* No Versus achievements have been unlocked by at least 50% of users
* “Double Jump” is the most unlocked achievement, at 36.7%
* 0% of users have completed the “Lamb 2 Slaughter” achievement (”as an Infected, incapacitate a Survivor who has entered and left a safe room”)
* Smoker and Hunter zombies have the most unlocked achievements (note: by design, they are also played more often by gamers)

There is something very important to note about these week-one statistics, however: only 25.4% of gamers have reported finishing “Blood Harvest,” the final campaign from the perspective of the game’s zombie apocalypse survivors. Just under one-fourth of gamers have not completed “Left 4 Dead”’s main draw, which may not give them much reason to check out the other modes yet.

We’ll have to keep watching Valve’s updates, however, to see if the zombie killers of the world decide to finally give the undead a fair shot.

Related Posts
Check Out Valve’s Four ‘Left 4 Dead’ Movie Posters
Valve Says ‘Left 4 Dead’ Is Studio’s Best-Received Game Ever, Splurges On Ads
One-Liner: ‘Left 4 Dead’ Designer On Slow Vs. Fast Zombies

If you’re an older Wii owner, you may have been keeping an eye on Deadly Creatures, a game that has always seemed to me like it didn’t belong on the decidedly family-friendly console (except, of course, for its motion controls). The brawler/thriller, in which you play as a tarantula and a scorpion, was originally scheduled for release on Halloween, but was pushed back to a mid-December bow.

Now, IGN is reporting that the game won’t ship until February of next year. It’s probably for the better, since gamers are surely busy with all of the great games that have come out in the past few months. More development time never hurt a game, and neither did “breathing room” in terms of a glut of games. I’m certainly still looking forward to Deadly Creatures!

But if your interest has at all been piqued by this game, be sure to check out my preview of an early build from June, and Nick’s hands-on impressions from April. There’s even more information on the Rainbow Studios-developed, THQ-published title’s official Web site.

[Via IGN -- thanks, Adam!]

Brütal Legend gameplay debuts at 2008 VGAs, Jack Black to host originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Link

Well, it does if we’re going off the ‘individual format’ charts, where games which are released over eight different consoles don’t count, anyway.

But yes, Mario Kart Wii - almost eight months after its initial release - is back at the top of the charts, no doubt helped by the irresistible appeal of the Redknapp clan and the screech of “aww, ah lav bee’in yewwww” from her-what-used-to-be-in-Eternal in the current UK telly ads. Of course, what the ad fails to note is that Mario Kart Wii actually offers the worst local multiplayer in any home console Mario Kart to date, and that online twelve-player races is actually where it’s at. Still, I’ll concede that it’s a lot of fun if you’ve got plenty of casual gamer friends and three Wii Wheels, and it is the most accessible in the series to date. Yay for the ‘expanded audience’. Sort of.

Elsewhere, lovely lovely Wii Music hangs on in there at seven, only just outsold by PS3 big-hitter Resistance 2 in the latter’s launch week. Does this mean the British public has taken Miyamoto’s latest creation under its collective wing? Let’s hope it does better over here than in the US and Japan…

Kawashima’s at 3, Wii Play’s at 4 and Wii Fit is at 8, all months or even years after being launched. Pretty amazing scenes, all told - with all of these games going at least double-platinum, it seems Nintendo has cracked the formula for extending a game’s shelf life.

Bookmark to:

One of the most unsavory terms that gamers fling at each other during heated online arguments is "graphics whore", referring to a gamer who prides visuals above all else.

Certainly there has been no shortage of games over the years that have attempted to use flashy graphics to hide gameplay deficiencies, particularly after the introduction of optical storage media (think Rebel Assault, Microcosm, Rise of the Robots, Heart of Darkness...)

But while it's hard to imagine many people who are actually willing to spend money on games purely to show off fancy graphics or the capabilities of new hardware, there is little doubt that high-end visuals can help provide a much more immersive and enjoyable experience.

Today regular Screen Play contributor James "DexX" Dominguez provides a follow-up to another recent Your Turn article that explored the relationship between "gameplay and "eye candy"". Click below for his piece, and let us know what you think.

In defence of eye-candy

Keith Fung's recent Your Turn article "Gameplay over eye candy" covered a range of topics, but I would like to address the point alluded to in the title: the idea that high quality gameplay and impressive visuals are opposing forces, fighting for dominance.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a poor game will often feature dazzling graphics to mask substandard gameplay, and that a classic game that plays like a dream does not need to be tarted up with cutting edge graphics in order to impress. I feel that this is an extension of the ancient rivalry between art and science, which also expresses itself in the frequently-expressed opinion that poor films cover up their shortcomings with expensive special effects.

My core argument is that, when both are done well, good graphics and good game design are not rivals, struggling for a greater share of development resources. Rather, they are complementary.

Many modern games work because they create a convincing artificial world. These digital surroundings and characters attempt to elicit emotional responses from the player, such as excitement, tension, fear, sympathy, laughter, anger, or sadness. I argue that evoking such emotions works best when the world is as real as current technology allows it to be.

An interesting example to look at is Quantic Dream's long-promised and recently teased Heavy Rain. This game will live or die depending upon the believability of its characters. If they fail to emote, but instead plunge screaming into the depths of the uncanny valley, one of the game's primary aims will have failed.

In the case of Heavy Rain, advanced graphical technology can only enhance the gameplay, which consists essentially of an interactive film - part drama, part thriller. The more real the characters look, with detailed skin shaders, painstaking animation, and fine control of the many virtual facial muscles to create emotive expressions and convincing speech, the more the player will care about them and the more the game will succeed in its goal of emotional immersion.

A similar example of a graphically groundbreaking game - and, as it happens, critically lauded for its gameplay - is Half-Life 2, released a little over four years ago. Again, character animation played a significant role, especially in the realisation of your artificial companion, Alyx Vance. Half-Life 2's Source engine allowed unprecedented realism in the facial expressions of real-time digital characters. Alyx was beautifully-rendered, but rather than being simple eye candy the technology lent her a lifelike quality never before seen in a game, which made her feel more real and more important to the player.

Rather then being just an AI, Alyx became our friend. I remember on my first play through being genuinely concerned for Alyx when she got into dangerous situations.

In one of the subsequently released episodic follow-ups to Half-Life 2, a major character is unexpectedly killed. I was surprised at the depth of feeling this evoked in me. Put simply, I wanted revenge. I wanted to avenge that character's death by punishing the killer.

While unusually high-quality voice acting and solid scriptwriting were also components in my immersive concern for these artificial people, I suspect I would not have been drawn in to such a degree if the graphical grunt of the engine had not allowed them to be rendered so convincingly.

Beyond interactions with other characters, impressive graphics can enhance the game-playing experience in many other ways. A good example is the lighting model in Doom 3. Graphics technology has progressed so quickly that it is easy to forget just how astonishing Doom 3 looked the first time we saw it. The engine could render complex real-time shadows from multiple light sources, a first in game technology.

Doom 3's amazing lighting model and ability to render extremely complex environments allowed it to be, in a word, scary. There had been scary games before, but Doom 3's ability to hide monsters in shadowed corners and to have them burst unexpectedly through destructible scenery made it terrifying on my first play-through. Sadly, the level design for Doom 3 was very samey, and the effectiveness of the scares decreased as the game edged dangerously close to becoming boring, but the power of that graphics engine to scare the player was impressive.

Another underappreciated ability of a good game engine is the "wow" factor. Few games sum this up as well as the God of War series on PS2 and PSP, especially the opening battle against the colossal animated statue in the opening sequence of God of War 2.

Even though I had read online about the general theme of this extended action sequence, nothing could have prepared me for how breathtaking it was. As I controlled a crazed Spartan warrior, making him dodge out of the way of a massive bronze fist the size of a double-decker bus, I remember thinking, "This is what video games are all about."

That impression stuck with me. That entire game series consistently created a sense of incredible scale, with beautifully rendered combat arenas the size of sports stadiums, prolonged battles with awe-inspiring bosses, ranging in size from elephants to sky scrapers, and intensely satisfying (and graphically impressive) magical spell effects - lightning, volcanic eruptions, and rampaging ghostly warriors, among others.

The God of War series has very tight design - the games play very well, and apart from a few wonky camera moments and sudden difficulty spikes, they are simply great fun. I argue, though, that the God of War experience would have been very different had the developers not pushed the ageing PS2 hardware to its absolute limits to bring us the best-looking game they possibly could. I doubt that God of War would have really been God of War without those graphics-driven "wow" moments.

In summary, I think that good design in gameplay is only assisted by added grunt in the graphical architecture, and I do not think it can ever detract from the quality of a gameplay. Critics have a valid complaint when a development team has obviously spent too much time on visuals and not enough on gameplay, but I find that this is not as common a phenomenon as you may think.

In my experience, a poor game tends to be poor across the board. If the development team has neglected one of the many facets of good design, then it is more likely that they will also have neglected others.

For this reason, I think that impressive graphics tend to be more common in high quality games, and poor visuals are more likely to be found in unsatisfying products. The disappointing Too Human is an excellent example: most reviewers found it to be a flat and repetitive playing experience, and most also concluded that the visuals were unsatisfactorily behind the curve compared to its current generation siblings.

There are exceptions, of course. The movie tie-in game Wall-E is flat and uninspired, a real chore to play, but it took visual assets directly from Pixar's film production, so on current generation platforms it is quite impressive. Naturally, games that do not strive to create an truly immersive world are also exempt, such as puzzle games and more stylised, artistic games. I could not count the number of hours I have sunk into Puzzle Quest, but nobody is ever going to give it awards for stunning graphics.

Generally, though, I have found that evident poor quality in any important element of a modern game is a strong indicator that the complete package is likely to be unsatisfying.

What do you think, Screen Play readers? Have you played any hideous classics or beautiful duds?

- James "DexX" Dominguez

Screen Play readers can submit articles or ideas for consideration in Your Turn using the email address screenplayblog@gmail.com. The best blog post published on Screen Play between December 1, 2008 and January 30, 2009 as judged by Jason Hill will win a PlayStation 3 console from Sony Computer Entertainment worth $699. The next Your Turn prize winner will be announced on January 30. Only Australian residents are eligible and the judge's decision is final.

General

• Inbound Bug - We have corrected an issue where teams would not inbound the ball after a made basket, resulting in a non-authentic experience. This turned out to be a timing-specific issue with regards to quitting out of another game mode.
• Player DNA We found an issue where face sliders were getting offset when downloading the DNA of a player that another user has previously uploaded. Downloaded players should now look identical to when the original user uploaded the Player DNA.
• Created Player Scrolling Crash When a player was created with the Thick body type and was not placed on a team, on the Bobcats, or on the Thunder, the game would crash when attempting to load the player model in the create player screen or in-game. This issue has been addressed.
• Exiting Game Mode Crash A crash was identified when the user attempted to leave a game mode (Association, Playoffs, etc.) when starting the game mode after receiving an updated Living Roster. This issue has been addressed.
• Development Drill Crash Related to the issue above, a few users were seeing a crash when attempting to perform a development drill after loading an Association file. The triggering issue has been identified and resolved.
• Substitution Issue It was discovered that when the user would change their Substitution Method to By Rotation , the CPU would remain in the By Fatigue method which would result in inconsistent subs or none at all. The CPU will now replicate the Substitution Method chosen by the user s team.
• 2K Cam Framerate We have greatly improved the framerate gameplay in the 2K camera. Additional cameras have also seen performance boosts with the changes made.
• Injury Frequency In-game injuries during The Association will now occur at a lower frequency. This is particularly true with hard fouls, loose ball dives, and general falls.
• Association League Leaders Users playing through The Association with 5 minute quarters were finding that their players who should qualify for the league leaders weren t properly being listed. This issue has been corrected.
• Association Simulation The simulator inside The Association has been tuned to produce more realistic game results. We found the final scores for most games to be too high pre-patch.

Online

• Player Match Crash It was discovered on launch day that when a certain number of users simultaneously select the Player Match option, the game will eventually crash when looping through the available players.
• Team-Up Lag An intense round of optimization has taken place for the Team-Up experience. The changes made grant significant speed improvements for users on slower broadband connections such as lower-end DSL connections. The end result is a much smoother gameplay experience for everyone.
• 2K Cam In order to increase user satisfaction with the title, we have added the 2K camera angle as a playable camera angle when playing online.
• First FT Lag / Difficulty The first free throw of an online game had a variable amount of lag depending on which camera was chosen for the shot. We have corrected this issue by asserting a fixed camera for this shot that eliminates any controller lag. In addition to this, the make window for free throws in online play has been increased to account for the timing difference.
• Waiting For Opponent Users with poor connections were causing the game to loop too long on the Waiting for Opponent dialog before continuing on into the game. We ve cleaned up this behavior to place players into the game in a much quicker fashion.
• Quick Match Connection Problems An issue was identified where users were being re-directed to the online FAQ instead of being taken into a game. This message will now only appear in appropriate situations.
• Online League Injuries In online leagues, injured players that were taken off the roster weren t healing. The game now properly detects injured players and heals them in the appropriate time frame regardless of where they are placed on the roster.
• PS3 Voice / Team-Up An issue was uncovered where voice chat would drop or become intermittent when more than two users were talking simultaneously. This issue has been resolved.
• Team-Up Cameras The Broadcast camera for Team-Up has been optimized to show the user a better balance of their player, the ball, and they player they should be guarding. Also, 2K Cam has been added to the list of cameras the user can use during Team-Up play.

Gameplay

• Subbing Fouled Out Player A bug was found where you could substitute in a player who had previously fouled out, only when using the quick-sub method of the On-The-Fly Coaching menu.
• Resetting Substitutions When the user queued up substitutions via the On-The-Fly Coaching feature, re-accessing the feature before the substitutions actually took place would cause the subs to be reset such that the user would have to manually perform them again. We have addressed this issue.
• Points Off Turnovers It was discovered that this statistic was not calculating correctly when it is reported to the server for online league games. We have isolated the issue in the AI and have addressed the problem such that the stat is correctly reported.
• Double Dribble Issue By performing a sequence of moves that ended in a hop step, the user was able to perform a double dribble. This issue has been corrected.
• Jab Step Fixes The Jab Step move has been reconstructed to be more balanced in the post. Specifically, it should not be effective in user vs. user games unless the ball-handler touches the defender. Also, performing the Jab Step should no longer make the defense go back when the ball-handler loses the dribble.
• Points in the Paint In an effort to increase user satisfaction, we have tuned interior defense in combination with shooting percentages for shots taken in the paint. The result is something we feel will be more in-line with what our users are expecting.
• Shooting Percentages Continuing with the above description, we have tuned down shot success of perimeter shots when the defender is amply covering the offensive player taking the shot.
• PlayVision PlayVision in Team-Up was showing everyone s starting point with no indication on which was yours. We have changed the behavior to only show the floor art for the player you are controlling.
• General Fixes A large number of other smaller issues have been addressed with the aim of increasing user satisfaction. These changes, while minor, have improved the quality of gameplay.

• First patch for Gears of War 2 now available
• November 27: More PlayStation Home invities sent Update Home v1.01 patch
• Now live: Resistance 2 Patch 1.30