KontrolFreek Blog

Let’s get right to the good stuff!

The six category winners below have been chosen by our judges TmarTn, Juictra, Trout and Trevor (me) to move on to the final round of public voting. These six winners each win a Black Ops 2 preorder:

The Pro – Andrew Sychtysz

Run-N-Gun – Cameron Asselstine

The Racer – James Coghlan

The Sniper – Trent Rose-Anderson

The Knifer – Austin Enos

Freestyle – Marcel G.

To view the winning videos and vote for your favorite visit the voting page now. Remember, the grand prize winner will get an amazing custom gaming setup inspired by TmarTn worth over $1000—which includes a 3D television, Hauppauge PVR, studio microphone, 2 games and a set of Astro A40s.

Congrats to the six category winners and good luck in the public voting!

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Tonight is the night! Starting at 10PM EST, we’re giving you an exclusive opportunity to spend some quality time with Mrs Violence.

If you’ve never heard of Kelly “Mrs Violence” Kelley, check your pulse—‘cause you’re probably dead. Kelly’s been dominating video games in a boy’s world for as long as she’s been playing. Not only is she a reality TV star—appearing in the first season of WCG Ultimate Gamer and The Controller: Battlefield 3—she’s also one of the top placing female FPS pro gamers in the world.

To tune-in all you need to do is click here and watch.

If you’d like to join the conversation and ask Kelly a question—follow us on Twitter and Tweet your question to @KontrolFreek using the #KFLive hashtag. We’ll be filtering your questions and only asking her the best ones. If your question is used on the air you’ll be entered to win a prize—so make it good!

Optional: If you’d like to take the experience one step further you can use TweetGrid and set #KFLive as the hashtag and @KontrolFreek as the host.

Special thanks to the great people over at Battlefieldo and Don’t Revive Me Bro for the extra prize and community support!

See you tonight!

So, we decided to send one lucky fan to Call of Duty XP 2012!

Before we announce the winner, we’d like to thank all of you FPS Freek Prestige fans for your support through the years. We love our fans and hope to bring you more big giveaways like this in the near future.

The winner of the CoD XP 2012 trip is Daniel Kvaley! We’ll be contacting you via the email address you provided very soon.

There are very few FPS Freek Prestige’s left in stock so get them while you still can.

Like a bunch of people, I got really excited about Homefront.  The marketing surrounding the game was great and the premise of battling the Koreans in an alternate reality San Francisco sounded outstanding.  The fact that the makers of the above-average Frontlines: Fuel of War were handling development duties didn’t hurt either.  Yes, Homefront had a lot going for it.

Well, we all know how that turned out.  A little over a week has passed since its release and the overall response has been pretty “meh” at best.

The very average (and that’s being nice) Homefront raises a much more important question, though, about the video game industry and our buying habits: why do they continue to make average games, and why do we keep buying them?

My short answer is, “hope.”  Yes, Obama used it, and yes, it’s a bit cliché—just work with me.  It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.  No one sets out to make an average game—just like nobody sets out to buy one—it just happens.  Developers hope their final product is a good one and we hope our $60 purchase gives us hours of quality entertainment.  But, developers run in to deadlines and certain features need to be axed and quality issues don’t get the time they deserve to be fixed.  And I’m sure it’s just as annoying to the people that pour their hearts in to game development as it is for the end user.  But, it’s a shame that the developers and publishers know about a game’s shortcomings prior to release and ignore them.  I get it; they have made a large investment and must stay the course that their game is good.  So they leave it to us and our $60 to find out of the disappointing dysfunction that lies ahead—and that can leave quite a bad aftertaste.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  Three more months of development could have really helped a game with as much potential as Homefront and Kaos and THQ could have saved some serious face.  Also, a $60 price tag on a budget title like Homefront is crazy.  Yes, I called it a budget title.  You can fool yourself all you want and try to justify your purchase of Homefront—but deep down you know it’s trash.  The campaign is short (not that it bothered me because I prayed for it to end), the graphics are ugly, the server issues are infuriating and the fact that when I sell or trade it without that multiplayer code that shipped in the box, the next guy will have to suffer too is insulting.  At $40, Homefront would be looking a whole lot better.

So, now I’m scared.  I’m definitely venting about Homefront, since it was the last game I had this experience with, but it’s certainly not an isolated incident.  There are so many shooters released every year and I keep waiting for that “next great shooter” to come along but continue to be disappointed.  Will somebody please step up and dethrone Call of Duty sometime soon?  I’m counting on you Battlefield.

The opinions reflected here are those of one Freek and KontrolFreek.com is not responsible for the things he says.  In fact, no one here even likes him.

It’s highly unlikely that you haven’t heard at least something about the upcoming Source mod, School Shooter: North American Tour 2012.  But, if you somehow haven’t, here’s a quick synopsis taken from developer Checkerboarded Studios (It’s okay if you don’t recognize the name. They realize that you have no idea who they are and that’s why they’re making a game like this):

You play a disgruntled student, fed up with something (we're not exactly sure), and after researching multiple school shooting martyrs, he decides to become the best school shooter ever. You decide to arm yourself with the exact same weapons as a previous school shooter such as; Eric Harris' TEC-9, Dylan's sawed-off shotgun, Seung-Hui Cho's akimbo pistols, Nevada-Tan's...box cutter? The possibilities are endless, you are free to do whatever you want. As long as it involves shooting people.

School Shooter: North American Tour 2012 is dedicated to being the best school shooting experience an angsty little shit could ever experience, with contributions from [NAME REDACTED] of [COMPANY REDACTED], as well as [NAME REDACTED], we would also like to mention how much [NAME REDACTED] has had a key part in certain areas such as [INFORMATION FORTHCOMING].

Simply put, this shit will blow your mother******* mind. Literally, you will shoot yourself in the head at the end of the game. Sorry for spoiling it, but what did you expect? You're a spree killer, not a man.

Features include:

• 6 amazingly realistic maps with cool features like high dynamic range, and multiple students for you to shoot at.
• A points system that tracks every murder you commit. Bonuses are recieved for various things such as headshots, difficulty level you are on, what your health is, how cool you are in real life, and some other stuff that we'll probably crowbar in as time goes on by.
• A weapon loadout system based on 4 real-life spree killers.
• 13 brand-new fu**in' weapons based on the weapons used by the aforementioned 4 spree killers, these will all be pain-stakingly modeled by one of our best (and probably only modeler), [NAME REDACTED].
• A round timer that will give you about 5 or so minutes to do what you do best, kill people. Gamemodes will be programmed that interface with this round timer, the ones we're working on right now are a "survival" type gamemode were you try to survive the longest amount of time, and another were you are given 60 seconds to kill as many people as you can. The more kills you get, the more time you get.
• Music that sounds a lot like the things certain school shooters (their names rhyme with Shmylan and Shmeric) were thought to be influenced by.
• Developer commentary by fellow developers of this fine project. Note: Developers actual voices will be masked in order to protect them from potential backlash.
• And what is more better than the ability to commit suicide at the end of your spree with a self-inflicted gun shot wound? What's even more special is that this works, even if you're completely out of ammo! (Real spree killers keep a single bullet hidden in their boot incase some shit goes down).

Sounds pretty _________, don’t you think?  Just fill in the blank with whatever word first popped in your head and we’ll go with that.  It seems like everyone has an opinion about this mod lately and nobody can seem to agree on what’s “right” or “wrong.”

If you filled in the blank with “awesome,” click here.

If you said “sick,” click here.

Notice how neither opinion gets you anywhere?

Spike TV has announced today the nominees for the big Spike TV Video Game Awards show that will be taking place Live on December 11, 2010 at 8PM ET/5PM PT on (wait for it)… Spike TV.  Sort of surprisingly, Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 looks like this year’s Uncharted 2, with ten nominations.  Everyone’s favorite western, Red Dead Redemption trails close behind with nine.  Halo: Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops each have seven.

Here’s the full list of nominees:

Game of the Year

• Call of Duty: Black Ops
• God of War III
• Halo: Reach
• Mass Effect 2
• Red Dead Redemption

Studio of the Year

• BioWare
• Blizzard Entertainment
• Bungie Studios
• Rockstar San Diego

Best Xbox 360 Game

• Alan Wake
• Fable III
• Halo: Reach
• Mass Effect 2

Best PS3 Game

• God of War 3
• Heavy Rain
• Modnation Racers
• Red Dead Redemption

Best Wii Game

• Donkey Kong Country Returns
• Kirby's Epic Yarn
• Metroid Other M
• Super Mario Galaxy 2

Best PC Game

• Fallout: New Vegas
• Mass Effect 2
• Sid Meier's Civilization V
• Starcraft II Wings of Liberty

Best Handheld Game

• God of War: Ghost of Sparta
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
• Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
• Super Scribblenauts

Best Shooter

• Battlefield: Bad Company 2
• BioShock 2
• Call of Duty: Black Ops
• Halo: Reach

Best Action Adventure Game

• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
• God of War III
• Red Dead Redemption
• Super Mario Galaxy 2

Best RPG

• Fable III
• Fallout: New Vegas
• Final Fantasy XIII
• Mass Effect 2

Best Multi-player

• Battlefield: Bad Company 2
• Call of Duty: Black Ops
• Halo: Reach
• Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty

Best Individual Sports Game

• EA Sports MMA
• Shaun White Skateboarding
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11
• UFC Undisputed 2010

Best Team Sports Game

• FIFA Soccer 11
• Madden NFL 11
• NBA 2K11
• MLB 10: The Show

Best Driving Game

• Blur
• Modnation Racers
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
• Split/Second

Best Music Game

• Dance Central
• DJ Hero 2
• Def Jam Rapstar
• Rock Band 3

Best Soundtrack

• Def Jam Rapstar
• DJ Hero 2
• Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
• Rock Band 3

Best Song in a Game

• "Basket Case"
• "Black Rain"
• "Far Away"
• "GoldenEye"
• "Won't Back Down"
• "Replay/Rude Boy Mashup"

Best Original Score

• God of War III
• Halo: Reach
• Mass Effect 2
• Red Dead Redemption

Best Graphics

• God of War III
• Heavy Rain
• Kirby's Epic Yarn
• Red Dead Redemption

Best Adapted Video Game

• Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game
• Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
• Transformers: The War for Cybertron

Best Performance By A Human Male

• Daniel Craig as James Bond (Blood Stone 007)
• Gary Oldman as Sgt. Reznov (Call of Duty Black Ops)
• John Cleese as Jasper (Fable III)
• Martin Sheen as Illusive Man (Mass Effect 2)
• Nathan Fillion as Sergeant Edward Buck (Halo Reach)
• Neil Pattrick Harris as Peter Parker/Amazing Spider-Man (Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions)
• Rob Wiethoff as John Marston (Red Dead Redemption)
• Sam Worthington as Alex Mason (Call of Duty Black Ops)

Best Performance by a Human Female

• Dame Judi Dench as M (Blood Stone 007)
• Danica Patrick as Danica Patrick (Blur)
• Emmanuelle Chriqui as The Numbers Lady (Call of Duty Back Ops)
• Felicia Day as Veronica (Fallout New Vegas)
• Jennifer Hale as Commander Sheppard (Mass Effect 2)
• Kristin Bell as Lucy Stillman (Assassin's Creed Brotherhood)
• Tricia Helfer as Sarah Kerrican (Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty)
• Yvonne Strahovski as Miranda Lawson (Mass Effect 2)

Best Downloadable Game

• Costume Quest
• Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
• Monday Night Combat
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Best DLC

• BioShock 2 "Minerva's Den"
• Borderlands "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx"
• Mass Effect 2 "Lair of the Shadow Broker"
• Red Dead Redemption "Undead Nightmare"

Best Independent Game

• Joe Danger
• Limbo
• Super Meat Boy
• The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom

Most Anticipated Game

• Batman: Arkham City
• BioShock: Infinite
• Gears of War 3
• Portal 2

You can start complaining now.