KontrolFreek Blog

Valve’s Source Filmmaker beta is now available to the general public.

Source Fimmaker allows aspiring machinima artists to create movies out of any game running on the Source engine—like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead. SFM uses the same assets as the game; therefore anything that exists in the game can be used in the movie, and vice versa, according to the application’s official website.

This is the same exact tool used by Valve to create the hilarious “Meet the Team” series. If you’re unfamiliar with the animated shorts, here is the ninth (and supposedly final) installment, “Meet the Pyro.”

Carefully designed to give gamers more leverage, the FPS Freek adapter adds movement precision without disturbing the natural game-playing feel. Team FeaR felt the advantage of using the FPS Freek first hand in recent MLG tournaments they’ve won, including the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare National Championship this November.

“We’ve been using FPS Freek’s for months and wouldn’t dare play without them”, said Joey ‘Moho’ Morehouse, Captain of Team FeaR. “We’re competitive gamers and winning matters – using FPS Freek is now just part of our winning routine.”  “We’re extremely proud of Team FeaR and their recent top place finish in Anaheim,” said Ashish Mistry, CEO of KontrolFreek. “We can’t wait to see how our guys do at nationals in Orlando this January.”

The KontrolFreek products are approved for use in MLG tournaments and have been widely adopted across the first person shooter, fighter and sports gaming genres. In fact, gamers have been evolving the products original use across many gaming titles.

In addition to the FPS Freek, KontrolFreek also offers the SpeedFreek. Designed to gives gamers added control and comfort when playing racing and aviation games, the SpeedFreek's supporting slide walls enable sharper movements while adding control and precision.The FPS Freek and the SpeedFreek are $9.99 each and can be purchased at www.kontrolfreek.com or participating retailers.

About KontrolFreek
KontrolFreek designs and build products for serious gamers, giving them a competitive edge and helping them to improve performance and accuracy. KontrolFreek products are developed based on a careful study of ergonomics, ensuring each product also helps to reduce gamer fatigue, improving overall gaming comfort.

Well, it’s that time of year again.  Time to gather together your closest friends and co-workers, lay-out the spread, sip some champagne and witness the glitz and glamour of the entertainment business’ biggest night on television!  Well, maybe not.  But you could drink some beers and watch the VGA’s (Video Game Awards) on Spike TV.  At 8PM on December 12th, tune-in to see if Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 can take home the Game of the Year award over Assassin's Creed 2, Uncharted 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and the near-perfect Batman: Arkham Asylum.

You can head over to Spike’s official VGA page at http://www.spike.com/event/vga2009 to cast your vote for all of your favorite games in their respective categories, but for now, the nominees for this year’s game of the year are:

Do you agree with the nominations? What do you think should be 2009’s game of the year?

You have to admit, even if your favorite game isn’t up for the GOTY award, that 2009 has been really kind to us gamers—as all of these nominees are more-or-less fantastic titles.

I used to be good at Halo.  So when ODST came out I decided to plug in the Halo 3 Multiplayer disk and relive some of my former glory.  Sure, I figured that I’d be bit rusty from not playing for a while, but I never thought that I would still be getting straight-pwned after multiple hours.  Ouch!  This concerned me.  So after a lot of frustration—and maybe even a few tears—I decided to get to the root of the problem.

My first thought was the obvious: I suck.  Then, right before hanging myself, I decided that I wasn’t really as bad as my stats were demonstrating.  I mean, I’m not god’s gift to gaming or anything, but I do have nearly a 2.0 kill/death ratio in Modern Warfare.  My conclusion: everyone must be cheating (well, maybe not everyone--but you can see what I'm getting at).  I have certainly fallen victim to cheaters in the past but it was usually something relatively obvious.  When you are constantly getting shot from outside the map in Call Of Duty, Ghost Recon, Halo, Gears of War, and every other popular game in the history of multiplayer gaming, you know when the C is O (“cheat is on…” stay with me).  But this was different; I was being outgunned—by the same guns that I was using!  I decided that I was being beaten by hardware mods (rapid fire controllers, specifically).  Had this exception to the rule become an epidemic?

Now, I’m all about obtaining advantages (that’s why I use FPSFreeks, after all) but when does this lust for the upper-hand become cheating?   Where do you stand on the issue?  Where do you draw the line in your quest for that tangible edge?

Valve released the details of their Left 4 Dead 2 pre-order offer earlier today.  Their offer, to those of you willing to fork over your hard earned cash in advance:  early demo access (woo…), a baseball bat with an American flag skin (yay…), and a 10% discount on the purchase price (that’s better).

These offers will be offered through Steam or through participating retailers starting immediately.  Early demo access begins October 27 (tentatively) and the game launches on the PC and Xbox 360 on November 17th.

With a wallet-draining mess of sequels coming out between now and the end of the year, you could say that 2009 is set to be yet another “year of the sequel.”  Now, we know that all of these top-tier games are probably going to be great—and we’d love to have them all.  But since many of our wallets are looking a bit thin these days, buying them all is going to be a problem (unless that plan to win the lottery finally works out).  So, if you could afford to buy only ONE of these games, which one would it be?

Halo 3: ODST

Forza Motorsport 3

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Left 4 Dead 2

Assassin’s Creed 2

For those of you still on the fence about picking up Left 4 Dead 2 when it releases this November—maybe because of fears of the “more-of-the-same” variety—I’d like you to meet the newest member of the Special Infected family, “The Jockey.”  After already seeing the other two Special Infected characters announced earlier in the year (The Charger and The Spitter), this most recently revealed little fella just wants to be close to you.  More specifically, he wants to ride on your back and steer you all over the place—maybe off a ledge or in to a horde of hungry Infected anxious for your tender brain.  With the addition of a third Special Infected character, and with the 20-plus brand new items and melee weapons already announced, L4D2 should have enough new content to keep your thumbs busy for awhile.