Since April 1, Valve has been conducting an Alternate Reality Game involving the recently released Potato Sack, in which one can collect Potatoes by completing certain tasks within the thirteen Indie games in the pack. Some of these potatoes unlock special Portal-like content for the Indie games, such as Portal-themed levels and the like. Until April 15th, it was unclear what other purposes these Potatoes might serve.

However, Valve recently revealed a purpose for the Potatoes: an early launch for Portal 2. The web page functions as such: there are thirteen Indie games in the Potato Sack, and so there are thirteen progress bars, with a large progress bar at the top averaging the thirteen to show overall progress. Each individual bar fills up based on hours that Steam users have played that game, with the goal being proportional to the number of sales that game had. Thus, a very popular game like Killing Floor, which has had many sales, requires far more hours to complete its progress bar than a relatively new game like 1 2 3 KICK IT!, and so it requires higher cumulative play time to complete than the newer game.

Now, where do Potatoes come in, you might ask? At the bottom of the new page, listed as Auxiliary Power, is the number of Potatoes thus far collected across Steam. Valve has revealed that, when a certain number is reached, GLaDOS will begin overclocking the CPUs, meaning that all subsequent hours spent in game will have a multiplier applied to it. How many Potatoes have to be collected or just how large a multiplier is yet to be determined.

So buy the Potato Sack and get playing, if you want to see Portal 2 release early. And check out this well organized wiki detailing the ARG so far.

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There is a shortage of G27 steering wheels since GT5 came out.  I in fact had a G27 that i played a lot of Dirt 2 with, but I sold it during the huge run on G27's when GT5 came out.  I wasn't using it a lot and needed cash so i sold it for more than i paid for it thinking that when dirt 3 came out there would be plenty in stock.  Well Dirt 3 is a month away and still no G27's so i started to look for an alternative.  I set my sites on the Logitech Driving Force GT.  when doing the comparison on Logitechs site, the only real difference according to Logitech was the the GT did not have a clutch.   I never used a clutch when gaming so i decided to give it a try.
I picked up the Logitech driving force gt from buy.com for $129 with shipping.  I had used buy.com in the past and was not really impressed with them but they had the best price and with the seeming shortage of Logitech steering wheels I bit the bullet and ordered one.  I was happily surprised to find that the fulfillment and shipping were much faster and better, I would definitely use them again.

My GT arrived on Monday and I have been using it for shift 2 and dirt 2 and I have to say i am impressed for the money it is well worth it.  The one thing I was disappointed with was  the lack of support for it in Dirt 2.  It was easily remedied by editing the registry and telling the CPU that it is a Driving force Pro that is support by Dirt.

 
The first thing I noticed was how much quieter the GT is, the G27 is so loud that you cannot  talk on team-speak during a race.  The clacking and clicking was so loud that no one can hear a word.  The GT it is much quieter and it does not sacrifice  force feedback at all.  In fact the wheel feels almost exactly the same when driving.  Another thing I liked was the fact that it had less cords.  The GT has the shifter built into the wheel so you don't have to plug in another peripheral.  It also has the plugs in the back instead of underneath the wheel.  This makes it much more manageable.  It also has a gimmicky center button for the horn which I though was kinda fun.  Another thing is the arcade game support.  many games that are coming out now, have jumping and rockets to shoot and things.  With the G27 all those keys had to be mapped and the button placement was not very intuitive.  Since this wheel is designed to work with the PS3 it is ideal for arcade games like blur and such.
There are a few things that I did not like about the GT.  It is missing the leather of the G27 although this is not a huge deal, the leather does give you a better feel.  One thing that I really don't like about the GT is the paddle shifters.  The paddle shifters for the G27 are real paddle shifters unlike the ones on the GT are basically buttons.  They work and are not really hard to use but they just don't feel like paddle shifters.

In conclusion the driving force gt is a great steering wheel for the money.  If i had my choice I would definitely chose the gt over the G27.  I like it because it basically feels and reacts the same as the G27 but it is not as loud or as difficult to set up.  I give the GT 9/10 stars.  Better hurry and get yours before Dirt3 comes out.

 

Valve has recently released a series of teaser videos narrated by Aperture Science CEO Cave Johnson for Portal 2 called the Aperture Investment Opportunities. While the videos don't necessarily reveal much about gameplay, they certainly inspire continued confidence in Valve's sense of dark humor, which was a very important element to Portal's success. My only regret is that there are and will only be four of them: Panels, Bot Trust, Turrets, and Boots. If there was any doubt that Portal 2 would not retain the same level of dark humor, it should be well erased by now.

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Help unlock the new Battlefield 3 trailer, all you have to do is "like" the Battlefield page on facebook. Once the page reaches 1 million likes EA/DICE will release a new 12 minute trailer and also a trailer with commentary by DICE. We are a little over half way, so every one click that button!

In preparation for the release of Portal 2 on April 19, Valve has released a comic (which can be found here) detailing the events between the two games, as well as some of what happened before Portal. This comic, called Lab Rat, follows a crazy employee who is likely responsible for all of the drawings and writing found during Portal, as well as giving some much needed background on Aperture Science and Chell. While it was neither as profound nor as long as The Sacrifice comic, it is still a really good read, I highly suggest it.

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The Battlefield series is one of the most important first person shooters in the gaming industry, it is known for the unique game style and mechanics of having huge environments where many battles can happen at the same time, and the latest war machines, available for you to use, ranging from a quad bike to a full size multipurpose jet like the F-15.

DICE, the favorite Swedish based company known for the popular Battlefield series is famous for the time and dedication they spend on their games, Battlefield 3 has been in development for years and with the powerful Frostbite 2.0 engine backing them up, Battlefield 3 promises to deliver the best first person shooter experience known so far, with the most realistic sound ever heard on a game and photorealistic graphics that it’s minimum requirement is DirectX10 for the PC platform.

Frostbite 2.0 promises to deliver even more detailed Micro Destruction but also as seen on the trailer Fault Line, serious Macro destruction of huge buildings getting demolished by a massive earthquake. Frostbite has the uniqueness of having the ability of fully destructible environments; this means that the game play experience is always dynamic because of the constant change in the surroundings and that’s the main attraction of Battlefield 3 in contrast to other games that everything is so static that the games turn into routines very rapidly.

If you like large scale destruction, Jets are returning for Battlefield 3, not much information has been given about them, but from what it has been revealed until now, we know they will be able to break the speed of sound. Battlefield 1943 was best known for its air to air combat that was present in most of the maps, if we’re going to get an idea on how jets are going to work in Battlefield 3, Battlefield 1943 should be a good reference; large open maps with enough space for the planes but also keeping the small scale for ground battles making them as interesting and fun as always.

Battlefield 3 is projected to launch during 2011’s fall, it is a highly anticipated game and a big candidate for game of the year. It is still a while but DICE for sure has a lot of surprises prepared for us meanwhile. 

Shift 2 Unleahed is only a few days away and that means the launch trailer has gone live.

A new trailer from Shift 2 has been unleashed showing racing driver Tommy Milner, drive a lap on the Laguna Seca track in a Chevrolet Corvette C6.R GT 1

I am personally looking forward to Shift 2 Unleashed it seems to be a great sim with lots of attention to detail and a worthy competitor to Gran Turismo 5.

Shift 2 is getting released March 29th in the US on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3

This is the start of a new weekly feature where we will interview one member from the Battlefield Community who stands out in a special way. This week we were lucky enough to get one of our own staff members and modder veteran Sir. Legolas.

Thank you for being the first of our Community Interviews, tell us a little about yourself.

Hey, it's a pleasure! I'm a casual gamer and a mapper that has been around for many years, PC gaming has been around my life since I can remember, Doom, Heretic, The Incredible Machine. Command & Conquer, Starcraft, Warcraft I and II and in fact most of the 90's classics. But it wasn't until I met the great Delta Force series that I knew First Person Shooters were going to be my favorite kind of games. Delta Force BlackHawk Down probably is the game I have spent most time playing, I liked sniping the most so I sticked with the name Legolas since then, and mapping, over 5 years for sure in that game and that's the time when my desire to build worlds, something called mapping, was born.

What is your history with Battlefield?

Because of Delta Force Black Hawk Down was my favorite game back in 2003 I wasn't paying much attention to Battlefield 1942, I had both games but 1942 required me to have a better computer and internet connection that was just not available for a 12 year old back then (Downloading those 120 MB patches with a 256k connection? It's was a JOKE!). When Vietnam showed up, well I still was "addicted" to DFBHD, still I rushed to Bestbuy and bought the Vietnam soundtrack as a pre-order for BF:V. Things continued the way they were for a couple more years, joined a DFBHD Squad in 2004, met amazing people who I still hang out with today, until the big day that the GREAT BATTLEFIELD 2 was announced, oh man, the graphics looked amazing on the screenshots they published, and I had to get my hands on it, I built for the first time my Gaming computer, costing me around $1k, I was finally trapped by Battlefield. Flying those high tech jets performing some sick dive bombing techniques on tanks and helicopters, rushing flags on a full Blackhawk taking over the map in seconds (until it got patched..), sniping pilots off their helicopters, going on Rambo missions to blow up commander assets, that was a revolutionary game for me, Battlefield has been my love since then.

What is your favorite Battlefield game?

I must say Battlefield 2, because BF2 has given me so much more than gaming hours.

How did you get starting with modding?

I have modded games since and for Command and Conquer series mostly. Only for my own amusement as I was too young. In Delta Force, I started mapping more than modding, people seemed to enjoy my maps which just motivated me to continue on this matter. In BF2 things got a bit more serious when I joined The Sir. Community, I helped on Battleracer as a mapper, I only built from the ground one map/track, Urban Speedway, and also helped other mappers that worked on version 1.29 on building their tracks. After that I've been helping Elxx on whatever I can, which is mostly nothing, he is too damn good at what he does.

How were you involved in the Sir. Community?

One day I found out about this website, Totalbf2.com, there were some crazy news about a community making one hell of a mod, still in development, called Sir.Mod. I said to my self "Hey, I want to do that!" so just joined their TeamSpeak, got to know people, played with them for a while and also helped on various projects, The great Sir. AAK625 thought I was a cool guy, he invited me to test early 0.2 sandbox beta, I met Elxx, who kinda scared me when I first talked to him, Matdef the great and other great Sir. members, some Sir.'s pressured me on to joining Sir. Shortly after I was considered as a "Supporter", some time latter I finally decided to join the community, asked AAK625 and he told me to add the Sir. tag on my name.
From then and on I helped in countless projects, some projects are secret, some were just small projects within the community and some others were as big as mods like Battleracer, Battleracer 2142, helped Elxx testing countless versions of Sandbox before his releases for BF2, some other small mods for BF2142, helped on a trailer for BF2142:Northern Strike, and on developing Wake Island 2142.

What is/was your favorite Battlefield mod of all time?

Battlefield 2: DEATHMATCH - By Elxx. This mod only lasted for about a week, Elxx said it was just an experiment, but it was the greatest mod ever in my opinion. It basically was a nicely detailed free for all, it was incredibly fun. 

What is your favorite official Battlefield map?

All of the Wake Islands. from the year 1942 to 2142

If you could mod Battlefield 3 what would you want to do?

Battlefield 1943 and Battleracer of course.

What do you think of Battlefield 3 considering what we know so far?

I think DICE should give modders a chance even if they think it's too complicated to develop for the game's engine. I do not think modders need too many fancy tools that takes too much of DICE's time to produce, maybe just opening the game for us is more than enough. But leaving that behind, BF3 is looking damn sexy, I feel like I'm going to really like this game specially because this is one game that is not being rushed out since it's been in development for years. Fall 2011 is going to be the best time for gaming in years.

With that I want to thank you Alex aka Sir. Legolas for willing to be interviewed by us and also thank you for your support and dedication to the Battlefield Community over the years.