Battlefield 3, Competitions, Minecraft and Space Marine!

Hey all!

It's been far longer than I initially realised since my last post, for which I do apologise. Hopefully as my time management slowly creeps to a skill level of well over 9000, I'll manage to fit these in more regularly. I've been really busy with eGamer nonsense of late, as I said in my previous post, so this blog is going to double as a portal I can use to keep you guys up to speed with everything I'm writing, everything I'm going to write, and other cool, eGamer related stuff.

So, in terms of keeping you kids up to speed, I've had two articles published in the last little while:

- The first was a Warhammer 40'000: Space Marine Preview/Hands-On, which you can access by clicking here.

- The second is a preview of the multiplayer component of Battlefield 3, which went live today. Click here to read it (it's part of a full preview article on BF3, covering both the singleplayer and multiplayer; I just did the multiplayer).

For interest's sake, I'm busy playing Space Marine at the moment (it's awesome!), and have managed to land the review for it, too (which is also awesome!), so that should tie into my preview quite nicely awesomely! Seriously, if you don't have it, get it. Or win it in a competition (we'll chat about that in a second). Or, wait a week or so for my review to come out, read that and then decide! Read my review regardless of which option you choose, by the way.

Battlefield 3 also looks awesome. But I'll chat about that in a later post - read my preview while you wait!

With all of that firmly out of the way (because if it was not-so-firmly out of the way, I suppose you would be lacking closure, or something), let's chat about competitions.

eGamer is currently running two competitions:

The first is FIFA 12 competition, which will have two winners - one person will win a copy for XBOX 360, and the other will win a copy for PS3.

How do you win? Basically, post a comment in the article explaining the competition, and then post as many (meaningful) comments as you can on as many articles as you can. It's that simple. Click here to read the article detailing the competition in more depth.

The second is a Warhammer 40'000: Space Marine competition. The entry is via a form this time, and there are a number of ways to increase your chances of winning, but they are a tad complicated and I can't remember them off-hand, so check out the article explaining the competition by clicking here. There will again be two winners for this competition, the difference being that you can choose which platform (PC, PS3, X360) you want the game on (if you win, of course). Major props to Ster-Kinekor for sponsoring us the games for the competition.

Seriously guys, the competitions are awesome. We don't have too many (less than 100, easily) entrants for both competitions, so your chances of winning are pretty damned high. I really encourage ya'll to go for it! And then share with me when you win, 'cause, you know, the Bro Code and stuff.

Anyways, enough about all of that.

You'll all be glad to know that I saved the best for last in terms of this post (given the awesomeness that has come before this, that's saying something!)...

The Minecraft 1.8 Patch has been leaked!!!

For those of you who don't know what Minecraft is, go find a dolphin and get it to punch you in the face. Or Google around a bit. For those of you who don't know what the 1.8 patch is, here's a link to a handy article with some links to a nifty video series detailing the changes.

The 1.8 patch introduces some pretty major changes to the game - strongholds, NPC villages, a levelling system, the ability to charge bow shots for greater damage, critical hits, a sprinting ability, a new mob (which teleports you if you stare at it, as rumour goes), a hunger bar, rivers, pork no longer heals health, ravines and, most importantly, pigs now have snouts. And so, so much more.

Basically, this is an absolutely huge patch, which is really going to change the game in terms of making exploring and combat both more interesting and more rewarding, adding an unprecedented level of depth to the game as a whole and making the urge to waste another week of my life building rollercoasters, using gold blocks as a foundation all the more tempting.

I'm not going to be playing the leaked version, I'd rather wait for the full release, but for those who are interested, you can download it by clicking here.

Hope all of that manages to keep you kids both excited and busy - don't forget to read my previews, enter those competitions and provide me with some feedback!

I'm going to play Space Marine now.

Duncan
Out