The fall LAN season in North Texas kicks off this weekend as we see HyperGamez and The Texan Gamer host HyperLan 2 at the HyperGamez Gaming Center. They've announced an interesting set of tournaments for the event: The practically dead Quake 4, a flash based game called Spank the Monkey, Postal 2 Capture The Babe 4v4, and Left4Dead on the Xbox360. Reading the list of games one has to wonder what the organizers of the event were thinking, including no mainstream games on their list with the possible exception of Left4Dead, which they are holding on the Xbox360 platform. A dead game, a flash game, an unheard-of game, and a console game: Welcome to HyperLan 2. I myself am somewhat disappointed in their choice, since at the grand opening of HyperGamez they had quite an impressive list, touting QuakeLive, Call of Duty 4, and Street Fighter IV. (And I won an Epiphone SG guitar. Brutal.) Whether or not I will chose to compete in any of these games remains to be seen, but I will definitely attend if only to support the local LAN scene and to chastise whoever picked these awful games.

-h3ll

In the early 2000s Viral marketing communities were the "it" thing, at least when it came to websites and micro communities. However, most of them died out early on, save a few the bigger names out there. In a great many ways these viral blogging communities have changed the world, in both business and recreation. Weather you're sending a message to your family over Facebook, trying advertise a new CD on MySpace, or posting recent videos of “that weird kid” from the local LAN you just attended; the Viral way of communicating is more than likely a permanent fixture in our daily lives.

So in an effort to help us spread the word about our website and organization we would like to remind our readers and members that we have extended TFS groups in many of the popular community-oriented web sites such as MySpace, Facebook, xFire and Steam. We strongly encourage our members to join our groups in these communities to help us spread the word!

Minh Le, one of the two creators of the original Counter-Strike, has been hard at work on creating a new game, and though it isn't labeled as "Counter-Strike 2," it can be seen as a successor in spirit. Titled "Tactical Intervention" it retains many of the same themes of Counter-Strike, pitting a force of agents against terrorists to accomplish various objecives like the familiar hostage rescue. Minh still seeks to create his own game, though, and wants it to play faster than traditional CS, addressing issues such as camping by speeding up the gameplay. He is said to expect round times to be typically under two minutes. Minh also introdouces some new elements to the gameplay, such as adding controlable attack dogs, and hostages that actually move about the area and react to situations rather than remain stoic like the hostages seen in Counter-Strike.

Although not much more is known about Tactical Intervention at this point, expect to see a beta soon and a release by the end of this year.

Source: IGN.com

-h3ll