Killzone 2 “Flash & Thunder” Pack Out Today - How to Survive a Nuclear Attack

Posted by Sebastian Downie // Producer, Guerrilla Games

With the release of the second Killzone 2 downloadable content pack “Flash & Thunder” on PlayStation Store today, we have been able to uncover Helghast documentation on their movements in the newest maps: Southern Hills and Beachhead. These two maps might be familiar to veterans of the first Killzone on PS2, but they have been completely reworked and re-imagined to suit the PLAYSTATION 3 experience. With that in mind, here’s a report from the frontlines on how to survive the Southern Hills and nuclear attack!

Helghast Field Manual 15: Surviving the Southern Hills

The treacherous ISA forces have resorted to using nuclear devices in their futile efforts to invade our beloved home-planet of Helghan. This cowardly act will not go unpunished and the Helghast High Command training corps has prepared a field manual to ensure its loyal soldiers do not die in vain. Read the below carefully as it could be the difference between your survival of a nuclear attack and turning into a burning corpse.

1. When you hear the siren, drop whatever you are doing. Just run like heck. A live soldier is a lot more useful to the Helghan Empire than a scorched, smoking one. You’ll only have a couple of seconds to get to cover, so don’t waste any time.
2. Science be damned! Just Duck & Cover! If you see the nuke going off the in the distance, simply ensure that you have a roof above your head. You don’t even have to close the windows or anything. Anyone caught outside will be turned into a something resembling jerky.
3. If you spawn in your base and hear the sirens going off, just stay where you are and the let the folks outside deal with the problems. You’ll be much quicker off the mark once the dust settles.
4. Sentry Bots and Sentry Turrets are not immune to the devastating power of the nuke. Don’t leave them sitting outside, or they will turn into burning chunks like anything else. Place Sentry turrets inside to ensure their safety and they will cut off the enemies path to shelter.
5. If you are inside, watch the doorways for enemies ducking inside to safety. Or even better, mow them down with an emplaced machine gun before they get anywhere near. That’ll teach ‘em to run like dogs!
6. Out in the open? Any base can be a safe spot from the impending nuclear annihilation. If you find yourself far from home, just go duck into the enemies’ base. Your chances of survival will be higher than out in the open.
7. The Bots in Killzone 2 do have a sense of self-preservation and when that siren sounds, they will try to save themselves as much as any living player. Follow them for the closest safe-spot, but make sure no sneaky ISA scum are hiding in there in the first place.
8. Repaired ammo boxes and Emplaced MG’s will not be destroyed by the blast, so you won’t have to repair them again.
9. Assassination targets! If the siren goes off, get to cover. I repeat, run like hell. Nothing worse than successfully defending the target and having it turned into smithereens before your very eyes and not being able to do anything about it.
10. If all else fails, climb up the ladder to the roof of the central base to get a good view of the explosion in the east. It might cause you a fiery death, but damn it the explosion is too sexy not to look at in all of its splendor.

Keep these tips in mind when the ISA Cruisers launch their gutless assault on our beloved planet and you might just survive another day.

All hail Visari!

Master Sergeant Downie
5th Helghast Training Corps
Pyrrhus Rise

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Uncharted 2: Come Play with the Naughty Dogs!

The results are in from E3, and it seems Nathan Drake has already claimed his treasure; Uncharted 2: Among Thieves took home several “Best of E3″ awards, including nods from 1UP, G4, Platform Nation, Go! Gaming Giant, Game Focus, and GamePro. And if you’re a participant in the exclusive UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Multiplayer Beta, you’re already getting a taste of what is shaping up to be Naughty Dog’s most ambitious video game to date.

The Uncharted 2 Multiplayer Beta is about to enter its second week, and we’re already making some tweaks to improve your experience. We are preparing a patch for release in the next few days. Properly applying this patch requires some careful attention on your end: You must watch the screen closely while booting into the beta. As soon as you see the patch message come up in the XMB overlay, you should hit X to accept as quickly as possible.

If you miss the window your PS3 will reset but NOT patch. Simply launch the game and you can try again.

We’ll post a notice on the PlayStation.com UNCHARTED 2 Multiplayer Beta Forum letting you know when the patch goes live, and we’ll also Tweet it out as well on the PlayStation and Naughty Dog Twitter accounts.

Here’s what this beta patch will address:

General

• Grenade explosions now apply damage properly

Matchmaking

• Players should no longer get hung up in matchmaking for long periods of time

Bug Fixes

• Ranks should no longer reset randomly
• Quitting the game will no longer reset the PS3
• Player collision – players should no longer get hung up on each other when moving through the environment
• Player will now be killed if stuck in falling animation for too long
• In Plunder mode, treasures will no longer disappear during matches

Note: ALL RANKS WILL BE RESET WITH THE PATCH

We are also pleased to announce that we will hold four “Play with the Developer” events in the UNCHARTED 2 Multiplayer Beta over the next two weeks, starting today! During these time slots, a lot of us at Naughty Dog will be online playing the game with all of you! You can tell the Dogs apart from other players because they’ll be playing with different models – a pirate for the villains and Drake with a Naughty Dog t-shirt for the heroes.

The dates and times are below:

Tuesday, June 9 – 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM PT (What time is this in my time zone?)
Thursday, June 11 – 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM PT (What time is this in my time zone?)
Tuesday, June 16 – 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM PT (What time is this in my time zone?)
Thursday, June 18 – 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM PT (What time is this in my time zone?)

Join us for some fun!

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Release Date: November 2009 ESRB Rating: Rating Pending Genre: Shooter Publisher: Activision Developer: Infinity Ward

Previews

By Thierry Nguyen  06/03/2009

You're reading an E3 2009 preview, which we've broken into three sections to make it easy to sift through during this week of convention madness. Check out E3.1UP.COM for all (meaning words, screens, and videos) of our E3 2009 coverage.

What's the game about? It's the heartwarming saga of ice climbers who learn to love life and each other. Okay, not really -- it's actually a direct sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare; in fact, that's one of the reasons Infinity Ward dropped the "Call of Duty" title. The COD games were all standalone entries, and this is the first title that legitimately picks up after its predecessor's ending. The basic gist is that Imran Zakhaev's death leads to the rise of his associate, Vladimir Makarov. Makarov is a harsher and more ruthless dude, and his revenge becomes serious business. Per other COD games, you'll experience this revenge tale from multiple perspectives, but for the purposes of this demo, Infinity Ward showed off things from the point of view of "Roach," a rookie member of Task Force 141 (an international band of brotherly dudes). His immediate superior is Captain MacTavish, aka "Soap" from the previous game.

What's new for E3? This is the first time since the NBA finals that we've seen the game. It's also the first time we've seen continuous gameplay for longer than a couple minutes. In this demo, Roach and Soap (man alive, as much as I love Infinity Ward, I do wonder about their naming choices; I expect their next game to have a dude named Taco or something) are in Kazakhstan obtaining intelligence on Makarov. The mission closely echoes the "All Ghillied Up" scenario from COD4, but instead of MacMillan guiding Price, Soap dispenses aid and advice to Roach.

The mission starts with the two soldiers scaling a cliff (you just alternate trigger pulls to simulate each arm/icepick digging in for the climb), and at one point Soap has to rescue Roach. Then they unholster their weapons, revealing suppressed assault rifles equipped with heartbeat sensors (which look a lot like the motion trackers in Aliens) -- two little tweaks to the gunplay in COD. The troopers use these tools, along with the fact that there's a blizzard raging around them, for basic stealth mechanics. Roach can pretty much get behind anyone without them suspecting and quickly use either a knife stab or a burst of suppressed fire to take them down.

Click the image above to check out all Modern Warfare 2 screens.

Early on, Soap advises Roach to plant some remote explosives at a fuel tank for "Plan B." An action that gains greater importance when, after Roach finds a mission critical computer and downloads some highly sensitive data, Soap gets discovered by the Russians. As Soap surrenders, Roach remotely detonates the explosives -- providing enough of a distraction for both of them to counter-attack their assailants and make a hasty retreat. No need for heartbeat sensors and suppression; it's all about killing bad dudes while planes explode and sweet power chords swell up in the background (okay, that last part doesn't actually happen, but that's the way I imagine it).

Infinity Ward ended the demonstration with a sweet snowmobile chase ripped straight out of The World Is Not Enough. Besides being fast-paced and different, the snowbound sequence displays one other quirky element: Roach fires his pistol sideways while driving the snowmobile. When pressed for a reason, community manager Robert Bowling answered, "We want to implement a new 'baller meter,' and felt that firing his pistol sideways would add an incredible boost to his 'baller' status."

What's our take? It's the next Call of Duty title from Infinity Ward -- it's pretty easy to figure out how we feel about it. While the ice-climbing threw us for a loop, and it didn't have quite the dramatic "Oh shit!" impact of, say, watching MacMillan suddenly stand up during the beginning of "All Ghillied Up," the overall demonstration gave us a satisfying taste of the game. It's a well-paced, variety-filled segment of signature Infinity Ward-style gunplay, visual aesthetics, smooth framerate, and, "Wow, that's just damn cool!" moments. Of course, we still want to see more, of both single- and multiplayer.

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