As with the written portion of the contest, there are only a few simple
rules:
1) Must be your original work
2) Must be related to gaming or technology industry
3) Must be G-rated for general audience consumption.
Video reviews offer an entirely new way to look at games and hardware and we ’re leaving it up to you do decide how you’d best like to tackle the challenge. Videos can be single person, talking heads, narrated, animated or any variety of these things. It’s up to you to decide what is going to be the most entertaining and attract the highest votes from the FiringSquad audience and editors who will judge your work. Your need to join the "FiringSquad Video Challenge" cluster to be eligible for this portion of the contest.
Preliminary 1 – February 12 through February 25
Preliminary 2 – March 5 through March 18
Both preliminaries last two weeks. During these two weeks you can submit as many videos as you like in one or both preliminaries. Public voting lasts through April 1st and on April 2nd the writer judges will announce the top production each from preliminary 1 and 2. Those two contestants will each receive the necessary hardware to prepare a review of the Intel® Core 2™Duo Extreme microprocessor. The finalists are allowed to submit as many video reviews as they like. The final video reviews are due by midnight April 22nd. Public voting for the videos will continue through April 29 and the winner will be announced on May 1st.
How Entries will be scored
Each entry is scored on a scale of 700 points.
100 points x4 = The Judge’s Panel is comprised of Alan Dang, John Callaham, Jakub Wojnarowicz, and Brandon Bell. Each judge will award each article up to 100 points. They’ll be taking the big picture into account and be looking at everything from writing style, technical sophistication and even spelling and grammar.
100 points x3 = Page views, number of votes, and average user rating. Each article will receive a weighted score from 0 to 100 based upon the number of page views, user votes, and average user rating.
General Points To Consider • We encourage every one who is competing to self-promote his or her entry. You can ask your friends, neighbors, co-workers or distant cousins to rate and vote for your work. They will have to register to vote, but registration is free and once they are registered they can vote during each round. That said, any use of forged votes/scripts or unsolicited spam will instantly disqualify you. We want you to be proud of your work, but we have to keep things fair.
• This competition is open to professional freelance or full-time writers to participate. We don’t care who you work for or what you do. We do not require an exclusive contract, and we’re simply looking for the best writers to rise to the top. We believe that the best writers have yet to be discovered, and that’s why we are running this competition.
• This competition is open to everyone all over the English-speaking world. The only requirement is that you are at least 18 years old. If you are under 18 you are invited to participate, just be warned that we cannot legally award you any of the prizes.
Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Preview Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is a standalone expansion pack and follow-up to developer Stardock's previous game in the series, subtitled War of Magic. That 4X strategy game was highly-anticipated and slated to compete with games such as Sid Meier's Civilization V for your turn-based strategy play-time, but was released in an incredibly broken and unfinished state that it never fully recovered from. Lead designer Brad Wardell apologized profusely to fans and set out with his team to go back to the drawing board and try again.
Almost two years later, the result of that proverbial mulligan is currently undergoing closed beta testing. In today's article, Will reports his thoughts on how Fallen Enchantress is shaping up, and will tell you whether or not you should be keeping an eye on it as it nears release later this year.
The Elder Scrolls Online Details Leak - Should Fans Be Excited? The Elder Scrolls Online, long rumored to be in development, was officially announced yesterday. Still in development at Zenimax Online Studios, this MMO aims to combine traditional genre mechanics with the spirit and sensibilities, not to mention setting and lore, of the immensely popular series of single-player RPGs. Though the game is set for a full unveiling in the next issue of Game Informer magazine, what appears to be the entire cover story article has been leaked to the interwebs already. In today's article, you'll find summary and analysis of all the alleged details, as well as feast your eyes on the very first screenshots and concept art from the game. Of course, the burning question now is, should you be excited?
ANNO 2070 Review
The year is 2070. The majority of life on Earth was devastated when global sea levels surged after the melting of the polar ice caps. Swaths of previously habitable land are now deep underwater, and sovereign nations are a relic of the past. But there is still hope...
This city-building RTS/simulation game from Ubisoft tasks you with re-colonizing what little land areas are left on the planet following a global warming apocalypse. Does it have what it takes to be worthy of your time and money, or should it be cast out to sea with the rest of civilization? Find out in today's review!
Hear that? It's the sound of the largest computer chip manufacturer in the world churning out new processors to power your gaming rig. This week, Intel is launching their next generation of Core CPUs, code-named Ivy Bridge. Like last year's Sandy Bridge chips, they're low-power, quad-core powerhouses that also feature integrated graphics processors. Want to find out more? Maybe check out a whole bunch of performance benchmarks on both the CPU and graphics sides of things? Well you can, in today's review!
Intel Z77 Chipset & DZ77GA-70K Motherboard Overview
Looking forward to those new Ivy Bridge CPUs? In anticipation of their release later this month, Intel has already unveiled the new Series 7 chipsets designed especially to take advantage of what will be the 3rd-generation of Core processors. In today's article, we take a look at the architecture of the enthusiast variant, the Z77, and how it's used in the Intel Desktop Extreme DZ77GA-70K motherboard. Even if you're not particularly interested in the motherboard itself, you'll probably want to see some of the new features that come along with it, so read on!
Mass Effect 3 PC Review
This latest release from EA/BioWare is the final entry in their trilogy of sci-fi action RPGs, putting you in a dire situation: rally the troops to save Earth at all costs. There was a lot of hype surrounding the final act of what has been a vast and highly-customizable story-telling experience, and the reception among many hardcore fans has been less than stellar. Even people that haven't played the game have probably heard about all the nerd rage going on over Mass Effect 3's ending...
If you want to cut through all the crap and find out whether or not the rest of ME3 is worth playing, come check out Will's spoiler-free take on the first blockbuster game release of 2012.
Batman: Arkham City PC Review Batman: Arkham City is the sequel to 2009’s smash-hit action game Batman: Arkham Asylum. As the name suggests, you will be reprising your role as the Caped Crusader and going against an even larger 'prison' filled with Gotham's criminals and villains. A textbook example on how to do a proper sequel, Arkham City takes what worked in the original, excised or improved upon what didn’t, and elevated everything to an even greater scope. The PC version suffered from a few months of delay, but in that time, Rocksteady worked closely to NVIDIA to implement some familiar technologies from the last game, such as PhysX and 3D Vision, along with new DirectX 11 optimizations. But how well was the whole package executed? Read on to find out!
Saints Row: The Third PC Review Saints Row is one of most unique series of games to build upon the open-world action template forged by Grand Theft Auto, and has met with plenty of critical and commercial success since it began on consoles back in 2006. This latest iteration, titled Saints Row: The Third promises the most outlandish fun and freedom of customization of them all, and in a much more PC-friendly package than its predecessor. Does it live up to those expectations and, more importantly, is it worth the price of admission? Find out in Will's latest review!
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim PC Review The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is Bethesda Softworks’ latest offering in their series of epic fantasy RPGs, as well as one of the most highly-anticipated PC titles of 2011. As the Dovahkiin, or Dragonborn, prepare to take the fight to the mythical beasts that have returned to the realm after centuries of slumber, all the while exploring a huge and highly-detailed open world.
The PC version of the game promises enhanced graphical fidelity, standard RPG trimmings such as hotkeys and quick-save, as well as unbridled mod support, something we’ll all be thankful for once they release that SDK. Skyrim has already sold millions of copies and set records for play-time on Steam... Find out why in today's review, which happens to be one of the biggest and most in-depth articles on the subject out there!
L.A. Noire Complete Edition PC Review L.A. Noire, as the name clearly states, is a video game built on the tropes of one of the greatest periods of American cinema: film noir. Developed by the now defunct Australian developer Team Bondi and published by Rockstar Games, this title has been out on consoles for a full six months before finally making its way to the PC. This “Complete Edition” of the game features improved graphics, keyboard/mouse controls, and every bit of previously-released DLC for free. But was it truly worth the wait? Read on and find out!
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