FPS General

As ShootMania: Storm continues to make waves among FPS veterans and newcomers alike, there are a couple things that you might have missed when the game launched last week.

Combo Mode

This brand new game mode was released simultaneously with the launch of ShootMania: Storm but it was buried among the frantic excitement that any launch week brings with it. Combo is a game mode that enables weapon switching - as well as a new weapon, but more on that later.

Item pick ups are available around the map in the form of lasers, nucleus and arrows.

The rules are pretty simple; two teams of 2 fight to eliminate each other. The first team to eliminate both opposing members wins, but the enemies must be eliminated two in a row. After every elimination, the time window to execute a 'Combo' as it is called increases. If neither team completes a Combo by the time the regulation timer ends, there will be a sudden death overtime period.

Just a heads up that Nadeo and Ubisoft have officially released ShootMania Storm into the wild, you can pick it up worldwide on Steam or at the official website.

If you're a fan of classic franchises like Quake or Unreal Tournament, ShootMania will be right up your alley. Fast-paced movement and skill-based shooting are the order of the day in ShootMania, allowing players to truly hone their skills on an even plane rather than being forced to use a certain weapon type because of a lack of balance. We have nothing against modern military shooters, but we won't lie and say that ShootMania isn't a breath of fresh air. The non-violent approach is done well and most importantly, ShootMania feels great and is fun to play.

What more could you ask for from a game?

Check out the launch trailer after the break and visit ShootMania Storm on Steam at http://store.steampowered.com/app/229870/.

Earlier this month, we had the chance to chat with some of the good people at Nadeo and Ubisoft on their upcoming first-person shooter ShootMania Storm. If you haven't played it, this is a game that draws its closest ties with games like Quake Live; a competitive shooter that puts the emphasis on high speed and skilled shooting.

As the team progresses towards the April release date, it seems like their key focus points are on user-generated content, eSports and putting the power of the game into the hands of the best designers of all; the players.

The transcript of our Q&A can be found below, and includes responses from Anne Blondel-Jouin who serves as Nadeo Publishing Manager Director and Josh Miligan, who is Senior Director of Online Strategy at Ubisoft.

We even tried to pry some information about Cryo out of the duo, but it wasn't happening yet.

ShootMania: Storm harkens back to games like Quake and Unreal Tournament, games that helped shape competitive first-person shooters. Was that something that Nadeo and Ubisoft wanted to do from the outset?

Anne Blondel-Jouin : Nadeo philosophy has always been to create games for gamers, by gamers, and deeply integrate the community into the development of a game, as we can see in the huge amount of user-generated content created on TrackMania over the years.

After the studio joined Ubisoft in 2009, the combination of this philosophy with Ubisoft’s expertise and support allowed us to build the ManiaPlanet platform, which is the true continuation of what TrackMania has built over the years: a gaming hub combining a powerful Engine with a lot of tools for user-generated content, which could welcome various game experiences, such as racing with TrackMania², shooter with ShootMania, and in the future RPG with QuestMania, all sharing the same tools, social features, etc.

Keep reading for more from our Q&A with Nadeo and Ubisoft on ShootMania Storm!

Just a heads up for any of you who haven't started playing ShootMania Storm. Ubisoft and Nadeo announced today that the game has made its debut on Steam and is available on that platform right now.

ShootMania is available in open beta, giving players a chance to try out what is easily one of the fastest paced shooters on the market today. The game officially launches on April 10th so this is a great chance to get a headstart on the competition before the final version is released in a few months. Nadeo has had ShootMania in beta for a while now and has continually released updates for the game all the while.

Nadeo's Anne Blondel-Jouin had the following to say in today's press release:

Through Steam, we’ll make "competition for everyone" a dream come true for more gamers and map-and-mod makers who all create the user-generated content and activity that make ShootMania Storm so attractive and innovative on the FPS PC competitive field. 

I want to take the opportunity to thank whole-heartedly the players who have already joined ShootMania Storm frenzyness and to welcome warmly the new comers: we're looking forward to seeing all of them on the servers.

This is one of the most promising competitive shooters out there right now, so we definitely recommend giving it a shot.

Check it out on Steam today!

Curse and FPS General have officially wrapped up the Curse ShootMania Invitational, and it's time to take a look back at this awesome ShootMania: Storm tournament. It was the first invitational we've hosted for ShootMania and we had a great time streaming the matches online and watching the action unfold. If you didn't get a chance to watch it, we're going to have full video recaps up on YouTube.com/FPSGeneral but if you're more of a reader than a viewer, we've also got a quick recap of the tournament below.

Day One: The initial round of 16 matches went fairly quickly as predicted. With some teams dropping out and most matches ending with a swift 2 - 0. SK gaming, Complexity and MonoManiac Esports got to show their talent early on and made showcases of skill and grace out of their matches, trying new things and taking risks.

Day Two: Day two saw the quarter finals and start of loser brackets take place. Team Curse faced off early against complexity and wins 2-0. complexity goes up against SK gaming and loses 2-1 with some very close calls. The loser bracket had a few of the dropouts and the other matches were over quickly with 2-0's for every match.

Day Three: DoNotJump went up against Curse and suffered a 2-0 loss after giving them a good run for their money in map 1. It was a tough fight, but ultimately Curse came out on top. Spin Move faced off against SK gaming in another semi-final match and lost 2-1 in a long match. Spin Move performed well above expectations and gave a great show. DoNotJump came back in their loser bracket match against mMe but lost 2-1.

Day Four: Getting pretty intense now! complexity start off against monoManiac esports and win 2-0 in an impressive show of synergy, lots of clutch moments and a few surprise 'deaths by jumping'. Curse and SK gaming finally meet in the winners bracket final in what turns out to be the toughest match in the tournament. After 3 maps with lots of overtime and amazing synergy from SK gaming, they win 2-1 against Curse. 

Curse goes down to the loser bracket where they go up against complexity and win 2-0 so they can come back immediately after for another try at SK gaming in the Grand finals. (Due to SK gaming being in the winner bracket they get 1 map win for the best of 5 and Curse start with 0.)

The Grand Finals end with a stunning 3-2 victory for SK Gaming who take home the 1st place and $3,000. Team Curse gets 2nd place with $1500 and complexity 3rd with 500$.

Congratulations to SK Gaming and thanks to all of our great teams for helping us make the first Curse ShootMania Invitational memorable! Remember to visit http://www.youtube.com/user/FPSGeneral for some recap videos and full matches and drop by http://www.shootmania.com/ for more information on ShootMania: Storm.

Update: The Curse ShootMania Invitational is officially underway! Join us right here on FPSGeneral.com or over on Own3D.tv at http://www.own3d.tv/FPSGeneral to check out the stream, where we will be giving away SteelSeries peripherals to our viewers.

Best of luck to all of the great teams who will be competing today!

Curse and FPS General are proud to announce that our first ever Curse ShootMania Invitational tournament will be getting underway this week, with first round matches starting on Monday, December 17th!

Some of the best teams from around the nation are going to be competing for the lions share of the $5,000 prize purse, including great teams like SK gaming, epsilon and Planet Xpress. The Curse ShootMania Invitational takes the form of a double-elimination tournament, that will pit teams against each other in best of 3 Elite mode matches. The top 3 teams will split the $5,000 cash prize at $3,000/$1,500/$500.

On Monday, the first round of 16 matches will go down as well as the first round in the loser bracket. The full schedule will play out as follows:

• December 17th, 2012 - Round of 16, Loser Bracket Round 1
• December 19th, 2012 - Quarter Finals, Loser Bracket Round 2 & 3
• December 21st, 2012 - Semi Finals, Loser Bracket Round 4
• December 22nd, 2012 - Loser Bracket Round 5, Winner Bracket Finals, Loser Bracket Finals and Grand Finals.

We're especially excited to announce that joining the original casting team will be JD "w1nters" Burns and Adam "indredd" Dandar. The duo most recently did a stellar job casting the ShootMania action at the IGN Pro League 5 tournament in Las Vegas, NV. We're proud to have them joining the primary casting group of David "Dignitas Zaccubus" Treacy, Ziggy "Dignitas nVc" Orzeszek and Jonathan “JonniTheJuicyJ” Gil.

We're looking forward to kicking off the Curse ShootMania Invitional and we'd love to have you join us for each event day, including Monday when we'll get things started with some great competitive ShootMania action. Don't forget that we're going to be giving away some SteelSeries peripherals during each live stream, so make sure you come and check out the matches!

Make sure you're following FPS General on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates on the tournament, including where you can stream the event!

Curse has released the complete roster of teams and tournament bracket for the Curse ShootMania Invitational, which will be taking place later this month.

The roster consists of the likes Planet Xpress, SK gaming and epsilon to name just a few. If you're not familiar, the Curse ShootMania Invitational is an awesome ShootMania: Storm tournament that is being hosted by Curse.com. Teams from across the nation have been invited to take on all comers in a double-elimination, best of 3 Elite mode tournament for a total prize purse of $5,000. The purse will be split at $3,000/$1,500/$500 between the top three teams, with the higher placing teams obviously earning a bigger share of the winnings.

The full tournament bracket looks like this, click and drag to browse all of the matchups:

Click here to view the bracket on BinaryBeast.com

The Curse ShootMania Invitational will be getting underway on December 17th. The full schedule reads:

• December 17th, 2012 - Round of 16, Loser Bracket Round 1
• December 19th, 2012 - Quarter Finals, Loser Bracket Round 2 & 3
• December 21st, 2012 - Semi Finals, Loser Bracket Round 4
• December 22nd, 2012 - Loser Bracket Round 5, Winner Bracket Finals, Loser Bracket Finals and Grand Finals.

Throughout the entire event, we will be livestreaming continuously. Our matches will be delivered with a commentary team that includes David "Dignitas Zaccubus" Treacy, Ziggy "Dignitas NVC" Orzeszek & Jonathan "JonniTheJuicyJ" Gil. During the stream, we will be giving away a total of 12 SteelSeries Sensei Raw gaming mice (many thanks to the guys at SteelSeries for hooking us up with these prizes!) for viewers.

Stay tuned for more information, we're only a couple short weeks away from the starting date now.

If you have any questions or concerns (or compliments) on the Curse ShootMania Invitational, please email jonnigil@gmail.com or jump in our IRC room at #shootmania.na on Quakenet. We would love to hear some feedback so don't hesitate to contact us if you have something on your mind!

The IGN Pro League’s 5^th event was this past weekend at the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada and featured North America’s largest ShootMania tournament to date.  The tournament prize pool was $100,000, split among all eight of the qualifying teams. 

Teams flew in from around the world to compete, including several European teams.  Both Team TCM and Colwn earned themselves a trip to Las Vegas by qualifying in the two European IPL5 qualifier rounds, while Planet Xpress, Spin Move, Epsilon and compLexity (formerly asphyxia) earned their way to the live event by winning the North American Qualifier tournaments.

The action began on Friday, November 30 with a Wildcard tournament in which 12 teams battled for the eighth and final spot in the money tournament.  The wildcard included two European teams, FnaticRC and Dignitas who each funded their own way to Las Vegas having just missed out during the qualification rounds.  Fnatic faced off against the Frag Dolls and Do Not Jump on their way to the Final Round, while Dignitas played matches versus ROOT and Monomaniac eSports.  The final wildcard showdown between Dignitas and FnaticRC ended three rounds to none for FnaticRC, ending Team Dignitas’ hopes for a shot at the money and awarding FnaticRC the 8^th and final spot in the IPL5 ShootMania Elite tournament.

On Saturday teams moved into group play.  Group A consisted of Colwn, SK Gaming, Spin Move and Epsilon eSports battling it out for spots in the finals.  The top three teams each had records of two wins and one loss, however, after giving up at least one game to each of their opponents in Group A, Epsilon eSports was eliminated as Colwn and SK Gaming took the top two spots.  Group B, consisting of FnaticRC, Planet Xpress, TCM Gaming and complexity, had clearer results.  FnaticRC were once again perfect dropping zero games in either the qualifier or group play to advance alongside Planet Xpress with a record of two wins and 1 loss.

Sunday featured three matches to cap the tournament, but the result might have looked familiar to anyone who watched the ESWC ShootMania Tournament a month ago. Despite fantastic play from Talespin, buds and vince, as well as a great deal of crowd support for the North American based team, Colwn took the match three games to zero in a best of five.  Likewise, SK Gaming’s Rapha, id and clock battled hard to the cheers of the home country crowd but were unable to take any games from FnaticRC. 

The finals between Colwn and FnaticRC were a treat to see, featuring some of the greatest players not just in the ShootMania community, but the Quake and Unreal Tournament communities as well. 

As the underdogs, JiePie, LekaiM and Strenx of FnaticRC heard remarkable support from the large crowd who gathered for the finals, but were unable to overcome Colwn’s play, which could only be described as perfect.  Despite giving up an early lead to FnaticRC on the first map, players Winz, Stermy and akm of Colwn played flawlessly for the remainder of the map and the match, winning all three games of the best of five to replicate their first place win at ESWC and win the $30,000 prize.

Kudos to everyone who competed, the matches were fierce, but special congratulations to Colwn for their big victory at IPL5!

The Curse ShootMania Invitational is only a few weeks away, where 12 teams will face off for a $5,000 prize purse. The schedule has been laid out and teams are getting ready for their challenge.

If you haven't played ShootMania: Storm, or if you're just looking for some more information on the Invitational, we're going to be live streaming the game on select dates between now and the tournament start date of December 17th.

We'll be playing Elite mode in ShootMania: Storm, giving you an idea of what the gameplay will be like in the actual tournament. On top of that, these streams are going to feature commentary from Ziggy "Dignitas NVC" Orzeszek, one of the casters who will be delivering you the play-by-play in the Invitational later this month. We'll be discussing the upcoming Curse ShootMania Invitational, as well as the current state of ShootMania: Storm. This will be a great chance to get all the details on the upcoming Invitation, straight from the folks who are organizing it.

We will be doing a total of four pre-tournament streams over the course of the next two weeks, so don't worry if you can't make it to today's live stream.

The rest of the streams will be taking place on:

• December 5th, 2012
• December 10th, 2012
• December 12th, 2012

Today's stream will be going live at 1:00PM (PT) and will wrap up around 5:00PM (PT). You can join us right here on FPS General or directly through Own3d.tv at http://www.own3d.tv/FPSGeneral. 

This morning, Curse released the finalized schedule of events for the upcoming Curse ShootMania Invitational, revealing when the competition will get started as well as the prizing details.

If you're not familiar with the tournament, check out our original story on the Invitational right here. In a nutshell, the Curse ShootMania Invitational is an awesome ShootMania: Storm tournament kicking off next month. We have invited some of the best North American ShootMania teams to compete, but we also made sure to reserve slots for aspiring teams in North America.

Some of those slots have already filled up, but we are still accepting applications for the four remaining seeds so make sure you send an email to jonnigil@gmail.com with your team name and information to apply. Teams must be made up of 3 players and based in North America.

Now, as for the schedule, here is how things are set up:

• 12/17 - Curse ShootMania Invitational Day 1
• 12/19 - Curse ShootMania Invitational Day 2
• 12/21 - Curse ShootMania Invitational Day 3
• 12/22 - Curse ShootMania Invitational Finals

There will be a $5,000 prize purse up for grabs for tournament competitors, as well as some awesome prizes from SteelSeries for our accompanying live stream. To cast the tournament, we've got David "Dignitas Zaccubus" Treacy, Ziggy "Dignitas NVC" Orzeszek & Jonathan "JonniTheJuicyJ" Gil.

We can't wait to kick off the Curse Shootmania Invitational next month! Stay tuned to FPS General for more tournament information in the near future including the full roster of competing teams.