Call of Duty 4 Beta

Disclaimer, this was written late at night/in the morning and it riddled with grammatical blasphemies, has small, simple words, no beginning or ending. Feel free to point out errors in the comments.

Gameplay is where Call of Duty 4 shines the most. Veterans of the previous installments in the series know that the COD series strives for Hollywood-realism and the newest installment doesn't disappoint. The dozen or so weapons available in the beta are balanced and nuanced in every way. Assault Rifles such as the M4 or AK47 can shoot through wood and other thin materials while heavier weapons like the SAW and sniper rifles can even penetrate thicker surfaces such as cement and sandbags; this brings cover to a whole new level of extreme. The beta currently has four different types of games, "Team deathmatch," "Free-for-all," "Team Tactial" and "Team Objective." "Team deathmatch" and FFA consist of 12 players (or 6 per team) and the player or team with the most points is the victor. In "Team Tactial," two teams of 2-3 players try to plant a bomb or defend the bomb site with no respawns(ala Counter Strike). These games are very nerve racking and intense, unlike larger skirmishes, the success of your team is a product of your skillz and ability to work as a team. "Team Objective" comes in a large scale version of "Team Tactial" and CTF flavor.

You can customize your weapons with unlockable camos and attachments such as suppressors and scopes. While (at least in the beta) you can't customize the physical appearance of your soldier you have three different "perks". While you naturally have your generic traits such as increased damage and increased health, COD4 introduces several innovative perks including "Last Stand". If your soldier is "killed" with last stand, you instead fall to the floor, whip out your pistol and try to take your assailant down with you. You also receive double points for kills when you dispatch a hostile this way. To level up, you need experience points and depending on the game type, you get between 5-50 experience points per kill not to mention other points for completing objectives and winning. After about five hours of play I reached the max rank for the beta, which is 16; the final game will have enough ranks to you occupied.

The graphics have a very smooth feel due to the fact that it run in a beautiful 60fps. Motion blur, bloom and focusing effects make "jaggy edges" almost nonexistant. Textures aren't nearly as sharp as in Gears of War but but the whole "blurrish" feel of the game makes high resolution textures almost unnecessary. Trees and grass have a very "lust" feeling to them. Other special effects such as dynamic smoke, lighting, and other sprites are excellent.

While there are only four levels in the beta, they are the perfect size; not too big, not too small, small enough for an epic 1vs1 duel and inclusive enough for 12 player shootout. The four levels included in the beta are intuitive, easy to memorize and unique.

The game's user interface is simple and minimalistic, which makes it easy to hop in a quick game of Call of Duty or manage your weapons. The game controls on the other hand have a slight learning curve and the look sensitivity is either, too low damn slow, really slow, not bad or fucking ninja fast (i.e. you breathe on the stick and your view rotates 360°); in other words: I wish there was a 10 point scale or slider bar for look sensitivity. The game controls however are very logical and convenient after you spend some time to get accustomed with them. The online part is good but not without flaws; when you use XBL's matchmaking service "play now" you will either join someone's game or create your own. While it may take only 30 seconds to get into the game (*COUGH*WARHAWKTAKENOTEPLZ*COUGH*), if you join a laggy game you will need to suffer through (and run the risk of getting D/C'd) or quit and auto-rejoin a new sever... this seems to be more of a flaw with the XBL matchmaking system than COD4 but it is a problem nonetheless. A few times I was playing on a perfectly fine server when I started lagging, warped under the level and eventually died a mysterious death. Call of Duty 4 is still in beta, however.

Had I just spent $40 for the online feature of this game, I would be completely satisfied.

H4x0ring your PSP for make benefit you!

Sustained Flattery will take no responsibility if you damage or render your PSP unusable using this guide; use at your own discretion. This guide is dedicated to everyone who has worked on PSP home brew, especially Dark_Alex. This is a live document and will continue to expand as other features are written.

With this guide you will learn how to use your PSP for more than just playing UMDs and listening to music. If you continue reading you will learn how to downgrade your PSP to version 1.50 to be able to install version 3.03 OE-C firmware. With this special firmware you will be able to play your PS1 (PSX) games, backups of your UMD games, watch higher quality movies, run NES, SNES, MAME, GBA and other system emulators.

TERMS:

• Root Directory (or simply 'Root'): You're in the root directory of your PSP if you can see the folder 'PSP'. It should appear as "J:\" on your PC; replace 'J' with whatever drive your PC recognizes it as.
• Brick: This is bad. A 'bricked' PSP is pretty much nothing more than a $200 paper weight. A PSP is bricked when the firmware is corrupted and cannot be loaded. The only way to fix this is to buy a new PSP, a new motherboard or a mod chip.
  

TIPS:

• Before attempting any of these h4xs, format your memory card, it will create folders and stuff.
• Make sure your PSP has at least 75% power otherwise it won't update.
  

The first thing you should do is check what version of firmware your PSP has on it. To check that, simply go Settings -> System Settings -> System Information and is should say something along the lines of:

System Software 1.50 (Or whatever version your PSP has)

If your version is 1.0 (JP only) or 1.50 you do not need to downgrade your PSP and you can skip the following section.
If your PSP is version 2.80 or higher you're screwed and you cannot currently downgrade you PSP without bricking it. Update: A 2.8x downgrader is available! More information on how to use one coming soon.


DOWNGRADING:
Prerequisites: Memory Stick (32mb is fine), fully charged PSP (it won't update unless it is close to being fully charged) a PSP without a TA-082 motherboard and 15 minutes of time.

• Version 2.71
• First download the following files:
• 2.7x Downgrader http://dl.qj.net/2.71-PSP-Downgrader-Downdater-PSP/pg/12/fid/9746/catid/114
• 1.50 dumper. You need a friend with a 1.50 PSP to run this and give you the file it generates. Google is also you friend... It's illegal to put a link to the file. http://dl.qj.net/index.php?pg=12&fid=9742
• If you managed to get all the necessary files to downgrade, you can now begin!
1. Connect your PSP to your computer via USB and transfer the files of the downgrader into the root of your PSP (x:\PSP)
2. Take the folder generated from the 1.50 PSP and place it in the root of your PSP as well.
3. Go to the Photo Viewer in the XMB and your PSP should reconize a .tiff file called Overload and flipout.
4. At this point you should see an intimidating red screen with different characters and symbols. After it is done it should crash to a black screen. Hold the power button to restart your PSP into version 1.50!
5. If your PSP did not show a red screen, wait a few seconds, restart your PSP and try again. This rarely happends.

• Version 1.51 or higher
• Upgrade to 2.70
• http://dl.qj.net/PSP-Firmware-Update-v2.70-US-PSP/pg/12/fid/7177/catid/163
• Follow the walkthrough above.
• If you don't want to upgrade, use one of these tutorials, I cannot attest for their accuracy as I have only downgraded 2.7x and 2.00 PSPs.
• Version 2.00 -> 1.50 - I used this tutorial, while there is always a small risk, it worked for me!
• Version 2.60 -> 1.50 - Heh...

If all went well, you should have a happy PSP with 1.50 firmware on it; if things didn't go well you may have a $200 paper weight, quite tragic. Now to reach our goal of playing our beloved PSX games and backups of our PSP games, we continue.


INSTALLING 3.03 OE-C
NOTE: The following was originally written for 3.03 OE-A but has been revised for OE-C, enjoy! Dark_Alex is a god among men. Without him we wouldn't have this awesome firmware. 3.03 OE-C, which stands for Open Edition-Revision C, gives us the ability to run homebrew games, emulators and backups of games we would normally run in 1.50 AND it gives us the ability to use 3.03 functions such as browsing the internet with Flashplayer, using Sony's PSX emulator to play our beloved PSX games at full speed, play UMD games, and have a few more minor extra cool functions. Also, some game backups require a firmware higher than 1.50 to run. Prerequisites: Memory Stick (a 32mb stick isn't going to cut it here, you need something larger, I recommend a 2gb stick, check eBay), a fully charged PSP, and 15 more minutes of time.

1. First you will need to download a few files. (Remember which file is which!)
   
• Sony's 1.50 Firmware
• Sony's 3.03 Firmware
• Dark Alex's 3.03 OE-C Firmware
  
2. Rename the EBOOT.PBP in each of Sony's firmwares to 150.PBP and 303.PBP, respectively; if you swich them and continue, your PSP will be a $200 reading lesson.
3. Extract Dark_Alex's 3.03 OE-C Firmware. Copy the renamed Sony files into the the directory called "oeupdmaker" (Make sure you don't drag them into "oeupdatemaker%"!).
4. Connect your PSP via usb and copy the directories 303oeflasher, 303oeflasher%, oeupdmaker, oeupdmaker% to your PSP under the "GAME" directory (/PSP/GAME/Your files here).
5. On the XMB on your PSP, go to Games and select Memory Card. Hopefully you should see 3.03 OE-C Update Maker. This takes Sony's firmware apart to make 3.03 OE-C!
6. After waiting a little your PSP should have a new file named DATA.DXAR located inside the oeudmaker directory. Connect your PSP via usb. Copy this file to the 303oeflasher directory located under GAMES.
7. This next step will "flash" your PSP and if something has been done incorrectly, will brick your PSP. Access your memory card under Games in the XMB and run the program called 3.03 OE-C Firmware Install. Once again, if your PSP runs out of batteries (it shouldn't), melts, malfunctions, or is shut off it will be rendered useless. Do this at your OWN risk.
8. If all went well your PSP will now be running 3.03 OE-C! You will now be able to do a plethora of activities on your Playstation Portable!

USING 3.03 OE-C

• Playing your PSX games. NOTE: THIS ONLY WORKS ON OE-B, THE GUIDE HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE THE WRITING OF THIS. THIS WILL BE UPDATED LATER.
  
• Prerequisites: PS1 game (Don't use PAL games, use NTSC games), MagicISO (or a similar program), a PSX game purchased from your or your friend's PS3 (Google is also your friend...), a memory stick (Most PSX games are a few hundred MB, a 2gb stick is cheap and will hold a few games), a PSP with 3.03 OE-C firmware and maybe 30 minutes of time.
1. Insert a PSX game into the CD drive of your computer. Yes, some PSX games are black and weigh a lot more than current discs.
2. Use MagicISO or another program to make a disk image (also known as an .ISO file).
• How to use MagicISO
• Similar programs:
• Nero
• WinISO
• PowerISO
3. Download Popstation GUI.
• Popstation GUI v1.0
  
4. Extract and open Popstation GUI2.exe. After you extract it you will need to put the PSX game that was purchased from the PS3 into the directory. Rename it from EBOOT.PBP to BASE.PBP.
   
5. Launch Popstation GUI and you will be prompted to select an .iso file. Point it to your newly created .iso file. You will also need to fill out the "Game ID" of the game. This can be located on the CD and should have four letters followed by five numbers such as this: SCUS12345. There are other options if you want to modify how the PSP shows the game.
   
• Check your work here.
  
6. After it is done changing your .iso into a .PBP file, it will be in a folder with the same name as your Game ID. Drag the whole folder into the /GAME/ directory in your PSP.

BACKING UP UMDS
Backing up your UMDs (Universal Media Disk) and playing them from your memory stick gives you several advantages over carrying the original disc. The most prominent reason being that UMDs are a hassle to change: you have to pop it out, find the case for the game swich it, let the PSP read it and finally load. UMDs read slow as hell. Running a backed-up copy of a game can also improve performance. For example, The Sims 2: Pets is riddled with horrendous load times, but running it from the memory card (apparently) fixes those problems.

Do you have two PSPs? I do; if I leave one PSP in the car or in my backpack, I don't like carrying my massive collection of games with me– it takes the second P out of PSP. In my opinion, however, the best reason to backup UMDs is to play via Ad Hoc with your friends. Many games, GTA for example, don't have a game sharing feature to play Ad Hoc, and for games that do have a sharing feature, many features may be omitted. Okay! So now you want to backup your UMDs but before you read on, please don't "share" your backed up UMDs on the internet; game developers make games to make money! If no one buys games, game developers will stop developing for the PSP. Even if you do obtain an ISO from a less than legit way, please buy the game! Ahem~ let's continue.

1. Like every part of this tutorial, you will first need to download a couple files. Download the following:
• USB Special System Storage v1.00
  
2. Extract your freshly "DeeElle'd" file with your favorite unzipping program. Open the 1.50 folder and drag its contents to the 'GAME150' directory.
3. Pickup your PSP (make sure it's still connected via USB) and go to GAME -> MEMORY STICK. Highlight "Virtual FAT16 . UMD ISO-9000" and punch X. Your computer should make some cheep and recognize a 'Memory Stick'. If it doesn't pop up, go to 'My Computer' and find it. You can also rip it to your memory stick if you're feeling adventurous.
   
4. Drag the ISO file from the drive to your computer and wait! Congratulations, you have successfully ripped your first UMD! Continue reading to learn how to run it.

PLAYING ISOS You have just backed up your game and now you want to play it sans disc. Read on! Notice: Please do not use this to play illegally obtained games, support game programmers! Prerequisites: A UMD, a PSP with 3.03 OE-C firmware and 5 minutes.

1. Hurray! Something that doesn't require a file download. Connect your PSP via usb and create a folder called 'ISO' in your PSP's root directory. It may already be there.
   
2. Drag your backed up game into the folder.
3. Under your PSP go to GAME -> MEMORY CARD -> 'Your Game', push X and BAM! It loads. Enjoy!