1P Start

This week brings another round of Rock Band DLC and Harmonix is really bringing the heat. First full albums and now this week there’s six songs from two artists. Too bad both of them pretty much suck, although corporate drones that like to get “crazy” on the weekends and angry kids not angry enough to listen to metal will certainly be happy. That’s right both Jimmy Buffet and Disturbed will be available for purchase this week by Xbox 360 and PS3 owners.

The offerings are:

* “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett

* “Cheeseburger in Paradise” by Jimmy Buffett

* “Volcano” by Jimmy Buffett

* “Indestructible” by Disturbed

* “Inside the Fire” by Disturbed

* “Perfect Insanity” by Disturbed

The Jimmy Buffet songs are master recordings, but with a twist. They’re newly recorded songs specifically for Rock Band. It’s pretty cool that he digs the game so much, but really what else does he have to do besides rake in a lot of cash? If you have no taste you can purchase the Buffet songs for $1.99 each (160 Microsoft Pretend Points) or $5.49 (440 Microsoft Imaginarium Points) for the pack.

The Disturbed songs are also master recordings, but not super special for Rock Band. What’s nice about their songs is that they will be available for a limited time at a discounted price. They will be $.99 per track (80 Microsoft Points) for the limited time, or $2.99 (240 Microsoft Points) for the three pack.

More thoughts and videos of the songs after the break!

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Over on Filefront I saw an interesting article highlighting the fact that the marketers around the new Penny Arcade game (Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness) have been using quotes that are a little less than complimentary in their ads:

The quotes don’t come from a gushing review, they are from a Penny Arcade hater by the name ddf on Wired’s blogs. In case you haven’t guess, ddf is the type of person that has absolutely no life and has the overwhelming need to tear the creative works of others down, because he (who are we kidding, this can’t be a she) can’t create anything himself.

Listen, I’m not a Penny Arcade fanboy. I like a lot of their strips and I bought the first two volumes of their comic strip collections, but there’s a lot of times they fall flat. I also find their commentary posts on their site both hard to read and smarmy. I can understand why people might not like them, but if you spend any amount of time actively trying to crap on them it’s a little freaking sad.

For the record this guy has a blog and yes he is a jackass on it. I’m not going to link to it in order to give him any kind of boost in traffic as a reward. If you’re curious though, here’s a tidbit of the kind of wit and substance that can be found there: “I hereby come out of my soap opera coma to coin the term “BioSuck” in regards to new lame FPS game Bioshock. Anyone using it from now on owes me royalties.” Uh yeah, because it’s so clever to put in “uck” after an “s” to mock something. When reading anything by this guy it’s nearly impossible to believe that he’s not some sort of plant created by the Penny Arcade crew to create some extra buzz for the game.

Grand Theft Auto 4 has now been out for 5 days, and with this being the first weekend since it’s release, I expect a lot of people will just be getting to grips with the game. So I thought we should take a look at what’s happened around the release, and how the game has been received in different quarters.

The sales bale began on Tuesday at Midnight, with many gamers queuing up at their local games retailer to be the first to get their hands on the game. 5 days later, and both Sony and Microsoft are already arguing over which console has seen the best return on the game. The only sales figures we actually have to go on at the point are from the UK, where the game sold 600,000 copies in 24 hours, making it the new one day record holder.

From the reviews of the game, it seems the PS3 version had a slight edge in the graphics department, looking sexier, and suffering from less frame-rate issues. Both versions have however shipped with bugs, with the PS3 reportedly suffering worse from Rockstar’s seeming inability to release a game without some sort of problem.

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I don’t know how this game passed by my attention thus far, but when my roommate downloaded the demo to Operation Darkness I thought, “Hey, a turned based 3D game based on WII that’s cool.” Sure, it was populated by douschebaggy looking anime characters, but I’ll take it because I have no other choice (check out my side rant below). What sold me though was that some of your soldiers are WEREWOLVES. It was like there was a scientific think tank put together to come up with a game idea that would make my head explode. I love me some werewolves, I love turn based strategy, and I love alternate history, but I love werewolves even more. The game seems to be pretty decent, but even if it turns out to be kind of sucky I’ll have to purchase it on principle alone. I need to encourage the development of more turn based strategy games that take place in significant times in history that features monsters of lore.

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No reason for this other than I like chicks.

Over on Gametap there’s a great article that delves into how achievements work and how they could be fixed. At first I thought the idea was silly, why would Xbox 360 achievements need to be fixed at all, they didn’t seem broken in the first place? However, the answer is that there is room for improvement and I’ve gathered my responses here. So here’s how it works, go there and read the article and come back here to read what I think and post your own thoughts. Got it? Good.

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If you’re like me and you still like playing Xbox games and either don’t have the original Xbox or your old one is broke then the limited amount of games available to play on the 360 is rather disappointing. The backwards compatibilty feature is underused, but at least they occasionally trickle updates for it. This round they added quite a few with the list following the break.

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Hey cheap-asses, remember that the Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack is now free so don’t forget to download it as soon as you can. I’d love to tell you how great or bad they are because I am indeed a cheap ass. I would love to download the Heroic map pack today, but my XBox is still not back in my hands after it’s unfortunate bout of the red ring of suck.

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Well, not quite on its own, but it can at least be the catalyst for a new baby to make its way in to the world.

A couple have met over Xbox Live, fallen in love, married, and now had their first baby together.

I’m sure this kind of thing has happened in PC gaming before, and also virtual world games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, but I’ve never heard about it happening in quite the same way as this one occurred.

Stacy and Mike Figueroa met while playing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Lockdown over the Xbox Live network. Hatred rather than love for each other was the first emotion to surface though, with the pair starting off as online enemies, in different factions of the game.

After months of shooting each other, they ended up becoming team-mates, and then a little after that, they fell in love.

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If you have not caught on, I have sort of a fetish for Tetris (seriously).

Well a couple of Tetris related happenings have come crossed my path recently, the first being something I hope to see you all in (then CRUSH YOU!).. a Tetris Splash Tournament being held on Xbox 360. This is the second one to be created and held just by other Tetris lovers on the official Xbox.com forums. User ‘cyno‘ has posted the information in a post here.

The long and short of it is, send him a PM that you would like to be in the tournament by March 12 (tomorrow) at 5:00pm. On the 14th, check the Tetris Splash forums and see the brackets.. easy enough? Well sign up and get to practicing! Want to see the best of the best from the last tournament, check this video below so you know what you are getting yourself into:

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Probably one of the most notable presentations at this years Game Developers Conference is Microsoft’s Keynote. Without Sony or Nintendo doing personal presentations themselves, this left Microsoft with a pretty easy “win” if you want to fuel the console wars fires. Though no “Free Xbox Live” was to be seen, some pretty damn big announcements have been made, including a surprise title coming out this year that had not been previously announced, read on for the quickest notes on the keynote ever:

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Last week saw Undertow given away free on Xbox Live Arcade to placate all those unfortunate souls affected by the service outages over the whole of the holiday season. Not a great game, but not bad for a free download.

However, this week sees a classic piece of video gaming goodness making it’s début on the Xbox Live Arcade, in the form of Chessmaster… no, just kidding, Rez is the big one, and Chessmaster is also being thrown in there to please the nerds.

Those of you who have never played Rez are in for a treat, and a bit of a mind fuck in to the bargain. Those of you who have never played Chessmaster have got lives, and good on you.

Rez, for the initiated, is a rhythm action and shooter game unlike any you may have previously experienced. You play a hacker who enters a computer network to try an reboot the AI at the centre of it. Think of a cross between Tron, and being a rave, and you’ll be maybe halfway there.

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In a kind of neat move on Microsoft’s part, they have made a set of Awards to recognize the great Xbox Live Arcade titles that have come out in the past year, and there really has been a lot of good ones after looking over the list. One game however, I notice got looked over. Luckily, when you vote, you can write in a game if it isn’t listed. Amazingly, “Tetris Splash” works in every single category, really, try it! See after the break for the categories, then click the vote now link to vote!

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Major Nelson has posted up the new list of the top played Xbox games (that are connected to Live of course). My favorite game of the moment, Call of Duty 4, holding the throne down over the game that disappointed me a bit, Halo 3. Amazing to see Gears of War still having that many people playing. Omega Five has quickly made it on the list, a new game of course, expect a review of that here on 1PStart very soon. I can’t believe it, UNO, staying in the top ten. Enough of my thoughts, here is the full list:

(NOTE: Don’t forget to download Undertow for free on Wednesday! Okay, now on to the list)

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Xbox Live users were pissed off in droves over the holiday season by the random, and inexplicable outages which hit the service for over a week.

Microsoft realised the levels of anger were going to hit them badly, so announced the give away of a free game to compensate everyone affected by the downtime.

Today, they revealed the game which all Xbox Live users will be able to download for free as a sweetener. The game is Undertow, an aquatic based shooter, which normally costs 800 Microsoft points.

It will be available to download completely free from Wednesday 23rd January 2008 until Sunday 28th January 2008. I can see that 5 day period crashing the servers yet again, but fingers crossed.

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Ladies and Gents it pains me to say my farewells to 1PStart. I’ve been here only a short time, though I’ve been at Xbox 360 Rally (another 451 site) for just under a year. I will miss you guys, though you’re probably throwing a party, chanting “he’s leaving! Huzzah! Huzzah!”. If you do miss me, though, you can find me at my new home BingeGamer.net.

It’s been fun, and I hope to see y’all around.

P.S.: Qbix — E-mail me, dude. I’m still gonna get your GTA IV to ya.