If you’re a sucker for McFarlane’s Halo figures and need a Master Chief toy for every color of the rainbow McFarlane’s website has released all kinds of details on all the exclusive figures coming out in the next few months.
Hold on to your hats fellow rock fans, this week’s round of rock songs is… oh who the hell am I kidding? It’s mildly interesting at best. The three songs are:
* “Call Me” by Blondie
* “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
* “Message in a Bottle” by the Police
Update: Looks like Mötley Crüe released a new single through Rock Band today called “Saints of Los Angeles”.
All three songs are Master recordings and will cost 1.99 a pop or 160 pretend money on Xbox Live. If you have a burning need for all three songs you can get them in the Classic Rock pack for the slightly discounted price of 5.49 or 440 rip you off points. The Motley Crue song will cost $0.99 or 80 Microsoft Magic Points for a limited time.
Videos and my thoughts after the break! (Except for the Motley Crue song)
I’ve heard some daft camping out stories in the past but this one really does take the proverbial biscuit.
A group of hardcore gamers are camping outside a games retailer in Sweden for a month just to be the first in line for a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 when it’s released on 29th April.
Okay, so they won’t just be getting a copy of the game, but also a whole load of GTA IV prizes and stuff to go with it, after the store ingeniously promised the first ten through the door on that day a bumper selection of freebies for their efforts, but still!
Hardware I can sort of see the point. Who wouldn’t want to be first to proclaim that they have played on the latest Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony console? It’s something you can brag about for years to come, at least until the next generation of machines comes along and someone else beats you to it.
As a gamer living in the UK I’m used to being treated as a second class citizen by games companies.
We in Europe tend to be the last to get consoles released, with the possible exception of Australia, and some games don’t even ever make it here. If they do, they tend to be priced extortionately higher than they are in Japan and America.
So it is with Rock Band. It’s taken six months to get here, it’s only initially being released on the Xbox 360, with PS2, PS3, and Wii owners having to wait until summer at the earliest, and it’s going to cost an absolute fortune.
Harmonix has made the ludicrous decision to up the retail price of the full package, that’s a copy of the game, a microphone, a guitar and drums, from the $169 it sold for in North America to £180. That’s the equivalent of $330, or double the price.
The company has spent the last few days trying to justify and explain the decision, but whatever excuses they may come out with, I just can’t see how such a differential in price can ever be justified.
Microsoft has seen sales of the Xbox 360 falling badly over the last few months, with 2008 proving so far to be the year of the PS3, and the Wii of course. So what to do? Why, try and steal your competitor’s market of course.
We’ve already seen the Xbox 360 getting dropped in price, and the Arcade pack released in order to cater to the less well off consumers who snapped up the Wii in droves.
Now, according to a company source talking to MTV, Microsoft are also going to muscle in on the motion control elements of the Wii and are busy developing a Wii Remote style controller for the Xbox 360.
Another week, another round of Rock Band downloadable songs. This week’s selection (for XBox 360 owners, PS3 owners will have to wait a bit) are all master recordings and are available for 80 ms points (or $.99 real people money) or as the HMX package together for 240 ms points ($2.99). The songs are:
* “Rock Rebellion” by Bang Camaro
* “Shake” by Count Zero
* “Super Sprode” by Freezepop
I’m not really sure how I feel about this week’s Rock Band DLC. Okay, I know how I feel… disappointed. The three songs released were all part of an “exclusive” disc of Official Xbox Magazine. I ran out and got a copy when it was released because it was during the height of my Rock Band mania. So if you paid a fortune for the overpriced issue of OXM, this week’s release is rather lame. If you haven’t had the opportunity to get these songs yet, here’s your chance to snag at least one great song.
My thought’s on each song after the break.
This week in releases is reminding much of last weeks. Not much to see here. The biggest release, “Portal” .. has already been out for quite some time. Now it is coming as stand alone release, woohoo. It is taking the cake (which is a lie, har har) this week as the best game for these releases. Seriously, check the list yourself below, nothing can top portal.
For this installment of Game Ads from the Days of Yore we are going back to the bountiful Atari 2600 well. The Atari had such great commercials because the medium was new and to show actual shots of the game for the full commercial would have been completely unimpressive, hence the use of hideous live actors doing a scene. This ad for Ice Hockey is a bit different than many others because it features a famous celebrity:
An Ex-Microsoft (fairly)recently was quoted as saying that videogame consoles as we know them will “die out” in the next five to ten years.
Wait! Before you panic and throw your PS3 out the window, let’s think about this for a moment. Sure technology moves fast and more and more it looks like digital distribution will be important, but let’s think about this for a minute. While digital distribution will certainly play a much bigger role in the future of the entertainment business, you’ve got to have something to run it on. One of the greatest strengths of the console is that while you are on the current generation, everyone has essentially the same machine. If you moved away from a standardized form of electronics you run into the mess that is PC gaming. You have a million different combinations of hardware and software.
For a different take on April Fool’s, Rare posted five different possible plots for the new Banjo game, with one being actual truth. A NeoGAF poster helped clear out some choices by eliminating three of the choices as they are the plots from other games. Rumor 2 = Banjo Effect (Mass Effect), Rumor 4: Too Banjo (Too Human), and Rumor 5: Banjo Wars (Halo Wars). Still, any of these really are possible, right now im going with Rumor One as being the real deal, as I just can’t see a Banjo being put out with the word “T.I.T.” in the game description, that is more of a Conker thing.
Rumor One: Banjo and Grunty team up against a new threat, falling in love in the process.
Sexy post-transformation Grunty makes a return and proves irresistible to our heroic bear, much to Kazooie’s disgust. Can the mismatched trio defeat their fire-breathing foe?
Rumor Two: Kazooie is abducted by aliens and Banjo heads out to search the cosmos.
Partway through his low-gravity exploits, he discovers who’s taken her… and it’s a familiar face from the Rare archives who has been ‘turned to the green side’ by Grunty.
Rumor Three: Banjo and Kazooie travel back through time in pursuit of the witch’s giant T.I.T.
Grunty drives her Time Interfering Truck back to before the bear and bird met. The duo must reintroduce themselves and relearn everything they know in a completely new way!
Rumor Four: Banjo comes out of retirement to stop his home being redeveloped into tower blocks and malls.
To end the struggle, a capricious higher power engineers a bear/witch showdown through worlds of the imagination – with Spiral Mountain’s ownership deeds going to the victor.
Rumor Five: War comes to Spiral Mountain, and Banjo becomes a reluctant leader.
Ever seen a Jinjo Tank? Or Grunty’s Grappling Grenadier Grunts? You will when you take on our innovative RTS-platformer hybrid campaign.
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However, I don’t think anyone has missed much having no release list, as I can count the amount of releases this week on one hand (and a few toes). No ‘HD’ ‘Next Gen’ gaming going on here, it is Wii, DS, PS2, and the PC fighting for who can release the worst game. My bet is on the PS2 only because they should stop making games for the system already! As far as why there is no games, I am guessing because of things to come.. Mario Kart… Grand Theft Auto.. etc. Companies know you are probably saving your money for the big names so no use to put out competition that won’t sway you from the franchises. Now onto the very short list this week, after the break:
April Fools Day is always a torturous day for gamers, with a huge amount of fake or prank stories doing the rounds on the Internet. And this year has been no exception.
Here are some of the best from around the World Wide Web:
This YouTube video supposedly shows a mash-up between Assassins Creed and Metal Gear Solid 4. It’s rubbish of course, but at least we get to see some new gameplay footage from MGS4!
Blizzard announced a new hero class for World of Warcraft. Called the Bard class, this hero wields a plastic guitar and rocks their way through the game. This is in addition to the game coming to consoles, although as its only available for the Atari 2600 to start with, it’s not really that exciting news.
I’m a huge fan of the Gran Turismo series of games, starting with the first version on the original Playstation, and the revolutionary 3 and 4 on the PS2. So as you’d expect, I can’t wait until the fifth game, and first on the PS3 gets released. Unfortunately I may have to wait some time.
SCEA associate producer Chris Hinojosa-Miranda spoke last week on the Official Playstation Blog about the series, and about a mixtape which they’d put together for the US version of GT5: Prologue.
In the comments under the article, a reader asked if it’s actually worth buying Prologue now, only to have to shell out more money for the full version of the game a few months later. This elicited the following response from Hinojosa-Miranda:
“GT5 is still about a year away. You should just decide now to buy it, enjoy it, go online and race against anyone and everyone, rank number one worldwide, get the girl (or guy) and become the most popular kid in town. The end.”
About a year away? Man, that’s disappointing, and I can’t really see why there’s that much of a delay between Prologue coming out (in Europe last week, and North America on April 17th) and the full version. What are they going to do in those 12 months?
Unless they are finally going to put car damage in to the game, something which the fans have been calling for right from day one.
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.
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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