I picked up my (first) Xbox 360 back in April and recently passed a huge milestone. In just 7 months I managed to rake in over 10,000 Gamerscore points. I've never really been overly competitive or cared about scores and arbitrary numbers that really don't serve any purpose. But for whatever reason, the Gamerscore comprised of unlocked Achievements, has had me by the balls from day one.
Last night on the way home after picking Hannah up from school, I made a pit stop at EB Games and surprised her with a copy of Viva Piñata. She's been waiting for this game for months and has been watching the TV series every Saturday since it started airing back in September. Needless to say, she was crazy excited and spent the majority of her evening playing it. Shortly after she hit the hay and a couple missions in Call of Duty 3 later, I jumped on to check it out. 3 hours fly by and suddenly it's pushing 1am, I'm totally hooked and questioning my manhood. Wait a second, what the shit just happened?
You know things are good when the only thing you can really complain about is the fact that there are too many awesome new games and you can't find time to play them all. Which is exactly how things are at the moment. It's been about a week and a half since I touched Splinter Cell Double Agent. I was planning to get in some quality time with the multiplayer end of the game, but Need for Speed Carbon stole my attention for a while. Just as I finished the career in Carbon, Tony Hawk's Project 8 comes out with less than a 24 hour window until the almighty Gears of War is among us. Now that the gears are turning, everything else stops.
The Xbox 360 Wireless Headset is a whole lot of goodness packed into a sexy, little package. I would recommend it to anyone who plans on using a headset on their Xbox 360, again, ever. Without a doubt, this headset should replace the current standard Xbox 360 Headset. Do yourself a favor and pick one up.
If you're on my Xbox Live friends list or have been following my Flickr activity, you know I've been logging some decent hours in Need for Speed Carbon. I actually had no intentions of picking this game up until post Emergence Day. But when I saw them stocking the shelves at EB with it, I just had to have it. For the first couple evenings, I was having an absolute blast! I've been uploading lots of screenshots using the in-game Photo Mode and even started a NFS Carbon Flickr Group specifically for them. By the time I reached about 50% completion in the single player career, the awesomeness was starting to wear thin and tediousness was creeping in. WTF happened?
I've played every Splinter Cell game in the series so far, but Double Agent is the first one that's grabbed me like this. Previously, the farthest I got was the third or fourth mission in. I simply lost interest. There was no real story and it seemed to jump around so much that it ended up confusing me instead of enticing me. I need more than just stopping bad guys to keep me interested. And Double Agent has done just that.
Yes, I am a lucky man. I may have caught a nasty cold, but I also had a chance to play some of this year's biggest titles, weeks before they come out. For those that aren't familiar with the X'0 events - they're Microsoft's annual hands-on press gatherings where they showcase the upcoming holiday line-up. Contrary to popular belief, this was not the first time an X'0 event was held in Toronto. They actually go way back to X'03, which was the first that I attended. I wrote about X'04, but missed X'05. This year, I took my buddy Andrew along who chainsaw'd me in GOW more than a few times. Anyway, on to the good stuff!
First of all, if you're snickering to yourself and about to leave an inflammatory comment, go and rent the first disc of season 1 (which is actually the miniseries) then come back and talk to me. Now that we've got that out of the way, how fucking incredible was this week's episode (3x04, Exodus Part 2)? I've watched up until the end of Season 2 with my wife at least 3 times in its entirety and we thought we had seen "the best episode" a few times already. Well, I do believe Exodus Part 2 takes that crown, at least for now. For those that haven't seen it or aren't up to speed in Season 3, there are serious spoilers ahead. You've been warned.
I've been working from home for over a year and I haven't contracted any sort of illness since. When I worked at MuchMusic, it seemed like I would always catch whatever was going around the big, stinky city. I guess that's one of the bonuses of not coming into contact with too many humans on a day-to-day. On Wednesday I ventured out of the my office that I like to call "the cave" into the real world to rock the latest and greatest Xbox 360 titles at X'06 (the Canadian version). Somewhere between chainsawing dudes in Gears of War and trying to beat Andrew's lap time in Forza 2, I became infected.
This is a tough one, it really is. On one side, I feel immediately disgusted by the very idea. But on the other, I can almost understand the reasoning behind the gouging. At least, with this latest release of "premium content". The first round was just plain despicable. Yes, I've got my EA hate on again. Actually, I'm not sure if it ever left. If you're an Xbox 360 owner you're probably aware of the latest round of downloadable content released by EA for the new Tiger Woods game. For those that aren't and those that are upset by this, let's discuss...
Providing a "resource" that is really nothing more than a sales pitch/press release is nothing new for Microsoft. And it seems they've done it again with the launch of XBOX LIVE PIPELINE - sorry, didn't mean to yell at you. That's apparently the name of the site. Anyway, I almost shat myself when a friend pointed this out to me earlier today as it could have hindered a project I'm working on. I let out a sigh of relief, followed by a laugh, followed by 5 minutes of screaming at my monitor once I made a few clicks through the various efforts. So what is Xbox Live Pipeline and why am I bitching? Why, it's "Your one-stop guide to Xbox Live Marketplace". Actually, it's not even close. Here's why...
It's been a week since I've opened my feed reader and about the same since I last signed in to IM for longer than 2 minutes. My email client is only opened a couple times through-out the day and I have piles of stagnant emails dating back to June sitting in my inbox. I can't recall the last time I had a conversation with a friend in the real world or even over the phone. WTF happened? Where did life go and why didn't anyone tell me it was leaving? Shit, I would have baked a cake, had I known.