Finally! Some more Bizarre Creations action but... not for Australia? That sucks. Royally (and we are still a monarchy after all. I'm sure the Queen isn't impressed, especially seeing as Bizarre are an English company - Hey! That ended up being really clever didn't it!).

Here's the link to the post on Gamerscore Blog.

Note the comments. Do you see how many Australians are commenting? There are a lot. We are no small voice here. Australia is one of the biggest (per capita I think it's the biggest) and most loyal Xbox install bases there is, yet time and time again we get the shaft.

Now I don't know what's going on here, but I think we deserve an explanation. You see, most time delays like this happen when a country's ratings board has some reason for not giving a rating to a game, or they need futher time to come to a decision. This normally happens with mature titles (like Rockstar's GTA3 or Manhunt). However, there are plenty of arcade titles on the arcade that have mature ratings. For instance, I have Alien Hominid HD (M) and Doom (MA15). Both of these titles were released here at the same time as everywhere else. I see no reason why Doom could pass through our OFLC (our equivalent of the US ESRB) and reach the XBLA at the same time as everywhere else, and a completely mild game like Boom Boom Rocket can't. There has to be another reason. Normally the secondary reason would be finding an Australian distributor (that woefully happened with the glorious Psychonauts here) but this is online distribution, that level is bypassed here isn't it? Let's see if they do post a reason, or just expect us to take it.

So sad. Microsoft better do something flippin' sweet for the Aussie (and maybe New Zealand) communities soon, or we'll really start to feel unloved.

I really should write a proper post soon. You know, one of my 3,000 word epics that nobody actually read except maybe my sister...

Anyway, I finally got around to making the commenting rounds tonight, which I should really do more often. Problem is, I do most of my blog reading at work on my break time, and that's normally done through Google Reader, and if I do attempt to go comment on people's spaces things normally go haywire. So it ends up taking a concerted effort to do it at home, which I just did! Pat on the back for me!

This one's a quickie though. What am I digging at the moment? The idea of a new Wing Commander game! Wing Commander Arena on XBLA? I want it right now. Though I'm not sure about the new view though, and the "Arena" type gameplay. I'd love to see a redone WC or WCII. Don't get me wrong, I'd kill for remakes of all the WCs, but WC and WCII came out when I was really young, we never had a computer good enough to run WC, but we did for WCII, for which I had (and the Secret Ops 1 & 2... or was that Special Ops, I get mixed up with the Prophecy Episodic content). The thing is, I barely remember anything about WCII, except that I loved it, and WC is also held in similar high regard.

At any rate, I'll be happy for any Wing Commander fix - it's been far too long. Do you know what would have been really cool though? A remake of Wing Commander Armada - that had action and strategy, and it's blend would have been awesome on Live.

I have so many other little things I should post on, but that's all I've got time for at the moment. Oh, and I also cracked the 10,000 gamerscore, which was sort of just a byproduct of me actually having time to play some games (and I've finished 3 in 3 weeks thanks to Vellan lending me some).

Is it really that easy to get 500 points out of Viva Pinata? I say as I note that my sister is now only 203 points behind me? And whatever did happen to her "I won't really be able to play through November because of my writing thing". Seems to me that she blogged prolifically and played constantly. Oh well, if she passes me, well done to her. It's good to see a competitive girl gamer (Not to say they aren't all competitive, just that they are rare).

The title? Well, as I have previously conveyed, I'm building a house. What I hadn't conveyed is that I currently live with my parents (Hey! Yeah I'm talking to you. You can stop judging me right now! I'd planned to meet the right girl a long time before now, and it's never eventuated, so at the start of this year I finally bit the bullet and went out to build a pad of my own.). Okay, those brackets are too long to continue the sentence they interrupted; I'll start that one again. What I hadn't conveyed is that I currently live with my parents, and they too are building a house. Theirs is pretty much done as I'm led to believe. So I think they're moving in next week (the 5th maybe?). They still haven't sold this house though (they have been trying), so I can still stay here until my house is ready at the end of December. The problem is, that they're having the telephone disconnected here. Why is that a problem? Because the broadband here is ADSL! No telephone line no ADSL = No Xbox Live! *Sigh*. It's not the end of the world, but after having Xbox Live become so integral with the 360, not having it is going to be very... odd. Not in a good way though, more in a "suffocation is bad because I like oxygen" way.

• So, Noble got his Xbox 360 back, congrats to him. That has to be worse than just losing it's connectivity to Xbox Live.
• My sister's charge at my score has unfortunately led to her surpassing of Cluskevird's score. Surely this is a sign of the end times. Also, has Cluskevird ever told us the story behind his gamertag? If he has, he needs to point me to where it has previously been done.
• A bug just flew into my eye, a little one, don't be alarmed. My vision is not impaired, but it wasn't very nice of it to suicide on me like that.
• I note from Sean80 and ICandee's spaces (and their gamercards within) that they're into Rainbow Six Vegas. I've been looking forward to that one. And from what I hear, it's somewhat of a masterpiece. It should be out here today (Thursday, if I count now as Thursday and not really late on Wednesday).
• I saw on Major Nelson's blog, that Gizmondo have reviewed the 360 Steering Wheel, and that they think it's the best thing ever. That's great to hear, I read someone else's comprehensive 8 page review of it, where they showered it with praise, but until you get multiples of such opinions you never really know. Great. Now I need to come up with yet more cash is my house-building cash-strapped world.
• I've also been really looking forward to Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, on PC, of course. As God intended RTS to be played, just as he originally intended FPS to be played. But then since delivered unto us Halo and then subsequent good console FPS games, proving that all things really are possible (I hope that wasn't sacrilegious of me). So now C&C 3 has now been announced for Xbox 360 as well. So now what do I do? The 360 is a more powerful (and specialised) gaming platform, and will probably make C&C 3 (a spectacular looking game) look better than my old Powercolor Radeon 9800 Pro could, classic graphics card though it is. If it's released after Halo Wars (an Xbox 360 exclusive RTS) and it proves to me that RTS on a console, without a mouse and keyboard, can work, then I'll definitely consider it. Otherwise, I really don't see me converting, even if it does mean missing out on gamerscore & achievements. Will LiveAnywhere allow for gamerscore & achievements cross platform? Or is opening up gamerscore & achievements to the PC platform to dangerous to rort? Those PC gamers can be masters of trickery and code-aided gaming.
• I haven't even mentioned how disgusted I am by the selling of NFS Carbon (and The Godfather for that matter) content, which you already have in the game. It's basically selling cheat codes, which are probably free on other platforms. And then, it's probably selling achievements too, as I'm sure buying the "give me access to all performance parts in the game" cheat doesn't nullify your ability to unlock achievements, even if they were a piece of cake to get. It's pretty dodgy, and I hope no-one's been morally corrupt enough to literally, buy into it. And just quickly on that, as I mentioned, The Godfather is probably even worse, allowing you to buy in game money, with your real money. I don't see how any of these advancements is furthering gaming, they disgust me.
• Finally, you know I never noticed just how high JO3PA's score is? It's so close to that milestone 20k he must be able to taste it!

Phew, that was supposed to be the ultra-concise bulleted section, but it didn't really turn out that way did it? If I haven't commented on people in my friends list or Blog List recently, my apologies, I do try. But work is not a conducive environment for such things, and at home there's Gears of War. I do however, most certainly read all those blogs, and think that everyone's doing a great job. This is usually done with my aggregator of choice, but I do still often like to read them on the sites themselves, as I am mindful of the total package being a part of a blog's communication.

Now all I have to do is wait for a US webcast which will start at 2:30am here. I guess I'll just have to bring myself to play some Gears.

You may have noticed from my achievements that I lied in my last post. I said I was going to play through Gears of War on the normal (Casual) difficulty level first. This was before I started the game. When I went to start a new campaign and it said "Casual: You enjoy the occasional shooter". I don't think that's me. You could say that I'm somewhat of a shooter/FPS aficionado, I played through Wolfenstein 3D when it came out. And come to think of it, I was probably only 11 years at the time. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? So without getting further off topic, I don't think that the Casual setting was for me. The hardcore setting? "Hardcore: You know how to pull off a headshot", yes, that's much closer to the mark. So far I'm not regretting it either, it's simply challenging, but I wouldn't call it Hard, most of the time when I die, it really is my fault. So I'm not getting frustrated, if I find a section really hard, it's probably because I'm trying to get through it too fast and taking too many risks.

But really, what do I think of Gears so far? I just sat here for minutes trying to think of a word that befit it's greatness, and I can't think of one. Let's just say it's really, really good, on all fronts. I haven't tried the game on standard definition yet (that's what my TV is) because I know one of the major drawcards with Gears is the phenomenal graphics. So for now, I've got my 360 hooked into my old 19" CRT via the VGA cable, and it looks awesome.

In other news, I did pass Cluskevird's score. This was sort of unintentional. I was looking forward to it, but it wasn't really competition driven. It was mainly a side effect of me trying to stay one step ahead of my sister. Which isn't to say I'm desperate to keep ahead, I am trying, but if she really put her foot down I'm sure she could pass me, and that's cool. She'll get Viva Pinata when it comes out, and maybe I'll grab that one too, seeing as I'm hearing great things about it. But even if I don't, I still have that time-sucker Oblivion to finish, and of course, Splinter Cell: Double Agent. I'd still also like to pick up Dead Rising, Rainbow Six Vegas, and maybe Call of Duty 3 (for the right price). But building a house is binding my hands a little.

As for the post title, Small Arms comes out for Xbox Live Arcade tomorrow! I've watched most of the videos for this on GameVideos.com and it looks fantastic. It'll be 800 points, and if it plays as well as it looks, it'll be much better value than my previous XBLA title (being Lumines Live, which is still great though, don't get me started on it again). Small Arms looks like a great Super Smash Brothers Melee or Kung Fu Chaos style of game. These are generally great party games in their own right, but should be great online. It's nice to see a good, new indie title on the XBLA.

If you want a real post, read yesterdays. I'm only posting because I got Gears of War today. I haven't even put it in the drive and yet I feel somehow relieved. I've heard that the game makes you want to play through it multiple times (a la Halo), so I'm thinking I might play it through on normal first before going onto the harder modes. As lately I generally just dive straight into the harder (or hardest) difficulty setting.

Yes, my post title refers to my Xbox 360, and it's prolonged inactivity. This is however, about to change. I did just get back from re-hiring Need For Speed Most Wanted, and also hiring King Kong.

I shouldn't have to defend my hire of King Kong, but for my sister's sake, I will. You see, here at Game Rankings, it gets an average review of 81% on the 360. Which is pretty decent, especially considering I loved Ridge Racer 6 and that got an average of 75%. From all I read about it during the 360 launch in the US, it was one of the best available launch games. And all up, it really is an entertaining play. It's just that it only entertains for about 8 hours max (the time taken to complete the game) and then you probably won't want to play it again. This makes it a perfect rental I think, I'll let you know what I think of it once it's done. I don't know if the fact that I've never seen either the original King Kong, or the remake will hurt my experience, but we'll see.

I said I'd write up the U2 concert, but I really don't think I need to. I'm sure all those of you with an interest in U2 would know their reputation for putting on an amazing show. Well Thursday night was no exception, they were great. Bono even did his thing where he changed the words of the bridge to Beautiful Day to fit the city (mentioning things about Adelaide, like the Glenelg etc.). I actually thought that the crowd was really good, cheering every song and clapping to everything, singing along... you know the kind of things you'd expect at a U2 concert. But I've read some Adelaide blogs, and they say that the crowd is flat and bored, maybe it was just where I was sitting, or maybe I haven't been to enough Crows games to hear what 50,000+ people cheering can sound like.

Probably one of the most "wow" parts of the night was everyone leaving. People lined up all day to get in, and 60,000 people coming into a stadium over the course of a day is nothing too amazing. But 60,000 people all leaving at once is something completely different. It's something you just have to see. I joked around with my friends saying that it was like seeing the entire population of Mount Gambier all exiting a building at the same time. And then I found out that the population of Mount Gambier is only about half that.

Back onto topic of the U2 concert however, I got my ticket for $100, which is the most I've ever paid to goto a show. But after that performance I realised, I would've paid more. If you'd like to see the setlist and some other people's reviews (which are actual reviews, unlike mine) go here.

I also heard from my friends that you weren't allowed to bring cameras in, but I weren't sure if they were right. So I brought it in stealthily anyway. So I took some photos, but I wasn't exactly snap-happy. I even signed up for flickr so I could share them with you properly. They're all 1024x768, but you have to dig around with the flickr interface to get the full-res versions (like this one).

You'll find the set here.

I was in a wedding yesterday, as in, part of the bridal party. I'm mentioning it in case you wondered about my sister's comment about me "doing well at the wedding" was perplexing. I might put some pictures from that up on flickr later too. But for now you'll just have to enjoy this picture of my sister, who I thought looked more like a disguised assassin when looking out onto the crowd for the wedding (very Pulp Fiction). Unfortunately she's smiling in the picture and doesn't look very threatening though, she'll have to work on that.

• The friends leaderboard is weekly. You can never compete with your friends highest scores.
• The second I call "Did I buy the demo-itis".

What is "Did I buy the demo-itis"? Well, Lumines has other modes of play besides the awesome challenge mode. These are things like the Vs. CPU mode and the puzzle mode. I've got the original PSP version, and these are a fun distraction from the main game from time to time. Well here they look like they're there, but on Vs. CPU, you only get one level. On Puzzle mode, you only get 5 puzzles - what the hell? I've got to buy more expansion packs after already forking out $30? The original Lumines has all this, and it only costs $30 for the PSP! And as if I want to buy these? The main addiction to Lumines is the Challenge mode - these extra modes are really just what I called them before - distractions. Are they going to be 600 points each again? If so, absolutely... not... worth... it. A.k.a. Rip off. Secondly, the "Advance Mode" which you get if you fork out another 600 points for it gives you another campaign for the challenge mode - do you know where most of these skins come from? Lumines on the PSP. So it's not like they developed Lumines Live, and then started working on new material to release for it. This is stuff they've had from the start. They chose not to put it in there so that they could then charge an extra $10 for it later. This just seems like a big cash-in by Q Entertainment and I'm a little disappointed that MS gave them the go-ahead on their pricing scheme. Are they that worried about keeping his excellency, the precious Mizuguchi-san happy?

Anyway, bottom-line is... Lumines Live is still great. Is it worth 1200 points? Absolutely. Are the add-on packs worth 600 points? Absolutely not. Would Lumines Live have been an unstoppable juggernaut of gaming goodness if they'd just put all their content in from the start rather than purposely taking bits out only to charge extra for it later? You're damn straight it would've been.

I just stumbled upon a little write-up Joystiq have done on this too. Seems I'm not the only one who thinks this is a bit of a rort. You can find their article here.

So I'm giving the Windows Live Writer Beta a shot. It seems pretty neat, though it doesn't have a whole lot of more options than the web edit interface we're all so familiar with. Being a GIS (Geographic Information System) person though, I will note this. On the right of the editor you have and Insert menu. There are three options:

• Insert Link...
• Insert Picture...
• Insert Map...

Only three options and one is insert map! Since Google Earth (and Microsoft's response to it) GIS, though many don't know the acronym has enjoyed a massive popularity surge. It was already the biggest growth industry in computing, simply by the need for it. But now the general public has gotten in on the act and it's getting more of the press it deserves. I could rant and rave about GIS and it's inherant greatness, but that would probably have the opposite effect to that which I'm so excited about. So instead I give you the Insert Map... option and it's results.

You're probably wondering what the marker pins are. Well they're towns (Yorketown, Kadina, Clare, Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Whyalla, Crystal Brook, Quorn, Moonta, and Jamestown) and I have to visit each of them for work next week. Just to provide refresher training on the corporation's basic GIS system that the depot guys use, and to help them out with usage of GPS units. I have a feeling though that this is just the tip of the iceberg however, we've got 40+ depots and I'm only visiting 10 of them. Oh well, company car and all that.

I downloaded Texas Hold'em yesterday, and managed to squeeze the Win a hand by going "all in" achievement out of it. I look forward to getting in some online games with all of you, should be plenty of fun.

I think Echohammer419 posted about the upcoming Xbox 360 accessories, I haven't fully read his post yet, but I'm pretty excited about them as well. I think the camera's going to be great, imagine being able to communicate in GRAW and having the little Narcom display show the 360 Camera view of the person talking to you! Not to mention gesture effects in gaming. What I'd like to see is it being able to measure your head movements so you could do things like turn you head slightly to look around your car's cockpit in PGR3. Then there's the whole facial mapping so you could put your head on to game characters which is pretty damn awesome.

Of course, the wireless headset's going to be great. It kind of annoyed me when we got the wireless controller that we were still stuck with a wired headset - at least they're addressing it though. The thing I didn't know about until recently that I think's going to be great is the official Microsoft 360 steering wheel. Which is going to ship (limited I think) with a special force feedback edition of PGR3. I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but I'd hope if Bizzare modify PGR3 to work especially well with the official MS steering wheel, that they'd put out an update over live to get everybodie's copy of PGR3 taking advantage of it and not only some special edition version of the game.

I guess my excitement over the steering wheel has really been piqued by my getting back in to PGR3 of late, which was brought on by the photo competition (which ends at the end of this month people!). I haven't had much luck getting an online career game, so I've been spending a fair bit of time in just Race Against The Clock mode. I can find myself racing a single track with a car for over half an hour, trying to find that elusive perfect lap. I often find though that my time isn't much better than top 600 or so (League 1), even with a class A car (my fave car is the RUF RT12, class B). I think it would be really nice to have car specific leaderboards for tracks, but there's plenty of things for Bizzare to improve on with PGR4, which I hope is as near perfection as PGR2.

I picked up my own copy of Call of Duty 2 yesterday for $69 (down from RRP of $110). I won't even talk about the schmuck in EB Games that made the transaction less than pleasant. I'm probably going to pick up Dead or Alive 4 tomorrow, I just can't resist it at $59 (down from RRP of $100) from Myer. Oh, and I almost forgot, all the GBVY'ers are now on high-def displays - except me! I've still got my old (but excellent) 51cm Philips Matchline III running through S-Video. So while I was at EB (with that moody moron) I grabbed the VGA adapter so I could at least plug my 360 into my PC screen (an old 19" Mitsubishi Diamond View CRT) and get a taste of this high-definintion pie. It works really well, and I'd definitely recommend it. It doesn't support 1080i (720p max I think), but it should definitely come in handy when I borrow data projectors from work (which are normally 1024x768 or 1280x1024, but only have VGA, S-Video, and RCA inputs).

This post has gone on long enough!

• Believe it or not, I still have plenty of friends that don't have a 360, but they're still occasionally curious as to what I'm up to. I can't tell them to go to my gamercard because for that you need to sign in your Microsoft passport. But anyone can checkout my 360's voice and see my current status on the right! Very handy.
• The top 10 games played is really interesting, and sometimes suprising. Cluskevird, who also got a guernsey from the 360voice dev blog, mentioned how this can really impact how you play. Nobody wants a top 10 completely populated with XBL Arcade Titles, good though they are.
• The embeded graph & gamercard are great, I'm not sure if they same team behind the 360voice are behind them, or if they just link them, but that doesn't really matter - they're cool too.
• The new badge system is innovative, and in some cases, is a nice way to showcase your achievements. Again, especially to those that don't have a 360 (and can't look at your profile on live.xbox.com).
• The Leaderboards are a good way of seeing how you fare with other gamers. For example, I'm way up there at #12,867. My fellow Australian, Noble Downfall (you can find his space here) is much higher up at #5,484. (I used him as a comparison because we Australians got the rough end of the stick, launching 4 months later).
• The actual post entries, which were the novelty that initially drew me in, are actually a wealth of information in themselves. Saying which games you played on which days, how many achievements you gained, and how much you increased your gamerscore by. Which is great for me, because I don't always intently watch my score go up, so when I visit my 360's blog, I can see "Hey, my score went up 295 on that day, I had no idea!" 

1. Cluskevird           - 49,130
2. ICandee              - 45,680
3. Striek                   - 43,170
4. Echohammer419  - 36,010
5. Noble Downfall     - 25,090

This is actually the first time (that I remember) I've ever played Galaga (I can't go on only using captials for the title). Seeing as it came out in 1981, and that's the year I was born I didn't have a whole lot of change to go to the arcade, or a means of getting there besides crawling. It is easy to see why it was so popular though, it's much more sophisticated than space invaders with the way the enemys fly in make attack runs on you, not to mention the tractor-beam/dual fighter system. It's sort of the inbetween game between Space Invaders and the shooters I grew up with, which were scrolling shooters like 1942 and Raiden.

 

Still on XBL Arcade (which is proving to be a bigger drawcard for the 360 than I thought), I managed to get past level 3 on Frogger, which also put me to #1 for it on my Friends Leaderboard (which contains a massive 3 people!). It currently looks something like this:

1. Striek                   - 11,850
2. Echohammer419  - 11,150
3. ICandee               - 8,250

We can forgive ICandee for not being quite as competive on this one in the light of her post on it. That, and she's totally owning me in scores for Cloning Clyde (645 vs 114). Again, Frogger's one of those 1981 games. I don't think I ever played an arcade machine for Frogger, but I think it'd have to be impossible for anyone living in a western country to not have played some incarnation of it somewhere along the line in the last 25 years.

 

Not long now till Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, which is a game I used to play at the arcade. Or more often, at the deli down the street from my friend's house (that's a Milk bar for you eastern staters). Except I think the one down at the deli (which I was most familiar with) was Super Street Fighter II Turbo, but who knows with the 100 different versions of Street Fighter II. I'm curious as to what the achievements will be for it, or whether they'll be mainly online achievements (ie. win X amount of fights on Live).

 

Pac-Man is next, but I'm not sure what's taken it so long. Pac-Man is an unlockable in Ridge Racer 6, which was a launch title (and I've already unlocked it). I am thinking, more and more, that Microsoft need to release a special arcade controller though. As my main frustration with Frogger & Pac-Man is the inaccuracy of the clunky Xbox d-pad (remember the original Xbox controller FA's d-pad - that was horrendous!). I like everything about the Xbox Controller S & 360 Controller more than the Playstation's Dual-Shocks - except the d-pad. But considering I barely use the d-pad, except for things where it's not your primary form of input (ie. GRAW) it's never bothered me. The Arcade has changed this, c'mon Microsoft you're missing out on retail dollars, if you released a sweet Arcade controller I'd snap it up!

 

Before I get to closing, those of you that are in my Blog List would have noticed that I've been a more dilligent commenter of late. I appreciate comments, so I like to deal out at least as many as I get, but it is hard to keep up with all the ones in my list. Trying to remember to check everyone's, have I already read this, you know, those kinds of problems. Well, I'm sure I'd be preaching to the converted, but in case I'm not - I stumbled across Google Reader in the Google Labs department. It's basically a RSS feed centrifuge (they're called Aggregators aren't they?), but it's made things so much easier! I've added everyone's RSS in there, and so as soon as someone posts I see it, and can click on it, go to their actual space - and comment! I highly recommend it.

 

For commenters (I love you, you know that don't you?) I leave you with a question:

What titles would you most like to see added to the XBL Arcade?

For me it would be something like this:

1. Bubble Bobble (I heard that Bubble Bobble's arcade earnings are second only to Ms. Pac-Man!)
2. Raiden (any of the series, or all!)
3. 1942 (1941 is my favourite of the series, but I wouldn't be complaining)

There are of course more I'd like, but they're the first that come to mind. Seeing as they're bringing Sonic to the arcade though, we're obviously not limited to actual Arcade games. Mega Drive (sorry US people, that's a Genesis, you can read why you guys got a different name in the Wiki article) and SNES games anyone? I could definetely go some Rock & Roll Racing or Earthworm Jim, but would we ever see SNES games? I don't think so, as much as I like Nintendo, I'm sure they'd much rather make GBA/DS ports and charge near the price of a brand new game.

 

I promise my next post will be shorter! (This just took way too long to write...)

 

Addendum:

I just had a look at my space's statistics and saw quite a few entries from www.360voice.com. One specifically here... http://battlestar.typepad.com/360voice/2006/07/pointing_you_to.html. Where they link my space because I mentioned 360voice and the new badge system. I love the 360voice setup, and I think the extra work they've put into it with the stats and badges is great. So it was only natural that I was going to mention them, but the gesture is much appreciated. Thanks guys!

• Game 1: Win; 65 - 29
• Game 2: Win; 59 - 19
• Game 3: Loss; 32 - 39
• Game 4: Loss; 30 - 32

A friend of mine that I went to school with now runs the youth group (if you want to call it that) of the church, and he does all the programs and graphic design for it. He does a great job, and is really creative. One of the things he's got a real fondness for is graph-art (not just your common run-of-the-mill graphiti). So late Sunday night he gave a few of us a call to go out and hunt down some graph-art and photograph it. Of course, some people are pansies, and only the three of us went. We went to three locations - an abandoned water tower (a big one), a burn-out abattoir and it's office block, and an old disused Australian Agriculture building. They were all within walking distance of each other. The burnt-out building wasn't exactly easy to navigate, but it was probably the most Condemned: Criminal Origins-ish of the bunch. We took a stack of photos, I'll include some soon. I kept seeing 2x4's with nails, pipes etc. lying around and thinking - yep, if some guy amped-up on speed or something comes running at me, that'll be my melee weapon of choice... All good though, nice little adventure.

 

I wasn't going to get Cloning Clyde, but upon seeing that it was pretty much all that ICandee was playing, I thought I should check it out. It's a great little platformer, I was a bit apprehensive of it's 800 point price tag, but it's definitely worth it. ICandee's already devoted a post to it, check it out here.

 

I properly played Frogger for the first time last night, and was amazed by just how addictive it is. I'm not sure whether it would be as addictive without the achievement system though. I found myself playing again and again trying to get to Level 4 (trying to unlock the Complete Level 3 achievement). It would also have been nice to beat Echohammer419's high score (which I came close to) as well, but maybe next time.

 

Still on Xbox Live Arcade, I downloaded the Gamespot Xbox Live Gold Experience video from the Marketplace, which is really just them attending an Xbox Live Arcade party. It really has nothing to do with Gamespot, but they're just the ones that produced the video. The whole thing is really an interview with Greg Canessa, who's the General Manager of Xbox Live Arcade. The party is for the launch of the Xbox Live Arcade Wednedays, which is a flurry of XBL Arcade game releases, each coming on a Wednesday.

• First was Frogger (@ 400 points)
• Then Cloning Clyde (@ 800 points)
• Then Galaga (@ 400 points)
• Then Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting (@ 800 points, yay finally!)
• Then Pac-Man (@ 400 points)

Pretty slick hey? Some other nice factoids he mentioned was that...

• There will be 30 titles available in the Arcade by the end of the Northern Hemisphere summer.
• There will be 50 titles available by the end of the year.
• There are 80 titles in development right now.

I haven't had too much time to game lately, hence why I haven't been playing COD2 since my last big stint. I'm still tossing up whether to follow Echohammer's advice and play it through on Veteran the first time around, or whether to finish it on Hardened (seeing as I'm already halfway). If it was my game (and I didn't have to get it back to my friend ASAP) of course I'd do what he says. It'd be a real achievement  to play it through, first time round on the ultimate difficulty. We'll see.

 

Because I am competitive I noticed that I'd nearly caught up Cluskevird in the gamerscore points race, when he just recently put on a massive point burst. Nice work! He also recently (along with someone else, I can't remember right now) mentioned the new badges in the 360Voice/Gamercard.net setup. Which are pretty cool. It's pretty much only because of the 10 days/20 days straight gaming badges that I've bothered to fire my 360 up every night, even if it is just to play a few games of Frogger, or a race or two in Ridge Racer. I don't know what the other badges are (though I've heard of a badge for having all of the COD2 Veteran achievements).

 

Just quickly on Ridge Racer 6, if you have a look at my achievements, you will have notice that after hours, and hours of play, I've now unlocked  whole 2 achievments. What a return on investment! The two I've got is that one for doing a 360 (a nothing achievement that nets you 5 points) and the Driven 800km/500miles achievement, which takes quite some time, and is still only 15 points. I think the rumors I heard about it being uber-hard on the achiement side may be true.

 

24 season 5 has been on here for the past month. I love that show, but I haven't been watching this season. I think I'll just get the DVDs when it's all over, and hope that no-one spoils it for me in the meantime! I just finished re-watching season 1 and 2 on DVD, and am about to start on number 3. I'm not sure which season was my favourite out of the first four, but it'd probably be a toss up between 2 & 4.

 

I'm still making my way thought WipEout Pure, which is quite the difficulty ramp, but I'm getting there. Because I am a scientist, I thought I'd fire-up WipEout 3 SE and see what the difference is like. I was amazed at how much more forgiving 3 was (and also how bad it looks compared to Pure, go, PSP go!). It's still a classic though. I'm still curious about how they say one of the things the PS3 can do is copy PS1 games onto your PSP's memory stick duo pro (you'd need a big one though!). I still don't know how they'd solve basic issues like not having as many buttons available. But being able to copy something like Final Fanasty VII onto my PSP is a pretty tasty prospect.

 

Finally, I remember expressing how I'd like to play though the coop campaign in GRAW, but I think it was Noble Downfall who told me that it wouldn't be wise to attack the coop with less than three players. Because he'd played it coop with two other people, and it was still brutal. Well, I read somewhere recently that the difficulty ramps based on how many people you get in on it. So two player coop should still be possible. 3 or more would still be plenty more fun though I'm sure. I still haven't managed to work out a game with Echohammer, though, so maybe myself, and Noble should work out some sort of workable GMT time for us to play at.

 

Anyway, I could still add a whole heck of alot more, but I'm already mindful that almost no-one will read this post in it's entirety, due to it's already behemoth size. But thanks to everyone for their comments of late, they're always appreciated. Keep up the good work everyone!

• Confusing menu system (ie. How do I create a XBL coop game? To play through again on Hard, should I play mission by mission using the Missions list, or create a New Campaign and set it to Hard?)
• I Don't Care-itis (ie. Who the hell are the people talking to me over my headset? Who is VIP 2? Is that the Mexican Prez or the US Prez?)

For my second point there, at one point that actually worked in the story's favour. The only NPC I knew, and cared what happened to, was my chopper pilot Bud. Those that know the story will know what I mean. Now that I'm playing though it again, the I Don't Care-itis isn't as bad, because I'm both paying more attention to people's introductions, and I'd already partially worked out who they were. Like, now I know who General Martin is, and his codename in the field is Bulldog.

 

I also like the difficulty ramping. I think I did the last couple of missions without dying once on Normal, And now that I'm playing it on Hard I'm finding it challenging, but not, well...Hard. I know that the difficulty is much higher, but because my skill level has increased, that difficulty level is better alligned with the challenge I want. I dislike it when a game's harder setting is not hard, but frustrating. For instance, I wish there was something in-between Heroic and Legendary on Halo 2. As I find Heroic to be Normal . The first time I played through Halo 2, I did it on Heroic. Now I'd like to play though Halo 2 on a setting harder than Heroic, but I'll admit that I find Legendary to be more frustrating than fun. You do get a sense of acheivement when you've done it, but it's not how I'd generally chose to spend my free time (now coop Legendary with another good player is a beautiful thing - Cookieman knows what I'm talking about!).

 

Thanks to the people that accepted my Friend Invites since the culling of my Friends list. You'll notice that it's given me a new reason to attack Marble Blast Ultra. Now the Friends Leaderboard is actually populated with other people's scores! I find myself doing stages just to directly compare myself to the likes of ICandee and Cluskevird.

 

I played through the Prey Demo. It's pretty good, EB Games had a special for June: Preorder Prey during June and get it for $70 AUD, which would've been a goer. Of course, I didn't want to get it without having a single clue as to what it played like. I'm not quite sure whether I'd pay full RRP for it, but given it's legendarily long development time, I almost feel like I should buy it just to give the developers a pat on the back for actually getting it to materialise. Next thing you know, Duke Nukem Forever will be out, and let's not forget the Sam & Max and Full Throttle sequels. I haven't tried the Multiplayer of the demo out yet, but I'll try to give it a shot tonight.

 

I finished MegaMan Powered Up for the PSP, or at least, I finished all the regular levels with Standard MegaMan on Normal. It still says I'm only 5% complete, because there are all the 100 challenge stages and you can play through the game as all the other robots (which I've unlocked all of). It's a great game, if you've got a PSP I thoroughly recommend it.

 

I picked up WipEout Pure for the PSP last friday for $35 AUD. How could I resist at that price? I've done 7 or 8 races so far and I'm amazed at the graphics this squeezes out of the PSP, and just how much fun the anti-grav racer can be. I had WipEout 3: Special Edition for the PSX, and I really liked it. But I think so far, that I like Pure more.

 

Metroid Prime Hunters hasn't seen that much play since I got it. I think I need a DS Lite, the levels are a little dark - which is fine at home at night with the lights off, but it sucks on the train. I'm thinking that a DS Lite would have the brightness required to fight the brightly light interior of the train and the daystar that so often tries to interfere with my gaming.

 

The question I leave the few of you that will comment is (and this is a question my sister asked me:

What's the next 360 title you're waiting for?

I couldn't really answer her at the time. I mean, everyone wants Halo 3, but what else is there? There are plenty of existing good games for the 360 I don't have. I've still got to get Revenge, NFS: Most Wanted, Ridge Racer 6, DOA4, Tomb Raider Legend, and I'd still really like to play through Condemned, King Kong, COD2, and Kameo. I'm sure there'd be a swag of really good 360 games yet to come out that I'd be really excited about if I wasn't still inundated with a stack of great games still waiting to be played. But what are they?

 

You know what this boils down to though? With regards to the 360? Best launch and post launch line-up for a console ever.