Games that NEED to hit the Xbox Live Arcade

Here are some games that should not only be considered by Microsoft for release on the Xbox Live Arcade, but should be greenlit instantly. Get on it MS!

The Simpsons (arcade game): Not everyone was granted enough quarters as a kid to reach the final C. Montgomery Burns boss battle, but now with the greatness of XBLA, we should be able to experience it with 3 other friends online. It’s a great beat em up (like most of my choices will be), which fits XBLA arcade perfectly (TMNT Arcade 1989).

Captain America and the Avengers: Like The Simpsons, I was blessed with the chance to jam this in a movie theater. I don’t know what it is, but the movie theater arcade has always been good to me. This game is a classic beat em up, with another great license waiting to be taken advantage of. I know the Avengers film is in the works, and Iron Man is already out there, so this game has every reason to be pushed onto XBLA.

Mutant League Hockey: EA sports has long been making the best hockey games in the video game business, and now is as good a time as any to re-release this gore plastered sports classic. Online support is clearly a must (for all of the games being mentioned), and this game could bring new life to hockey gaming, perhaps even reinvigorate the Mutant League franchise (Mutant League Hockey Be a Mutant Mode with the NHL 09 engine?). Everything about this game is great, the hockey, the fighting, the clever play calling, and the killing of enemy teammates. The Mutant League brand is itching for a comeback.

Sunset Riders: The best Cowboy/Western game to this day. A great side scrolling shooter, that featured some of the funniest voice acting in gaming history (“Bury me… with my money”). Couldn’t have been internet poker money! Another 16-bit era arcade game that has been blatantly ignored by XBLA. Games like Call of Juarez and Gun hardly shine a light to this classic. This game features great boss battles, and even horseback levels, which remind me of the skateboarding levels from TMNT.

Tecmo’s Deception: Invitation to Darkness: Here’s my lone single player pick. Perhaps one of the most original strategy games to grace the PSX. Deception was all about outwitting the visitors of a giant castle, and setting traps that would lead to their demise. It was basically like Home Alone meets Satan, and his castle. It’s hard to explain why it’s fun to pretend to be a ghost, and set fatal traps, but trust me, it is.

Fallout 3 DLC coming!

FALLOUT 3: Bethesda is releasing a new episode for Fallout 3. It’s called Operation:Anchorage, and takes place in Alaska instead of D.C. (like the main game). Apparently it’s about Anchorage’s liberation from Chinese Communists (Mama Dolce’s people), and there are at least two more episodes planned for the future. Players of the PC version will also be receiving an “official editor,” for their game. I guess this is just another instance where being a PS3 owner, means getting screwed. Can’t wait to see the price on this DLC, as I hope it’s free, but expect it to be around the 800 ms points area.

Source: Ign.com

Fun with Avatars

Blazedasfun told me to make a Lincoln Osiris avatar, so here is what I came up with…

here’s the Downey as that same Lincoln Osiris…

Dante Hicks from Clerks!

Black and White as always…

Here’s Ron Perlman as Clay Morrow on Sons of Anarcy…

Here’s an Avatar I made just for Ron Perlman…

Here’s Hunter S. Thompson…

Here’s an Avatar in his memory…

Matthew Fox as Jack from Lost…

Jack’s Avatar…

Charlie Day from It’s Always Sunny…

Charlie Day the Avatar…

Bomberman Live + Avatar Support = Weak Sauce

Bomberman Live: I was looking through my game library today on my HDD, and saw Bomberman Live. I thought to myself upon seeing this classically underused game, “it would be awesome if I could use my Avatar as a Bomberman.” Come to find out moments later that there is “Avatar Support,” in Bomberman live. What does that mean exactly?

After updating and jamming Bomberman Live. It turns out that it supports the New Xbox Experience Avatars, but it doesn’t do anything especially cool (or playable) with them. The in-game differences are quite minuscule. First we get our Avatar looming over our Bomberman at the menu screen, next we get our Avatar (and the other bombers’ Avatars) overlooking the match, while representing the player (head only), and finally we get our Avatar (but not the other bombers’) jumping around at the end of the match if we win. That is it. That is the Avatar Support that you can download, or not. I vote go ahead, since you can’t play online if you don’t, but otherwise it’s pretty useless.

I’ve been Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead: A game with more zombies than you can shake a stick (or the butt of your shotgun) at. Around every corner is a new problem your team of four survivors most overcome. The first game, to my knowledge, that has the players fighting against the on screen characters as much as they’re fighting the A.I. Director. What’s an A.I. Director? Apparently it’s the game’s engine, and it decides how your Left 4 Dead campaigns play out. Think it’s a good idea to leave your team to fight that Tank zombie by themselves? Well, the A.I. Director thinks it’s a good idea to swarm you with about a hundred zombies as soon as you hit the street. Is it fair? Perhaps not, but the A.I. Director is seemingly a believer/practitioner in the art of Karma.

In Left 4 Dead you choose between four scenarios that all feature five chapters. The first four chapters are all about running for your life, but the fifth and final chapter of each campaign is about holding off the horde. As much as it makes sense to run away from the running infected (zombie) threat, when you reach the final chapter of a campaign, running isn’t an option. You will be told to contact a rescue ship/plane/helicopter/boat/magical dragon, and then you will be forced to fight off multiple waves of infected, a task that is easier said than done. When you find the rescue contact device, you will be in a room filled with health, ammo, and pipe bombs (usually). After you stock up, the horde comes at an alarming rate. While this may seem like a problem, it’s the least of your worries, when the Tank arrives (at least 2 times per rescue on Advanced). The Tank is the epitome of zombie destruction, and is possibly the hardest recurring character in a 2008 video game. Let me explain the different types of infected.

Tank: A large zombie that acts just like the Hulk would if he were infected with a zombie disease.

Witch: A petite one hit killing zombie that cries a lot. You can sneak past these usually, but startling her leads to an instant down 9/10 times.

Boomer: A fat zombie that gets “bile” on your character, which makes them attract a beastly amount of infected. Not sure if it’s named after Chris Berman or David Wells, but it could represent both quite easily.

Your pal Boomer

Smoker: Perhaps the most annoying of all the “Special” infected, dudes just capture people with their long tongues, and allow the rest of the zombie horde to feast on your trapped body.

Hunter: A hoodie clad infected, who likes to jump twenty feet in the air before tackling survivors. The only escape from one of these is a teammate’s bullet.

Aside from these five, there are thousands of just regular infected zombies, who look and act like they’re from the 28 Days Later series.

There isn’t a giant variety of ways to dispatch of the infected in this game, but when it comes to zombie killing, I’ve always been a shotgun guy anyhow (and there’s 2 different Shottys in this bad boy). There are the shotguns, an assault rifle, a submachine gun, a pistol (that can be duel wielded) that your character always has, a hunting rifle, and some throwable weapons (pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails). Depending on the chapter/scenario there will sometimes be a mounted minigun that is useful in defense moments. These are the weapons at the Survivor’s disposal, and while they may not seem like much, there isn’t a whole lot of time for style, when you’re being chased by an entire city’s population. After we (Godhartsyankees, Eldiabloislord, and I) beat the No Mercy chapter we were given all of our stats for that playthru. Apparently 1895 zombies were killed in the “making of this film.”

The story in Left 4 dead can easily be missed by survivors in a rush because a lot of the story is written on the walls of each campaign. All different notes from survivors past fill in the blanks for Left 4 Dead’s story. These notes are written in a variety of ways, and are fun enough to get your team of survivors interested in the next chapter. There’s a “take a break,” option for any gamers in a multiplayer match, but have something they need to do while they leave their game on. When you select take a break, you are thrust into the spectating world, and a computer A.I. teammate joins your team in your stead. A great feature for people like me, who like to do a couple things at once. Another great feature is the fact that you can reload when you melee. There’s nothing like being left helpless to reload as a city rips you apart, but in Left 4 Dead you can smash the zombies with your empty weapon while you reload. A big difference maker in case of zombie apocalypse.

Just remember everyone. Run until you get to chapter 5 because there you will have no choice. Also everyone should note… “Claude Huggins yor a coward and you let your children die.”

Welcome(backjman) to the New Xbox Experience

NXE’s first casualty

NXE: The new Xbox update has been live for at least the past two hours, and I’m pretty impressed so far. From the very start I could see this was no ordinary fall update. When the update was finished applying itself to my console I was taken straight to the avatar editor. Here you will be taken to a menu very reminiscent of the Nintendo Wii’s Mii editor. You can decide what your character looks like, what clothes they will wear, and even take a gamer picture for your Xbox Live profile (a sweet feature in itself). After I was done editing my avatar, I moved onto the new Xbox Live Party System. The party system works in a very similar way to the old Live Private Chat, but now you can share the chat with up to seven friends. Unlike the private chat, when you switch from dashboard to anywhere else on your Xbox, you will remain in the party, instead of getting kicked out every time you leave the dashboard. Another (major) difference is you can go to your friends list from the dashboard, and see all of your party members’ avatars hanging out, pretty sweet.

Welcomebackjman

The Netflix streaming was unable to be accessed as of this writing (as far as I know), so I can’t really touch on that feature. The direct to HDD uploading seems to work fine. I uploaded Gears of War 2 to my HDD (6.7 GB), and have been running Horde on River (currently on Wave 16) perfectly. I’m hoping it’ll make the online matchmaking games a bit less laggy, though I’ve yet to try it. I’m not sure I support taking up over a quarter of my HDD (20gb), but I am sure Horde matches take hours at a time, so it’s worth a shot to preserve my 360. I don’t have any photos to share on my 360, but a friend of mine told me it went off without a hitch when he tried it. You have to download a program called “Photo Party,” beforehand. That’s my New Xbox Experience so far…

Apparently GNS is Being Hijacked

Some whackster site out there… http://xbox.gameslog.info/ is apparently posting everything I’ve posted on my site, on their own site, and pretending it’s theirs. I don’t know what the point of it is, the site is poorly constructed, but it’s still not cool. If anyone decides to go to the link provided make sure to send the people some messages about how you’re not into their thieving ways…

Horde… The way it was meant to be.

Photo I took during one of my deaths on the run.

Gears of War 2: Just went all 50 waves of Horde on Security, and am now ranked 30th all time on that map. We did what we had to do, but when it came down to the final survivors it was only myself and SeeJaymack still standing. It was epic, it was emotional, it is over. I’m glad to get this weight off my game playing back because wave 47 has been hanging over my head since day two of this game. Now it’s time to go Horde some new MF’n maps.

Overall Score: 541538

Four Versus Many: Hoarding the Horde Mode

Photo by GodHartsYankees of WelcomeBackJman

Gears of War 2: Around two or so in the morning, after not being able to find a fifth member for an online Horde match, GodHartsYankees, XxSmartKeepxX, Jetc69, and myself decided to go finish the Horde mode in a private match where we left off on day two… Wave 47 on Normal.

The first attempt at wave forty seven didn’t go well at all. We all needed this first round to really adjust to the intensity level. After everyone went down about fifty times in three seconds, we were abolished, and had to start again. Our second attempt led to the destruction of waves 47, 48, 49, and would have been fifty if I didn’t jump into the gate with about ten enemies left (we were on Security by the by). The second attempt of wave 50 yielded the winning results, GHY and I got our Hoarding horde achievement, and JetC got to see what the later levels of Horde were like. It seemed as though the most difficult wave was 47, but all of them were action packed. It was my first time playing a private match, and it was nice to have all the options at our fingertips, but I imagine I’ll still be playing public matches the majority of the time. Horde is still my favorite Gears 2 mode, and I can’t wait to beat some of the other maps.

An interesting note. Here is a picture taken by GodHartsYankees of me with a Mulcher…

This was from our 47 wave run… I had been ripping with the Mulcher (had overall 300+ kills), and everyone on my team told me my gun looked crazy, but on my screen it looked normal. GHY said “your gun looks like it’s on fire,” and I told him it probably just overheated, but he told me it wasn’t that… I’m not sure if it’s a glitch, but it’s a pretty sweet picture either way.

EA’s new and improved NHL 09

NHL 09: I love the new NHL 09 update, but I have to admit, it wasn’t my cup of tea after the first few periods I’d played online. Something about the game felt a bit off. I’m not sure if the game actually is slower, but everything just felt a bit more sluggish than it did in previous weeks. After a few games I had to give it up for the day. I returned for day two of the update with a more open attitude, and found the game to be more compelling than ever. The game seems to have slowed down a bit to give players with the puck a bit more time to react to what is going on, without being bombarded by defenders flying at 100+ miles per hour. Now passes to the point are a bit more effective because the point man can maneuver himself to a better passing/shooting lane. Now defenders seem to block more shots from further away, players with low checking seem to miss more checks, and good shots are being rewarded with great highlight goals. Something a bit like this…

EA SPORTS World: 3 OT

This goal was scored about fifteen minutes ago in a game that went to triple overtime… A first for the Souvenir City Day Man (first multiple ot game of any kind). Interesting tidbit, PostersRise finished this game despite being late to work. Good thing he did because it led to a great game with a great ending.