Halo 3 Big Team Battle Goes Ranked

Today Bungie officially made Big Team Battle a ranked game type for xbox live users. It has been the most talked about topic as of late amongst the gamer community. We all knew it was coming, and it did.

Why is this so special, we’ve been playing it in social slayer since the release? The game types are still mostly slayer with the random bomb and capture the flag games thrown in however this is the first game type in the ranked match to fully utilize the larger maps as they were meant to be used. Also instead of having the largest party being 4 in ranked matches you can now be in a party of up to 8 people and still go into a ranked game.

You’ll be best off getting your rank up as soon as possible. Towards the beginning there are still noobs playing in the level 20’s so if you get it up now you’ll have easier opponents. I’d say this advantage will last until late Sunday so get playing.

Game Critics Game of the Year Award

 The first annual Game of the Year awards by the judges of the Game Critics awards has just been announced. As this is the first annual you may not know who chose these games. Here is a list of the 36 media groups included in the decision.

USA Today, Newsweek, TIME, Entertainment, WIRED, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, Game Informer, EGM, Game Pro, PC Gamer, Games for Windows, Play Magazine, Xbox, Popular Science, PSM, Business 2.0, MTV, 1UP Network, Gamespot, Gamespy, IGN, Kotaku, Games Radar, The Reporter, Game Invasion, Game Daily, Game Herd, Yahoo! Games, G4, The Electric Playground, UGO, GT, and Gannett

The list was compiled of games that were released in 2007, so Gears of War, Halo 2, and WoW were ruled out of this one. This is their list of the top 10 games started off with Bioshock.

Top 10 Games of 2007:

1. BioShock
2. The Orange Box
3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
4. Rock Band
5. Super Mario Galaxy
6. Halo 3
7. Mass Effect
8. God of War II
9. Assassin’s Creed
10. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Game of the Year breakdown by platform:

Xbox 360: 7
PlayStation 3: 5
PC: 3
Wii: 1
PlayStation 2: 1

Game of the Year breakdown by publisher:

Microsoft Game Studios: 2
Sony Computer Entertainment: 2
EAP (Valve, MTV Games/Harmonix): 2
2K Games: 1
Activision: 1
Nintendo: 1
Ubisoft: 1

2008: Year of Gamers?

    A year farther ahead in the gaming industry and what will we have to show for it? Is there even a remote chance that 2008 will come close to the ongoing battles over the 2007 year? In my mind no, there isn’t.

2007 started off with three main games being played. Rainbow 6 Vegas, Gears of War, and Halo 2. You couldn’t beat these games, it was either join them, or play without your friends on xbox live. Gears of War and Halo 2 continued their extreme popularity right up to the release of Halo 3. This meant we were fully satisfied with these games until Halo 3 came out. Although in many peoples opinion it was and is all hype Halo 3 was a strong game in 2007. Its dominance lasted a few weeks before Call of Duty 4, a less flawed game, came out introducing many new elements to the industry. The ability for characters to be different, have more or less powerful guns based upon experience, and many other things. These are just the big games of 2007, I’m not even getting started on games like WoW, Madden, and Splinter Cell as 2007 would be the majority of this post.

Yes, it is a depressing thought, another year gone by and all these great games we were so psyched for are now released and many of them buried in the past. Gears of War will never regain its old glory. There are a few games we can look forward to in 2008 though.

The delayed release of Grant Theft Auto IV may have been a strategic move. Although Rockstar Games would never admit the delay was probably not needed, it was very smart. It would have launched a few weeks before Halo 3. You will see this game hit the shelves on April 29th 2008. It is sure to be the best of the series so far. It will also be the first to hit the Xbox 360. With the improved graphics of both the PS3 and Xbox 360 you can expect it to have some of the best graphics out there. It will be a good chance compared to all of the Saints Row and Orange Box poor shooting control. This to me is a rent but if you really want to buy a game in early 2008 this would be the one.

We have the Super Smash Brothers Crash for the Wii on March 9th. After the original two smash brothers video games you can expect this one to be a great game. In my personal opinion from what I’ve read so far they may have made to many poor additions, but that will not be shown until the games release. You can plug in a Nintendo Gamecube Controller instead of using the nunchuck.

Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 is also set to release on March 11th 2008. This may collide a bit with the Smash Brothers game but not too much. This game is more of a teenager one, while the other is more of a younger kid game with a few leftover fans from the original series of them. This is probably the game of the year. I don’t think it will beat WoW, but game of the year, released in the year. It has many upgrades since the older version to make the game play even better. If you liked the first one you should buy this, if you haven’t ever played any of the Tom Clancy games I suggest you check this one out.

The last big game of early 2008 will be Battlefield: Bad Company. It is set to release June 3rd, just in time for the first week of school summer breaks. After the thousands of loyal gamers from Battlefield 2 switch this game will start off strong. However from my experience with the game it is not the greatest. The combat system is very weak compared to that of Halo and Call of Duty standards. This game will bring many new elements into the FPS industry that you will see in other games as well.

Obviously I couldn’t cover every game. Some honorable mentions are Command and Conquer 3, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Resident Evil 5, and Tomb Raider: Underworld.

CoD4 Top Video Game of 2007

Activision’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warefare has been announced as the winner of the top-selling video game title across all platforms for 2007. There was nothing close as they were exclusives.

Halo 3 you’re thinking had to have beaten it right? It had sold over one million copies before the game had released! Well this was a great feat,but what really hurt Bungie was that it is a Microsoft exclusive game. This may be the reason Bungie has left Microsoft, although they lose the rights to Halo. It sold a total of 4.82 million copies in 2007.

Then you have the big game for the Wii, Wii Play. Selling 4.12 million copies makes you wonder does Nintendo have to put any effort into it’s games to sell them? This is a rather comical game for those of you that don’t know. You get to play a bunch of mini games. That’s not exactly what I’m complaining about. I’m saying the graphics are horrible yet people keep buying them. This was an obvious knock-off of their Wii Sports title which to say the least was fun, yet again a low quality game.

How many copies of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warefare were sold then? They reported selling just over 7 million copies across all of the platforms. Retailing at between 50-60 dollars each that is quite a lot of money. Don not expect the CoD4 franchise to end anytime soon as it is the best realistic war game on the market.

What do we have in store for us in 2008? Just wait and see, or you could read my article on up and coming 2008.

First Week Success

Well it has officially been a week since I started this blog and I am already rather high up on many google keywords that are of a rather large size. I’m 3rd on a few words that have 800,000+ results. I have been receiving about 20 views a day most days, and then today I have received 50 views. This may seem rather low to you, but 50 people read my content the first week it was out. I have a rather small amount of content. If I were to be able to capture their attention to my other articles after they read one I just might have a few loyal readers.

I am actually rather disappointed. I had hoped to have at least one person message me regarding the ability to post on here. There are so many things happening in the gamer world these days and I will have a hard time covering these. That being said I will try to cover the basic large articles myself until I get an offer.

How long to I release the actual LTN Gamers website? I am going to aim for having the actual base site up by February 28th, and fully operational on it’s own domain by March 25th.

Until then, enjoy my posts.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

The highly anticipated Nintendo Wii game, Super Smash Brothers Brawl is expected to be released March 9th. You may think that the game would be rather hard to control, but remember the Wii’s are compatible with Gamecube Controllers, so just plug it in and play with the controller.

The reason for this article is I have discovered a leaked list of the characters you will be able to use in the game. If you visit the Super Smash Brothers website you can read about some of the newest features included in the game. Okay enough talk about the game, the characters.

Click on the photo to get a bigger picture.

Get Free Temporary Xbox Live Accounts

So you have a friend coming over to your house and you guys want to play some ranked halo games or any other game that requires two xbox live gold memberships. If your friend doesn’t have an account they can get a free xbox live account that lasts 48 hours. This guide will help you set it up. Enjoy

First you will need a temporary email address so head on over to Guerilla Mail to get an email address that will last 15 minutes. Once you click “get temporary email”, copy and paste the email, and head on to the next step of this guide.

Once you have the temporary fake email head over to the Tropicana Twister Site and copy that email in as your email address. Fill in a fake screen name, and any password. You can get a free access code which will always be AA4XPN3. Enter this as your code, it will not be a winner so your consolation is a 48 hour account. You simply enter the code on the account you want to have the gold trial and you’re finished.

You can do this as often as you want, provided you keep using a free email address. Just repeat the steps whenever you want a new trial and you are good to go. The offer isn’t ending anytime soon so this deal will still be valid for a good year or two after the post. If you have any troubles getting the code onto an account leave a comment.

Halo Guide to Grenades

Grenades, quite possibly the best weapon in FFA games, and probably any other game mode as well. They leave the enemy weak so that you can quickly finish them off with just about any gun. While the 1337 gamers use grenades, it can also help a noob out as well.

To start off you should know the attributes of the different grenades. They each do different things, and if you cycle between your grenades effectively for different situations you will find out just how helpful they can be.

The Frag

The frag grenade is the most common grenade on the map. For this reason they cannot make them overly powerful. In order to kill somebody who has full shields they have to practically be standing right on top of these. Why are they helpful then? If they don’t have their full shields you can easily finish them off with these, or steal kills easily. Lob these into a group of people and you are sure to kill one or weaken both leading to an easy double kill. These are also helpful when you are getting BRd. You will take down your opponents shields and they will be vulnerable on the first shot.

The Sticky

The sticky grenade is the favorite grenade of almost everybody, and the only other grenade to appear in the whole Halo trilogy. The idea of a sticky grenade is pretty simple, hit your opponent with one of these and it will stick to them. If it is stuck on them it is an automatic death. This grenade can be used as last ditch efforts as it will usually kill you too if you are to close to them. Simply hit your opponent and start backing away, there is no point in shooting them if you hit them. These grenades are also effective if you use them to attach to a vehicle to blow it up.

The Spike

The spike grenade is similar to the sticky grenade, only its purpose is for blowing up vehicles. Sticky grenades will need two to take out a vehicle, and a spike grenade will take out that same vehicle in one hit. It can also be used to “stick” opponents as well. A great tip I found out is that throwing one of these inside a bubble shield is an instant death for all those inside of it. The spikes bounce around until they find a person in a bubble shield. These are pretty useless if you just throw them in the open to cycle to a different grenade for that purpose.

The key is knowing when to use which of the grenades. When you are at a distance trying to steal a kill or weaken an unsuspecting opponent use the frag. When you are up close and about ready to die, or you are trying to get an easy kill use the sticky or spike. You can cycle through your grenades by pressing your left bumper and you will see the box around the grenade icons move.

Grenades are your friend. If you can learn to use them effectively you can become a pretty decent player in free for alls, and just about any other game on halo 3. This is something you truly need to learn.

Undertow: Free Xbox Live Arcade Game

    As I mentioned earlier they did indeed offer us a free arcade game on xbox live. The only thing is that we didn’t get to choose. They chose a game called Undertow and is free to download until 1/27/08. This is the game that makes up for the days of lag and complete failure for xbox live. Here is my review of the game.

Undertow is a game you may have played on the internet without even knowing it. This is what I encountered. The game has 200 achievement points, so at the very least you can earn 200 achievement points to add to your account in a few hours. You are a scuba diver, or another of the four possible characters, and you shoot at the opposing characters attacking you. Each team gets 100 lives, and whenever one of your characters die or one of the opposing team, a point is taken off of that 100 lives. It isn’t the greatest game idea.

I first started playing on the middle level, it was mildly amusing, the first time. Then it just turned into this game is lame, but it’s free achievement points. I kept playing merely for the fact of increasing my gamer score. The harder difficulties  are close to impossible to beat your first time through. It will take many games to get used to the controls and strategies that you will need to succeed. There is an online mode, but that’s only for fun, no achievement points.

The game is a rather simple game. This, along with all of the other free arcade games, has shown me exactly why I am not buying Microsoft Points to use on the arcade games. They are all rather simple, and instead of paying ten dollars for a worthless arcade game, I can spend twenty dollars and get myself a nice used game that is about a year after its release.

Why exactly didn’t Microsoft just give us the 800 Microsoft Points has many people baffled. I agree with them, that they should have just given us the Microsoft Points and let us use them as we like, however many gamers don’t understand that the Microsoft Points are buying games, movies, t.v. shows, and many other things which they have to pay the company whose material it is for every download. They may have gotten a deal that allowed Microsoft to pay Undertows creators the cheapest amount per download, or more likely, they got the chance to give the game away free of charge without owing Undertow any money.

My advice, download it simply if you want the achievement points. The game will just take up space on your premiums hard drive, and be wasting the space on the bigger hard drive. The only plus to this is that many of us either didn’t get affected as much by the lag of Microsoft, or we weren’t going to do anything about it anyways. So I guess take it as it is, an apology.

Xbox Live Crashes During Free Download

Over Christmas there was an extreme lag on all of Xbox Live, at times so bad that you could not play. Many gamers across the country actually sued Microsoft for the mistake because when we purchased the Xbox Live Gold Membership we are promised certain things and Microsoft broke the terms. To make amends to those of us who did not go as far out as suing them they said that in the near future there would be a free download on Xbox Live.

That day was today, January 23rd, however Xbox Live crashes, again. When will Microsoft learn that in order to keep up with the current amount of members it must upgrade all of their servers and add more to them. I can only wonder what Microsoft can and will do to amend this big mistake. Did they not expect a mad rush to downloading the game they offered us? Just give us 1000 Microsoft Points each and we’ll be fine. I’ll keep you posted on any announcements by Microsoft in the next couple days.