Xbox Live Marketplace Black Friday

Xbox Live is having it’s own black friday sales. If you have some extra microsoft points you can get more bang for your buck now. Check the deals out.

Type	Content (click to purchase)	Original Price	Black Friday Price	Discount	Savings
Arcade	Rez HD	800	500	37.5%	300
Arcade	Arkadian Warriors	800	500	37.5%	300
Arcade	Assault Heroes	400	250	37.5%	150
Arcade	Catan	800	500	37.5%	300
Arcade	Brain Challenge	800	500	37.5%	300
Arcade	Boogie Bunnies	800	500	37.5%	300
Arcade	Golf: Tee It Up!	800	500	37.5%	300
PDLC	GH3 Metallica “Death Magnetic” Full Album	1440	1000	30.6%	440
PDLC	Forza – March Car Pack	400	250	37.5%	150
PDLC	Crackdown – Getting Busy Bonus Pack	800	500	37.5%	300
PDLC	Rock Band All That Remains Pack 01	440	290	34.1%	150
PDLC	Lips – The Remedy (Jason Mraz)	160	100	37.5%	60
Theme	Gears of War 2 – Last Day	250	180	28.0%	70
Theme	Sonic Unleashed	250	180	28.0%	70
Theme	Castle Crashers Premium Theme	250	180	28.0%	70

Free Golden Hammerburst for GoW2

Make sure to check my blog for the free golden lancer link as well. If you didn’t go to the midnight launch for the game, you’re a noob. Not only are you a noob, but you also did not receive the golden hammerburst code. It has no real advantage to the regular hammerburst; however the golden guns look so much cooler.

So to get your free golden hammerburst simply go to the xbox marketplace online. This is the legit xbox marketplace, but if you don’t trust me then simply open up a new tab and log in to xbox.com. Then click refresh on the link I gave you and you will see you are logged in.

I have heard that there are problems with the download. I already had the hammerburst and got this link at the same time I downloaded my golden lancer. If the download is invalid, then I’m sure xbox will fix the download soon. It’s worked for some, and not for others.

Free Golden Lancer Assault Rifle for GoW2

So you didn’t get the version that came with the golden lancer but you really want one? Well you’re in luck because you can get them for free! This may not be the newest of news, but to some of you, it’ll be just want you were looking for. Don’t purchase the code for $30 on ebay, and don’t let your friends do that either.

For your free golden lancer assault rifle go to xbox marketplace and sign in. It will then download on your xbox the next time you turn it on.

If you are afraid this is a phishing attempt and too good to be true, simply go to xbox.com and log in. Then click refresh on the link I sent you and you will appear logged in. Then just download it. Trust me, I was a bit nervous myself when downloading it.

New Xbox Live Experience Goes Live

I just downloaded the new Xbox Live Experience and was pleasently surprised. This is very smooth compared to the old dashboard. I really liked the avatar customization; however they are severely lacking in the available options for customizing. I’m sure in the near future you will be able to buy new sets of stuff, but again, that means paying Microsoft even more money. The idea is great, but I’m looking forward to the dashboard update. I’m sure in a few months there will be an update for us that will change things up a little bit to make it even smoother.

Also the netflix on your Xbox is ready to go. You can start downloading them right now or so I’ve heard. This won’t sell Xbox’s; however it will sell netflix accounts. It’s just another reason why I’m happy I bought an Xbox. I can download movies wheneven. Granted they have old movies, and you can already do this on your computer, you can now to it legally.

Xbox Experience Leaked

The new Xbox Live Experience has been leaked and you can actually download it already. Why have I not downloaded it to give you a full review? The same reason I didn’t download GoW2 early, and the same reason I don’t use a mod chip.

I don’t think they will be too friendly with letting you guys use this. If you get caught with it on your box who knows what will happen. Maybe they will just ban your xbox live account, maybe they will ban your xbox live account and your xbox from ever accessing live.

Just wait, it will be out soon enough. If you decide to get it early, please comment with your first impressions of it.

GoW2 Matchmaking Phails

Gears of War 2 had a lot to hold up to as the sequel one of the most successful games on the Xbox 360. On the original Gears of War you could specify exactly what you wanted to play. What game mode, what map, and even with whom to side with on your team. The only thing it was missing was the ability to party up and join the same ranked game as a friend. It was rather difficult to get in a game with a buddy, but not impossible.

So with Gears of War 2 the only change I was hoping for and expecting was the ability to get into a ranked game with your friends. Not only did they make this possible, they added to my excitement with multiple new game modes, and the Halo 2 style in game friends list. It was when I first wanted to get into a game that things started to disappoint me. There is no way to gurantee which game you will play. You get to choose from two different game modes out of three or so options. You then only get to choose out of two randomly selected maps.

While that is better than Halo, Call of Duty, or Battlefields matchmaking, it still falls short of what we loved in the original. That’s not what makes Gears of War 2’s matchmaking fail. It is the sheer speed of it. The Gears of War 2 matchmaking is so slow. I sit and wait to be given a game for twenty minutes at times and I still can’t get a game. If they don’t fix this soon, I may go buy Call of Duty: World at War. If you read my review of that, you’d realize how bad I thought that game was. That should give you an idea of how frustrating this slow matchmaking is.

Halo 3: Recon Game

Good news! It’s not going to be costing you another $60. After the recent disappointment with Gears of War 2, I couldn’t be happier. It’s going to be adding about 3-5 hours of gameplay, but to my suprise it’s a prequel to Halo 3, at least, according to some leaked information.

If this is a prequel, it’s not the end to the Halo series. Unless this Halo Wars game for some reason ends it we are probably going to end up seeing a Halo 4! Don’t expect that until 2011 or 2012 though. They need to make this game perfect because it’ll be the first by Microsoft.

So yeah, it will release late 2009. Be sure to get the additional campaign because you can now get full recon armor by getting the vid master challenges next fall when the new campaign comes out. If you’ve been permabanned from recon it stinks to be you.

Piracy Becoming Serious Problem

It happened to music, it moved to movies, and now slowly it’s becoming more and more popular in video games. Would you believe a game has a 90% piracy rate?

Apparently a game called World of Goo has a 90% piracy rate. For every 10 copies of the game out there, 9 of them were illegally downloaded. This is just staggering. One would think that it would be impossible for the company to even profit off of this. It’s a popular game, but when it’s that spread around it’s got to be hard to assume many more copies will be purchased as it’s just getting ripped by anybody who wants it.

This is a $20 game. I mean one would think you wouldn’t go through this kind of trouble for a $20 game. 2d boy claims that they are still profitting off the game. Hopefully the Wii starts a similar policy to Microsoft by banning live on a Wii that has a mod chip or stolen copy of a game (essentially the same thing as you need a modchip to play a burnt game).

Gears of War 2: Review But No Spoilers

I got the game at Gamestop for the midnight release and went home and played it for about five hours. Five hours well spent. Who needs sleep when a game is built this well. The graphics and detail are insane. In all reality I thought the game would be terrible after seeing Bungie fail on Halo 3 and the new CoD: WaW beta being terrible.

There are a few new guns. While I don’t exactly agree with these guns being placed in the multiplayer maps, they are both fun, and put into use well in the campaign. The new grenades are pretty cool, they improved your smoke grenade to give it a little suprise boost. I’m not going to say anymore about that so that you are able to discover it yourself. Hopefully on the sending end over the receiving.

They also added some new multiplayer modes that are a lot of fun. The modes let you play many more things than warzone, annex, and execution. The new maps aren’t as good as I hoped, but maybe I’ll grow to love them.

This game is definitely a buy whether you’ve never played Gears of War or you just want to continue the campaign to learn the story. Good luck.

There will be a more in depth review coming soon when people are more willing to read about it and not so worried about giving away any spoilers.

Site Reworking

I’m going to be analyzing many features of this site along with the layout over the next few days. I plan to reorganize all the post categories, theme, and layout of the site. Hopefully this will help the site to become more easily navigatible for people interested in checking more out about the blog. I’ll create a new post after I’m done to get some feedback from you, the readers, because that’s all that matters.