Man, I loves me some Metallica. Mostly older Metallica, but ther are a few good songs on their recent Death Magnetic album. If you take a gander over at Metallica.com, you can see the anticipated full track listing for the upcoming GH: Metallica game. I am really looking forward to this game. Release date is March 29th.
Let’s face it. If you’re a gamer, there is at least one time that someone has called you a loser. For some reason, we can’t shake the “fat guy on the couch playing videogames all day” image. So when you’re fighting that image, you should probably do anything you can to keep from confirming it. Enter Desirai Labrada and John Henry (not a porn name). To show their extreme fanboyism and dedication to all things Halo, they went and had themselves a Halo wedding. They were joined in matrimony by the Most Reverend Master Chief against a backdrop of the Ivory Tower map. At the end of the ceremony, they were pronounced “teammates for life”. Shortly thereafter the teabagging commenced. Enjoy the full article here.
Most of us who are gamerhusbands have gamerwives or signifigant others who love getting cards, flowers, and the like. The holiday of love is fast approaching, and we men need to shake off the reputation that our kind is given of being forgetful, thoughtless, and un-romantic. Our wives put up with our game playing throughout the year, so we can give them something nice in return. A genius in the UK has started marketing hand-crafted Valentine’s cards, one of which is the perfect card for our wives. Looks like they have temporarily sold out, but I am sure they’ll be back before the holiday. If they’re smart, they will also make one for the PS3, Wii, PSP, and DS.
According to a report from Reuters, the US Army is using gaming as a recruiting tool. This should not come as a surprise since the game America’s Army was developed as a recruiting and training tool for the military as well. The difference this time is that the Army has a cool hangout. In the Franklin Mills mall in north Philadelphia, they have opened the “US Army Experience Center, which has 19 XBOX 360 consoles, as well as 60 PC’s. Potential recurits are welcome to come in and play, or just hang out and listen to tunes. So far they have gotten at least 33 recruits since August in this center. So the next time you’re at Franklin Mills (wink, wink FullTilt and JD), drop in and play some Call of Duty. I get to Franklin Mills a couple of times a year, so I will definitely be checking this out the next time I have to take the wife shopping there.
As most gamers and tech nerds are aware, going on this week is the sacred pilgrimage known as CES (or Consumer Electronics Show for you non-nerds). In my opinion, there hasn’t been a whole lot of *WOW* coming out of the show as of yet, but I did come across a nice peripheral for gamers. Everyone’s favorite aftermarket hardware provider, Mad Catz (no relation to Dogz, Horsez, or Gerbilz), is coming out with flight sticks for the 360 and PS3. Other than Ace Combat, I am not sure what you’d play them with, but they are cool anyways. They should be available later this month for around $50. Source: Engadget
I seem to be developing into a pattern of posting wacky stories, so I feel obliged to continue as long as I find them. The AP posted a story that is definitely worth mention. A 6 year old Virginia boy missed the bus to school yesterday, and decided to drive himself there. Yes, I said “drive himself”. As you can probably imagine, he crashed and had some minor injuries as a result. The impressive part is that he made it 6 miles, and made at least two 90 degree turns before crashing into a utility pole. In true Nico Bellic fashion, once he had crashed, he continued his journey on foot. Apparently he didn’t want to miss breakfast and PE. The boy told police that he learned to drive playing GTA and Monster Truck Jam. Hopefully Jack Thompson will read this story somewhere and realize that GTA can be helpful, even to 6 year olds.
Microsoft and Sony should take note. Not only is the graphically challenged Wii kicking their butt in sales, but they are apparently kicking their butt in customer service as well. The story goes that a guy was plaing his Wii that is 2 years old, and was getting some graphics artifacts on RE4 and GH:WT. He called customer service, and even though he thought his system was out of warranty, it was not (which makes me wonder what the Wii warranty is). So he was emailed a label, and shipped his Wii out for repairs XBOX 360 style. When his system was returned, a note was inside saying that they could not duplicate the problem, but they suspected the motherboard and replaced it. Nice. But what makes this story special is that they also sent him brand new replacement copies of the two games that he was having issues with. Now that is what I call customer service!
Some stories are almost to bizarre to believe, like the one about the thief who demanded the “least expensive XBOX” at gunpoint. This is a bloodcurdling tale of a Mom who took a prompt from her kids’ Wii a little bit too literally. Someone (and I dare say not a friend) told this lady that she needed to put her credit card in when prompted by her Wii. Now if someone told me this, I would take it to mean that I needed to enter the number, but I digress. So this lady ended up inserting (physically) 3 credit cards into the disc slot of the Wii, which consequently caused problems. Moral of the story, keep that woman away from videogames. She might kill someone next.
Achievement whores unite! According to a “source inside Microsoft” (i.e. – the janitor), MS is going to start patching achievements into original Xbox titles, beginning with the original Halo:CE and Fable, with the plans being to roll achievements out to all older titles by the end of the year. Each game will have 500 possible achievement points. The details beyond that are a little sketchy, but I am assuming that this only applies to Original Xbox titles that are paid for/downloaded via Xbox Live. If that is the case, then my personal view is that it is pretty stinky and is just a ploy to extract more money from all of you achievement whores. The official company line is that this is being done to “get gamers interested in original titles”. If this patch applies to games that you already own on disc, then maybe they are just trying to get people playing something other than Gears 2 and Halo 3. I personally do not play many of my old titles, with the exception being SW: Battlefront 2. If you are into achievements (read – Scott and Allen), then keep your eyes on this one. Personally, I am still trying to finish the achievements from Sneak King. Source: Nintendo-Europe via Maxconsole.net
For anyone who is interested in technical things like I am, there is a nice writeup over at Engadget that shows a fairly detailed teardown of an Arcade unit with the onboard memory (code name Jasper). It also tells you how to tell if the one you are buying in the store is a Jasper or not.
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