Many of us are Halo fans and have bought Xbox solely for the Halo series. The Xbox 360 console however can do more than just play games. I did not even know before that you can download movies and episode from the 360. The console it self is quite buggy though, many people are aware of the “red ring of death” that appears on the power button. This occurs when your 360 overheats, which has been a problem for countless owners of the 360. The Xbox Marketplace, in which you rent movies and episodes runs completely off the 360, no computer needed. It is about $2 per episode. The service also has about 400 movies in the library collection, which is not really to impressive. A movie rental costs about $4-$6, but in the department of new releases, the service is pretty good.

Character Development:
My character being some demon blood thing, got an ability at level 5 where I could transform into a demon. I can only explain this transformation as laughable, as when I transformed, it first deleted parts of my body (the head first, so you would see a torso moving) then this thing from swamp thing would suddenly just appear out of thin air! No animation or anything, just *PLOP* oh look, it’s swamp thing!

Being the demon, I got bonus stats but I was still swinging this unsavory broken oar at monsters and pirates alike. To say the least, I looked absolutely ridiculous. Other than an appearance, I really didn’t gain a benefit from being a “demon”. No special feats or abilities, just the same old me. Maybe later I’ll get some more? Who knows. Speaking of feats, there were a few that I gained along the way including some fire breath spell which had NO animation at all.

Questing:
So, back to the island. After making the pirates and crocodiles my personal bitches, I went over and started the quest to gain entrance to the city. The first quest was freeing this woman from chains that literally block entrance from the rest of the island. I talk with her and she tells me about some ******* who tied her up, and to go kill him for the key. Well lo’ and behold, the son of a bitch just spawns right behind me after talking with her, but I didn’t run into this guy during the escapade of killing countless pirates and crocs? Unbelievable.

Well he goes down in a few swings from my might oar and swamp thing, and I get the key off him. Another concept that I’m greatly disappointed with is the loot system. When you kill something whether it be a pirate, a crocodile or some other wild animal, it drops a perfectly knitted bag (that’s graphic has gold in it btw) which you obtain useless items such as “gold teeth”. Why the hell can’t I loot the pirates clothing and their weapons? I mean don’t get wrong, this oar is bad ass but still….

So yeah, I’m cruising around in this jungle with this dumb girl following me around (and not assisting me in the battles AT ALL other than to scream when I enter them and clap when I finish them), and I finally end up at a “BOSS”. It’s the fat slave driver that everyone’s been talking about apparently, and after we exchange a few words (and his life is ended by swamp thing) I get the key to complete the quest, and I am awarded a weapon I cannot use. Amazing.

The slave woman talks for a bit, then leaves me telling me that the town is just up ahead. After killing some more useless NPC’s I make my way to the town and am promptly told by the gate guard that I cannot enter (being a slave and all), but I should talk with the blacksmith who just happens to be outside the city wall. So I run over to the blacksmith and he agrees to cut my chains off if I get him some bricks to complete a wall he’s making. I agree and run over (about 5 feet I’m serious) and gather the bricks then return to him. He cuts the chains off and I’m able to enter the city! Woot!

More Questing:
Only to find out that I have to complete another question from the gate guard to give a note to some broad. So I do that, and then she gives me a quest to wait until dark, and speak with some old lady. So I DO that and the old lady tells me all about who I am, and what I should be doing (you know, the typical Ms. Cleo stuff) and informs me that I must yet return to the girl and talk with her. Alright, so after all this walking, I finally get the quest chain completed, and I get a new weapon. Hurray, I think? I really just wanna exit the game……..

Conclusion:
So after playing for about 2 hours, I must say that I am definitely not impressed. Now before I go out on a limb here and say this game is another stupid attempt at a ground breaking game, I will continue to play it and further my travels.

Graphics/Environment:
I enter the game. It takes a good time to load the main area. About 2 minutes or so. Once I get in, it starts a cinematic where I was a slave traveling in some boat and we get attacked (it doesn’t actually show the attack, just a still image-kinda lame). Anywho, I’m stranded on this beach and some old guy walks upto me and talks a little bit about what happened, and where I am. He explains that I’m a slave, and I’ve been washed ashore this island which harbors a city called Tortage. I’m told that since I”m a slave, I have no chance to enter the city and will probably rot in the jungle (thanks old man).

So the cinematic ends and I’m on this vastly large island. The visual details are stunning, and there’s certainly a lot of vegetation and scenery that’s being rendered. Running the game on max settings, I had to adjust manually to about medium/high. I ended up running the game smoothly at 1920×1600:32 res with high textures, low shadows and bloom disabled.

The island is believable. The vegetation is very diverse, and there are some plants you don’t see twice. The water is beautiful and the reflections are very precise. The only problem is the fact that the water doesn’t really make a splash or ripple much when you enter it. In fact, you can’t really tell you’re swimming to be honest. The swim animation isn’t very believable and the water doesn’t contract with you in it. It’s kind of like you’re flying.

The vegetation is another thing too. Although beautiful and diverse, it does not interact with you walking through it. Only the wind, which is the same as far as I can tell. There also is no wildlife as far as I can tell. I didn’t see any birds flying around, or fish in the water, or other jungle type animals, other than these crocodile NPC’s that attacked me which leads me to my next complaint.

NPCs/Combat:
The AI sucks. It really does. The NPC’s aggro you without line of sight. I figured in a game that was touting realism, maybe I could sneak past these crocs sun bathing? Nope, no way. On top of that the NPC’s really didn’t even have a path to patrol. They just sat there in obvious bunches, like the Royal Guard. They hardly have any idle animations other than a few head turns or so. Completely unrealistic. Animatronics at Chuck-E-Cheezes are more believable than this.

Next is the combat system. In AoC you don’t just auto attack. Infact you don’t auto attack at all, you must press a button to attack. You have 3 basic ways of attacking. Swinging left, thrusting forward or swinging right. While this sounds like a good idea on paper, in practice, it seemed to be completely random and have very little effect on the battle. When you target an NPC, it gives you arrows indicating which direction you should attack, and even after following it and doing my own thing, the battles resulted the same way. The weapon my class started out with was an oar. Yes, a ship oar. In fact it wasn’t even a full oar, it was broken.

Sometimes I could kill them faster if I just thrusted forward instead of following the arrows. The only real advantage was when there were multiple enemies, I could do “AOE” damage if I swing left or right depending on what side they were on.

Alright, so thanks to a friend of mine, I got to try out the Age of Conan Beta this weekend. From what I heard, they said it will be one of the greatest MMO’s. Without further adieu, this is my story.

Introduction:
Saturday Morning (3pm is morning for me) I log on AIM and start the download from fileplanet (mistake number 1). At first the download failed about 2 hours into it because firefox & windows are shit, so I get the download manager from filefront which can resume downloads and all that jazz. I start the download and I’m getting a decent rate, about 400Kbs. Well, the game is 12 gigs so it’s going to take 10 hours.

Fast foward to 10 hours. I get home and install the game. It takes nearly 30 minutes just to uncompress and install. Then another 20 minutes to patch. Finally, I get into the game to hear this awesome war music, complete with battle drums, and other ambiance-it’s incredible! It’s getting me pumped! Only problem is………. NO VIDEO! It’s just black with music playing. So I wait a bit, and figure maybe the game didn’t load right. So after a few attempts, I google a solution to change the game’s res and it worked!

Ahhh-finally I’m at the login screen. It’s not very detailed, and the text is very tiny and hard to read but whatever. It’s just a login screen right? So I goto login and I’m left to find “SERVERS ARE CURRENTLY DOWN TILL 11AM GMT!. ****! I wanted to play it NOW, not later…..What a disappointment….. So I hit the hay and sleep.

The next morning I wake up like a crazy kid on Christmas morning, ready to sever some heads in Conan. I load up the game, and I actually get it! Amazing! I’m at the character selection screen, and I’m taking a look at my friend’s characters there, but none of them are rendering…. Only the backgrounds (which look bad ass btw). Who cares right?

Character Creation:
I select a server to play on…….only PVE servers are up (eww) so I select the first one and start making a character. Wow, character creation is pretty detailed. It’s kind of like the Sims 2, maybe close to Oblivion’s. You can adjust the height, width, skin tone, chin, eyes all that jazz. Only problem is, there’s only 3 different “races” (Aquilonian, Cimmerian and Stygian) if you can call them that (they’re all human). Kinda lame. I would have loved to play something other than the same thing I play in real life. Oh well.

Each “race” has limitations. Only the Stygian can be a mage type, while I’m not certain what the other race limitations where. After that, theres 12 classes to choose from. I could list them all, but you can look them up online. I choose a ” Herald of Xotli” because they have an ability to transform into a demon. Bad ass if you ask me.

While everyone has been busy speaking and commenting about ‘Rockstar’ and ‘GTA IV’, Nintendo released one of its best and funniest games Mario Kart games to date which has, unfortunately, been overlooked because of the new GTA.

This new game allows complete novices to compete with ease and comfort, ensuring no one is left in the dust.

The Wii Wheel makes the new Mario game one of the most accessible Mario Kart games and players will find the 16 classic tracks from previous Mario Kart games, along with the 16 new tracks, brilliant and imaginative. The Wii Wheel makes the new Mario game one of its best and funniest game Mario Kart games. Along with the game, a new accessory: the Wii Wheel. If you’re on the verge of buying it but have some doubt, remove it, you won’t be disappointed.

What do ‘guitar hero’, ‘rockband’ and ‘grand theft auto’ have in common? They’re all getting rich from music deals.

The emerging need to use videogames as a channel for selling music is entering a new era with the recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV. In the past it’s proved a phenomenal success, with “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero III” selling millions of songs through their respective platforms.

‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ now leads the way and includes such feature that allows players to tag any song in the GTA soundtrack in order to receive more information about the title and artist, as well as the ability to store tagged tracks in a custom play list on the Amazon digital music store to buy at a later date. Good or bad, it’s still a defining step forward in the video game industry.

Is Super Smash Brothers Brawl Online really as bad as everyone says? First we must clear up a common misconception. Nintendo does not host their own servers, they use Gamespy/IGN servers for Brawl. On to online gaming and I must say it isn’t as bad as everyone lets on. I usually have opponentsin a timely manner. Now it isn’t instant but I still play within a few minutes. I lag once every 9 or 10 games and sometimes the lag goes away after a few seconds of game play. I still enjoy online play a lot but Nintendo really screwed its gamers by crippling the methods of communication through it.