Sunday, December 9, 2007

Mass Effect Review


Alright, I've finally finished my first play through of Mass Effect, and I must say it was an amazing experience. Although this was a very, very good game, it does have its flaws. Firstly, the frame rate wasn't the greatest, and characters would occasionally pop in and out. The teammate AI could have used a little tweaking, and the fact that your teammates occasionally get stuck, or just plain wont move at all can get a bit frustrating. Also, the main storyline was well written, but it seemed just a tad short. I know, this is the first of the (supposed) trilogy, and I shouldn't really expect too much, I'm just saying I felt it could have been maybe a little longer. By no means am I saying this is a short game either. If you complete all the side quests and whatnot, this game should take anywhere from 20-40+ hours. Having rushed through the story, and not completing many side quests I completed it in about 15 hours (on the normal difficulty). Lastly, I found that the number of planets you could actually land on was disappointingly small. Now that the cons of the game our out of the way, I can sing its praises. This game is, simply amazing. Yes I know I said it earlier, but it's true. This is definitely a must have game if you own a X360, and I think it deserves Game of the Year. The storyline is very well written, and at times is so emotionally gripping, that I actually cared whether certain characters lived or died. For the most part, the voice acting in the game was good, though at times Shepard's words came out somewhat awkward. One complaint i've read on many boards is that the game is slow and boring, with hardly any action, well to answer these complaints, THIS IS A BIOWARE GAME! Bioware is known for their dialogue driven games. If you want action go play Call of Duty 4 (a great game by the way). Overall, Mass Effect is definitely worth the $60, and I Highly recommend it, provided you don't have the attention span of a Squirrel.

Overall: 9/10

Story : 9/10
Graphics : 9/10
Sound : 7/10
Fun Factor : 10/10

N4G : News for Gamers

Assassins Creed Review


I recently bought Assassins Creed and its a great game with big twists, one at the very begining which i wont spoil for those who dont already know. It also has some problems, one which really halts the gameplay. Assassins Creed is about an assassin named Altair who works for an Assassins guild. The game starts off slow as your bombarded with dialogue, but it picks up shortly after. You can travel to 4 different cities, and gives you open ended exploration. In these towns you have to climb view points to get sight of the where your objectives are on the map. Once you do this the points appear on your map. You then complete these objectives to gain information about your hit, so you get the approval of the owner of the assassins bureau in each town. The missions are the same for each town and each hit, Informant-speak to a fellow brother and do something for him to get info from him (silently killing his enemies, or collecting flags). Eavesdrop-sit on a bench and listen to a persons conversation. Interrogation- beat the hell out of someone for info, then kill em. Pickpocket- i dont have to explain that one. Save the Citizen- this one isnt mandatory to do, but u get people to distract guards for you if you ever get in trouble. This leads to the biggest problem in the game, it gets extremely repetitive. It will dampen the experience for you, and makes the game get old too fast. And it glitches, not frequently, but enough to be a problem. If you are able to ignore this major downfall, then you will love this game and its a game for you. To summarize this game is very good, but has hitches that can possible kill the experience for you. I give Assassins Creed for the Xbox 360 a 3.5/5.
-Ryan Falla




N4G : News for Gamers

Friday, August 17, 2007

Super Smash Dojo weekly update round-up 8/13 - 8/17

I'm sure many of you are more than hyped for a little game called "Super Smash bros. Brawl", set to be released December 3 2007. If you've been keeping up with the site Smash Bros Dojo, then your well aware of the following updates.

The first major announcement was that of a new Smash bros. combatant:

POKEMON TRAINER


To be honest, at first I thought he seemed to be completely out of place in a Smash Bros. game. However after reading the details, I'm interested to see how game play turns out. The Pokemon trainer does not fight directly, instead he relies on his team of Charizard, Ivysaur, and Squirtle to do the fighting for him. He can apparantly switch his team out at will, but according to various sources, switching too much will cause some sort of stamina meter to suffer. Again, I'm quite interested to see how this is going to affect game play.



The second (and most recent) major announcement was that of returning character:

PEACH

Not really much to say about this, except, umm... Peach is in!





The third announcement is that of a new assist trophy :

DEVIL




Apparantly, all he does is cause the screen to... move.








And lastly, we have the announcement of a new form of collecting :

STICKERS





Apparantly you can put them... anywhere. And from the screenshot it looks as if you can collect them in game, just like trophies.



Thats all for this week's update, I guess I'll try and do this every week.


N4G : News for Gamers

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Gphoria 2007 part 2

Best Action Game went to Gears of War

Best RPG
went to Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Most Original Game
went to Dead Rising

Best Multiplayer Game
went to Gears of War Best Handheld Game went to Pokemon: Diamond & Pearl

Strides Longest Lasting Game Award
went to Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Most Deserving of a Uwe Boll Movie
went to Red Steel

Best System
went to the Xbox 360


Lastly, Game of the Year went to Gears of War (how surprising) and that concludes this years Gphoria 2007 feature N4G : News for Gamers

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

List of Video game Movies *taken from wikipedia*

In Production
Development Hell





N4G : News for Gamers

Monday, August 13, 2007

GPhoria 2007 part 1

As many of you may or may not know Gphoria is an annual gaming award show on G4TV thats is pretty much like the grammys of videos games without all the sideshow stuff. This show gave away various awards from categories such as Best Rpg to Best Soundtrack, and the votes are polled from online by gamers, and please note that these are unofficial awards. The award winners are as follows:

Best Voice Over was the Might Rasta aka "Cole Train"(Gears of War) ,

Best Soundtrack went to Guitar Hero ,

Best Graphics went to Gears of War


The Best Downloadable Content goes to Elder Scrolls IV: The Shivering Isles

Best New Character went to Marcus Fenix of Gears of War

Hottest Babe goes to Kasumi from Dead or Alive


Best Strategy Game goes to Command and Conquer 3

And the Best Sports Game went to Wii Sports(yes....thats not an error it was Wii Sports),

Second half to be posted soon





N4G : News for Gamers

Madden Feature




One of the most popular games of our time is about to come out with a new addition of its series in a matter of days...this series is know as MADDEN!! Madden debuted, if I remember correctly around 1985. [Ed. note: It debuted as John Madden Football, and did not feature licensed teams]. In fact licensed teams were not included until Madden NFL '94. As time progressed and so did technology, Madden evovled from it's 8 bit debut to 3-dimensions with the release of Madden 64. Throughout this time new modes were added such as quick play, season, exhibition, and mini games and an online mode were people could test their skills with players over the world. In my opinion, this may very well be were the Madden craze hit its peak. After awhile fans became bored with the routine of call play, tackle, repeat, and hardcore football fans were tired of the lack of depth in the "playcalling". In response, EA decided to put a little thing called "playmaker" control for the 04 iteration of the series. This added far more realism to the game by adding pre-snap adjustments with both offense and defense. EA wouldn't stop here though. They forever changed history with the ever famous phrase "hit stick" I don't know about you but you can't play a game of football, basketball, golf, or tennis without saying HIT STICK once or twice. This allows users to make a crushing hit on defense in an attempt to break loose the ball from weak running backs, full backs, QBs, WRs, the works. Hey but why give the defense all the fun the very next year another history changing term was invented "truck stick". This let anyone with the ball put the pain on a weak defensive player by putting their shoulder down and bringing THE PAIN!! They also created Superstar mode which gave many people the chance to be a football player in the NFL and work their way up the legend ladder and not have to worry about any lawsuits such as dog fighting, drug bust, or stabbing, its all clean. There was also the QB vision which in my opinion is great but since people don't like having to do what exactly the QB does and LOOK at the receiver BEFORE he throws it they decided to get rid of it.... pansies. With the 07 installment of the game they added Hit Stick 2.0, errr i mean Highlight Stick. The difference is that instead of Randy Moss trucking Ray Lewis now he dodges him in some agile animation. Lead block control was added too basically take control of a lineman cut block everyone you see, pancaking is overrated. Now with the 08 version, there's the smart passer which can read the defense after they ran the pay four time; the Bullet passer self explanatory, The accurate passer, the the power back, speed back, elusive back, run blocker, pass blocker, possession receiver, and hands receiver, and i believe distance and accuracy kicker( i could be wrong). ON defense you got yourself the hit crusher, the run stopper, pass stoper, umm pass jammer, smart line backer same as smart QB can read the defense after play has been run four times, and others i can't seem to remember. So theres a little info on this game that has become a cultural phemonem know as the Madden game series.

HUGE Halo 3 Ending Rumor

O.k. as you may know, I find most rumors off message boards, and this one I found is HUGE. Now, The actual chances of it being true are 1,000 to 1, but its still a VERY interesting theory.

Taken from the Gametrailers message board, it's way to long and detailed for me to try and summarize, therefore I'm just providing a link.


Check it out, Remember though this is a rumor, it may in fact turn out to be true, therefore if you DO NOT want to be spoiled, I don't recommend you click . And as always, take this with a grain, no take this with a BARREL of salt : http://forums.gametrailers.com/showthread.php?t=148216


N4G : News for Gamers


Related News:
Halo 3 pre-orders break the 1 million mark

Sunday, August 12, 2007

[Dead] Xbox live 12 month card only 39.99 at circuit city


Many of you have probably seen this in this week's sales paper, but in case you haven't, 12 month live gold cards are on sale at Circut City for $39.99.

link:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Microsoft-Xbox-Live-Gold-12-Month-Membership-Card
/sem/rpsm/oid/138276/catOid/-13250/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do





N4G : News for Gamers

Xbox 360 consoles WITH HDMI now being shipped from Amazon

Yes, Amazon is now selling Xbox 360 consoles with HDMI.

Heres a shortcut link: Xbox 360 with HDMI (from Amazon)
and heres the official Link :

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos
/ASIN/B000UQAUWW/sofa-20/ref=nosim

and here's a pic of the page:



(I have to find a better screen capture program)

Well enjoy your new HDMI 360's!


Related News:
Find out how you can possibly get 2 free Xbox Live Arcade games

New Xbox 360 power brick plug

The greatest MMORPG ever made.

No im not talking about World of Warcraft...for all I care that horse crap game can go die in a ditch somewhere...I'm talking about Star Wars Galaxies. This game has everything you could want in an mmorpg and then some. You can be almost every Alien race found in the movie ( I say almost because Hut's are not playable). There are also a load of classes, such as bounty hunter, jedi, medic, mercenary, smuggler, musician, dancer, and many more. This game lets you travel to every planet with many cities on each. There is also a main storyline with loads of side missions to keep you busy. This game contains all of the vehicles found in the movies including X-wings, speeder bikes, flying cars, fighter ships, yachts etc. You can also choose to be an imperial or a rebel. It even has pets which are able to fight, that can also be ridden. This game has so many different features that it would take me hours to write about them. So these are just a speck in the world of star wars...UP YOURS WORLD OF WARCRAFT!!!!

[Ed. note: Ryan, next time, USE PROPER GRAMMAR, so I don't have to fix up your articles!]

Most Underrated Game (or game you probably never heard) of the Every Other Week Award



       I was at gamestop for my birthday buying some stuff a few years ago when i noticed i only had $10 left, i looked for some game worth that much and I didn't even care if it sucked or not (because I had bought the crouching tiger hidden dragon game, not knowing how bad it sucked and it set me back $15 or so dollars). I saw this game called New Legends and it looked pretty cool, to my suprise it was only $7! This is when I started having second thoughts, but I bought it anyways. Needless to say, this game exceeded my standards. In the game you play as a prince who's father's palace is ambushed and he is killed by the invading army, leading you on a quest for revenge. You can equip a seamlessly endless amount of weapons to each hand (some require both), such as guns(automatics, pistols, shotguns, bows, etc.), close combat weapons (swords, bo's, claws, giant hammers, whips etc.) and many magical weapons. The main bosses of this game are made up of a giant buff golem (man of clay...or rock in this case) with a hammer as big as you and has a bade on the backside of it. A woman who can float in the air and attacks with a spiked whip and some others who i never got up to. You also come across many allies in this game, which include pacifist monks who you help release a dragon who helps you in your quest, an old man who carries a backpack filled with explosives and a sniper rifle, a woman who is your main allie, a giant purple guy, and prison escapees. The levels in this game are well made and the objectives surrounding them are quite good too. You get to escape a prison, protect a castle, invade a castle, climb a pretty large tower, etc. This is why I decided on giving this game the Most Underrated Game (or game you probably never heard) of Every Other Week Award.

What is Halo 3 Epsilon?

Many of you may have noticed that within the past couple of days certain Bungie and Microsoft employees have been playing a little game called "Halo 3 Epsilon". While I cannot say for certain, using some logic and common sense would lead on to believe that this is indeed a build of Halo 3 that is practically the final build. It is common knowledge that games go through different testing phase names, most commonly Alpha, BETA, and I've heard that it can go higher. Well after doing a bit of research on wikipedia, I found out that Epsilon is the 5th letter of the Greek alphabet. Thus, It has led me to believe that this "epsilon" is the final stage before the FINAL Halo 3 build. I'm sure others have come to the same conclusion as I have, therefore it leads me to believe that what I speculate is more or less true. Unless of course Bunjie has one more secret up their sleeves, and the real title of "Halo 3" is "Halo 3 : Epsilon".

Also check out This email I found at Xbox-Scene.com, which all but confirms mine, and nearly everyone's thoughts on what this mysterious Halo 3 Epsilon is.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

New 360 Power Brick plug

This isn't really anything really groundbreaking, but I found a post on the Gamefaqs message boards stating that new xbox 360 power brick plugs no longer have the buttons on the side that you have to squeeze to remove from the console. Two other members have confirmed the existence of the new plug, with one stating his console was manufactured in June 2007, and both stated they purchased Elite consoles.

I'm guessing this is merely for cosmetic reasons, and to make it easier to unplug the plug from a 360.

In other 360 news:
Premium Xbox 360 consoles being sold and shipped at amazon.com

Find out how you can possibly get 2 free Xbox Live Arcade games

Halo 3 ending rumor/possible spoiler

Day of reckoning or rejoice?






       October 29, 2007 is the day AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE ZOMBIE NINJA PRO-AM finally come's out. This game brings the characters of the adult swim animated series "Aqua Teen Hungerforce" to the Ps2, Meatwad (the half retarded wad of meat), Master Shake aka Shake (the sadistic milkshake) and Frylock (the genius box of fries who can shoot misc. stuff out of his eyes), and side characters such as Carl, and the mooninites. The main story of this game is as follows, Frylock gains admission to one of the most prestigious country clubs, which makes Shake attempt to impress the club members and the always impressionable Meatwad following him. The game play is a recipe for disaster, it is “action adventure combat golf racing”, which in other words mean you play some holes of golf fight some enemies from the show and driving a golf cart. ATHFZNPA doesn’t feature any zombies or ninjas. Maybe the insertion of the ATHF characters can brighten up this unique style but we won’t know until it comes out.

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/driving/aquateenhungerforcezombieninjaproam/media.html?tag=tabs;videos (link to game play videos)

This game is PS2 exclusive. I would like to close off this preview with a quote from the TV show creators Willis and Matt Maiellaro :
"This golden chalice represents a new age in gaming, the likes of which has never before been seen on this planet. The weak will tremble at the awareness of our full color, hand-made graphics!" "

Is Rock Band really "Rock Band"?


       Many of you people already know with the ever popular Guitar Hero series and recent events splitting up Harmonix and Red Octane a new game has been born. This game is called Rock band. With announcements of being able to play guitar, bass, sing, and play drums, many people have had to change their pants/skirts/shorts and whatnot. And I’m very pleased in what Red Octane and Harmonix has accomplished, turning a whole generation onto rock, metal, classical and guitar playing in general. What worries me is though whether or not this will do anything to get the creative juices flowing in their minds. Sure its fun to play a game like this but if your anything like me playing the same riff on expert over and over again can be tedious. But Rock Band does give you the option to “jam” after you successfully complete a song (this is rumored from what I understand)[ed. From the video's I've seen this is confirmed]. But even this is not a complete jam because jamming comes from the inside maybe this is just me as a fellow musician speaking, but when will there, be if ever some freedom in these types of games? Its also been said that if you can play drums on hard you can pretty much play em in real life. I say this then : buy Rock Band save some money, then go and buy yourself a real instrument and break the chains…. Unless you like being strapped down by corporate America. So go out buy Rock Band or Guitar Hero III(its got Number of the Beast By Iron Maiden) then buy yourself a real instrument so you don’t have to wait another year praying they release your favorite song. hmm which one should i play....? THIS ONE!!! it'll get you laid faster.

Eternal Sonata video

Alright, well there has literally been a 1000% increase in page hits.... though about 99% are for the PS3 firmware v2.00 rumor article. Yesterday I promised a (p)review of the Eternal Sonata demo, well that put on hold until I re-download it (short, but boring story...don't ask). To make up for the lack of (p)review, here's a video clip.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Rock Band priced $199.99.

According to Gametrailers.com, Rock Band will cost $199, and there will be no wireless controllers for the Xbox 360 (their source was an annonymous microsoft employee). However the PS3 and Wii guitar controllers will indeed be wireless.

I personally cannot wait until the November 6th release date, though the $200 price tag is a bit steep, It does include the guitar, drums, microphone, and game. I guess if you break it all down it is reasonable, but well, the price seems like it will scare off a lot of "casual" gamers (by that I mean all those mom's who have no clue about the games they buy for their kids) who will most likely purchase the cheaper Guitar Hero 3 instead. Regardless, both Rock band and Guitar Hero 3 look awesome.

Next week's game releases

I've decided that every Friday, I'll post a list of upcoming games that are being released the within the following week. So without further ado:

Console Game releases for 8/11/07 - 8/17/07

8/13
Metroid - Wii VC

8/14
Madden NFL 08 - 360, wii, Ps3
Billy the Wizard Rocket Broom racing - Wii
Fatal Fury : battle archives vol. 1 - PS2
Metropolismania 2 - PS2
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 - PS2

Handheld Game releases for 8/11/07 - 8/17/07


8/14
Heroes of Mana - DS
Luminous Arc - DS
Madden NFL 08 - DS, PSP
Operation : Vietnam - DS
Rune Factory : A Fantasy Harvest moon - DS
Dungeons And Dragons Tactics - PSP

8/15
ATV/Monster Truck Mayhem - DS

Thursday, August 9, 2007

PS3 Update v2.00 info (rumour)



A friend of mine was recently making rounds on various message boards when he found a post with information on the upcoming PS3 v2.00. Since this is coming from a message board, I'm regarding it as a rumor, and I strongly advise you take this with a grain of salt.

Here is his list in it's entirety:

  • 1. v2.00 will have updated drivers for its built-in internet browser, for updated flash player functionality and other stuff related to the browser.

  • 2. his beta/final build of v2.00 consisted of 2 different downloads - one containing Home, and one without it. this results in the Home software having it's own section in the XMB. Current Beta version are downloaded from the store and are booted from the game section of the XMB. It was mentioned though, that Home has been accessed this way since v1.54 and not to expect Home to actually be released until after v2.10 or v2.20. Kinks are being worked out involving the Home/XMB menu design/access. His group is mainly ironing out
  • 3. Anonymous mentioned that there would be no in-game XMB access yet, although the group that he is currently operating with have actually sent this idea, as well as other ideas, to their dept heads. Aside from known bug issues, he also gets to send his higher-ups thoughts/opinions/ideas to improve software. But he hasn't heard of any response from anyone yet about this feature other than that, so far, it is not in his final build.

  • 4. Icons for movies/games can now move while other media types are currently being accessed.
  • 5. Security is being worked on. You can password protect individual files on your HDD including movies, photos and pictures by pressing triangle to access the options menu. he did state though that this does not appear to be anywhere finished yet, and not to expect it for the v2.00 update, but cool info none the less.

To protect the innocent, I'm withholding where my friend got this from. However, should the author of the list read this, and would like me to credit you properly, please by all means contact me.

Given the recent influx of views for this article, I would like to remind you that I did not write the list myself, I merely found it and posted it, since it's an interesting read... personally I think it's a 50/50 chance on whether it's true or not... and you know after further review, to ME #2 doesn't really make much sense, I don't know, but releasing a firmware update in two different versions seems, well, like a weird thing for Sony to do.

Halo 3 pr-orders break 1-million mark



According to Gamestop, over 4 million preorders have been made. However, last thursday, Microsoft released a statement claiming that Halo 3 has just sold over 1 million pre-orders, which breaks the record for the most preordered game (after a quick search, I was unable to find which game previously held the record, I'm probably just not looking hard enough though). This sort of makes me wonder: why didn't Peter Moore wait until after Halo 3's release to go to EA? I don't know why, but I'm just getting this thought that would have been the best thing for him, sort of leave with a bang?

Amazon cuts 360 price an extra $20.



I'm sure this has probably made the rounds on other sites already, but since i'm barely hearing the news, I thought I would post this news.

Apparently Amazon is taking an additional $20 off of (what I' m guessing to be premium) 360 consoles. This brings the price down to $329.99, plus free shipping. The official item title is "Xbox 360 Console Includes 20GB Hard Drive". Notice the lack of the word premium, or pro. I agree with the speculation that Amazon is making this move to clear out the stock of current 360's to make room for the upcoming HDMI, 65nm consoles. When you think about it, a premium 360 for 329.99 with FREE shipping, is a good deal.

Click HERE for the deal.


Help me help you!

Something I forgot to mention in my first post: If you come across any rumors or news stories that I haven't written about, please feel free to send them my way, and should I write a post about it, I'll be sure to give you full credit in the article/post for sending me the tip.

Top 20 most downloaded games on Nintendo's Virtual Console for Wii, as of 8/9/07

1. Paper Mario
2. Super Mario Brothers
3. Super Mario Brothers 2
4. Mario Kart 64
5. Super Mario World
6. Super Mario 64
7. Punch Out
8. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
9. The Legend of Zelda
10. Shining Force
11. Star Fox 64
12. Sonic the Hedgehog 2
13. Donkey Kong Country
14. Kirby's Adventure
15. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
16. Street Fighter 2 Turbo
17. Pac-Man
18. Kirby's Dream Course
19. Excitebike
20. Donkey Kong Country 2

(I would like to thank Gametrailers, for originally publishing this list)

It's really not surprising that Mario games are dominating the chart, though I am a bit surprised that Paper Mario has taken the top spot, I thought Super Mario brothers would have been #1 (though it comes in at second). I would also have liked to see how many of each title has been purchased/downloaded. oh well.

I've also decided that my first review...well I guess it's TECHNICALLY a preview.... is going to be of the Eternal Sonata demo, and it should be up... sometime within the next few days.

1st post

Hello, welcome to the Video gaming report, and thank you for reading this. I've always enjoyed reading gaming blogs, so I figured why not start one, this IS free after all. Well, Like most gaming blogs, I do plan to bring the latest industry news, as soon as I hear it. I've got some reviews I' writing right now, so i'll try to get those up...though they are a bit...OLD. I highly doubt this is going to become big or anything, I mean if your already going to other gaming blogs and sites for news, WHY come here? my answer: You must have accidentally stumbled upon it! Now that your here though, please feel free to give me any feedback, good or bad it will be greatly appreciated, I always like to hear the public opinion.

Well, Expect a quick nintendo update soon, the top 20 most downloaded virtual console games are up.

Until then,
Silent Beeker