Reid
E-Mail: reid@altgn.com
Yahoo IM: Infininja
AIM: Infininja
Jabber: Infininja@gmail.com
Web Page: http://www.twitter.com/infininja
Registered Since: 2007-11-28 22:50:18
Profile: Reid is a gamer from Cleveland, Ohio. He's currently obsessed with increasing his Xbox 360 Gamerscore.
Posts by Biz:
- Caves (Ghost Recon®): Azcona’s squads are using the nearby caves as an operational base for raiding army convoys across the river. Detain and extract the rebel leader and recon the area for any hidden weapon caches.
- Railroad Bridge (Ghost Recon): Intel reports the rebels are moving on a command post 60 clicks southeast of here. Protect the command post, recon the local rail line and hunt down the informant providing intel to the rebels.
- Battlefield (Ghost Recon): The last rebel unit in the area is holed up in the village of Venta. An allied armor unit on the edge of town is pinned down by artillery. Ghosts, knock out the enemy comm transmitter. Then escort the armor through the village.
- Plantation (Ghost Recon®: Island Thunder®): Intel shows a rebel leader’s motorcade is moving through the farms south of here. Take out his convoy and destroy all of the surrounding ADATS before Sabre Seven arrives for extraction.
- Swamp Airfield (Ghost Recon: Island Thunder): Azcona’s rebels have occupied a small island airfield. Recon the area for intel on this operation and destroy all aircraft to prevent any means of escape. The landing strip is targeted for an air strike so get out ASAP.
- Business Park (Brand New): Narrow alleys connect open courtyards with overlooking balconies in this concrete corporate paradise.
- Rooftop (Brand New): Sitting on top of the world, the rooftop structure of a skyscraper has lots of cover and vertical combat.
- Caves (Ghost Recon): Rolling terrain, forest and a cave structure tucked into the side of the mountains.
- Railroad Bridge (Ghost Recon): A deep valley with a rail bridge spanning overhead, hilly and wooded areas nearby.
- Battlefield (Ghost Recon): Open terrain with pockets of war-torn buildings, under the limited visibility of black skies and pouring rain.
- Plantation (Ghost Recon: Island Thunder): Wet, foggy airfield located in the heart of a murky swamp.
- Swamp Airfield (Ghost Recon: Island Thunder): A bright, sunny day overlooks the plantation fields and nearby structures, including a large warehouse.
- Prison (Ghost Recon: Island Thunder): This dilapidated structure has many paths in and out.
- Castle (Ghost Recon): The mighty castle walls and excavation within provide lots of cover and CQB, while thick wooded countryside offers ample stealth and sniping opportunities.
- Caves (Co-op) Perfect: 15 points: Complete Caves Co-op Mission without respawning at default or hard difficulty.
- Railroad Bridge (Co-op) Perfect: 15 points: Complete Railroad Bridge Co-op Mission without respawning at default or hard difficulty.
- Battlefield (Co-op) Perfect: 15 points: Complete Battlefield Co-op Mission without respawning at default or hard difficulty.
- Swamp Airfield (Co-op) Perfect: 15 points: Complete Swamp Airfield Co-op Mission without respawning at default or hard difficulty.
- Plantation (Co-op) Perfect: 15 points: Complete Plantation Co-op Mission without respawning at default or hard difficulty.
- 2-Point Swing: 15 points: In a CTF match with 5+ players, recover your stolen flag and score in a single run.
- From Downtown: 10 points: Kill exactly three enemies and no teammates with one grenade on a map.
- Clever Retort: 10 points: In a match, get a grenade kill while you are incapacitated or dead. Minimum five players.
- Kickin’ it Old School: 15 points: Complete a Co-op Mission without respawning, hard difficulty, and the Drone off.
Braid Finally Gets Gameplay Video
March 15th, 2008Braid is something I’ve written about in the past, and a game I’m personally excited to play. Finally, after reading about Jonathan Blow’s concept for his time manipulating levels we can see them in action. For a description of what’s going on here, hit the jump.
Better quality (and the end of the third level) at the original GameVideos .
The first level is based off the original Donkey Kong. Time is “paused” by default and runs forward when moving right and backward when moving level. The character’s goal is to grab the puzzle pieces around the level, but obviously when he tries to climb the ladder he is blocked by the enemy. There are no lives in this game; the screen turning purple is time rewinding (think Prince of Persia). This can be done at any time.
The second level shows a similar time set up as the “Donkey Kong” level, with some objects not affected by time manipulation. The third level shows some cooler stuff. When the character jumps down into the pit to grab the puzzle piece he can’t jump high enough to get out. What to do except rewind time and have your double grab the puzzle piece for you?
I’m sure this is just a small sampling of the puzzles that are going to be available when the game is released… hopefully soon.
Share:
Xbox Live Diamond Adds Fee
February 18th, 2008Feel free to take that Diamond card out of your wallet now, you won’t be needing it much longer. Not that it was much use in the first place. A new company is taking charge of the Diamond program and starting March 1 registration will be open again. For $6.95 a year you get… seemingly exactly what you got before. The page detailing the changes gives no mention of an added benefit, simply saying they’re under new management, and this management wants to get paid.
I personally never got a card, but if you were lucky enough to receive one, don’t worry. Your “subscription” won’t end early and you’ll have to re-register at the site to opt in to the new program. Maybe the funny looks will stop if you actually try and pull one of these out in the real world now. Maybe.
Share:
Three New Xbox Originals Coming Soon
February 5th, 2008Turn on your Xbox 360 right now and head to the Xbox Originals section of the Marketplace and you’ll see the grayed out cover art of three games coming soon. Sid Meier’s Pirates, Ninja Gaiden Black, and Black will be going up on Monday, February 11th. The games can’t be selected, so we don’t know much more, but expect them to follow suit and be priced at 1200 MS Points (15 USD).
I don’t know much about the other two titles, but I know Ninja Gaiden Black is a fantastic game that’ll stick its boot in your ass plenty of times. If you have somehow managed to miss the original release on Xbox, the re-release, and the re-re-release on PlayStation 3 you probably can’t go wrong with this one. Of course, I played it on an actual Xbox and have heard rumors that later levels suffer from slowdown due to backwards compatibility. Hopefully those rumors are false because this is a game that deserves to be played.
Share:
Rez HD Immediate Impressions
January 30th, 2008I’ve been checking the Marketplace for the past three hours or so hoping Rez HD would drop. About a half hour ago it did. Download was real quick and the trial was played… I’ll be purchasing shortly, but I wanted to get my initial thoughts down.
Short version:
OMGBUY!
If you’ve ever played Rez before, you know what you’re in for. This is the same game you know and love, with a slick graphical update. For the uninitiated, I’ll do my best to explain. At its very basics, Rez HD is a rail shooter. The beauty of the game comes in its ability to draw you in, almost numbingly, to its explosion of colors, sounds, and vibration. Each virtual world you explore is based around a song and every shot you make at the enemy contributes to the music you hear. Enemies burst into splashes of colors on your screen while your controller pulsates to the beat. Rez comes from the creator of Meteos, Every Extend, and Lumines, but I believe it is better than all those games. I urge you to download the trial and give the game a shake. Unfortunately for those that don’t plunk down 800 MS Points for the full version, they’ll be missing out on the best level in the game.
Anyways, the first thing I did was make sure I knew my controls (simple stuff, move cursor with left analog, shoot with A, overdrive with B). I skimmed over the story again, but don’t worry, you don’t need to know it if you’re not interested. I checked out the options menu and luckily, if you want to shoot with Left Trigger and use overdrive with Y you can, as the game rolls off the beaten path of many XBLA releases and allows you to customize your controls. Vertical inversion is also an option, but what I found odd is vibration was set to off by default. Let me tell everyone to make sure this setting is on, as it adds so much to the game.
Also in the options is a setting called “trance vibration.” If you haven’t heard about the game you might not understand this one. You can set up to 3 other Xbox 360 controllers to vibrate in time with the game. Now it’s not just so your friends can pretend they’re playing, the “trance vibrators” are on a different beat than the main controller, making an incredibly different experience when used correctly. Kotaku mentioned Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi prefers one controller behind his back and one under his feet. I’ve only got two controllers around at the moment so I used one to control the game and placed the second on my lower back. It may sounds uncomfortable, but I recommend at least giving it a shot, as I unsurprisingly loved it. Going off memory alone, all the old settings are there along with a couple to change the way the audio and visuals sound and look.
The trial offers only Area 1 (and didn’t even let me complete the boss!) but it was enough to see how good the game is. Before you begin you can select either Rez HD or Rez Standard. Rez Standard is what you would expect, a 4:3 picture running at a low resolution, although it will run in progressive scan. Rez HD is where the nice upgrade comes in. I honestly don’t have much to say because anything I would say would be a criticism. The game looks great. It’s simple graphical style went through the upgrade superbly. There’s nothing to indicate this came out on a previous generation, and is definitely fantastic looking for a download title. Text is crisp and effects look awesome. I doubt anyone would expect an issue here but I didn’t notice any issues with controls. The 360 analog stick moves the cursor around just fine.
So I know I haven’t said much, but this is a game that’s much easier to experience than be told about. Make sure to try the trance vibration feature, I loved it. I don’t know yet if all the unlockables are in this release, but I see no reason why they would be taken out. I also can’t find the achievements anywhere online, but the game of course supports them as well as online leaderboards.
Go to synaesthesia…
UPDATE: Achievements are your basic affair. Beat a level, get an achievement. A couple for getting high scores (locally, not over Live) and one very forgiving one that unlocks after 100%ing the levels or 10 hours of play. I’m going to put a spoiler warning since it gives the name of unlockables… but there’s really no spoilers. You can check out the achievements on my Gamer Card.
Share:
GRAW2 Gets New Maps, Weapons, and Achievements
January 29th, 2008Good news for fans of GRAW co-op, and I know there are a lot of you. Ubisoft has just put up the GRAW2 Co-op Collection on Xbox Live Marketplace. For 800 Microsoft Points (10 USD) you get five cooperative maps inspired from the original Ghost Recon and Ghost Recon: Island Thunder. All five of these maps can be used in adversarial mode along with two “inspired by” and two brand new maps, for a total of nine. This download also allows the unlocking of nine new achievements for a total of 125 achievement points.
In addition, a totally free “More Guns Pack” is supposed to be released today. It’s not up at the time of this writing, but it will feature seven new weapons to be used in Single Player Quick Mission mode.
The new maps and achievements as dictated by xbox.com:
CO-OP MAPS
ADVERSARIAL MAPS
ACHIEVEMENTS
The Co-op Collection also gives you nine new achievements for GRAW 2, totaling 125 achievement points:
No word on a Playstation 3 release.
Share:
Pinball FX Sneaks New Table Onto Xbox Live Marketplace
January 16th, 2008When Pinball FX first came out I loved it. Then I played through all three tables and thought “man, this game is never going to get the downloadable love it deserves.” How wrong I was. First Zen Studios released the absolutely free Buccaneer table, which is easily just as good as the originals included with the game. Now they’ve snuck another our way in the form of Nightmare Mansion. Our readers knew about it first which is surprising, because this is deserving of more news than it’s getting. Major Nelson hasn’t even said a peep about it.
Anyways, the table is up on the Marketplace now for 200 Microsoft Points (or 2.50 USD). The title update suggests it comes with a new achievement but I haven’t been able to confirm this. Happy balls! …or something.
[source]
Share:
Braid’s Graphics Shaping Up Quite Nicely
December 31st, 2007For those of you that don’t know, Braid is an upcoming side scroller slated for release on Xbox Live Arcade and PC. The game’s unique twist is the effect time has on each level, such as on level where time moves forward when walking in one direction and backward when walking in another. More information (and a batch of old screenshots) can be found here or on the game’s official website.
In the past couple of months Braid has been polished to a sheen and Jonathan blow has released a batch of new screenshots to show it off. Read his news post for some context or just jump below to get right to the pictures.
The character art has been softened considerably to fit with the environments. I’m loving the painted look the game has going on and can’t wait to see it in motion. What do you think?
Share:
The Behemoth Store Packed With Awesome Goodies
December 17th, 2007My foray into gaming related online shopping arenas continues with The Behemoth, creators of the side scrolling shooter Alien Hominid. The store’s biggest items right now are figurines from its upcoming game, Castle Crashers, headed to Xbox Live Arcade soon. Each comes with a display case and four different weapons. Pick up three right now, and the fourth is free. Other goodies are the Alien Hominid figures still on sale, and a lot of Behemoth related clothing items. Make sure to check out the store, and I’ll make sure to update on all things Behemoth.
[source]
Share:
Valve Store Brings In New Portal Goodies
December 17th, 2007The Valve Store has a couple new items in this week. Unfortunately for me, this is my first venture (although not Alt’s) into what seems to be a Half-Life fan’s paradise. Notable items include the Aperture Laboratories coffee mug, and some “fuzzy dice” styled after the weighted companion cube. The big hit is the six inch weighted companion cube plush, which is currently selling for $100 with proceeds heading to Child’s Play. These are going quick so make sure to grab one.
[source]
Share:
DivX Pro Free For a Limited Time
December 12th, 2007As a holiday treat, DivX is giving away its $20 “Pro” software for a limited time. DivX Player and Web Player are already free, so what’s included in DivX Pro, you ask?
Anyone ready to start their own amateur film website can now produce videos using the DivX Pro Codec, and any existing videos can be converted to DivX using the Converter. The details can be found here.
The free download is here; Once installed, DivX will e-mail a serial number to unlock DivX Pro. I got my serial number, but I seem to be still running the free 15-day trial on DivX converter and can’t find the location to upgrade. Hopefully it still works come 15 days. With the Fall Dashboard Update for the Xbox 360 including support for DivX files this could come in very handy. The page doesn’t say when this offer runs out, so get it now while you can!
Strangely, DivX Web Player had an update immediately after installation, but it was a quick download and even quicker install.
Share:
Loading ...
