inComprehensive Review: Hasbro’s Family Game Night

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inComprehensive Review: Fable 2

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How to L4D

A complete comprehensive guide on how to not suck at zombie videogames.
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New Blu-Ray Reviews and What I’ve Been Playing

The X-Files I Want to Believe

Fox Home Entertainment / 2008 / 108 Minutes / Rated PG-13
Street Date: December 02, 2008
List Price: $39.98

Movie :

If you enjoyed the TV Series and the previous movie you can’t really go wrong with checking this out, with that said you might come away a tad dissapointed. I won’t go into the plot points but in my opinion the story written for this movie does not stand up to the first film and comes off as more of a plot for one of the X-Files shows produced for television. If you go into the movie expecting a huge spectacle you’re going to come away dissapointed. With that said though, if you go into the movie expecting what I’ve written you will find a pretty interesting little story that will at the least keep you entertained just to find out what it is that’s goin on. So this isn’t a bad movie by any means, it’s just not a great one.

Blu-Ray Picture :

As for the transfer of the film it kinda came off a tad bit soft in spots but overall was sharp and vivid with deep blacks and nice use of color. This isn’t a huge special effects type film so it’s not in the category of  material you would use to demo Blu-Ray to friends and family.

Supplements and Extras :

Deleted Scenes

Audio Commentary

Featurettes

Documentary

Gag Reel

Trailers

Interactive Timeline  - featuring over 80 video clip segments from “The X-Files” archives

Video Commentary (Profile 1.1)

Online Game (Profile 2.0)

Digital Copy

D-Box Enhancement

Bottom Line - If you are a major X-Files fan this is of course a buy and for anyone else it’s def worth a rent.

Burn After Reading

Universal Studios Home Entertainment / 2008 / 95 Minutes / Rated PG-13
Street Date: December 21, 2008
List Price: $34.95

Movie :

The basic set up of the film revolves around two of the most retarded characters I’ve seen in a long time, 2 gym employees played by Brad Pit and Frances McDormand who think they stumble upon highly classified CIA documents that belong to a high up in the chain CIA Agent.  What follows next is their brilliant plan to blackmail the agent, played hilariously by John Malkovich, so that ultimately the character played by McDormand will get the money needed for her plastic surgery…….  Yep you read that right and that’s what in my opinion makes the movie so great, the complete absurdness of the plot. Of course there are other stories being told throughout the movie that involve cheating spouses, the Russians, spy games, and a hilarious disscussion throughout the movie of what exactly it is that is happening by two senior CIA officials.

Now not everyone is going to like this movie though, it is very random and quirky to say the least and if random and quirky aren’t your thing then it’s probably best to just stay away for it would end up being a waste of your time. If complete pointlessness is your thing though you will probably really enjoy this movie and it’s characters.

Blu-Ray Picture :

Not much goin on here worth mentioning as far as ” Holy Shit ” Blu-Ray wow factor talk. It’s pretty much what you would expect from this type of movie which primarily takes place in office buildings, apartments, and occasional bed room scenes. The outdoor shots of Washington DC look nice when you get to see some of the sourroundings but they play a very little role in the film other then being the backdrop for where the story is set.

Supplements and Extras :

Not much goin on here at all just a few featurettes.

Bottom Line :

I would like to reccomend this to everyone but I think it might just be too quirky and pointless for some to enjoy or ” get ” for that matter. This is one of those movies where you’re gonna love it or absolutely hate it and of course for the slow minded ADD crowd ” Shut the movie off 15 min into it ”. Personally I loved it and found it to be hilarious and recommend it for those who enjoy stories about pretty much nothing at all. Is it worth a buy? Probably not, but I felt it was worth adding to my collection. For those who aren’t into ammasing a Blu-Ray collection I would say Rent It.

What I’ve Been Playing:

Call Of Duty : World At War

I just picked this up over the holidays and while not a huge fan of the Call of Duty games I gotta say I’m pleasantly suprised. The game looks amazing first off which should be assumed since it’s running off the Call of Duty engine which runs at 60fps and I’m a whore for 60fps. I know everyone is pretty much burnt out on WW2 FPS’s myself included but Treyarch managed to so far craft a pretty fun game. I play the game on Veteran difficulty and while that can be brutally frustrating at times the fun factor and just spectacle at whats goin on all around you really make you feel like you’re ” in the shit “.

Last night I got to try the co-op campaign mode with one of my friends and again while playing on Veteran we were dying pretty much every 10 seconds on certain parts the whole time we were just laughing and having a blast. I want to try and get a full 4 player co-op campaign going sometime this week to see if that makes it any easier on Veteran and I can only imagine the hilarity that would ensue from having a room full of sub-par FPS players trying to go through together on Veteran.

I haven’t yet tried the multiplayer so I can’t comment on that but I def want to give it a shot this week. So if any of you guys reading this have the game add my gamertag so we can play.

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Ash’s Best of 2008

Yes I normally don’t Blog on Tuesdays and yes I know I used my name, but that’s how we roll up in Canada…. rudely.

I encourage all the other Bloggers to post their lists as well. Please note I obviously haven’t seen every movie, heard every album, etc. So omission does not always = dislike (example: Left 4 Dead).

—————————————————————

Albums

8. If - Mindless Self Indulgence
7. Third - Portishead
6. When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold - Atmosphere
5. Rising Down - The Roots
4. Attack & Release - The Black Keys
3. The Odd Couple - Gnarls Barkley
2. Feed the Animals - Girl Talk

1. At Mount Zoomer - Wolf Parade


While I didn’t get into this one until recently, it’s easily the best album out of the bunch as far as a complete package.

To be honest, I liked certain songs from other albums on this list more than some of the songs on At Mount Zoomer, but almost every single album on this list was hit & miss this year (I’m looking at you Black Keys). Wolf Parade put out an incredibly tight package from end to end that made me give it the nod here. Good times.

Video Games

7. Fable 2
6. Gears of War 2
5. Grand Theft Auto IV
4. Braid
3. Rock Band 2
2. Prince of Persia

1. Fallout 3


Bethesda has done it again, only this time they took my favorite series of all time and brought it to the next gen, intact. A miracle considering my expectations. Sure the game isn’t perfect, but it is hands down the best game of the year, in a year with a lot of big contenders and a lot of big surprises.

Movies

7. Cloverfield
6. In Bruges
5. Iron Man
4. Pineapple Express
3. Let the Right One In
2. Wall-E

1. The Dark Knight


What’s there to say that hasn’t already been said? Chris Nolan knocked this one out of the park on almost every level, and Heath managed to put out one of the most memorable performances in the last decade as everyone’s favorite psychopath. Gritty, mature, and kick-ass, this one was an easy pick.

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Tags: Video games

Sony is killing the industry

With the word that Factor Five employees will be  joining Free Radical guys on the unemployment lines, it’s time for other companies to take a stand and stop making PS3 exclusives.

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Tags: Doom, Gaming, Sony

Oh right…new Rock Band songs, y’all.

Tuesday’s almost over and I almost forgot to post about the new Rock Band songs this week (a sign of things to come…I predict that in a few weeks I’ll just stop doing these posts altogether unless it’s songs I give a shit about). And yeah, each week I’m getting lazier and lazier about this. So here’s a link to Major Nelson’s blog that lists the songs along with links to buy each one. Oh yeah, and it’s a bunch of country songs. YEEEEEEE HAW!

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Tags: country music, Rock Band

Sony Defense Force: Assemble!

This month hasn’t been the best for Sony. First, the November NPD numbers came out and weren’t very encouraging for Sony’s big black box. Soon afterwards, Silicon Valley Insider issued a pretty scathing analysis of those NPD’s, calling the PS3 a sinking ship and pointing out that “sales of the PS3 are down about 19% from November 2007″. They continued:

 

So why is the PS3 flopping so badly?

1. It’s the most expensive console on the market, $150 - $200 more than its rivals. Even if you believe the video game industry is “recession-proof” (it isn’t), a tanking economy makes consumers more price-conscious.
2. The PS3’s big bonus is its ability to double as a Blu-Ray player. Too bad no one seems to care about hi-def DVDs. The differences between Blu-Ray and DVD are hard to see on a TV less than 50″.
3. The PS3 just doesn’t have any must-have titles exclusive to the console. “LittleBigPlanet” has generated decent buzz but isn’t a game-changer, and neither is Sony’s new virtual world “Home.”

There’s really only one option left for Sony to remain in the game: deep price cuts, and not just for people with good credit. Tell yourself the PS3 has superior graphics if it makes you feel better, but a $400 console with a mediocre game library simply cannot compete against an Xbox 360 priced at $200 in this economy.

 

Yikes.

But the hits keep coming for poor Sony, as more bad news arrived today.

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Tags: LittleBigPlanet, NPD, PS3, Valkyria Chronciles

I wish I were the Moon

I wish I were the Moon is a puzzle game where you must figure out all 8 endings by capturing objects in a picture and moving them around. Read more…

Slow HDTV sales impacting PlayStation 3 uptake

Slow sales of high-definition television hardware in the US is holding back sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3, as consumers feel the effects of the economic slowdown.

That’s according to analyst Michael Pachter, who also said that consumers had been opting for cheaper Xbox 360 console deals, rather than the more expensive PlayStation 3 offerings.

“There was likely some substitution of Xbox 360 for PS3 purchases, due to recent price reductions for the Xbox 360 and the bundling of the console with two free games,” said the Wedbush Morgan specialist.

“In addition, we believe that PS3 sales are being impacted by lower demand for HD televisions as a result of the recession.”

Sales of the PlayStation 3 during November were 6.1 million units, compared to 12.4 million Xbox 360 consoles.

However, Pachter believes that during the first half of 2009, sales for Sony will begin to look up as consumers show interest in exclusive titles and Blu-ray capabilities.

“We believe that several PS3 exclusives, notably LittleBigPlanet, along with focus on the Blu-ray will drive hardware sales over the next six months,” he said.

He also added that he expects December sales for the entire hardware market in the US to show further improvement over last year.

“We do not expect the recession to impact videogames in December; rather, we think that as Nintendo increases Wii supply further, Sony markets Blu-ray, and Microsoft rolls out its New Xbox Experience, hardware sales will show year-over-year increases in December.”

Credit goes to GiBiz - http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/slow-hdtv-sales-impacting-playstation-3-uptake

Altblogger’s take on this -

Michael where are you getting your numbers for slow sales of HDTV’s, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why sales of Sony’s PS3 are lagging behind those of Micorosoft’s 360. IT NEEDS MOAR GAMES HUURRRDURRR. I do agree though that 2009 should see better numbers for Sony with some pretty huge high profile releases planned for the year.

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No Need for Need for Speed?

EA is in a tough spot, having to scale back their financial forecast for 2009 after their holiday release titles - namely Mirror’s Edge and Need for Speed: Undercover - performed below expectations.

The publisher has expressed interest, if not committing outright, in continuing to develop the Mirror’s Edge franchise. Need for Speed, however, may be on the outs, with Electric Playground reporting EA will dump future iterations.
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Holy Fuck It’s Tuesday (Stefani Edition)

Last week I posted about the new Rock Band songs up for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace (and available for PS3 on PSN on Tuesday…suckers!), thinking I was doing something nice. Also thinking “Hey, if I can’t think of anything else to blog about on Tuesdays, at least I can do this each week.” But did you guys appreciate it? NO! I didn’t get comments like “Thanks, AltBlogger! You’re the best!” or “This will be a nice thing to read every Tuesday,” or “My my, your penis is huge!” No! Instead, I quickly got a list of criticisms (a more optimistic person might call them “friendly suggestions”, but you know what? Fuck you!) including:

1. “Hey AltBlogger, why don’t you include links to the songs on the Xbox Live Marketplace website so that I can click through to buy them? I mean, Major Nelson does that on HIS blog!”
2. “Dude, no YouTube videos of the songs? How can I possibly find them on YouTube myself? It’s not like there’s a search feature and you’ve given me a list of song titles and artists! Oh, by the way, this dude usually posts videos of the new songs early every Tuesday.”
3. “What, no review of every song? I need your sage opinion on these before I drop my hard-earned cash money on new DLC, AltBlogger!”
4. “Rock Band music info is nice, but what I really want to see is pictures of your penis!”

So here are my answers:

1. Oh really? Well this isn’t Major Nelson’s blog, is it? GET FUCKED! (Also, click on that link for those links)
2. Oh really? My name isn’t Npeaen is it? Last time I checked, it was AltBlogger. GET FUCKED! (Also, click on that link to go to Npeaen’s YouTube page)
3. Oh really? To do that, I’d have to BUY every song, play it on every instrument, and have some semblance of an opinion as to how much I liked each song on every instrument. And that requires both money and time. Oh, and motivation. Money, time, and motivation I don’t have. GET FUCKED! (Also…well, no, I’m really not going to do that every week)
4. Oh really? You have quite a fascination with my penis. I think it’s a bit unhealthy. GET FUCKED! (Also, send me an AltMail…)

On to the music! This week’s offering for Rock Band is The Singles 1992–2003 (Album) from No Doubt. It’s a collection of 13 No Doubt songs that you can buy together for 1600 MS Points ($20) or individually for 160 MS Points ($2). The songs are:

“Ex-Girlfriend”

“Just a Girl”

“Don’t Speak”

“Simple Kind of Life”

“Spiderwebs”

“Running”

“Excuse Me Mr.”

“Underneath It All”

“Hella Good”

“Sunday Morning”

“Bathwater”

“Hey Baby”

“It’s My Life”

In a complete reversal from last week, when I didn’t even download the FREE song, I actually plan on buying this entire album. Say what you will about my musical tastes (it’s okay, I’m told I take constructive criticism very well), but I think No Doubt is really catchy and I like pretty much all of these songs. And even if some of them don’t have the greatest note charts (and I have no doubt - no pun intended - that some of them will have boring note charts), they’ll still be fun to play because I like the music. So yeah…AltBlogger gives this week’s DLC two thumbs way up (his critics’ asses!).

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Tags: DLC, No Doubt, Rock Band

This week’s gaming and movie releases, plus the most Pirated games of 2008

Only 3 more weeks left in the year and the gaming releases are slowing down to a trickle. For the 3 major consoles we only have two titles being let loose into retail this week. They are:

Playstaion 3

12/10/2008

Sonic Unleashed

Nintendo Wii

12/10/2008

Neopets Puzzle Adventure

and for the Xbox 360 -

Nothing….

Moving onto handhelds we have the PSP’s last release of 2008,  and 5 new titles for the DS.

PSP

12/10/2008

Dungeon Maker 2

Nintendo DS

12/10/2008

Slingo Quest, Cate West: The Vanishing Files, Drivers Ed Portable, Build a Lot, and Left Brain Right Brain 2.

This week’s Blu-Ray releases are probably the biggest news in the land of geekdom. Actually one release in particular….

Blu-Ray

12/09/2008

The Dark Knight

 OMGZ Christian Bale is sooo hot!

Lost Season 4

Horton Hears a Who

and for the rest of this week’s Blu-Ray releases you can check the full list here - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=br_nf_2_more?ie=UTF8&field-releasedate=1y-7y&node=16295751&rank=salesrank&pf_rd_p=325297301&pf_rd_s=center-11&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=193640011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1HRG6XJRDPV1QX2HB1VN

In other tech related news Microsoft has released two new colors for the 120 gig Zune just in time for Christmas.

  I have a Zune. I love it!  www.zune.net

Now for the list I’m sure alot of you came here to read, The Most Pirated Games of 2008. It really should read the most pirated PC games of 2008 but whatever. This list was compiled by Torrentfreak.com and in no way are these official numbers but they more then likely give a pretty good look into what went on in the GameZ Scene this year.

                           PC Game Downloads on BitTorrent in 2008 

Link to their story - http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2008-081204/

No wonder why Crytek wants to shift focus onto the console side of development.

 In case anyone forgot Crytek’s president Cevat Yerli had this to say back in April of this year ” I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy,” “It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.”

Way to go PC gamers! Keep on destroying your hobbie and don’t come on here commenting about how successful pc gaming is doing because of Blizzard and WOW, they are the anomaly of the PC gaming industry.

I don’t even know why I’m writing about this, pc gaming dead.

PS:

Only 17 shopping days left until Christmas!

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Prince of Persia sucks

There, I said it. The new Prince of Persia game isn’t a 90%+ game, much less the 95% and up it’s been getting.

The game looks fucking AMAZING, especially in motion, but the gameplay just isn’t there to back it up. It’s all sizzle and no steak, and while that combination will keep you occupied for a while, in the end you’re left hungry for something with substance and generally unsatisfied with what you had.

Just speaking in terms of the gameplay, I felt like I was playing a Wii game without the seemingly-mandatory and totally fucktarded waggle mechanic that it’d have if it were to ACTUALLY be a Wii game.

The game handholds you incessantly, and often literally. You can’t fall to your death, for example, without your partner grabbing your hand and pulling you to safety. I know - I tried. I flung myself off every fucking cliff around while trying to find hidden areas or other secrets and was rescued countless times.

And I never found a single god damn secret area either.

That’s not to say there aren’t any, of course. I didn’t try climbing in every single spot and, as the developers decided they didn’t need to let the player know what spots they could vs could not climb, there’s really no way to tell if I missed something aside from trying to run up/down/across every single spot in the environment.

That kind of trial and error exploration gets boring quickly.

Speaking of getting boring quickly: COMBAT.

You get three moves to start: acrobatic attack, sword attack, and fist attack. You can combo these together, and get a fourth move soon after starting the game - magic.

That’s largely the extent of the combat all the way through the game. You attack the enemy, then block their attacks, then you attack again. Early enemies are laughably easy, though there’s really no encounter in the game that’s going to test the skills of anyone who has completed the first level of any Ninja Gaiden game ever made.

Though I said the game sucks, and it does, it’s not really a bad game. It’s just not what it could have been. It’s incredibly easy, but also incredibly good looking - a great combo in a potential date, but not so awesome for a $60 purchase (and for some of you pathetic bastards those two are probably one and the same, amirite?) at this time of year.

The game is also on the short end of the spectrum. It’s unlikely that you’ll have grown tired of the visual style by the time you finish it up but the gameplay, on the other hand, that’s another story entirely. After an hour or two, you’ve seen pretty much everything the game has to offer and it’s just a matter of getting through it to see what happens.

That’s why Prince of Persia is a game that’s worth playing, but not worth owning. It’s a solid rental at best but had the foundation in place to be so much more, falling far short of that and of my expectations.

And that’s what sucks.

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Tags: Gaming, review

Rock Band Weekly

Seems like a pretty sucky week to me, but hey, if you’re into it then more power to you.

Here’s the first group of songs, which seems to be a mix of foreign, metal-ish, and emo bands.

Children of Bodom - Are You Dead Yet

Finley - Tutto E’ Possibile

Platero y Tu - Hay Poco Rock N Roll

Squeeze - Tempted

Tokio Hotel - Ready, Set, Go

The All-American Rejects - Real World

All above tracks are $.99 (80 Microsoft Points) for a one month limited time window.

And then the free one that I wouldn’t be caught dead playing.

Miranda Cosgrove - Headphones On

This track is totally free!

And then a couple more Nickelodeon band songs that I only imagine I’d buy if I had a 12-year-old daughter that was forcing me to.

Naked Brothers Band - Body I Occupy

Naked Brothers Band - I Don’t Want to Go to School

Both Naked Brothers Band tracks are permanently $.99 (80 Microsoft Points)

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Tags: DLC, gay, Rock Band, shit