Holly Days

First and foremost it saddens me that I haven't had any new content to post as of late, but due to the fact that the holiday season is coming up and that all of the games I review come out of pocket I am hesitant to purchase any games that I may be getting as a gift or by way of some gift card.

As far as I know come sometime after Christmas I will have an impression for either the Orange Box for the 360 or Mass Effect...both I have heard are very good, but I will have specifics on at least one around that time.

I guess I can throw down some news in lieu of gaming goodness. Duke Nukem Forever has been announced. Personally I had thought that I had seen the last of the Duke Nukem franchise with the release and subsequent failure of the N64 counterpart. We shall see how Duke performs in the next gen market, but I don't have too high of hopes for this one.

Not specifically game related but Peter Jackson has been slated as the Producer of the Hobbit movie(s). While not specifically mentioned as the director as he was on the original Lord of the Rings Trilogy, he will definitely have his hand in this movie. As of right now the idea is that the Hobbit book will be split into two movies so as to alleviate back pains from sitting for 6 or so hours. I'm looking forward to this one, but not as much as I was for the Original trilogy.

Super Smash Brothers: Brawl has once again been pushed back from the obviously past due December 3 release date. The current tentative release target is February 10, 2008. This game promises to be one of the best selling titles on the elusive system known as the Wii.

As you may or may not have heard Rock Band while being a smash hit is having a lot of problems with the quality of the pseudo instrument controllers. As of right now reports have shown that the guitar controller is extremely unreliable and the drum set controller is proving to have a very short life span. On the bright side all you have to do is contact Harmonix and you can get a replacement for both in a timely fashion.

Well that's all guys, hopefully these ads start actually generating revenue so that i can use the extra income to get a hold of newer games faster. Happy holidays everyone.

Continued Wii Shortages

Well once again it's that time of year where holiday cheer is pouring out of people like money from the Social Security fund. Yeah right! I have seen so many disgruntled people this holiday season, and they are mostly people behind the wheel of vehicles.

As with the coming of the holiday season we are once again seeing, or rather not seeing, Nintendo's attempts at getting their "next-gen" system into the hands of the consumers. With the release of Super Smash Brothers: Brawl I have increased my Wii buying alertness to defcon 4. Alas there is not a Wii to be found high or low with multiple attempts to get a grasp on this ethereal beast. If it had not been for my friend being about to get one at launch I would even debate that these systems even exist.

Leave a comment if you have any tips or tricks to finding one or just want to discuss how inane the shortage is at this late of a point after release.

Guitar Hero 3 final impressions

So having played a great deal of the game so far I have decided to give my final impression on the game.

I have come to terms with the fact that I will likely never completely finish the game, as I value my fingers and expert mode gives me arthritis and makes my eyes bleed ever so slightly. Of course I am exaggerating but only a little. I have tried the online battles and co-op and I have come away with a much more sour taste in my mouth than I would have initially thought. Online Co-op is a lot of fun, but for some strange reason it doesn't let you do a co-op career mode which is available to players on the same box. So, you don't get a great a feeling playing online as you do if you had someone right next to you. Also I seemed to notice that on any form of online function once you complete the game it automatically kicks all users out of the lobby instead of leaving them in a transitional lobby that the host could change the settings from or start a new game. Which in my opinion was a poor design decision.

At the same time the actual game play was not without its bugs either. At one point during co-op mode, only on my screen, my team mate seemed to remain in star power mode the entire game, but on his screen he saw no such thing. In addition to this during online battle the game seemed to have frozen on his end but on my end the game seemed to assign him a computer AI and continued to play through until he turned off his xbox 360.

Last but not least I have a bone to pick with online battle mode...when against a computer it is a very fun experience. Against a human this game mode is shamed horribly. Since you are playing people online you know that these people are good and will likely hit most of the notes and consequently the battle power ups. As a result every single game I played wound up in sudden death, which has only one power up which drains the players "life" the downside to this death drain is that it seems inconsistent and will often leave players scratching their heads in wonderment as to how the other person won.

In conclusion, I do love the game, it has its flaws but if you want an awesome single player guitar game with a great same box co-op mode pick this title up soon as it will make a perfect Christmas present for yourself or others.

Obligatory Numerical Score: 8.5/10