April 07, 2007
Guitar Hero II Rox, of course
The 360 version of Guitar Hero II came out last week, and I was terribly worried about the game sucking up all my precious time. However, on medium difficulty, I finished the entire set list in 3 days. Man, there are some tough songs in there. I love the addition of "The Trooper" by Iron Maiden to the 260 version. Anyway, until they gimme some downloadable content or allow Xbox Live cooperative or compete modes, I am no longer so worried. Of course, if we get an xbox in the office (which we desperately need to do), all bets are off!
Posted by Steve at 09:52 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 14, 2007
marusin.com: FeedBurner Tracks Wii Opera Browser Users
Mike Marusin finds a nice little nugget in FeedBurner Site Stats - Nintendo Wii as a Browser. I'll make sure they add the other platforms in there too, just for grins.
Link to marusin.com » Blog Archive » FeedBurner Tracks Wii Opera Browser Users
Posted by Steve at 07:25 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
December 30, 2006
Target chock full o' PS3s
Well that didn't take long. A whole case full of 600GB PS3s at Target. I refrained. No good games yet anyway, and I'm just having too much fun with the 360.
Posted by Steve at 09:04 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
December 20, 2006
Eric & I Playing Guitar Hero
Steve & Eric Playing Guitar Hero
Originally uploaded by FeedBurner Fotos.
I had never played Guitar Hero before today. It's a blast...I could totally get addicted.
I've actually been known to play the real guitar on occaision. I used to play a lot. I'm not sure it helps in the game.
Knowing the songs and how to find the beat definitely helps though.
So in case you wish to learn, here's a Y! Music playlist I created for Guitar Hero II : Playlist for Guitar Hero II
Posted by Steve at 09:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 30, 2006
Lumines for the LG CU-500
If you have an LG CU-500 on Cingular - I highly recommend Lumines, even if it's a game you've already conquered on the PSP or XBox 360 Arcade. The mobile version has a few new twists, and even some more tetris-like shapes to keep things interesting. By far the best time killer available. I will warn you, it's easy to get addicted!
You can download it right from the Cingular MediaNet deck, or have it pushed to your phone from the link below.
Link to | Lumines Block Challenge | Gameloft - Mobile Game
Posted by Steve at 09:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 28, 2006
more BK Gamer
If you do make it to Burger King to pick up some of the promotional XBox 360 games, the one to get is defeinitely Pocketbike Racer. it's great family fun. definitely appropriate to play with kids, and generally just a great game.
photos from Major Nelson
Posted by Steve at 11:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 23, 2006
A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3 - New York Times
wow, that doesn't sound good for the ps3. hopefully a few firmware updates will solve some of these problems.
Link to A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3 - New York Times
Posted by Steve at 12:32 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
October 12, 2006
10 things i love about the Xbox 360
with all the hype of the late release of the Nintendo Wii and the PS3, i thought i'd recap all the stuff i love about the Xbox 360 platform. to be clear, i'm not a game platform bigot. i'm equal opportunity. i fully expect to own all 3 of these platforms before this is all said and done, and i expect them to all coexist peacefully in my home neighborhood.
1. the controller - let's see, let me go through all the gaming systems i've owned - pong, atari 2600, sega genesis, sega game gear, ps1, ps2, N-gage, PSP and the Xbox 360. the 360's controller blows them all away. it fits perfectly in your hand, and just becomes a part of you. how come no one else could do this before. and the wireless works great too. it's RF, so there's no need to have line of site[sic] open to the console.
2. xbox live - xbox live is done right on so many levels. yes, having to pay to play other people sucks big time, but for the $50 per year, i think it is well worth it. surely, xbox live has forced Sony to think very hard about how they would go to market with multiplayer gameplay, and i see this as Sony's hardest challenge in marking up feature for feature with Microsoft. this is because xbox live is so much a part of the gaming experience on the xbox that it doesn't even make sense for me to play without it. the fact that it is recording achievements (see #9) while i am playing is actually a big motivation to play in addition to the fun of playing. when playing my PSP i long for having achievements or something similar on this platform.
3. the graphics - well, compared to pretty much anything else currently available, the 360 blows everything away, and that's on the first generation games. it always takes developers a couple generations to learn how to tune a platform. this will only get better.
4. the sound - i come out of a game of call of duty 2 with my heart racing and wide awake. adrenaline is clearly racing through my body. i think this has everything to do with the 5.1 sound coming out of the optical port on the xbox 360 cable.
5. the media player - i've had a number of solutions for my stereo that allow me to stream music from a server on my network and play music. the xbox360 does it better than all the others i've had. AND, i can also play a slideshow of pictures from any computer in the house to the TV while playing this through the stereo. i can play music off of one server, and pictures off of another, no problem. no media center PC required.
6. making my own soundrack for any game - i am the type that usually has the stereo on while playing video games. i love the fact that i can be playing a game, and also streaming my music collection from any computer in the house in the background to the game. given #4, i don't do this a lot, but it is nice to have the option.
6. the demos - it's awesome to be 10 minutes away from trying any game. over a cable modem, downloading a 1GIG game demo is pretty effortless, and you can now do it in the background while you play. this online marketplace feature is a winner.
7. the arcade - sometimes you just need a simple, mind-numbing game. sometimes you just don't have time to take on an entire level of oblivion or game of NCAA football. that's where the arcade comes in. a quick game of Zuma or Hexic can be a blast and boost your gamer scrore to boot. and the kids love Marble Blast Ultra.
8. platform compatibility - games on the pc are great, but i'm flat out tired of compatibility problems. half the games i get for my kids' pc do not work out of the box because of some system incompatibility, lack of disk space, what ever. what a pain. platform gaming is just so much easier for the average joe, and people who just don't have time to pimp their ride. the backward compatibility of the 360 leaves something to be desired, however, having to have the team at MSFT issue a patch for any original Xbox games.
9. achievements - every game on the 360, whether it be on disc or the arcade, has "acheivements" that add to your "gamer score" in Xbox Live. this is a remarkable concept, and is remarkably addictive. you don't feel like you've had an attractive gaming session unless you've upped your gamer score. achievements vary greatly based on the game, from scoring a rushing touchdown of more than 30 yards in NCAA 2006, to winning the war in Call of Duty 2.
10. the stats - i'm a stats junkie. whether you know it or not, every XBox 360 game is required to log some set of stats to the Xbox Live server as you are playing. there's numerous services that have partnered with Xbox Live to give you stats on what you've played, how long you've played it, as well as your "gamer score" and "achievements." i expect them to open this up a little more in the future to other third parties to develop additional services.
all in all, the Xbox 360 rocks. i could probably find 10 things i don't like about the Xbox 360, and maybe i will post those soon. but for now. i highly urge you to go out and buy one so i can play you.
Posted by Steve at 10:12 PM | Comments (1583) | TrackBack
September 14, 2006
Video Game Console User-Agents
A few days ago, i posted on the distinct user-agents we see from Mobile phones, and just to further this point that RSS is making it to more an more places, I decided to do another internal query to see how the takeup has been on video game consoles.
The results aren't too surprising - the leaders are also a mobile device, and particulary the podcast clients for the Sony PSP.
For those who haven't used the "Sony PSP Native RSS Reader" - it's really only a podcasting client. If you add a text feed, it just reports that there are no feed items. But it's great for video podcasts.
If you have a PSP, try watching Ask A Ninja: http://feeds.feedburner.com/askaninja
| user_agent | Circulation |
| Sony PSP Native RSS Reader | 458933 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00) | 158234 |
| PSP" Media Manager | 29283 |
| Media Manager for PSP" | 2779 |
| Media Manager for PSP® | 110 |
| Mozilla/5.0 (PSP WiFi Cluster running Blue Gene emulator) | 62 |
| LinksBoks/0.99 (Xbox; d3dx) | 53 |
| BX14RSSR/1.0 (PSP/2.6.0) | 43 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00),gzip(gfe) (via translate.google.com) | 41 |
| Sony Playstation2 (Utility Disc Ver.2.00b/for PS-modem)[jp] | 36 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0102pspNavigator | 14 |
| Missing Sync/Sony PSP (Macintosh; U; Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/418 (KHTML, like Gecko) | 13 |
| Mozilla/4.0(PSP (PlayStationPortable); 2.00) | 7 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0110 UCJS10010 | 7 |
| Mozilla/4.0+(PSP+(PlayStation+Portable);+2.00) | 6 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2) | 5 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00 | 4 |
| PSP_ Media Manager | 4 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0101 Content-Downloader/1.9.9 (Neboo) | 4 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0105 UCJS10007 | 4 |
| Mozilla/4.41 (SuperNintendo; FamilyBasic 3.0 ;IE) | 3 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0102pspNavigator (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) | 3 |
| Famicom/Nintendo (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Mac_PowerPC) | 2 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.80) | 2 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP(PlayStation Portable); 2.00) | 2 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; {211B3A9E-64F0-0FA3-C31F-48EB36C0FA8A}; pspadvance; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) | 2 |
| Mozilla/5.0 (PLAYSTATION 3; 1.00) | 2 |
| 480x272x32 Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.60) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PS2; PlayStation BB Navigator 1.0) NetFront/3.0 | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 1.50) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP PlayStation portable); 2.00) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; {24A8B876-C847-D4EE-8E37-740377A13B73}) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; {DC877C4A-79AD-872D-DD67-59CF0208FCD8}; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.60; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) | 1 |
| Nintendo63/1.0 (CP/M; 6.5-bit) | 1 |
| Nintendo64/1.7 (SuperMarioOS with Sun 15K Y-MP Emulation) | 1 |
| PlayStation Portable | 1 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0215UCJS00040 | 1 |
| XBMCjÿÿÿ @ (http://www.xboxmediacenter.com) | 1 |
Posted by Steve at 10:03 AM | Comments (33) | TrackBack
August 31, 2006
Xbox.com | LEGO® Star Wars® II: The Original Trilogy - Game Detail Page
The first installment might be the only adventure game i have ever finished (co-op with my kids of course). Can't wait for this one September 12.
Link to Xbox.com | LEGO® Star Wars® II: The Original Trilogy - Game Detail Page
Posted by Steve at 11:15 PM | Comments (384) | TrackBack
August 14, 2006
YouTube - Fifa 07 Skills
the hippety hop is back! a cool preview of the power moves in Fifa 07.
Link to YouTube - Fifa 07 Skills
Posted by Steve at 01:22 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
July 25, 2006
gamerscorechart.com
i love services like this that can take a data stream and make it graphical for you. this graphic, for instance, can show you how much i've been progressing on my XBox360 games. apparently, i played a lot on the 21st and 22nd.
www.gamerscorechart.com
Posted by Steve at 07:51 PM | Comments (169) | TrackBack