Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 is up

For any of you who have been waiting up for it. It is now up. Seems it was up on the Japanese server for a bit longer than the one I use (Canadian) but I didn't feel like downloading it off the Japanese one because I didn't want to risk the 800 MS points if something went wrong.

Anyways, the game is now up and available for download. Currently mine is at 16% and going terribly slow, but after that I'll be online playing. Only for a few minutes though since it's late o'clock over here and I should hit the bed soon.

For offical info of it, check Major Nelson's info post.

2:16am Update: 42% and looking toasty!

...Why??

Whoever has been voting on the poll this week. Both of you are crazy for picking Rock Revolution. Yes, you are entitled to your opinion, but your wrong. Plain and simple. No.

Gamerscore Update 27/07/08

Let's talk about what matters, let's talk about points. So this was another okay week for achievements and me. I got around 1200 or so since my last update here. I played some Crackdown, Viva Pinata, and a little Gears of War and Bionicle Heroes.

Crackdown really surprised me. It's an extremely sandbox game (like GTA for example) and I usually don't enjoy those to much. I even didn't find Bully all that much fun after the first chapter, but Crackdown surprised me because I really enjoyed it. I put it in and finished it two days later, twice. I went through it on single player and then on co op. I just found that even the annoying little stuff, like collecting orbs, had a fun element to it that I could see myself doing for a long time. The co op mode turned out really easy because me and my friend had our guys almost completely beefed up so we flew through the whole thing in 3-4 hours. Though the co op is incredibly broken and if it weren't so, we probably could have done it in about 2. Achievement wise I'd say its a good, some of them are really hard to get and require alot of time, but I ended 640 points or 34/50 of the achievements in only two days of play. Game wise it's also gonna be a good, the co op being broken just really annoyed me.

Next was Viva Pinata, I found it used at a local Blockbuster for $8 (later I found another local blockbuster was selling it new for $8, but whatever). I had already gone through quite a bit of this game getting about 500/600 points from it but I realised it's one of my favorite games on the 360 and I really should own it. Currently I have 960 points in it which is 48/50. I recommend it to everyone. Anyways, I ended up getting about 400 or 300 more in the last couple days because I decided I wanted to get them all. At this time I'm only missing 2 of the achievements, which are the having 100 000 coins at once and the 50 hours of play. I plan to finish these two in the next week. Achievement wise it's somewhere between a good and a meh, some of the achievements are real easy, such as name a pinata, while some of them are really hard/time consuming. Game wise it gets a great.

I only touched Bionicle Heroes for a few minutes this week since I loaned it to a friend, but I got probably another 80 in that. Bionicle heroes is way easy for points since each level you'll get at least 40 if you plan it out. And each level takes less than 10 minutes. So I'll be finishing that up this week. Achievement wise I give it a good, the achievements come in big quantities (20 each) while it only takes a couple hours to get around 800 of them. Game wise it's awful, but I got it for $5.

Gears of War I never really got into. I'm not to big into the shooter genre. So I played it for a few minutes this week. Got 2 achievements, finishing the tutorial level and playing an online ranked game. I'll probably go back and give it a second shot by playing through the first act. I doubt I'll be all into even after that though. No take on the achievements and game for this one since I didn't play enough so it wouldnt be fair.

- opening quote by Jeff Gerstmann

Get it.

Geometry Wars 2 has been moved up from Augest 6th to July 30th. Get it. I plan to be staying up and waiting for it's release, so if anyone grabs it the minute it's out. Look me up online and we'll play.

We are on itunes!

We submitted our podcast to itunes the other day and it was just now accepted to the store. You can now go into the itunes store and search for the Blown Speakers podcast and you should find it. If you want to look it up faster you can go here. Hopefully you guys will enjoy our podcast enough to subscribe to it.

Blown Speakers 21/07/08

This week on Blown Speakers we wrap up the news of E3, discuss Shaun White's drug abuse and we find out that Sean hates movies, all that and more on this week's edition of Blown Speakers.

Also we are in the works of getting our podcast officially submitted to itunes so look for it soon in the itunes Store.

Download it to your itunes here

Or grab it in it's own window here.

Shane Kim explains the 360 dashboard redesign

Here's a video by Kotaku talking to Shane Kim about why they choose to upgrade the current dashboard design.

Gamerscore Update 20/07/08

I used to do these little articles on what I have been playing on my 360 lately and I would talk specifically about my Achievement Points total, so my Gamerscore. I always enjoyed doing them and thought I would start up again.

So let's look back about one week or so at what I've been playing. Total stands at 15 135, Chris hasn't noticed noticed that I'm only 5 points behind him yet. So I played Lost Via Domus, The Orange Box, Ninety Nine Nights and DBZ Burst Limit. I think these gave me somewhere around 1500 or so since I started playing this week.

Let's get into Lost then. I'm a fan of the show, I guess this is loosely based around the show. Ok, it's like fan fiction for Lost. It basically revolves around a new guy (never in the show) who has to get his memory back. It's shows some key parts to the show but also adds some stuff, I wont ruin anything for anyone who cares about the show...or this game? My overall take on it was meh, I didn't really enjoy playing it and found it incredibly boring. I kept thinking to myself that this would have worked much better as one of those like click adventures that are on the computer alot. Anyways points wise - incredibly easy to get full 1000, so I did. There really isn't any hard ones there so it's worth a pick up if just for points only, other wise, I wouldn't recommend it, it's to boring.

Once again I've gone back to The Orange Box, if you've been following my currently playing games then you'll know I've gone back to this game over and over and over. I finally beat everything in that game. I got 84/99 of the achievements that game offers which has gotten me 705 points. This game is great, every part of it. Though near the end of episode 2, which was the last thing I needed to do, I just got really tired of it and wanted it to end. I've played that game so much now. It's not good at all for points, everything is like 5 or 10 at max, you'll only get anywhere for actually finishing stuff. So I can't recommend it on the points side, but on the actual gameside then yes, very good, go get it.

Ninety Nine Nights is another acheivement armpit. It got be 200 points, I got 2/10 of the achievements on it. The only achievements in this game are for beating the game, which sounds bad but it only takes like 2 hours MAX and that's even a slight exageration. Depends if you care about the story that this game is missing anyways. Then you have to go beat it again with the other 6 characters...ugh. So points wise it's aweful and game wise it's...mehiha so slightly less than a meh. It's a good game to have on mute while listening to like a podcast or something.

I didn't do much this week on Burst Limit. I just found that I hadn't finished the main single player mode so I did that and got another 200 or something. Overall I have 410 from it by use of 31/50 of the achievements. Achievement wise it's a meh, some are easy, some require you to be crazy. Game wise its an ok, read my review on it I guess.

So that's it for this week, I'm thinking of doing these either once a week or once every two weeks, we'll see how it goes. Back to the neverending quest for points.

First look at boss battle in LittleBigPlanet

Giant Bomb is about to go off

Arriving to my computer this morning and checking my usual sites. I come across GiantBomb.com one of the by far best video game websites, has changed the way it looks. It now has a screen there with a note saying "Giant Bomb landing shortly." It seems the so far blog programed site is about to start. Not sure about you, but I'm way excited. Yes I emailed them for a beta spot.

Update: Checking Jeff's (co-creater or Giant Bomb) blog, he made a post saying that the site wont be up within the day or anything. Here is the offical wording.

Note that "landing shortly" does not mean you should stay up tonight waiting for the open beta to begin.

Update Update: I just received an email from Giant Bomb telling me the site will be up soon so check the site regularly now.

New 360 dashboard

Here some more in depth info on the new dashboard that will be coming to the 360 soon. One thing I noticed so far that I really don't like is when you go into the 360's guide, all of the sections in there seem incomplete. This may be like just the beta version of it, but I really hope this changes when it's released.

Yay new 360 controller has a Guide button!

Thought I would post a quick thing I noticed while looking at my 'My Xbox' page.

Microsoft is releasing a Limited edition red 360 controller. So far so good. Says its bundled with some charge kit stuff. Still good. Though some of the things they noted as a "Feature" on this controller, I found quite odd. Odd in the sense that...they're not really features, to the point - if this controller didn't have these, it's not a 360 controller.

The weird, almost funny, ones they stated were that it has "Integrated headset port for Xbox Live play." This may seem ok, but only if you didn't read it properly, they're talking about the port, not a head set, or something new, just the port for which you can plug a head set you buy seperatly into. The next weird one I saw was that it's advertising the Guide Button! They state "Use the Xbox 360 Guide button to keep track of your friends, access your games and media, or power on and off your Xbox 360 console" ok that's cool, I guess some parents or maybe the girlfriend reading this can get a little info on it. But if the parent or whoever doesn't know this, do you really think they'd be this deep into xbox.com? I don't.

Anyways the full list of features from the site is below.

• Limited Edition red finish, with newly designed black accents
• Bundled with a Play & Charge Cable and matching red rechargeable battery pack
• 2.4GHz wireless technology with 30-foot range
• Use up to four controllers simultaneously on one console
• Integrated headset port for Xbox Live play
• Adjustable vibration feedback for longer battery life
• New left and right shoulder buttons are designed for ease of use
• Use the Xbox 360 Guide button to keep track of your friends, access your games and media, or power on and off your Xbox 360 console

Werehog?...what?

So this is a screen from Sonic Unleashed. It is coming out for the Wii, 360, PS3 and PS2. As we all know, Sonic games aren't what they use to be since they went 3D. I think this has to be the worst idea the sonic team has come up with.

The idea with Sonic Unleashed is that Dr. Eggman has used the chaos emeralds on Sonic to give him a curse. During the evening he becomes more like a hedgehog (Werehog?) where he runs around on all fours, knocking down a bunch of enemies and fighting them. This aspect is basically a beat 'em up. The worst part though is that for some reason; the werehog's arms are really stretchy when he is attacking...what?!

Besides that ridiculously stupid aspect, I hear the daytime section of the game is great. It has Sonic running around real world place (like Greece) in 3D and 2D going at extreme speeds, 300 mph is max I hear.

So why would the sonic team come up with such a good game and then ruin it with this stupid aspect. They must be thinking this will add something fresh to the Sonic franchise. Thing is, I can't remember the last time I thought something new with Sonic was good (ex: Sonic Riders). Maybe by doing this, they'll be able to appeal to the hip kids of today? I dunno.

Playstation Network ID linking now on

Announced at this years E3 yesturday at the Sony Press Conference, you can now link your Playstation Network IDs to your Playstation Underground account. A good feature about this is you don't need a PS3 to get some of the benefits of doing this.

The site states this as benefits you'll be able to get by linking your accounts:

Once you've linked your IDs, you'll receive all these great features:

• Identify yourself on the Web using your PLAYSTATION®Network portable ID
• Display your portable ID on social networking sites
• Meet other PLAYSTATION®Network members
• See who's who on the PlayStation® message boards
• Keep tabs on your PLAYSTATION®Network friends on the Web with the Friend List

Seems like a good idea, I just made my account link up. I don't have a PS3 but I have had a Underground account for a while now.

You can click this link to get to the Playstation Underground.

Blown Speakers July 14th 2008

Here is the first Gotta Jet Podcast also known as "Blown Speakers". This week we cover E3 and the Microsoft Press Conference, hope you enjoy it.

We are currently looking into getting it on itunes, but for now if you wish to download it to your itunes you can go here or you can download it and listen to it on the internet in it's own window here.

Review: DragonBall Z: Burst Limit - 7

Overall: 7/10

Positives:
- Perfect for DBZ fans, especially if you enjoyed the original Budokai series
- Great visuals
- Cool super attacks
- The addition of drama pieces are a good idea

Negitaves:
- Online play can be laggy if using a cross country connection and definitely not enough there to keep you coming back
- You probably wont enjoy this and definitely wont know what's going on if your not a DBZ fan
- Only includes the first three sagas
- Drama pieces and rank requirements get repetitive fast

DragonBall Z: Burst Limit is your typical "hey it seems people don't like our current games, maybe we should take a step back" game. After the garbage that was the Tenkaichi series, Atari decided that maybe the original Budokai series has something that could possible be done again. What I mean from this is that instead of the 3D fighting areas and battle/combat style they had been doing for the last three console games, they went back to just 2D fighting in a 3D environment.

Burst Limit is unlike a game such as Street Fighter and more on the Soul Calibur side of things, minus ring outs. It has you fighting one other enemy on a 2D plain but at the same time lets you move in a 3D way to create yet another 2D plain. If this confuses you, don't worry, it doesn't really matter. This element of battle and game play is much like the original three Budokai games and pretty much mimics the basic idea of them all.

The single player mode has you going through different 'scenes' in the DBZ show/movie history and recreating them in a one on one fight. Along with some good looking cut scenes, it makes for a pretty good time. One thing it doesn't seem to realize is that there are people out there who either don't know what DragonBall Z or don't care enough to have watched all one million episodes and don't know the story line. It has you going through each fight in the correct order based off the show through each of the first three sagas of DBZ (yes thats right, it ends after the cell saga) but what it doesn't do it tell you what's going on and why each of these things are happening. Unless you have watch the show, you have no idea how and why these characters are beating the crap out of each other. What makes this element worse is the game decides that you can finally get the privilege of knowing these answers after you finish the around twenty something fights that make up a saga by use of a voiceless cut scene.

Aside from that, Burst Limit doesn't really have many other great flaws. As stated, it revisits it's original roots but that's what makes it so great. Once you drop the giant 3D arenas in which causes you to have to try and use the environment as more of a weapon than what the show was really about (your fists and energy) you can get back to actually back to what DBZ is actually about, hitting people really hard. This game should make most fighting genre fans happy and should please DBZ fans all around.

The graphics of this game are very good, and combining that with the monstrous flashing lights that people into the game and show will know as energy attacks, your in for quite a good looking game. Some of the stronger attacks look really good when shown on these powerful consoles and well surpass the Budokai series. Some of the better light shows will be seen when two powerful attacks collide and the sparks are flying everywhere.

Also this game involves online play, so you can battle with your friends or anyone. One thing that lacks here is there is some lag to the fights if your not in the same country and the person. Aside from straight one on one fighting online, there isn't much else to do. Though there really couldn't be to much else to put online so overall the online component isn't a wonderful feature that will have you coming back to the game.

Probably the biggest point about this game s its use of in fight cut scenes known as "drama pieces." These stop the fight when you meet certain components and cause a short, maybe less than 8 second cut scene. At first these are a cool idea, but then you will begin to notice that they do the same maybe dozen scenes over and over and they're not even a little different. The only different is the character performing it, other than that they just pasted a different body onto the motion path.

Another add on is the requirements that your ranking per fight is based on. These are things like "perform an ultimate attack" or "finish while destroying the battle field" which once again, start off as a cool idea and will make you want to try and meet as many as you can. By meeting enough or these, your overall ranking for that fight will increase. The downside to these is that they never ever change. For every fight you can just do the same thing to meet the same requirements and you will usually get the same ranking. It would have been real nice to see some storyline/character specific requirements thrown in there.

Overall this game meets the standards you'd want if your a DBZ fan but will come up as shallow and not worth while for others. Though it does have a lot to do if your wanting to finish every fight and get a good rank on each one of their difficulties. The online play is a must have section to this game but wont last long for you and definitely wont have you coming back to this game over and over.

The Max Payne Movie

I'm very excited that this movie is actually being made despite my initial fears that it would not hold true to the source material.  However after seeing the first trailer it shows that the movie will actually follow the plot of the game (or at least based off of it as I notice a lack of Vlad) and the characters (especially Mona Sax) will look like their video game counterparts.  My only complaint is what is that stupid looking bird thing, I hope it becomes a metaphor for Max's Madness but seeing as this is Hollywood I find this extremely unlikely and they just wanted a badass fight scene with it... Hollywood makes me sick. Well anyways here's the trailer, I'm setting the date on my calender.

What's new

So if you've been to the site lately, and since your reading this - you have, you have probably noticed some new page elements up on the side bar to the right. To be specific, up there currently is the Latest News, Other Blogs and our Rss Feed.

The latest news section will only display 5 links at one time and its just a quick area that we will put links to other sites with an article up that we thought was interesting or worth taking a look at. It'll be updated quite frequently, or atleast we plan for it to be.

Next is the other blogs element. This is similar to our other stuff section, but as you can see that section has gotten quite small now. We moved all the blogs from it to the new section. This element shows the latest headline of the most recently updated blogs we have up, currenty we have 5. These are blogs we here at GJ enjoy going to and think are worth your while to go check them out.

Last is the RSS feed section. Pretty straight forward, it links to other sites that categorize RSS feeds or it goes straight to the main one which you can subscribe to if need be. I'm not sure if I like this element so we shall see if it remains up.

Also we are looking into a section similar to the Latest News section, but for videos. We'll be tampering around with the program or a section soon enough. Would you guys be into that?

E3'08, My hopes and dreams

Here is my list of games that I hope will be at E3 that we know about and what games I wish would be there.

• Banjo Kazooie Three (360) - I have loved all the Banjo Kazooie games and now with the third one finally announced I'm looking forward to actually seeing more footage as well as some on foot action.
• Rock Band 2 (360) - I'm mainly excited to see the track list and how it will work with the previous title especially with the announcement that all previous downloaded songs (and potentially the original songs from the first one) will work .
• Half-Life Episode 3 (360/PC) - After the conclusion of Episode 2 and the realization that the portal gun will make an appearance will appear in Episode 3 (well the plot of two seems to lead to that conclusion) I'm very excited to see the conclusion as well as if it's packed in with any other games (including potentially Portal 2, or Counter Strike)
• Resident Evil 5 (360) - After a single trailer and my love of the series I really can't wait to see more gameplay information and footage.
• Bioshock 2 (360?) - I find this extremely likely to be announced especially considering that Take Two made the first one so I expect the next one will be announced at this E3.
• Dead Rising 2 (360?) - Capcom has made it quite clear that Dead Rising will have a sequel the real question is when and I figure this E3 will be the one.
• Red Dead Revolver 2 (PS3?/360?) - I almost forgot about how excited I am for this game, although there is no actual evidence it exists besides a trailer for a "Western Themed Game" by the developers of Red Dead Revolver I am very exciting for any quality western game of which Red Dead Revolver one was one of the best.
• Alan Wake (360) - I have no idea what this game will even look like but it's been announced for around 3 years now and I'm still excited for it for a number of reasons, first off it has a dark scary feel to it and a plot that seems very promising and secondly it's made by Remedy who gets props from me for creating one of the greatest games of all time, Max Payne.
• Sadness (Wii) - So this game is one based off of terror and from the brief trailer it looks amazing, in reports the game has been stated to be the scariest game ever and reacts to what it knows will scare you, I am very excited to hear more.

Those are my predications and my hopes for new footage or announcements so we shall see when E3 comes around.

Most anticipated games at E3'08

I thought I would share the games I'm looking forward to most that are going to be shown, or that I hope are going to be shown, at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

• Viva Pinata 2 (360) - I very much enjoyed the first one and with a sequal, let's hope it only gets better.
• Chrono Trigger DS (DS) - I never played the original but I have heard all the hype this game has gotten so it seems worth while to check out.
• Animal Crossing Wii (Wii) - This games hasn't been confirmed at all, but I'm assuming it might, and I hope it does.
• Rock Band 2 (360) - I loved the first, and with this being the first game to have cross game DLC, I cant wait to see what new stuff will be added.
• Prince of Persia (360) - I loved the Sands of Time trilogy and this one just looks insain.
• Soul Calibur IV (360) - I'm a huge fan of this series and though the addition of Star Wars characters makes me cringe, I'm still looking forward to it.
• Mirror's Edge (360) - This game looks very interesting and super cool. With the latest trailor out, it just seems that much better. I'm quite intrigued with this whole "change the way we look at first person" aspect.
  

So those are mine, they're in no specific order but I know sooner or later I will be picking these up, some as soon as September. Chris is to be posting his list up in the next few days.

Coming Soon

As I am still on my vacation and have no solid computer access, I won't be able to update for another week or so (as you can see this place has been a little dead). Though I'll let you know what to keep your eyes out for when I return.

• DragonBall Z: Burst Limit review
• Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core review
• No More Heroes review
• The DOG island review

E3 will also be following shortly when I return so we will be posting some of our choice news and thoughts on it. We also plan to start out podcast in the next few weeks.

Forge 4 Rush?

Diablo 3 has finally been announced after 7 years since the last game in the series (Diablo 2 LOD) was released. It was slowly announced using the various Bizzard sites to show a small teaser on the front page. Now my excitement for this game has slowly been building over the past few months as I briefly decided to return to the Diablo 2 with some friends and we began doing the usual activities like Meph Runs, Rushes and Uber Tristram. Although I recently have found the concept of the game a little disappointing. I'm not just referring to the new graphic design of the game which seems more like Untold Legends then a Diablo game with much more cartoony looking characters but more the time I will be "Wasting".

Now when I was a kid spending unknown hours doing runs and leveling up just for the purpose of being "The Best" seems kind of lost on me as I've been falling out of favor over the past couple of years with pointless leveling since my last foray into the world of City Of Heros and the fact that my PC is currently residing in my closet until I decide to upgrade it. Is it perhaps that I've grown accustom to constant instant gratification in my games as opposed to working slow to achieve my goal? Perhaps but I do plan to pick this game up (as well as a new graphics card) when it is eventually released but I mean what's the hurry? It's Blizzard, I'll be lucky if it's out by the time I move out.