The Geek Bros

I was immediately excited when I heard about Shadow Complex on the Xbox arcade  first because the story line of the whole game was based as a fit in Orson Scott Cards empire series and secondly because of the gameplay itself.

ready for this?

Shadow Complex is built like an original metroid it consists of your character wandering through a complex map finding all the assorted hidden things inside the game, with an added twist in this game your firing area existed on a three d platform so while you can only walk on a 2d plane you fire and interact in a 3d plain which could sound like it would get extremely annoying, I’m here to say its not. I picked up the demo for the game and played it over and over a few times through and couldn’t get enough and somehow it didn’t get old.

Ready to kick revivalist rear!!

The great: This game really blew me away as I the game seemed like a finished piece of art and felt like a breath of fresh air in the gaming industry and for only fifteen dollars which may seem overpriced for an xbox arcade game it is definitely worth the money as this game seems like a highly polished game even if it is short for a full on console game. The graphics in Shadow complex are highly polished and very nice the whole game engine from unreal fits like a glove on the game itself it feels just right. The story is intriguing and believable in a completely video game way, but I always feel like figuring out some new way to use the abilities the game gives you.

That's right just a normal guy not some genetically modified mumbo jumbo

The bad: While this game is a great package it’t not quite all roses the 3d shooting plane although great does give you trouble at times you sometimes get frustrated as you can’t aim at what you really want to. The story in this game is extremely short and could use more content if that was so i would have no problem paying 20 or thirty for this game and with more content I wouldn’t mind it as a full game.

The verdict 9.5/10

So I just recently aquired an Xbox 360 and I took my brothers advice and played Ghostbusters and my opinion completely agrees with his. I actually put off playing this title at first thinking it sounded so geeky and corny, but then I started playing and I couldn’t put it down  it was completely fun and addicting though it may be hard for kids that can’t competently button mash, but it definately functioned well and if you don’t want to take me or my brothers opinion go pick it up for yourself it’s old enough now that it can be found used for pretty cheap and if ya don’t want to dump that many bones rent it for cheap and find out for yourself this game that got far to overlooked in what a great fun game it is. Let someone scare you and feel like your about to pee your pants over a completely silly thing.

overall score 9/10

As I mentioned a few weeks ago my Xbox gave me the RROD error, which i was very sad about, I was extremely nervous about the repair as I had never experienced Microsoft’s service from their xbox repair division, and I have to say thus far it has been relatively painless.  I Packaged it up and got it sent off after a few days the progress on the website changed I do have to say I got an email stating it has shipped back to me though it didn’t actually ship for 4 more days.  But still with in the time frame that they gave me on the repair.

In the box their was a free month card for Xbox live I’m sure to replace the 1 month I was without my Xbox.  I didn’t notice upon receipt that they front USB Door cover was missing so I promptly called them and even though my Xbox is a special edition Halo green color they were able to replace the whole faceplate, which I’m still waiting for. All in all, it wasn’t that bad of an experience.

So after two phone calls with customer support, their application that generates shipping labels doesn’t seem to work properly so I get wait 4 business days for them to ship me one.  Don’t worry I won’t hold my breathe, on a side note I am seriously contemplating the purchase of a new XBox, due to the fact the 20GB hard drive seems awefully small since the update of the software to allow you to copy your games to the hard drive for faster playback.  Microsoft announce a new pack that include a 250GB hard drive, which is the first we have seen one that large, 2 wireless controllers and a game for only 100 bucks more then the Elite which has 120GB.

My opinion if you are in the market for a new XBox 360 make sure to pick up one of these 250GB version, with the new content and loading full games on the console it will be well worth the purchase.  I’d hate to see anyone purchase a new XBox with a 20GB hard drive or the arcade version.

So this weekend was eventful, I finally picked up a copy of Rock Band 2 as I was feeling the urge to play a music game.  After using what was left on my Gamestop card and throwing a pre-order on Lego Rock Band, I went home played my game for a while,  after a minute my graphics started to go a little funny so I decided to restart which resulted in the dreaded red ring flash on my Xbox.  Lucky for me I have my receipt and I’m mailing it back in to Microsoft today.  If you get an E72 Error Message its covered under 3 year extended warranty so you don’t have to try any crazy tricks to fix it.

Speaking of the Force Unleashed, its gone on sale for the 360 over at Amazon.com. Pick it up for $10 Bucks. I’d pick it up but I paid full price.

So if you are looking to pick up an XBox I would Highly suggest getting the elite version especially since its price just dropped to $300!!! The biggest benefit of this is the fact that it has a larger hard drive, I’ve been struggling with my 20GB drive, due to the fact that the new dashboard can copy full games to your hard drive for quicker load times, I generally get 2 games loaded and it struggles with that.

So if you’rein the market for your first XBox or looking to upgrade make sure to pick up the elite version and don’t get suckered into the arcade version like so many unsuspecting people.

Halo 3 has become the first xbox game to reach 10 million copies sold. After its amazing release of 3.6 million copies it has continued to sell over 300,000 copies every week. On a side note the Halo 3 special edition xbox 360 is the reason I have .

source: VGCHARTz

Microsoft Corporate vice president Shane Kim in a discussion with www.kikizo.com said:

“For us, it’s a matter of focusing on ‘when’, because if we chased after a mobile or handheld opportunity, we would not have the resources and ability to do things like… Project Natal. So we’ve chosen to focus on the living room experience from a hardware standpoint, if you will, but we’re building a service in Live that will… will extend to other platforms. No question about it.”

Obviously at this point this we have no idea what this means.  Does this just mean that they plan to take games from the XBox Live Arcade and allow you to take them on the phones that already support their software?  Or does this mean that the Zune HD could have a follow up that is game enabled.  At this point it doesn’t seem like the near future since it is talking about getting Project Natal off the ground first which we know is late next year.  However, with the deep pockets of Microsoft you should never underestimate the influence on markets they want to move into.

After 7 years of absence you can usually get to the point where you believe a game is not coming back.  Sure the MechWarrior series had the DS iteration but it wasn’t a big release, but suddenly it appears MechWarrior is coming back to the PC and XBox360.  The series has always held a special place in my heart, there is something about being in a war machine that is a several stories high and blasting the crap out of everything you can see that always has interested me.  Check out the movie that says there is actual gameplay footage: