The exclusive Armor Set available to those who only pre-ordered the game can be yours. And like previous nc454.com contests, you must answer three questions correctly in order for your name to be thrown in a hat and then later drawn. I know a lot of people are hesitant to pre-order games so I took one for the community and for the simple fact that I can't wait to play Too Human this Wednesday! So with out further adieu. here are your three questions:

1. What date is Too Human scheduled to release? The current date, not the original scheduled date.

2. What is the name of the main character?

3. What is the name of the company that created Too Human?



So there are the three questions-short and sweet. Now for the details: To enter, just send me an email at jradebaugh@hotmail.com or PM me, nc454, with your name and the three correct answers. In the subject line type in "Too Human" so that I can filter all the answers into one folder and essentially make it easier to find a winner. You have until August 21st to enter and the winner will be drawn on Friday August 22nd. If you win, you'll receive the code for the Too Human Pre-Order Armor set by email or IM.

Thanks for playing!

*By the way, please don't post any answers in this thread. Thanks

I've got to admit, this E3 was probably one of the most memorable for me. If you heard someone say that, you would think that there was something amazing that happened? It's the exact opposite, this was one of the most disappointing E3 shows I've seen. What makes it so memorable is the ridiculous, massively ignorant response to Nintendo's press conference.

Well its been one year now. One year since we got so sick of playing gears of war every week that we decided to start scheduling game nights so we could play other games. And the last few weeks we have come full circle and have ended up playing Gears of War anyway...So for our birthday what else could we play? To celebrate 1 year of game night, my site (www.marriedgamer.com) will be giving away 3 t-shirts away to people that play with us this Friday by random drawing. My hope is that we can get enough people to populate 2 gears rooms. Your chance of winning a shirt is actually pretty good because there are several people who are playing with us that work for the site and already have shirts. They are not eligible. Later this week I will post pictures of the shirts.
The rules for this are very simple. You MUST play friday night with us and live in the US or Canadia (Sorry for the lack of love for the UK folks but it would cost me too much to ship a shirt over their) I will do a the drawing at the end of the night and post the winners here.

Over the past year there have been a few people that helped keep game night going either when I was gone or couldn't play. I would like to thank them now...

First off... to Chad - GCN Master of all he sees and does got the calender up and running for us to be able to have a nice place to schedule and talk about game night.

to Twig - Usually hosts game night cause the guys ass is glued to his couch and his hands are sewn to his controller. He is always the first to arrive and usually the last to leave.

to Evil One - He and I tried to get a casual game night going a couple of times to no avail and he posted game night the few times I was gone over the last year. He gets another for being Canadian.

I would also like to send a shout out to the core group of gamers that play with us week in and week out and make game night possible. I'm not going to mention names because I know I will forget someone. But you know who you are.

Its been a fun year.

-Z

So I got to thinking... Microsoft is allowing full installs of games onto the hard-drive on the 360. On the surface, this seems like a feature that nobody demanded and isn't particularly useful.

The costs for this are pretty large -- an up-front installation that copies gigs of data, and those gigs sit around and eat up space on drives that everyone agrees are already cramped.

And the benefits are pretty small -- faster load times (50%?) on a system where load times are not a major issue, and less drive noise, which really isn't that big of a deal.

It almost seems like there needs to be more to it than this. And it just occurred to me... maybe there is. Microsoft has a history of taking baby steps in various directions before rolling out bigger solutions. This could very well be the case here. Here are some ideas of things that MS could be planning to expand this feature to in the long term:

I mainly started to play this one to get some progress done on my "Brass Balls" achievement (complete game on hard with vita-chambers turned off) but it really didn't go that way at all.

I booted up the game and loaded my save file. I went into the pause menu to sort out the brightness settings and found that the "turn off vita-chambers" option wasn't there. I redownloaded the free DLC and still nothing.

Then I figured out that maybe because I'm playing the game on my 2nd Xbox (this was the first time I did this), that the required DRM licenses aren't on properly. So I did the whole Xbox License Migration tool process (which was dead easy BTW) and got all the stuff I needed. I downloaded the DLC again and presto! Everything's back to normal. I was gonna check all my games for any DLC problems but that would take way too long (as I have a ton a games and rather check them when I feel like playing the game in question.

Back to the retrospective then. As this is my second playthrough obviously the story isn't a factor anymore but the cutscenes are still enjoyable to watch, there are not too long nor boring. Gameplay wise, it does get a bit repetitive after a while (hack turrent gun, shock Splicer, hack security camera, burn Splicer).

But the real star of the show is the City of Rapture, I felt so immersed in the enviroment that all the faults I mentioned before are not really that important especailly if it's your 1st playthrough. You really feel like you're in 1960 right down to the music, clothing, decor etc.

Sadly however, I realised that the only reason I felt like playing this game again was the achievements. The game seriously lacks replayability. There's no multiplayer, which I wouldn't have liked anyway. It would have been like Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, just an extension of the single-player with a few extras thrown in which doesn't feel right at all.

The PS3 version coming out soon does look good and the extra "puzzle" DLC looks to add some more hours of gameplay to the mix which would have been great on the 360 but doesn't look likely as it is "exclusive". It would have been like Portal which I still play from time to time as I love puzzles and never have to worry about enemies shooting at me from all angles.

This games worth is like Memento or The 6th Sense, brilliant the 1st time, pretty average the 2nd time onwards. It's like Doom 3 all over again (that's for another time).

Rating: (Rental only)

Burnout paradise will be the game this week. If we get enough folks maybe we can make 2 rooms... Hope to see lots of people there this week in preparation for our 1 year anniversary night...

As I feel that I don't play on my Xbox 360 much anymore since I got my PS3, I thought that it would be a good idea to play all the singleplayer-focused games that I have and give a honest and decent review after all the hype surrounding them are long gone.

The first game that I played was Assassin's Creed. I played through Memory Block 3 trying to get all the investigations, citizen saves and viewpoints done along the way.

When I first started the block, I ran into my first problem that I've always had with this game and that was the unskippable cutscenes. These were fine for the first playthrough as I was getting into the story but now that I know what happens, I want to just skip them but I can't. All you can do is walk around slowly.

Also I found that the Kingdom area of the game as a complete waste of time and effort by the developers. there are no missions at all there, you just ride though it on your way to the next town. They should have done more with it or got rid if it altogether in my opinion.

Another thing about this game that annoyed me was the PR campaign that went with it namely the executive producer Jade Raymond.

She used her good looks (I don't think she's that hot anyway) and her nervous laugh (which was annoying as hell to hear) to get young males attracted to this game initially. I know that sex sells but I feel used after playing this game and felt victim to her car saleswoman-like skills.

Also, how can a game in this generation have absolutely no online features at all? No leaderboards (which she promised in a press conference), no multiplayer (they should have just copied from Splinter Cell but have Assassin Vs Guards matches) and no DLC. Patches aside, it's like Ubisoft Montreal just abandoned this game completely.

Getting past all that though, it's still a good game. I'll never get tired of climbing up tall buildings and looking at the breathtaking views, killing every guard that gets in my way with expert ease and running away from them after an assassination in an intense chase.

Here's to hoping that Ubisoft are saving their creative ammo for the sequel.

To sum up,
Is it a good game that would make you feel good that you've played through it? Yes
Is it a great game that you'll remember years from now? No

Rating:

That's right it's giveaway time! And the prize 2000 Microsoft Points brought to you by nc454.com.

The contest is simple and here are the following rules:

E3 Giveaway-Simply watch the Microsoft E3 Press conference and after it's all over, I'll post three simple questions about what happened at the conference. If you get them right your name will be entered into a hat and the the winner will be randomly drawn. It's that simple. The questions will go up soon after the conference and the final drawing will be July 15th at 8pm est. so there is plenty of time to enter. Don't forget to put "E3 Giveaway" in your subject line so I can filter the answers and prevent them from going into the junk folder. So get to watching because the conference starts shortly! Good luck to everyone who enters!

The email address to enter is jradebaugh@hotmail.com.

Thanks to Gamercast Network for all the support!

Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution is some serious good times. I find myself slowly getting addicted to the game. Personally, I haven't tried out the multiplayer game out yet, but the Single Player is worth more than the purchase of this game. The thing that stands out most between the console and the regular PC Civilization games is that everything seems very fast and streamlined for consoles, you really tend to focusing on Building, and deployments of your armies. There are 4 different ways you can achieve victory; Culture, Domination, Economic and Technology, so there are multiple avenues to think about when playing the game.

Protips-Here's a tip for people not in the instruction book: Use the right analog stick to move to a unit you want to view, and when you slightly squeeze the left trigger (Note: A little pressure, not hulk smashing it down) the camera will zoom in on your target. Well okay it's not a protip but it's something that I discovered on my own since I was going to complain that the camera only zooms out before until I found that out.

I definitely recommend checking this out.

Obey Out!

I thought that in the history of me playing Uno on XBLA that this would never happen to me but it did last night.

I joined a quick match session and found 3 other guys just lounging around, nothing out of the ordinary. There was this guy in the top left hand corner that was lying on his bed but the camera was only showing his head.

Near the end of the game he said that he was gonna get a drink and when he got up, low and behold, he was completely butt naked. You could see everything (which wasn't much BTW). I won the match and immediately quitted the game and filed a complaint towards the player.

Just a quick gaming update from me.