I just had my first can of "Burn" energy drink and realizing it might be the most extreme energydrink Ive ever had I had to go look up their homepage, and wow. One of the most awesome webites out there. Entering this page is really the perfect display of how extreme this energy drink is. Not only is it perfect marketing but its funny as hell to surf around on. The obvious humor on the page is nothing short of awesome. They are forcing EXTREME down your throat so hard you can feel it, and yea, its awesome. I cant stop laughing. The more time you spend on the page the more extreme it gets. Everyone should check it out, even if you hate extreme energy drinks!

After changing both Power Supply and GPU my PC is now dead yet again and this time its beyond my knowledge to repair it. It just dosent boot even tho I have tried everything. So its officially going in for repair. I havent called and checked just how long it will take yet but I will be stuck with the laptop (again) for one or a couple of weeks...

So. Both my car AND my PC are gone at the moment, both coming back sometime in the coming weeks...

With the announcement of Diablo 3 I realized that a huge amount of my all time favorite games are getting sequels. Never before has so many extremely classic franshises had requels in development at the same time. Games I grew up playing and games I call true classics are getting sequels (or in some cases remakes) like there is no tomorrow. I felt I had to make a list of them. I am probably forgetting some of them but the following lists really shows that if you grew up in the late 80s and the 90s you are in for a treat the coming year(s). Even some more recent big favorites of mine are getting heavy sequels.

Doom 4, Colonization 2, Mega Man 9, Bionic Commando Rearmed, Bionic Commando, StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, Tomb Raider Underworld, Red Alert 3, MK vs DC, Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Soul Calibur 4, Sacred 2, Mafia 2, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter 4, Sonic Unleashed....

The list of huge sequels is pretty much endless at the moment. These were just some I picked from the top of my head. On top of this we recently got remakes of both Arkanoid and Space Invaders as well as Civ with the new Civilization Revolution. And of course both Portal and Half-Life 2 have sequels in the works. Theres a remake of Golden Axe on its way and I guess you could see the new Aliens - Colonial Marines game as a sequel or remake of old classic Aliens games. Then somewhere down the road theres Mass Effect 2.

Yea as I said, I could go on forever. These are truly the times of remakes and sequels to my favorite franshises. I guess I could even throw in A Vampyre Story in there since its pretty much a spiritual successor to The Curse of Monkey Island even if the universe is a different one. Bah, I know I am forgetting half of the sequels coming out that interest me but you get my point.

'EDIT* And of course Deus Ex 3 and Bioshock 2. How could i not list those?!!

Its ROCK WEEKEND BABY!

UK Import Rock Band has arrived.

Good news everyone! This is a day of great news indeed. First of all it reached my ears that Frank Klepacki, one of the worlds greatest videogame music composers are now on board for Red Alert 3 and that he is currently recording Hell march 3 for the same game. A short interview can be found here ! I hold Frank VERY highly when it comes to videogame music and its truly great news that he is officially involved now. For anyone that havent been keeping up to date on Frank for the last couple of years I can tell you right now that his last project was Universe at War - Earth Assault. The sole reason I actually spent some hours with that game.

In other news a new Tomb Raider is officially confirmed for next gen consoles this fall. If only it is half as good as Legend its good enough to make me super excited for its release. A couple of really nice looking screens has been released and it seems they are keeping the Legend design on Lara wich is a good choice! The name of the game is Tomb Raider Underworld and hopefully it will stick to the more action and platform oriented type of gameplay that legend had.

Other good news also includes me ordering a UK import copy of Rock Band wich should arrive before the weekend. For those of you that dont know the EU release of the game has been a mess. The PS3 version isnt out here at all and the 360 version is only out in a few select countries, not including Sweden. So I am importing the 360 Special Edition version from the UK.

A very stylish remake. First Impressions

So I started playing Space Invaders Extreme (DS) yesterday. Its a superb mix of old and new with cla$$ic Space Invaders gameplay merged with rythm based influences and mad pickup/powerup mechanics. This game also geta really hard after a while. I am on Stage 3-A at the moment and I cant get past it. This game shows you no mercy. The Invaders will reflect shots, dive down onto you, teleport down to you and some of their shots will split up into multiple shots if you accidently fire at them. The trick to surviving this madness is chaining colors. Much like the mechanic in Ikaruga. If you shoot 4 or more of the same color in a row they drop a powerup that will give you a new and powerful weapon for a few seconds (bombs, a huge laserbeam or multiple shots for example). After those seconds have passed you better be chaining together another color to get another powerup because once you are stuck with your standard cannon the game can turn bad on you really fast.

The other trick to surviving is to nail UFOs that fly past. Some of them can, if certain goals are fulfilled, take you to a "roulette" stage on the top screen where you will shoot at a spinning circle of invaders to get, for example, an extra life or a clone of your ship next to yours. Other UFOs will take you to a bonus round where you have to complete a specific goal and if you succeed you will exit out to the stage you were on again in whats calle d"fever mode" where you can really blast those invaders to pieces for afew seconds and build up a huge combo score. All this is actually rythm based. Its not loosely rythmbased like Rez or E4. This game actually gets easier if you shoot in time with the music. If you press shoot in time with the beat the flow of shots will be much smoother. In addition to this, you can actually fire even faster by making simple melodies that goes with the beat. So you keep a standard beat and then push the shoot button faster a couple of times to create some kind of extra layer of melody on top of the music and youll find yourself taking the invaders down even easier. The melodies you can perform varies with the music.

So the first impression is that this is a really smooth remake of the cla$$ic shooter. Backgrounds looks amazing and it feels very "Extreme". Its super hard and got a really deep system to handle everything that will have you learning the ins and outs of the game to truly get anywhere.

The impossible task of reviewing a game larger than life is "done". Enjoy! I didnt even bother to go into Multiplayer since I havent tried that out yet.

"A transfiguring work of absolute genius"

Anyone that have not played this game or havent played beyond Act 3 yet. You have no idea what is in store for you. This game went from the best game I have ever played to the greatest work of art and the greatest most epic story I have ever witnessed. Some of the scenes in Act 3 feels plain out Unreal. "Am I really controlling this? is this real time? it cant be?" and "oooh...myyy.. goooooood" were words coming out of my mouth playing through this Act. I have experienced things I didnt think was possible. Things that surpass movies and CG by far. Scenes so epic, and so well directed there is no equal. ´

Metal Gear Solid 4 elevates the artform so far beyond anything before it its hard to even describe. If there was any doubt about this game in the first two chapters, those has now been completely swiped away. Any doubts to whether this is the best looking, best playing and most well directed game ever made has been blown away. I have started taking notes for the almost impossible task to review this game. I have been living my gaming life in belief that the perfect game cannot be made, I have given games 9.6 and saved those 0.4 percent for a game that I thought would never be released. But let me tell you right now. This game will be my first EVER 10.0..and I am not even finished with the game yet..Anything we thought was "Next gen" since the "Next Gen" of games begun now feels gray in comparison.

Let me quote Shane Bettenhausen over at EGM/1up: "A transfiguring work of absolute genius"

Agreed.

The reason to own a Playstation 3

Alright. Act 1 is finished, took me roughtly 3 effective game hours trying to sneak and advance very slowly and of course watching every cutscene. The story has been set up perfecly and the rest of the game will be a ride for sure. The interaction with the battlefield is very interesting and helping the local militia against the PMC has alot of benefits. Controls are far and beyond expectations. Everything is handled very smoothly and seamless. The same goes for the camera that coexist with the controls to create an experience that you dont get frustrated over for even 1 second. It moves just the way you want to.

The "old" voice of David Hayter is very convincing and you can feel how tired Snake is everytime he says something. The first Act have also inlcuded loads and loads of references to modern warfare and a military future wich it does oh so spot on. This is by far the sharpest dive into modern day and possible future war tactics and what it will mean for the society. Its fantastic! Cutscenes are well directed, even more so than before and the stunning HD visuals really helps to set the mood alot. Alot of very interesting characters has been introduced and I cannot wait to see how everyones relationships play out. The cutscenes have, in addition to the old "push L1 to see it from an alternate angle" thing, an icon that flashes at some points during conversations that will trigger 0.5sec long flashbacks to the older games with brief graphics from those titles over the actual cutscene wich is extremely cool. If you press it again and again before it vanishes you get more flashbacks and sometimes old codec portraits pop up.

The music so far has been pretty sparse and very good. The opening theme was very emotional and I think it was called "Love Theme" or something. I might have heard it in a previous MGS game but Im not sure. Overall the audio feels deeper than in your standard game. Even with a pretty crappy home theathre system you feel right in the middle of it like no other game before it. Again, graphics are very impressive. I dont want to let my excitement talk too much so I wont say its the best graphics ever, and it probably isnt but its very nice to look at. Yoji Shinkawa has surpassed himself with the character/enemy/armor design and it goes along way to make the game look as unique as it does.

For the first time in a very long time I really feel like I dont want to rush through this game. I really want to let every act sink in so I probably wont play anymore today.

Its here. The game that might end up being my favorite game of all time, the reason I bought a PS3 in the first place.