Got into the beta yesterday, played it for a while, already at the level cap. It's a lot easier to level up than you would think. The challenges they haveare a lot of fun that are fun ways to get extra xp to level up (such as fall for 30 meters or more and die or fall for 15 meters and survive).

The matchmaking is damn near perfect. You join up with about 12 other people or so and just play for as long as you want pretty much unless the match closes on its own. The best part is, is that after every round, the server will randomize the teams (not compeltely randomize, it takes into account everyones levels and such) so its really great. You could get your ass kicked one round, and then next round you completely dominate...something Halo 2's matchmaking never had. In halo 2, if you got your ass kicked one round....its gonna stay that way.

The maps they released for the beta are a lot of fun and I'm not getting bored of them at all (unlike the Halo 3 beta). My favorite level would probably have to be Crash.

I gotta be honest, I didn't really like the whole perks thing when I heard of it, but I gotta say, it really changes the gameplay. My favorite one, Deep Impact, lets you shoot through walls much better than if you didnt have it on. Thats another great thing in this game, you can shoot THROUGH WALLS. Its awesome. Lets say your shooting a guy outa window, then you have to take cover behind the wall next to the window, all that guy has to do is shoot through the wall and he'll probably get you, depending on how far away he is.

I should probably comment on Bioshock even though I'm really late. It came out, I beat it twice, got 910/1000 achievements, its an awesome game. I'm going through a third time but I've been busy playing Stuntman Ignition which has great multiplayer. So yeah, if you have the CoD4 beta, just send me a friend request and we can play sometime. Peace.

Btw, Kanye West's album comes out today, go get it.

September 11th. Kanye West. Graduation.

&*!^#*&!^$*&(^!@*($#!%)(*!*(%&&*@#&^@&#&*!)$)*!%@)*^)

Tonights topic. GAMES. Surprised?

I'm just going to run through my top 3 games for each platform and a sentence or two of me ranting about it.

Xbox 360-

3. Mass Effect
This game looked great. I loved KOTOR, and to see that you can go anywhere in the universe while keeping the KOTORfeel intact, makes me want this game so much more.

2. Rock Band
Was a skeptical about this game? Hell yes. Did I think it was going to work out? Hell no. Does it? Hell yes. This looks like a blast. The drums look aboslutely incredibly fun to play. But I can't decide whether or not I'm actually going to BUY it rather than Guitar Hero 3...hmmm..

1. Assassin's Creed
I wouldn't have put this in here if they had just put out a brand new non-gameplay trailer, but hey, it was actually playable at E3 and it looked AWESOME. I can see myself just crawling around on rooftops for hours on end. While I may be completely broke after I buy GTA IV, Halo 3, and Bioshock, I'll try my best to try and dish out some extra cash for this game.

Honorable Mentions:
Half Life 2: The Orange Box, Stranglehold, CoD4, Bioshock

PS3-

3. Mercenaries 2: World In Flames
The developers said it best, If it doesnt blow up or you can't hijack it, it doesn't go in the game. Every game should have that motto.

2. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
This game combines awesome hand to hand combat, platforming, insane visuals, gunfighting, and modern day pirates. This game looks beautiful and is really killing me that I don't own a PS3...

1. Littlebigplanet
Wow. When I saw this at GDC I didn't think much of it and moved on. But when I saw the E3 Live Stage Demo on Gamespot, I was blown away. The infinite number of things you can create is awesome! And those little things are so cute.

Honorable Mentions:
Echochrome, Home

Wii-

3. Rayman Raving Rabbids 2
This game looks just as fun as the first. Especially the Rock Band type of minigame.

2. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
I played the first Metroid Prime on the Gamecube and thought it was alright. But this one looks aboslutely incredible!The grappling hook that swings you from platform to platform looks really cool. Can't wait to see how it goes when it comes out.

1. Super Mario Galaxy
What a surprise eh? This game wasplayable at E3 and everything. The bee suit looked really funny and jumping from "planet to planet" was really neat looking.

Honorable Mentions:
Wii Fit, Super Smash Brothers Brawl (all we got was a release date, LAME), Mario Kart Wii

Well thats pretty much it! I'm not gonna do another post because giving an entire blog post about E3 live doesnt sound too great.To comment on some off-topic stuff it sucks to hear that Rich Gallup is leaving. He was definetly my favorite Gamespot employee and it sucks to see him go. On the Spot and the Hotspot will never be the same. Anyways, hopefully someone will comment on this post, since no one did for the last one, just wanna hear your thoughts of my decisions. Hope you liked it.

I'm going to do 3 different blog posts to sum up my post E3 impressions, considering that I was such a E3 whore this year. I'll cover Press Conferences, Games, E3 Live and my final thoughts.

First, let's start with the press conferences.

Microsoft-

They really did a great job this year. They just showed the games that everyone wanted to see and more. The new demo of Assassins Creed looked great and I can see myself spending endless hours just crawling around the Jerusalem rooftops. Seeing Peter Moore miserably fail at playing Rock Band made me want to gouge my eyes out. Not only did he pause once, BUT TWICE!!!! Eh thats alright, considering I usually really like Peter Moore and he extended our warranty to three years. PGR4 seemed pretty intriguing. I'm not too big on racing games unless its Test Drive Unlimited and Forza Motorsport 2 (they hold a very special place in my nerdy gamer heart). It's seems like a game I'll have to track in the coming months. Now for some really STRANGE reason that I can't begin to understand, I think the new Scene It controllers are really cool, not to mention the game itself. It's just another shameless board game theyare bringing to the 360 that everyone is going to play. Not a fan of Viva Pinata, not to mention the brand new minigame collaboration thats coming out. Leave those games to Nintendo*. The Resident Evil 5 trailer was completely unexpected but incredibly refreshing. It just reminded us that a fifth game WAS coming, not just another port of Resident Evil 4**. I'm not the only one to say that the new Halo themed Xbox 360 is the ugliest thing anyone has ever seen. Seriously, GREEN AND ORANGE!??! Anyways...CoD4 demo looked incredible. I wasn't even playing it and I felt the rush when the enemies were walking towards them and they had to try and blend in with the grass. So cool. Gears of War to PC is cool I guess. I'm not gonna buy it, but it is aggrivating that they are adding single player levels that I won't be able to play, AND CLIFFY, WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR HAIR!??!?! I think I've spent more than enough time on Microsoft.

*=burn
**=double burn

Sony-

I don't own a PS3. But this press conference....changed me on my feeling of owning one altogether. I was actually planning on saving money up real soon to buy the new $499 console, but oh wait, they're discontinuing it, what a punch to the huevos that was. Alright, I had a lot more feelings about the Microsoft conference than Sony or Nintendo so they're going to be significantly shorter. I just want to say, Echochrome looks absolutely AMAZING!!!! I was getting sort of bored of watching Chewbacca onstage until I saw Echochrome. I think it was an incredibly cool idea and it seems like a lot of fun. Home seems to get more and more interesting as it continues in development. The new PSP looked okay I guess, but nothing I would need, I already have the bulky black PSP that I am perfectly okay with. It was very cool how Hideo Kojima came up to present the brand new MGS4 trailer which looks great as everyone expected. The fight between Raiden and Vamp (i think, I didn't play MGS3, but thats who it looked like to me) looked absolutely awesome. Raiden was a complete pu*** in MGS2 but now he looks absolutely terrifying...in the best way possible. Haze looked alright I guess, I don't really get it...Motorstorm looked good, even though its been out for a while. I just think that game looks incredible, I could play/watch it for hours. Killzone 2...wow. They pretty much did this in order to be like, "Okay okay...2 years ago the trailer wasn't real, but seriously, it looks practically the same." And it really does! They tried to re-enact the things from the old trailer which I found to be sort of funny. Looks great. Home...again...looks just great.

Nintendo-

Nintendo's press conference was really about showing off how great theyre doing in sales and how they are getting older gamers to come and play. And thats great, I'm happy for them, I love Nintendo! *Note: I just wrote a bunch of stuff but somehow it all go erased so I'm gonna keep it quick, I'm sick of typing* Wii Zapper looked pretty cool. Steering wheel looked lame. Mario Kart for the Wii sounds great, really excited about that. Happy that Mario Galaxy and SSBB got release dates. Metriod and Phantom Hourglass looks like a lot of fun. Wii Fit isn't for me, but is for a lot of who the Wii is appealing to right now. I thought it was great when Reggie said "Muscle weighs a lot more than Fat" when Miyamoto says in English "Good Excuse." Haha.

Thats pretty much it! Sorry about what happened when I was typing about Nintendo, I was really frustrated and my hands are killing me and I wanted to finish this blog post as fast as I can. If you have any specific questions about each individual conference just leave a question in the comments. I wish I had more people tracking me so more people could read this, spent a long time on this post. I'd have to say in order from best conference to worst would be Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo. But they all did a great job in their own individual right. I'll write up the next post in a couple of days. I'll write about my favorite games of the show for the individual consoles. Peace!

About an hour ago I finished up Gears of War on Insane....and that's pretty much the only word I could use to describe it. I have discovered that Act Four Chapter One is the worst level (and hardest) of all time. Took down RAAM on Insane in Co-op and he was ridciulously easy between the two of us. We would just alternatly get out of cover, shoot him in the head with a sniper and a torque bow, and it was over in 20 seconds.

Recently went back to Saint's Row and have been playing that a bit, going for the all activities finished achievement worth 160 points. Also played some San Andreas and flew around with all the planes because that was my favorite thing to do when I played it a couple years ago.

As an update to my last entry, I got The Darkness that same day and I couldn't put it down. I already beat it because the story was so compelling I could barely stop playing. I thought the multiplayer was alright but going back to it now isn't so great.

As always I've been playing Guitar Hero 2 and I don't seem to be getting any better lol. I think I'm just gonna have to stick with the Hard difficulty forever.

This was a pretty lame blog post after reading it through once, whatever, I'm posting it up anyways.

So I was really stoked about The Darkness. I pre-ordered it and everything. I was on my way to pick it up, and to be honest, I wasn't in the mood to drive kind of far through heavy traffic in 90 degree weather. So I'm sweating like crazy and I go up to the counter and ask the guy, "You guys get the darkness yet?" He says yep and I show him my pre-order receipt thingy. Then he asks me the question that ruined everything:

"You got a picture ID showing your 17 or older?"

...

If you have not figured out by now, I am not 17 or older. I am 16 and turning 17 in September. This has happened at least seven times prior to this. Go to the store, wanting to buy an M rated game, get punched in the nuts by that legendary question. This has actually cost me money before. I go to Best Buy when they were having that sale on Rainbow Six Vegas for like...40 bucks I think it was. And of course, I forget you need to be 17 to get it. I go back the next day with my brother and the sale is over so I had to buy it for $60...So I'll go back later with my brother or dad and get The Darkness. But I was looking forward to playing it instead of writing this blog, then again, I haven't made a blog post in a long while.

In other topics, I finished up Shivering Isles finally and made a review. I didn't like it that much. Don't be fooled by the insane amounts of positives in the review and the lack of negatives I put in there. It was annoying, and I was getting extremely frustrated at the end. Good storyline though :). Ive pretty much been sticking to Guitar Hero 2 and started getting back into Gears of War. Trying to get that hardcore campaign achievement. If anyone wants to help me finish up Act 4 on co-op, that'd be cool.

E3 is coming up, pretty excited about that cause I really have NO IDEA what to expect this year. Really wishing to see some more Killzone 2 even though I doubt I'm going to buy a PS3 anytime soon.

Applied for a job at EB Games and other places like American Eagle. Need a job for the summer and waited way too long to get one.

That's pretty much it for now.

Halo. Yeah. So since I got Crackdown, I've been playing the Halo 3 Beta pretty religiously. I gotta say, it's definetly the best Halo yet...which is good because that's what we all wanted. I'll be honest, I really didn't think much of Halo 2, I thought the original was much better. Yeah sure they defined how online mulitplayer should be played, but still, I thought it wasn't too great.

To start off....weapons. They brought back the old assault rifle which is amazing as ever. Unfortunatly, it only has 32 bullets in a clip as opposed to the original 60, and I do find myself quite often running out of ammunition and having to reload in the middle of a gunfight. The new grenade is pretty cool, it has spikes so it sticks to walls, but it does throw a lot differently than the plasma or frag because it is much more heavier. The new and refurbished brute weapons are pretty nice too. The duel-wielding Spikers (brute pistols) are one of my favorite weapons now. The brute shot now has 6 (i think) shots in it. And of course....The Spartan Laser. For those of you who dont know what this is, it is a huge weapon that sits on your shoulder, hold the fire button to charge up for about 3 seconds, and then out comes this enormous laser that kills in one hit. I really can't decide whether I hate this weapon or love it. It sucks when guys get up close to you because you cant shoot back for three seconds, but if you find a high vantage point, you'll be taken guys out no problem.

Vehicles. Everything is the same except for the Mongoose. The Mongoose is the new ATV which goes pretty freaking fast and you and a buddy can fly across the map with it. It's pretty nice, but for some reason I find it a little difficult to maneuver.

Levels. Snowbound, Valhalla, and High Ground. The three maps they are letting us play for the beta. High Ground is the little bunker type level that I'm sure everyone has seen, and its a blast. Its AMAZING for Capture the flag and can get pretty hectic for some team/solo slayer. Valhalla....is another story. It's so damn big. Personally, I don't like it. The only part I DO like is the huge man-cannons that shoot you across to the middle of the map. Snowbound is another great one. Not too large, and the lasers that are guarding the boundries that prevent you from walking out of the map are pretty entertaining to watch someone walk by them and get destroyed.

And possibly the best addition to the Halo 3 franchise: Deployables. I gotta tell you, I wasn't too sure about these things when I first heard about it, but I gotta tell you, they work wonders. The bubble shield will save you in such tight situations, you'll be wanting to just look all over the map just to make sure you have one in your inventory. The energy drainer is able to suck out all the health of nearby players, making them easy for a quick one hit kill. The portable man-cannon can also save your ass just as well as the bubble-shield does, and its great to get in high points that aren't accesible otherwise. Finally, the trip mines. Unfortuantly, I haven't been able to use on to its full potential by dropping it in front of an oncoming vehicle, but from what I've seen, it works pretty well.

I'm probably forgetting a huge chunk out of the beta that I should talk about, so if you want me to add/edit anything more, feel free to leave comments.

Got the 360 back yesterday, good as new. Besides the fact I need to re-download all my arcade games. I just a bought a new SDTV (still haven't taken the plunge into HD era yet) for $50 from a friend. It's a solid 20 inch TV and I barely managed to make it fit into my room. Moved my 360 up there, first time I've ever been able to play video games in my bedroom (other than PC games) and I gotta tell you, it feels pretty solid. What's not so great is that to conserve space, I have to turn the 360 vertical...which from what I hear, is worse than putting it horizontal.

 What I didn't realized until I hooked everything up is that there is no way I can be connected to XBL from my room...unless I get the $100 wireless internet adapter...which totally sucks. Now I gotta save up for that, so far I'm at $40/$100. Another 3 or 4 weeks and I'm ready to go back online...wow that doesn't seem long at all.

I was looking at the cheapest HDTVs at bestbuy.com before I decided to get my friend's old TV, and what I realized is...there's no such thing as a cheap HDTV. Which is pretty much the main reason I havent "taken the plunge" (did I just quote myself?) to get an HDTV. The SDTV does fine for now, and it'll do for a long time coming. It was the cheapest/best TV I was going to get anywhere anytime soon so yeah.

By taking this long time off XBL I have realized how much the Xbox 360 relies on internet capabilities. I can't do ANYTHING. I can't play with other people on Test Drive...I can't play co-op in Crackdown. I can't see any new demos, I can't REDOWNLOAD my XBLA games (I'm really hurtin for some UMK3). Try it sometime....actually don't, it REALLY blows.