I know that I am not supposed to really bring anything out again until Monday, but I couldn’t pass this story up. This comes from an article I found on both filefront.com, and also on myfoxdc.com today. What this article gives is five after-school alternative activities for gamers, other than playing video games.

Here are the five suggested alternatives, and my interpretation of them:

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Yes, believe me, this was some big news for me as well as any other halo fan out there, the campaign in halo 3 is finally going to have some replay value other than just beating the same game on three difficulty levels. And they better, because gamers need designers to be more creative than “You beat the game on easy, well try it out on hard mode now”.

According to an article released by the Canadian press on Friday, Bungie announced that there were two all-new single player missions that were not shown at any of the major gaming events this year, but yet shown behind closed doors to members of the Canadian press.

One of the missions, called “The Storm”, has a part in it known as “The scarab conflict”, which is set in a factory complex. And according to the article, this level has more enemies than bad guys and allies in the first mission of the original Halo:Combat Evolved combined.

The other mission, called “Tsavo Highway”, is set to be the first vehicle mission in the game, and takes place in a dark tunnel cave, and mountain landscape. No more details were released on this level, but let’s hope it has just as much excitement as the other mission mentioned, or gamers are going to be bored. The lead sandbox designer from Bungie, Jaime Griesmer stated that “This just gives you an idea of the scale that we are going for”, he also said,”and these are not even the largest encounters in the game, the size really ramps up as you got through”.

Now where does the replay value come in you ask? Well, there was also talk about halo 3 having a point system to help increase replay value. Things like headshots, boarding vehicles, and assassinations will all be figured into this system, and then posted on leaderboards on Bungie’s website.

If somehow this was all configured to gaining achievements for each type of kill you get in online multiplayer and the campaign, then this could give the game more replay value than it has ever had in the past, and that could be a very good thing, especially if you’re a halo junkie like myself. Sept. 25th isn’t too far away, and if the game is anything like the article stated, than we have a lot to look forward to. But I am out for today, see you next time gamers.

Take care,

Mr B4

A lot can happen in a week. I was recently on Vacation, with my family, this week. Gaming was the last thing on my mind. However with E3 and the Billion dollar warrenty situation; I may have picked a good time to take off.

Well now I am back, and something is eating away at me. So here I go with my “Conspiracy Theory” (or thats how it was reffered to on Major Nelson’s Podcast)

I will start by stating Peter Moore has done a lot for Xbox. As far as a figure-head goes, he promotted the console in a vibriant, intelligent manner. He made his name a staple on the MS team. I tip my hat to what I concede as a job well done.

So why am I writing this? I want to let Major Nelson and Moore know why people will draw conclusions to his departure:

You’re the Captain of the Ship. In smooth sailing you stand at the helm and bask in the glow of those green rings. However when the dust hits the cooling fan; you don’t jump ship.

You’re on record as saying your a Family man first. That was a big reason for your departure. I saw Titanic several times. Isn’t it “Women and Children first” or were you just referring to your family?

You also said your Children wanted to move:

I, like you, have kids. They, like yours, want to eat. With that in mind my career comes first.

Finally the last thing you announce at your MS title is your taking up residense at EA. Isn’t this the same company that took micro-transactions to a whole new level? So EA goes from leaving the Xbox out of the loop (remember the early Xbox days) to owning the one person who spoke loudest for the console.

In the end it doesn’t matter to most why Peter decided to jump ship. However callingthose who post and blog about possible scenarios “conspiracy theorists” is just lame. Perhaps thats the reason you had a hard time relating to all those pissed off red ringed customers. You couldn’t read your own writing on the wall.

-There I said it!

I bet most of you thought that since i haven’t been able to play games with you guys on Xbox live that i might be gone from XBL Radio forever, guess what, I am back, but this time as a writer.

I’ve had a few problems lately with my 360 and my internet(no three rings of death, but close enough). I can either set up my router so i can play games online, or have an internet connection on my computer. I guess this is more or less a moral dilemma to me because i just wish i could have both and be done with it, but i can’t and that’s where I am stuck. If you guys have any way of helping me out here, please let me know because i want to get back to some gaming nights and keep on fragging Mr. Steve like i used to.

Well anyways, it’s great to be back as a writer, as a poster in the forums, and as a part of the greatest gaming community out there. I will do my best for all of you, because the gamers are the best people out there, rock on.

Take care,

Matt(Mr. B4)

Wednesday at 5 AM EST, Wing Commander Arena, a space combat action game, was released on the Xbox Live Market place for 800. Wing Commander Arena is a spin-off from the franchise Wing Commander, which was released in 1990. Wing Commander was published by EA and developed by Gaia Studios. Just as expected for an Xbox Live Arcade game, Wing Commander Arena was completely remade from the ground up; having better graphics, sound, and enhanced features such as multiplayer over Xbox Live as well as playing in 2D as opposed to 3D, so don’t expect a souped up port.

This is being written from the point of view of a person who is looking for another good Xbox Live Arcade game. Just seeing the videos on IGN made me excited for this title, despite not playing its predecessors. When I played my first single player match, I noticed that the controls were very easy to pick up. Everything felt fluid and natural. The first game that came to my mind when I played this was Star Fox for the N64. I felt a similar level of enjoyment from Wing Commander, despite playing in 2D. As far as game balance goes, Giga Studios nailed it. It was as easy to go on the attack as it was to defend, making for very interesting battles. Other than straight up deathmatches, Wing Commander had an interesting gametype. This gametype had two GIANT motherships. The object of the gametype was to destroy the opponent’s mothership. The mothership was equipped with turrets and weapons. The mothership could not be destroyed by firing it in general; it could only be destroyed by taking out the mothership’s weakspots. Overall this gametype was intense and lengthy.

The best part of Wing Commander is the plethora of power-ups and ships at your disposal. Power-ups had a wide variety of effects ranging from defense to offense. Some of these included energy efficiency, clone, absorption, refill weapons arsenal, enhance shields, and MUCH MUCH more. Ships in Wing Commander ranged from little fast ships to colossal tanks. Each ship could hold four weapons and had its own stats such as hull strength, thrust power, turning radius, and velocity. However, I was very disappointed about one part of Wing Commander Arena. It lacked 4 player local multiplayer; a feature that is now becoming less and less of a trend on the Xbox 360. 4 player splitscreen would have been totally possible, but it only has single player and online.

If you are looking for a fast paced action game, Wing Commander Arena is for you. Only playing for just a few hours, it feels like Wing Commander Arena has made its way in the top five Xbox Live Arcade Games. Overall, Wing Commander Arena is definitely worth the 800. I would definitely recommend Wing Commander Arena as a purchase for any hardcore gamer.

Hey I just wanted to let you guys know how awesome you were and what has happened. First, sorry for the delay on updating this. I never knew how big of a thing this was going to be nor did I realize how much work it entailed.

Alright now for our final stats. We took game donations for about a month or so and we received just a little over 200 games. Thats right, over 200! All this because you awesome gamers out there wanted to show support to our troops.

We also received help from a few awesome developers which include, EA, Activision, Tell Tale Games, and the biggest donor, The Behemoth, who donated themselves a whooping 96 games. So with all that being said I just want to thank everyone that showed support whether you donated or helped by just spreading the word, it all mattered and none of this could have been done without your guys (and gals).

I will hopefully be posting more pics and letters later on from some the the troops that received these games. Thanks again everyone, you guys make this the best community out there to be a part of.

Come join us tonight for an XBL Radio Gaming Night. Tonights game, Bomberman!! We will kick off gaming night at 7pm pacific time, all you have to do to join us is send me a message over Xbox Live requesting an invite. Now space is limited, especially with Bomberman maxing out at 8 players so it will be strictly first come, first serve. But if you don’t get in or don’t have the game, don’t worry, because all you have to do is check out our forums to see what else is being played tonight and message that person. So take it easy everyone and I hope to see you online tonight.

Welcome back to the 2nd part of the comparison. This time were looking at the multiplayer and the extra/other features so I hope you kept your seatbelt buckled. If you missed the first part you can read it here.

Multiplayer
This is where Forza simple destroys DiRT in every way. DiRT only has one mode online-play mode and it’s a dismal one. You and up to 99 other players race at the same time! But, each on your own track competing for lap times on a limited amount of tracks. Now I don’t understand why they couldn’t include real racing with multiple cars on the track in this game; but, according to Codemasters they were too busy making the single player portion of the game. I would have preferred the game to be delayed then ship with this horrible online play. And along with that comes horrible voice chat, think about private chat but set up by the game where you invite 1 other person to talk to them. Now I understand 100 people talking would not only be laggy but extremely loud. But why limit it to only one? A better option would be to choose a channel system (like in PDZ or Solider of Fortune 2). I’m disappointed to see the online play so limited in this game as I think that often gives the bulk of the replay value. But hopefully DLC will be released containing full multiplayer or DiRT 2 will have it.
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Alright this weekends game is Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. This weekend is going to be a little different though, we are going to be doing the defender mode to help all of us get the Ultimate Defender Achievement so if you would like to join, check our XBL Radio Gaming Night thread right here, it contains all the info and rules. And as an added bonus one lucky, and random, person will win a free copy of Vampire Rain just for attending. So I will see you all there.

Thrillhouse17 wrote this in our forums, I felt he was dead on in pretty much his entire summery so I figured I would post it here for the world to see,

I was very underwhelmed and disappointed. They showed very little new material, and didn’t make many large announcements.

Opening: Total fan service, and dragged on. We’ve all heard the Halo theme, we want to actually hear the music while we SEE the game. (more…)