Vote Halo 2!

Gphoria, the "award show for Gamers" is currently taking online votes for all categories. You have to registar, but it only takes a few minutes. Be sure to head over and vote for what should be game of the year, Halo 2.

LINK

Also, what do you think of Blogger's new picture uploader? Before, if I wanted to inlclude a pic, I had to use Hello, Google's image transfer thing. Hello works really well, and I loved using it, but when I got a new laptop, I never redownloaded the files.

Wipeout Pure: Gamma Pack 2

Why can't they update their damn site? My PSP can't hold a WiFi connection to save its dead pixeled life. I'm still trying to get that pack...and it would be alot easier if they would just pop up their online download NOW!!

Still Gone...No PSP

I can't publish the PSP review today, as planned, because my WiFi hotspot is iffy at best. The file, which ois on a little USB drive, aka as my PSP, is just too big to upload right now. Plus, I'm a little busy to fuss with it just now.

Hopefully things will be back to normal tomorrow, June 22. I (should) have the file available by midnight tomorrow. I can't promise it any sooner.

PSP News: Gamma Pack 2

Looks like a new wave of content is ready for download for the hit game Wipeout: Pure on the PSP.

Tomorrow, Gamma Pack 2 will be released, which is supposed to inlucde two new maps, one enitilted "Ubermall", as well as at least one new skin and ship.

The content is free, and will be avialble via direct download on your PSP using a WiFi hotspot, or, by using a PC to download via normal Internet and then by transfering to a PSP with a USB cable.

No BBall...No Hotel

Ah, the joys having no control over you life. Like I posted yesterday, I was supposed to head out to a Padre/Dodger game today. I was also supposed to stay in a hotel in nearby Temecula, CA to aviod the whole midnight drive home thing. Unfortunatly, it turned sour on both accouants.

First, the hotel was easily the worst I have ever stayed in. The price was $169 for a "suite" that consited of basically a bed, s few extra feet of floor space, and two foldable chair beds. Heres where things start to turn to the worst. My first step is to turn on the A/C, which, not surprising, consists of a swamp cooler. The smell was unbearable. After about an hour I realized there was no why I could sleep here. The dead bugs under the chair, a wasp nest, and no free WiFi (even worse, they wanted to charge me) made the desicion all the easier.

I a not a particuly picky person who has to have things just so...but, I do need basic nesscites, and for $169, I expect to get a nice room. The management explained the hotel state as "rustic" and "an antique". The excuss dosn't cut it for me. Luckily, the refunded me $110 and I went to go stay at a nearby Hampton. Much better hotel, with free WiFi (How I am currently blogging this)

To top it off, once I was there, my "party" realized that the tickets were not for today. Haha! Great. So, I am stuck in Temecula, a now at least in a livable hotel room, that charges for eveything. I geuss I just never notcied the hotel charges. $7 for an hour of GameCube (Not even Xbox mind you. An hour of Double Dash or Animal Crossing is not worth $7. I could buy the game for that price.)$12.99 for Internet access, and about $4 to watch anything on TV, which, by the way, now has a Tivo-esque service that allows you to sorta rewind and record. I didn't pay for it, so I can't be sure...but in theory it sounded like a good idea. The TV also had in theater somehwere movies, like Fever Pitch and Geuss Who, but I wasn't impressed with the picture quality.

Ahhhh...what a day.

SAT Results Tomorrow

I'm a tad bit worried about what I'll get. That test was so hard...I'm hoping for a 1900-2000...I know its alot, but hey, with a 4.0 GPA I should score that high, shouldn't I?

What will be interesting is to see what my essay score is...just to see how big a deal length is. I wrote the absolute maxium allowed...so, according to several LA Times Ed/Op writters...I should be OK.

Coming This Week

Ahhh, nothing to actually post right now...but I have a couple of big stories I'm going to be posting throughtout the week. Here's whats coming down the runway this week:

Monday: Padre/Dodger Game, Possible Live Audio

Tuesday: The PSP Review (4 Pages Long!)

Wednesday: PSP Games Review (Wipeout, Twisted Metal, and Lumines)

Thursday: Nintendo's Future (Long....article)

Free Stuff For Going to ROTS?

This weekend, get free stuff for going to see ROTS? Count me in!

It looks like everyone that goes to see Revenge of the Sith this weekend will get a cool, "Who's Your Daddy" poster just for buying a ticket. Sounds good to me. I might not be able to head out to a theather this weekend, as I have to travel tomorrow for Father's Day and it's alreadly late today, but I'll probably look around in ebay for a poster after-the-fact.

Another promotion that dosn't end this weekend is this See It Again Pinball one. Looks like everytime you head out to see ROTS, save the ticket, send it in, and you could win a pretty cool pinball machine valued at over $2000 (That seems like alot to me...are all pinball machines this expensive?)

Looks like Lucas is trying to get ROTS back at the #1 spot in the box office. In recent weeks, it has slipt to number 3 and below, suffering from hits like "Mr. and Mrs." and "Cinderalla Man". Altough I can't frankly see why anyone would want to go see any of those movies. Expect ROTS to fall out of the top five once "War of the Worlds" hits on the 29th...just too many movies out for a May release to stay on top.

That's Me!

I just made the news!

Well, my town anyway.

For starters, I live in a pretty small urban little town, by the name of Yucaipa. That little town was rocked by a 4.9 earthquake that put it on ABC, NBC, FOX and CNN for more than three hours!

As we speak, helicopters are flying over my house capturing the scene. Nothing of my stuff was damaged or even fell down, but I did feel the rather long quake.

I took some pictures of the news cast and of the helicopter scene that I'll upload latter. But, for now heres a Reutors news story! Reutors!

LINK

EB Games Rip Off

Cheek this out...I suppose this is simply a time mess up, but, still, I would be pissed if I paid the full $50 if the game was a Platnium Hit.

LINK

I was shocked to see it as a PH, though. Pretty good value, definatly worth the pick-up. In fact, it's also worth noting that alot of SW games are getting marked down right now...I just got Galexies, a complete collection of all three games for less than 30 bucks.

No HD "Revolution"

Nintendo annouced last week that its next-gen console, the Revolution, will not support HD games because it "costs too much." Okay, that wasn't a real quote. But cost is the reason why HD wont be supported.

IGN now wants everyone to email Nintendo to say, hey, WTF, I want HD. While your at it, I suggest asking them at least one of the following bonus questions:

• Does Nintendo give out free drugs to its employies? If not, how do you guys say the crazy things you do?
• What is Nintendo On? Are you guys simply trying to get rid of old Virtual Boy helmets?
• How do you manage to pay the electric bill?

Go ahead, ask 'em. Heres their email addy nintendo@noa.nintendo.com

Music Wars: M$ to Fight iTunes

Today, the cheif officer of the Xbox/360 project, Robbie Bach, was promoted to work with the MS Music service to "make it compete with iTunes". To do that, Robbie will have to change his job from making a cool thing not so cool, to making a sucky thing cool.

Xbox was already a cool product, and I doubt Rob had any problems trying to get people to see the black box as cool. But, what a change it will be in trying to get the MS music service cool enough to compete with Apple's iTunes.

Halo Movie: What $10 Million SHOULD Buy

All over the web, sites are already making their wishes known for the Halo Movie. Cheek out IGNs here, the best all-around list, and mine below.

Story
The story overall just needs to make sense. It needs to both fit in with the games, but yet be its own as well. I don't want to see it as simply a reiteration of the games, yet, it should not go too far from the orginal source. The best bet for te story would rest on a connection between 2 and 3, but, in the posistion Master Cheif was left in, it might not be for the best. I want to fight that Earth battle, god damn it!

Overall best bet: side story of Halo 2/ gap for 3

Cast
The best bet for a cast would be to have a literal no-name be the Master. No one should realy see his face, just hear a voice. For that, I would love to see the voice-over actor in the game do the same voice for the movie. (Think Vader voice-overs). As far as Cortona and Johnson goes, Cortona is a hands down perfect role for Jenifer Garner (Alias). She has proven to both smart and kinda sexy, in that geek-love way. We all know who has to be Johnson, it's essential that Samual L. Jackson is the hands-down only thought for the Serg.

Type
I personal will only see this movie if it is live-action. I still don't think animated movies "qualify" as real movies. Just my opinion, but, I don't like them.

Rating
Must be R. No question about it, an M rated game must transfer as an R-rated movie. Partly for the cool action, and partly to keep the boger-eating 11-year olds out.

More People Hate the Cell, Sony Burns Again

Ah, the harsh world that is the tech industry. Today, comments flew from both sides of the fence in the early rounds of the sure-to-be-firece PS3 V. 360 battle.

On the Sony side, the Kutaragi Sony-smack talker once again laid down some smack on the 360, calling its backwards compatability "flawed":

"As for Xbox, when the new generation comes out this November, the current Xbox will become the old generation. So when that happens, the Xbox will be killing itself. The only way to avoid that is to support 100% [backward] compatibility from the first day. But Microsoft won’t be able to commit to that, it is technically complicated. "

Not committing? This coming from a company that hasn't even finalized hard tech specs for their console?

He then went on to diss some pixel shadder thing in the 360, which is too complicated for me to understand:
"As for ATI’s architecture, the vertex and pixel shader are unified and that looks good at first glance but I think it will have some difficulties. For example, where will the results of vertex processing be placed and how will it be sent [back] for pixel processing? If at one point it gets congested, everything is going to slow down. Reality is different from what is drawn in a picture. If we're taking a realistic look at performance, I think nVIDIA's approach is superior."

Which leads me to my next argument, on the other side of the fence. Today, sources (NY Times) reveled that Steve Jobs was not impressed by "The cell", the driving power behind Sony's next-gen everything. It seemed reasonable to belive back at GDC that a Sony/Apple marriage was coming, but now, it looks like Apple ran away from the alter. Add to Apple to the growing list of people not impressed by the "Cell".

STARD Tourny Details

While I still need, well, EVERYONE, to join the tourny, I have set in stone some of the basic tenets, in the hope that someone will read and want to participate.

Tourny open to all Xbox Live members, with the following games:

• Halo 2
• MechAssult 2
• Whacked!
• NBA 2K5
• Call of Duty: FH

To consit of four daily rounds, and one final showdown.

Monday, August 15, 2005 Round 1

Game: Halo 2 Type: 8-Player FFA Deathmatch. Bottom Three eliminated

Play will end once 50 players are left.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 Round 2

Game: Whacked! Type: 4 Player FFA Deathmatch Bottom Two eliminated

Play will end once 16 players remain

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 Round Three

Game: NBA 2K5 Type: One V. One, West Coast V. East Coast Loser eliminated

Play will end once 4 Players remain

Thursday, August 18, 2005 Round Four

Game: Call of Duty Type: One on One deathmath, Best out of seven Overal loser eliminated

Play will end once 2 players remain

Friday, August 19, 2005 Final

Game: Random (Out of above 5) Type: Deathmatch 1V1, best out of seven Overall loser elminated

email me at stardrummer@gmail.com to enter (Free!!)

Winner to Recieve choice of PSP or Xbox 360*

*as long as 100 entrants are recieved.

I Guess There Is No Free Lunch

I just found this interesting quote from some Japanese Nintendo dude:

"There's rumors floating on the Internet that the Virtual Console will be available for play for free, but we have no plans to distribute [the games] without charge.

There goes the only reason why I was excited about the Revolution...oh well, back to the real console show off...

Last Day of School

So, today was the final, last day of school for the year. Ah, the free time I now have! With all this free time, I will once again head back over to Halo 2 and try to improve my puny level 11.

(Play Green Day muisc)
What a year.

2nd to Last Day of School

Think back to August...ahhhh...what closer this brings.

So, today was the second to last day of my junior year. We got yearbooks on Friday and today was finals for History and English, although, since those were AP classes, the finals were not, should I say, hard.

The summer is so close I can taste it. Sure, with it comes my driving test, band camp and college work...but ahhh the nice late mornings will feel nice indeed.

Burn!

Ken Kutaragi just dissed the 360. In a major way.

While most MS employes with direct people contact, namly Major, have been polite when discussing the next-gen consoles differences, Ken, the PS3 father, was bold, crass and just plane wrong. Here's his main quote:

"the messages of the Xbox 360 and PS3 differ clearly. Xbox 360 emphasized it is a game machine which is complete as a platform. PS3 emphasized the possibility of technology."

I love when people make fun of Xbox because it is a game machine. The hard facts are that the onyl reason I'm going to spend $300+ on a console IS TO PLAY GAMES. Sure, DVD is nice. Sure so is music. But I already have a Sony Player and an iPod. Frankly, what I don't have and thus the reason of my purchuse, is the gaming machine itself. When I buy a 360, it will be without a doubt because of the gaming possibilites.

Don't get me wrong, I love that the consoles will be able to do more than just game. But, in my book, all of those features will never change the core of why I buy a gaming console.

And, if you want to talk about the future of technology, Ken, lets look at your console. In todays world, your console seems like one of those old superccomputers. Sure it will have raw power, but in reality it will mean nothing. It will take 3.5 years for the PS3 to start really using its hardware. Mark my words: the launch titles for 360 will look much better than the PS3.

And remeber, X360 is the only console with Halo. 'nough said.

GameStop Morons

So, I head out over to a local GameStop to cheek out GTA:SA, probably to buy it. I was all ready and eveything when this idoit behind the counter informed me that, "Hey, dude, I can't sell the game untill midnight". I tried to convicne him that it came out TODAY, the 7TH, but her wouldn't budge.

Needless to say, I walked out of the store san San Andreas. I did pick up Wipeout Pure for my PSP, which looks pretty good so far. I'm still writting up an in-depth review of the PSP (I'm talking 5 MB .pdf file here), so bear with me.

Maybe this weekend I'll head a few miles over to an EB and see if they will sell me the game. Maybe.