Who doesnt love a little online shopping?

With Christmas around the corner, it is time to start shopping for friends and family. As we ate our turkey last night, my brother and I were discussing what we would like to get for Christmas. He mentioned a few things including some video games I am not familiar with. In an attempt to find these video games I have been online for the last hour. Although no success in finding what he asked for, I did come across some great deals. The ones listed are all from Amazon.com.

Video game deals:

-Buy Wii Sport Resort and get bonus Wii Motion Plus free

-Buy Xbox Elite or MW2 Elite and get Left 4 Dead 2 free

-PS3 120 GB Bundle with Infamous, Killzone 2 and $10 Credit

-Street Fighter 4 for Xbox360- $19.98

-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up for Wii-$26.98

-Need for Speed: Shift Electronic Arts for PS3- $34.99

-Call of Duty: World at War Final Fronts & Call of Duty Legacy (Includes Finest Hour, Big Red One) & Call of Duty 3 all three for $101.79

Computer Game downloads (all for $6.99):

1.Supercow (Windows XP)

2. Princess Isabella: A Witch's Curse (Windows Vista / XP)

3. Ghost Town Mysteries - Bodie (Windows Vista / XP)

4. Farm Frenzy 3 (Windows Vista / XP)

5. Puzzle Hero (Windows Vista / XP)

6. Luxor 3  (Windows Vista / XP)

7. Jewel Quest III (Windows Vista / XP)

8. Campfire Legends: The Hookman (Windows Vista / XP)

9. Fishdom H20: Hidden Odyssey (Windows Vista / XP)

10. Chicken Invaders 2  (Windows Vista / XP)

11. Cake Mania: Main Street (Windows Vista / XP)

12. Luxor Mah Jong  (Windows XP)

Also, 10-15 dollars off selected games such as Borderlands, Madden NFL 10, Arkham Asylum, Wii Fit, controllers and other accessories.I suggest you visit their site before they're out of stock.

Happy Shopping!

Sims 3 Spoof Of...

Twilight: New Moon. What do the two have in common? Hard to say; one is a game and the other a movie. However, in todays society games encompass a lot of things that movies do as well. Safe to say both are growing to be interrelated. In the case I am presenting to you today, both entail the aspect of forming relationships (be it different or same sex). The Twilight Saga aims to get you emotionally involved with the characters and this Sims Spoof aims to poke fun at it. The video is complete with shirtless boys, lipstick wearing vampires, lots of making out, strange Sims 3 language, and awkward sexual confusion. I know you have heard enough about Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner and the rest of the cast of The Twilight Saga: New Moon to last a lifetime. I promise I will make this quick and painless. Well, Electronic Arts feels your pain and they have used The Sims 3 to parody the New Moon trailer (which has been played way too many times). I honestly dont know how I came across it but when I did, I found it amusing. Take a look for yourself...


Hilarious! I hope there is no Twilight game in development. Seriously, I love Twilight but that would be a bit much.

Behold for my new favorite game...

Modern Warfare 2 =) Surprised? Dont be, I'm sure I'm not the only one instantly addicted to the newly released game which smashed records, bringing in $310 million in 24 hours in North America. Mike Griffith, CEO of Activision Publishing, has reason to celebrate "the biggest launch in history across all forms of entertainment." My brother waited patiently for this limited edition Xbox (which included the game) and didn't even get to hook it up when he got home. How sad. The following day, I couldnt help but notice the black box as it sat on my living room floor patiently waiting for someone to open it. I wanted to be that someone. I hooked it up and attempted to play. Yes, attempted. I cant even begin to explain how difficult I found it at first. I didnt give up though, oh no, I kept trying. Ultimately, I got through the training and went on to play; I was hooked. The storytelling and cinematics are superb, I just lose myself. Before I knew it I spent 45 minutes trying to perfect my abilities to walk, aim and shoot at the same time. As easy as it sounded, it wasn't. Safe to say it will be a while before I can join Xbox Live (without any embarassment). I know, I'm a hypocrite passively criticizing people those who are devoted fans and wondering how they can play for hours. Well, my hat goes off to you fellow Modern Warfare fans, it is an amazing game. So amazing that Infinity Ward is already working on the "next installment" of the series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, where you take on the role of PVT. Keeshon Lewis. There will also be a Wii version of the game that includes a 17-pound controller, shaped like a M-249 Machine Gun. Sounds cool. Until then, I will happily settle for my five pound controller.

MW2 Xbox

My brother came into my room and told me that hes getting a "Modern Warfare 2 edition Xbox" so I looked at him and said "ughhh, okay." What the heck is a Modern Warfare 2 edition Xbox 360 and how does it differ from the orginial Xbox 360? Well, little do I know its the limited edition console which releases with the game November 10th. Apparently, fans can now 'arm' themselves with the Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 limited edition console, featuring an exclusive design inspired by the epic thriller. It includes more storage space than ever before in a 250GB hard drive, two Xbox 360 wireless controllers, as well as an Xbox 360 headset and a standard edition copy of Modern Warfare 2. That sounds cool, it also sounds expensive. The estimated retail price is $399. Not bad. I mean we do have a Playstation, why cant he just play that? "Its not the same." Ill take his word for it.

When I seen a picture I wasnt too fond of the faceplate; it's a little goofy. It doesnt put forth a 'modern warfare' theme, it is just gray with a stripe, F-141 and a 2 on it. Knowing myself I would walk in a room, see it, and ask why someone has an F-141 Xbox. If I played the game enough, I would know it is a multinational special operations group in the game. Other than the lack of 'exclusive design' it sounds like a fantastic deal. I know you can spend about $100 on the game and controller alone. I have heard that doubling the hard drive of the orginal would be expensive, so the 250GB is just like a bonus at this price. He has been looking into getting a 360 ever since the price dropped, this is the time to do it.

GTA: Don't try this at home...

Browsing through the internet, Im bound to find a couple of interesting stories. Some more bizarre than others but none the less, still interesting. Pick of the day: a man playing Grand Theft Auto IV for 40 continuous hours. What?! Thats what I said. I mean we've had an all night gaming session or four in our time, but 40 continuous hours is ridiculous. Especially when you consider the game, which in my opinion is not all that. Not from my experience at least. 20 minutes to a half hour was the longest I would spend playing this sixth addition to the GTA series.

 During our last class, we discussed this game in particular. How it is set in a fictional city based on modern day New York City (excluding Staten Island for some odd reason). It follows Niko, a war veteran from Europe, who comes to NYC in search of the American dream. Rather he gets involved in violence, crime and corruption. Good story line, but is it worth 40 hours of exploration? Chirantan Patnaik, a resident of Mumbai, India, thought so. "I enjoyed the game very much. It's fun playing long hours. It wasn't that exhaustive for me, as one might feel," Patnaik told long-running Indian news channel Zeenews. Is he crazy, one might ask. I think so, one would say. But hey, who am I to speak. This guy now holds the Guinness World Record for "Grand Theft Auto IV." He beat the previous record held by a U.S. citizen which stood at a mere 28 hours and one minute.  Sheesh. How do you stay awake that long? Even with an allowed 10 minute break every hour, how do you play GTA for that long?!  While my questions remain unanswered, one thing is certain, it makes for an interesting story. 



What is the longest single-sitting you dedicated to GTA? Or any game of that matter...

Release of COD5.

                    

             In one of my older posts I bluntly admitted that Resident Evil 4 was not as good as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Does this upset me? Absolutely not. I've watched my boyfriend play COD4 before and played it myself on my friends Wii, its a cool game. Playing it on the Wii was super hard and after I died about six times, I  gave up. My boyfriend (along with his 3724 friends) still hasn't,  he plays all the time. Literally ALL the time. Which brings me to something of high importance for all die hard Call of Duty fans: the release of the sixth installment of the Call of Duty series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on November 10th of this year.

 

Woohoo! Excitingggg...

          Modern Warfare 2 continues the gripping and heart-racing action of Modern Warfare as players face off against a new threat dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse. As Sgt. Sanderson, you  will be able to lead soldiers through battle in harsh combat scenarios that range from mountains in Siberia to the streets of Rio de Janeiro. You can face the threat alone or with other players in SpecOps mode. If you're looking for more intense action, there is always online. 

          
          I'm pretty sure I'm late on all the Call of Duty propaganda but give me a break, I was just introduced to the video game industry, okay? Speaking of an introduction, back in July, Activision said that the game was going to be "Modern Warfare 2" and that this was a big enough brand on its own right. Rumors led to the assumption that it was no longer going to entail the label of Call of Duty. As a copy of the cover leaked onto the web, the assumption was proven false. Now we must wait and see if the game lives up to all the positive buzz around it.

Holy game, Batman!

And the Guinness World Record for the Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever goes to...

 Arkham Asylum!

With this in mind, my friend, Kathy, went out and bought the game. I invited myself over and watched her play on her PS3(normal, right?). After watching the trailer in class, I automatically assumed it would be a great game, I didn't know it would be this big. 
This single player action game which explores Arkham Asylum, the famous nuthouse for DC Comics supervillains  (Riddler, Two-Face, Posion Ivy from Batman), gives you an insight to what seems like one of the longest days of Batmans life. Although the point of the game is to make you feel like Batman himself, I believe Joker is the main character. Heres why. Because from beginning to end (I suppose), he is moving the plot along. After he lures you (Batman) into Arkham, and traps you there, he taunts you. Joker then releases all the prisoners forcing Batman to not only face his enemies but also save the staff and figure out Jokers evil scheme for Gotham.  Even when not on screen taunting Batman, Jokers voice punctures the speakers. 

I didn't watch her long but it was long enough to realize that like most games, there are predetermined points you're forced into some sort of game play. In this case Kathy was the victim. When assaulted by a gang of thugs, she had to constantly press the X button to punch them all unconscious. (Its humanely possible to press it 16 times per second, she was at about 4). This doesn't work when enemies creep up from behind though. Fortunately the game gave you a little hint before they attacked (some sort of halo over their head) so when they do, you can counter the attack by pressing the Y button. Poor girl led to Batmans death plenty of times when she didn't know what to do. The game however explains tips to a solution on the Game Over screen, clever Id say. 


Batman, well Kathy, has to examine every nook and cranny in order to successfully stop Joker. I cant tell if she did. I will tell you one thing though, this game is quite entertaining to watch as it is being played by somebody else. Its a super dark, dangerous in a fun way, adventurous game that captures the true rivalry between Batman and Joker from day one. I recommend you go play it.


IGN Video Review of Arkham Asylum

Fact is, we love facts.

I soak up useless trivia. I came across a few interesting yet pointless facts from the world of gaming, and I would like to share them with you. 

~ Until recently, Sonic The Hedgehog wasn't only the name of Sega's speedy mascot, but also a gene on chromosome 7 of the human genome.

~ The play area of GTA: San Andreas is roughly 17 square miles. That’s about five times the size of Liberty City and four times the size of Vice City.

~The maximum achievable score possible in a game of Pac-Man is 3,333,360 points.

~ In the original arcade Donkey Kong game, Mario was called Jumpman and he was a carpenter, not a plumber.

~ Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon, got the idea for the worldwide Game Boy phenomenon after collecting caterpillars as a child and watching them change into butterflies.

~ While the original Atari Football game was first created in 1973, it wasn't released until 1978. It was delayed because the game couldn't scroll the screen -- players couldn't move beyond the area shown on the monitor. When the game was finally released, it became the first game to utilize scrolling, a key part of many games today.

~ The famously awful E.T. game for the Atari 2600 actually sold more than its most famous game, Space Invaders. (E.T. sold 1.5 million, while Invaders only a million.)

~  In 1986, Nintendo released a special Disk System peripheral for the NES in Japan. Among its features was a microphone in the controller, which certain games used, including an updated version of the original Zelda. You could only destroy a certain enemy by shouting into the mic. (I shout while playing as is.)

~ Mega Man is known as Rock Man in Japan. This was changed in America because 'rock' is well-known slang for crack cocaine, and the name stuck.

~  There are currently over 100 million Game Boys in the world; both the original and the colour variant. 32 million of them are in Japan, and there are 44 million in America.

~The name Atari comes from the Chinese game Go. 'Atari' refers to a situation where a stone or a group of stones is in imminent danger of being taken by another player; a state Atari ironically found themselves in when the brand was bought by French company Infogrames.

~The Xbox was originally named DirectXbox, as it was initially designed to show how Microsoft's Direct X graphics technology could benefit the console market.

~ The Texas Instruments TI-83 calculator has more graphics processing power than the Commodore 64. Amazingly, some basic C64 games can even be programmed into it.

~ The Original Devil May Cry was originally intended to be the next chapter in the Resident Evil series. The gun juggle move was a glitch, but became part of Dante's move set.

~Final Fantasy VII was originally designed for the Nintendo 64, but Square cancelled the project and moved to the PSone because of the lack of space in the console's game cartridges. FFVII would've filled 13 cartridges. 

~The first game to feature multiple endings depending on how you played the game was Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest on the NES.

~The Nintendo GameCubes proprietary disc can hold 1.5 GB of data, 190 times more than what an N64 cartridge can hold.

~ If you cheated while playing the Sega 32x version of Doom, after the game ends you're taken to a fake DOS prompt. You can't quit out of it, and the only way to escape the screen is to reset the console. If you didn't cheat, you get an extra cutscene.

~ Super Mario World for the SNES took 29,000 hours to program. Luckily, it went on to sell 17 million copies and was the best-selling game of its generation.

~ If, for some strange reason, you still have a Madden NFL 06 save game on your memory card, a special Madden van will be unlocked when you start up Burnout Revenge on PS2.

~ It's only humanly possible to press a button on a controller 16 times per second. This record was set by Toshuyuki Takahashi, a Japanese gamer.

~ In Germany, copies of Medal Of Honor: Frontline had to be reprinted because there was a swastika on the back cover. The developers also had to go back into the game and take out all the Nazi flags and other paraphernalia.

~ In its heyday, the Dragon Quest series was only ever released on weekends in Japan, because mid-week launches would see thousands of people pulling sickies to go and play it.

Want more? Click here. 

Gaming is on the move.

I feel like there aren't enough hours in the day for me to do what I have to do, let alone what I want to do. I went to Poland for the summer and over there it seems as if the day is never going to end. I had time for everything. Back home I'm always caught up doing something and before i know it, time for bed. I never have time to play video games. Never. I feel like I live in a bubble. Seriously, Im lucky if I get to play online once a week. As you can see Im not what you call an avid gamer. Curious to find out who is, I did some research. 


According to the NPD Group survey of the past six months, 63 percent of the US population is playing games, and 30 percent are playing more this year than last year. Gaming is on the move. 81 percent of US adults ages 18-29 said they are video gamers. To my surprise about only 20 percent play every day or almost every day. Consumers spend one-third of their entertainment dollar on video games. Studies show that the average gamer spends a little over $38 per month. And if you're an avid gamer, Im sure you spend a lot more (Being that you don't just buy one game a month and that those newly released games are around 50 bucks.)



People of all ages are picking up controllers and portables and playing hours on end. I get it, its addicting. The video game industry targets just about everybody. Apparently everybody but me. (Im going to start playing regularly so I can have better input, I promise). No, but seriously nowadays there are games that appeal to my 65 year old grandma, my 40 year old uncle, my 23 year old best friend and my 5 year old cousin. Thats why its on the move. Truthfully, anyone can be a video gamer, even an avid one. Some people have more time and are more devoted than others. I may not have time but 63 percent of Americans do. Grandmas playing Wii Sports at a retirement home, get the excitement and exercise they need without actually going bowling. People who never experienced war first hand still get to experience it second hand through a video game. I can go on forever because frankly video gaming has become a vital means of entertainment. Everyone has their own reason for playing. What is yours?

Best video game, oh its on like donkey kong

All games serve one purpose, to challenge and to entertain; some are just a lot more successful than others. When it came to writing about the best game I ever played, I had difficulty. I sat here in front of my computer thinking can I really narrow it down. Probably not but you can’t kill me for trying.

One of my favorites is Resident Evil 4. It was my runner up. I know it doesn’t measure up to Legend of Zelda or Call of Duty but those games will be up for discussion on a later post. Believe it or not I think RE4 is the most intense, terrifying and adrenaline pumping game I played on my Playstation. The fact that the the camera is focused behind Leon in his search of the presidents daughter, makes it super easy to see what is going on. See you later weird angels. That sense of fear and panic that builds up when you run into a bunch of zombies is addicting. I mean you do have plenty of weapons to choose from in order to kill them but these zombies are no longer slow and stupid. In this version they dodge attacks, they’re quicker and able to communicate with one another, fancy I suppose. 

Not as fancy as my man Donkey Kong and his partner in crime Diddy Kong though.

 I absolutely love the Donkey Kong Country 2 game. You must think I’m crazy calling this the best game I ever played but it definitely is. There is no other game, (except maybe Mario Brothers occasionally) that I can play repeatedly and enjoy it as much every time. It is a great game in every aspect. Let me explain why. First of all the hypnotizing music for every level is superb. EVERY level, and that’s rare. As you progress you explore various locations from a pirate ship, to a carnival and a beehive. Donkey and Diddy have more moves and a custom pistol/gun. You can’t go wrong with a crazy monkey that swims, swings from vine to vine or launches out of barrels all to recover his banana horde. He rides a mine cart, if that’s not fun I don’t know what is. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to play it but when I do, I have this thing where every time the cart has to jump, I make an upward movement with my controller, I suppose I think I can make it go higher or something. Yeah I know, I probably look like I have a muscle spasm while I’m doing it. No matter how I look, Ill always go back for more. 

video games, not so bad after all

Gaming has come a looooong way. I can honestly say its the fastest growing leisure activity in the world. You don't think so? Why is it that I can name at least ten new games for various consoles when I don't even play? Well because all my friends do. Its all about the XBox, Playstation and Wii. If you don't own one, or both or all three, you're a step behind everyone else. I suggest you get with the program.

From experience I know there are many stereotypes and perspectives of video gaming. One of which is the false idea of video games contributing to anti-socialism and decrease in creativity. As inexperienced and uneducated about video games as I am I cant do much but provide my own opinion. Where do I begin? Maybe at the year 1994 when I was first introduced to a video game on my neighbors Sega. Im not going to lie once I started playing I couldn't stop for at least an hour or two or until my annoying little brother began tugging on the controller indicating it was his turn. Either way I had to stop and when I did I was perfectly capable of returning to my normal life , genuinely happy that I am Izabela and not Sonic the Hedgehog. Which brings me to say that video games are nothing more than that, just video games. Whether its on Sega or Wii the video games are not taking over peoples lives, they are not destroying the imagination of current 6 year olds, they are basically providing entertainment and amusement to those involved.