A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced that it was going to allow beta for the series of new features that will be coming to all 360s sometime in November. I was actually really excited about this because I'm a huge fan of Twitter, and I'm on the site daily. I was also enthused, although not quite as much, about the ability to browse facebook on the console. I have a facebook, although I don't use it as much as most other people. And the last part of the update, the Last.fm section, I wasn't interested in at all, because for some reason I was under the impression that you would have to pay for the service. 
 
Anyway, so I booted up my 360 after the update and hopped on twitter, a pretty easy process. You just input your username/password and you're in basically. The twitter hub on the console is alright I guess, It's nothing special and it's not exactly easy to maneuver through it using a controller, it's kind've irritating. I'd imagine that I won't be using it very often, as it's much easier to just hop on the nearest PC. It's REALLY stupid to try to type out a whole tweet using the controller if you dont have the keyboard addon for the 360 controller, it actually gave me a headache after only a few tweets. 
 
Next, I decided to try out facebook, (which you must download a small file in order to use, its something like 26 MB or something). The facebook hub is fine I suppose, It'll be nice for pictures, etc because it allows a fullscrean slideshow of photos on your television. The actual browsing of the site, works like you'd expect, nothing really grand, but it's not too bad. Once again, the only problem comes when you actually need to TYPE something, it fails terribly... 
 
Lastly, the most impressive part of the package is Last.fm. It's kind've hard to explain what last.fm is, but basically it allows you to stream music from your 360, ANY music that is on Last.fm's database. It has an interesting feature where you put in an artist name and it compiles an entire 'radio' station comprised of that artist's music AND music that sounds similar. This is incredibly useful for discovering new music. And once you have listened to enough music, Last.fm will begin making suggestions of what music/bands/stations you might also enjoy which is pretty nifty. I have a feeling that this feature is going to keep my 360 on basically 24/7 and will probably end up causing me to have the RROD... but oh well, its worth it.

It's official! A couple days ago I completed the Call of Duty: World at War single player, and it wasn't the worst thing in the entire world though it was pretty bad. At the moment, I'm trying to unlock most of the game's achievements which requires me to go back and replay many of the missions. The only achievements that I'm nervous about going for are the ones for completing various missions on the veteran difficulty, which I have a feeling will be quite challenging. Lucky for me, I bought the second map pack on a splurge, I don't even like the game, but it will allow me to get the new nazi zombie achievements which will be nice.

I finally got my 360s disc drive to start working today so I put in CoD: W@W and although I'm pretty experienced with the games multiplayer (first prestige level 37), I've only completed a little less than half of the single player, and apparently for good reason. Now, by this point, most people know that the multiplayer side of World at War is decent, its fun to play but it copies nearly everything off of the previous game, so there isn't much new content. I've always played the game's multiplayer on and off whenever I had nothing else to play but I was never too interested in the single player but lately I've been wanting to start getting achievements again so I headed straight into single player, from where I had left off previously.

And let me say... this game sucks. I encountered a lot of issues with the hit detection when I was using a scoped rifle and the enemy AI was awful, some of the worst I've seen in recent months. And the fact that sometimes enemies could shoot you from incredible distances away and hit you but at other times be a few feet away and miss many...many times is just unreasonable. After seeing things like this in just the regular difficulty, I can only imagine that veteran will require no skill on outsmarting the AI but instead will be about, camping a spot and learning to throw back grenades with incredible dexterity.

In the end, I completed one or maybe two missions so I'm a little bit over the half way mark, and then I got side tracked with AIM and decided to stop playing. I think I'll be playing it a considerable amount the next few days because I hope to beat the game in order to write a review about it. But be warned, this game is not good.

So, hello everyone, it's been quite a long time since I have been on this site. I've decided to return in the hopes of writing reviews and making the site a better place generally. The current state of my gaming isn't good, I've been caught up in a lot of things lately, I have a girlfriend and... my 360s disc drive is broken so I can only play arcade games, nothing that requires a disc. But, I've managed, I've been playing a lot of Castle Crashers, and now that I've gotten into it, i am really enjoying it. Yesterday, I bought Braid and I found out I'm not quite as bad at puzzle games as I thought. I mean, I'm not good, but I'm not the worst ever. I'd like to collect all the puzzle pieces but I'm afraid I may need to cheet and use youtube walkthroughs to do it. :O but... at least i'd have the achievements I suppose. It's now summer so no school but there is still very little time for gaming, though I am trying to get back into it even with a broken disc drive.

That's all I have to say for now, IM BACK. yay.

So I guess yesterday the demo for Star Wars: TFU was released on the xbox live marketplace (and maybe PSN, but I don't know) so I downloaded the demo which was nearly a gig. I booted it up this morning and I simply loved it. Let me say that I'm not some huge star wars fan, I have seen the movies a long time ago and enjoyed them. When I was little, I had Full Throttle and it had a demo of this star wars game in it, and I played the demo every day. More recently I got Lego Starwars: TOT, played through it and liked it, and I also used to have the game based on the 3rd of the new star wars movies.

Okay so now about the game. This game is so uber l33t pwnage sauce. First of all, in the opening cut scene, you see the apprentice and DARTH VADER talking, and there is nothing cooler than Vader. The game keeps some of the tention from the movies when your master tells you to kill many innocent people and you feel regret but can only say "As you wish, my master".

When gameplaly starts its very intense. The buttons Y, B, RB, and RT, are used for various force attacks that can be upgrated over time for more power. You use X to swing your saber, A to jump, and left trigger to block. The force powers are obviously the highlight of the game and you can tell. The way the apprentice uses them really gives a feeling that he is a badass tough guy. Running into a room and firing three quick bursts of force in an enemies direction cannot be matched by any game. The sword play is also enjoyable but the saber just comes down to mashing the X button.

The graphics in the game are very well done. The thing that I find weirdest about the game is how the Apprentice holds the saber. Don't get me wrong, it looks hella cool but I don't see how it would really work in real life. Just imagine trying to hold the saber like that and do all these crazy moves he does.

After the demo, I am really excited about this game, but I don't know if I will be picking it up when it comes out just because I don't see too much replayability. It feels like a game that after one play through you're done with it and don't have too much insentive to get back in there and do it again. For this reason, I think I will wait and see some reviews, and then decide if its a buy or rent.