Congratulations again to the winners. Whether I continue my monthly contests here on my blog or elsewhere, I'll be sure to at least make a blog directing my followers to it.
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I'm not big into these sort of statements so I'll keep this brief. I am putting my GB Weekly Feed blog on (most likely permanent) hiatus. I have two main reasons for this.
Not enough people really use or even see it, which defeats the purpose of it anyways.
I need to make time for other projects.
I initially started the weekly blog in the first place just to keep myself writing a little on a regular basis. I couldn't think of anything to write about, so I decided to promote material by overlooked users. I would still like to promote users somehow, but if I decide on a way to do so, it will not be in a format so similar to The Community Spotlight.
As for contests, I'll keep doing that one way or another. The current contest with three prizes is still going. Keep an eye out for more from me in the future.
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I was going to have a recent game as the prize for this month's contest, but I have decided instead to offer several less expensive titles. No designing this month, so entering will be much easier. I had a sudden urge for a Double Fine theme. Note: You're on the honor system to buy the XBLA game with the points. I will follow up with that winner, so don't do anything to taint your name (you also get $5 extra, so don't be a chump).
Simply post here stating your most important contribution(s) to Whiskey Media (any site). Blogs, reviews, wiki, paid membership, etc. Also state the game(s) you would like in order of importance (1 being the one you most want, then go from there). Only naming one game does not lower your chances of winning. Please do not list games you do not want, do not intend to play, or already own. Also state if you need a PAL version and I'll see what I can do for you if you win.
Deadline
March 12, 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time (GMT - 5)
*One prize per winner. Winners chosen at random. Deliveries only made to actual addresses (no P.O. box).
Since I terminated release dates from The Weekly Feed, the calendar is obviously gone too. I had planned to replace it with something, but a lack of feedback and ideas has left me a bit aimless. If I think of something (or someone super cool suggests something great), then I'll edit it in. I'll have more free time to experiment once I'm back in school, or should I say when I stop working full time. I had some free time, so I updated my APB Reloaded thread with more Beta details and general updates.
Speaking of free time, I actually did some decent gaming this week. First of all, I've been playing a bunch of Minecraft. I downloaded four texture mods, but have only tried one so far. It is an amazing HD texture pack and it makes the game so much better to me (and I'm no graphics whore). I also got a cel-shaded pack, a Legend of Zelda pack, and a clay pack (makes everything look like it's made of clay). The game has been crashing on me though (even without new textures) since the recent update with beds. Hopefully Notch and Co. will fix that after GDC because it's apparently a widespread problem.
I also jumped back into Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. This is my favorite multiplayer game of all time and I've been dying to play more. Punkbuster has dicked me around a bit while trying to join games, but I have gotten onto a couple servers. I've read Windows 7's UAC settings may be responsible, so I'll see if I can lower that to join more games. Anyways, the game still holds up and is incredibly competitive. It's been a long time since I played, so my skill is a bit off. I did manage to stay in the top 3-5 simply because I played the classes well. Six medics and no field ops is a frustrating site to see, so I played FO a lot even though it's not my favorite class. It's a really good game to train your PC aiming abilities though. It takes more bullets to kill enemies than more modern games so you focus on head shots a lot (even then it takes 3 hits with an smg). Look for GLHB if you happen to be playing next week.
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Holy crap, did you guys write enough reviews this week!? I am glad to see more consistently worthwhile reviews being posted though, so keep up the good work. Let's see some more of those video reviews, too. Oh, and Video_Game_King finally finished his Braid review. Be sure to read it and give it a positive rating. I will probably keep the format I used today for reviews (group multiples, list singles). But, as always, I'll brainstorm ways to improve things and take suggestions as well.
I'm not sure what's up with the emblems not displaying correctly. I did everything the same as always. I'll create an error topic on it tomorrow if I can't get it fixed. You may also have noticed I don't have one for Aspiring Writer yet. Just laziness on my part; I have the design ready, but haven't actually created it yet. I need to finish a few I have lined up actually. To my more faithful readers: Do you think I should distinguish the top-tier emblems from the rest with a different color scheme? For example, Arrow Pointing Down is the "best" emblem for join date. Maybe use red silhouettes for those?
I have a few plans for this week. I'm definitely going to start working on my special GB project again. I also have a couple of topics I need to update in the forums. Next weekend will be the March Preview Edition which means a new contest and prize. I have not finalized a prize decision, so I will consider prize suggestions between now and the next Weekly Feed post.
On a more personal side of things, I bought a new mouse and season one of Archer. That's all for this week!
Winner:MarkWahlberg Prize: Alan Wake (X360) Full Game Download Code
MarkWahlberg posted my favorite design for the GB Weekly Feed (you may have noticed it above). Thanks to all who entered their own designs. Next month's contest will not require designing, so keep an eye out for it if you want to win free stuff.
"Wait a minute," you may be thinking, "Where's the new and upcoming releases?" Well, obviously not here. I don't like reporting inaccurate release dates, and I seem to have trouble finding reliable dates. Plus, it is not really relevant enough to what I'm doing here with the Weekly Feed. So, unless there's much outcry for it to come back (I doubt it), it is history. You may also notice some new formatting. I'm not sure I will keep the reviews format exactly this way, but I will keep the games grouped somehow. I'll think about adding something new to make up for lost content.
I played a bit of Stacking and I'm really loving it so far. I thought it would be easier to find all solutions but it was a pleasant surprise to find out how complex some are. I bought Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood yesterday, but I doubt I'll be playing it anytime soon (I have a huge backlog building up). I'm a bit disappointed with how incredible unproductive I was this week, so next week I'm going to try to make up for it.
As usual, please comment and/or give suggestions. What do you want more from the Weekly Feed? Is there anything you don't like? Would like more blogs from me during the week? What would you like to see for the next contest?
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Another fairly uneventful week for my gaming. I'm pretty much grinding Flowerz on WP7 for achievements now. The fun has long past. I will definitely be buying Stacking when it comes out and I'll make time to play it even if I shouldn't. I've also made some major strides in my secret project and hopefully it will start developing much quicker once I have a good system going. As is, it's only about 6% done. And no, that number is not arbitrary.
Speaking of stuff I'm working on, I am very disappointed with the turnout on my Alan Wake giveaway contest. If you missed it, it is in last week's GB Weekly Feed and the deadline is one week away. I don't care where you post it as long as I get it. I may have to reschedule when I post the blog so I get more views.
To all readers, I'm still open to suggestions for this weekly blog. If there is anything more you want to see then let me know. Or if there is something that you don't like, too.
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After everything you see above, I'm not really in the mood to type more so I'll keep this part brief. I got the board game Dominion + all of its expansions in the mail this week. I look forward to trying that after Will Smith's glowing recommendation. I also bought all of the DLC for Fallout 3 on the PC via GFW Marketplace. I tried playing some but the game crashed and I didn't come back to it. All of my WP7 games are still being played, so no reviews ready for those yet.
As promised, guides are now in the Weekly Feed. I'd like to see more of those from users so I can keep posting them every week. This edition is also a monthly special. I intended to have sales figures for games released in December (the previous month), but I decided to leave that out unless it receives popular demand to be a monthly feature. The preview calendar will return each month but I will definitely make it more readable for the future.
To start speculation and hype, I'm putting this out there: I am working on a super awesome secret project for Giant Bomb. It will hopefully be ready in 1-2 months. It involves something users love dearly and free stuff from me to you. Well, specifically, one of you. Let the rumors begin!
And now, I'd like to present my final monthly special feature...
Monthly Contest
So many users are in the giving spirit; it brings a tear to my eye. The more the merrier, right? Each month I will have a small contest in which the winner will receive a free item or items declared as the prize. Contestants will have two weeks to complete the contest unless stated otherwise. Without further delay, here's contest number one!
Design a banner for my blog series, The Weekly Feed. I will choose a winner directly based on my favorite entry, even if I don't end up using it. Bonus points for making the banner blend well with GB's background gray color. I also like neon against dark colors. Good luck!
Deadline: February 12, Saturday @ 11:59 PM Eastern Time (GMT - 5)
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***The website would not display all of the recent reviews for me, so I will update this section when I can see the rest of them***
New From Origina1Penguin
Busy with personal stuff this week, so no gaming at home. However, I did get a couple new mobile games including Zombies, a WP7 game which is apparently based off of a board game. I ran some new 16 gauge speaker wire in my bedroom, but I still need to set up the speakers again. Oh, and I bought my ferrets a new hammock. Ooh! AND I watched the entire first season of The Walking Dead on AMC. That show is really good. I hope the rumor of a Telltale game after it is true.
For Giant Bomb, I made a thread with APB Reloaded information. Concrete details are scarce right now, so there isn't much to it. I will edit in updates as I see them.
For the Weekly Feed, I have a couple changes. I didn't screw up the dates. I have moved it's release to Sunday and will cover the previous Sunday through Saturday. This is easier for me and it allows me to include any late postings from Saturday that I would have otherwise missed. I've also refined my emblem categories slightly. Starting next week, I'll begin including guides from GB into the Weekly Feed as well. It won't always have something though because I only include items that were released the week I'm covering in the Feed. Sadly, guides aren't posted that often. I'm going to look into listing downloadable game releases as well.
Remember, next weekend will be the monthly special. As always, comments and constructive criticism is welcome. Improve the Weekly Feed to your liking!
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Featured for having three thought-provoking blogs. I enjoyed pondering his points, and although I may not agree with everything written, I still encourage more blogs like it from him and other users.
Wow. You guys have been busy. It took a long time to go through all those forum topics and reviews. That's why this is going up Sunday instead of Saturday. Don't be alarmed if that happens again in the future, but I'll always try to have it up on Saturday.
A few changes to the format this week. I'm now picking noteworthy topics as well as blogs. I've also included next week's releases in case anyone wants to investigate them before release. To top it off, another emblem category was added: wiki points. The wiki is very important to the site so I felt it needed to be shown as well. You may also have noticed I don't have the emblem for quest levels 10-19 complete yet, but that should be fixed by next week.
Now on to personal stuff. I have the photo of my Tron controllers as promised. Bask in their glory:
All done? Have a second take if you need to. The orange controller was the rare one with only 250 made, so it was obviously more expensive. I managed to get both for reasonable prices on eBay though. I'm also waiting on my Back to the Future Trilogy box set to come in from eBay so I can watch them before playing the Telltale game.
I didn't play any games during the work week at home, but I did manage to play some Windows Phone 7 games on Xbox Live. I may may post some impressions or reviews in the future. Today, I finished Dragon Age: Origins and the Witch Hunt DLC. I really enjoyed the last hour of the main game but I was a little bit disappointed by the ending just being text. The end of Witch Hunt gave me a little bit of comfort, but I still think it ended very abruptly and poorly overall. I'll move on to the other DLC next week.
I've been watching the DC Universe Online coverage from several sources and I'm really interested in the game. However, I have never "subscribed" to a game and I'm still not keen on the idea. So, I'm waiting for Champions Online to go free-to-play and I'll try it out. If nothing else, I usually dick around in character creators for hours. Be sure to check out GB user Matt's videos of DC Universe Online (linked above).
That's pretty much it for now. Again, feel free to give suggestions and constructive criticism about the Weekly Feed. I'm still working on improvements on my end though, so expect it to keep coming bigger and better.
I couldn't get a whole lot done this week because I was so tired from work. I did manage to keep my promise to myself to start up this weekly blog. I also put up a not-so-successful humorous blog, but we'll just move on from that. Other than that, I was busy playing Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition and creating emblems for this blog. But more on that later. Back to Dragon Age, wow is that a long game or what? I already owned a copy of the game, but during the Steam holiday sale I just had to nab an Ultimate Edition copy. To save time, I've been cheating through the stuff I already did with my last character. I just don't have the time for those long battles. Anyways, I'm having a really great time with the story and characters. I can't wait to finish up the main game so I can start through all the DLC. Then I move back to Fallout: New Vegas.
I got a few thing in the mail. My Tron Xbox 360 controllers are both in (one blue, one orange). I'll put pictures of that up sometime next week. I also got Deadly Premonition from Newegg as well as the Forza 3 Ultimate Edition copy that I gave to my brother for his birthday. My new 360 slim is hooked up now and all the content I wanted to keep has been transfered to it. It's super sexy. My brother bought my old 360 and is gifting that to his girlfriend along with four great games. Now he'll be able to play co-op with me while he's away, so that's cool. I have an extra download code for Alan Wake, so I might have a contest for that at some point in the future.
Now to talk about this Weekly Feed thing. (I thought about calling it Weekly Explosion, but it seemed too cheesy) The purpose of this blog series is to point out noteworthy users in the community so you don't have to dig through the site to find them (like I've been doing). In case you somehow have missed it, ZombiePie has an ongoing project called The Community Spotlight which he also does weekly. I'm not trying to do the same thing exactly, but rather I'm trying to compliment his work by providing an alternate source of community appreciation. He has been doing a great job with for quite a while now, so definitely look for it anchored at the top of the General Discussion board.
I plan on expanding this a little bit. I'll add more emblems and categories for featured users. I just didn't have time for it this week. Also, I will feature a preview calendar at the end of each month as well as more game-specific preview content from myself. I'll make some fancy artwork (or try to, at least) and add more flare overall. Please give me any feedback you have. Would you like to see review scores next to each user review link? More info on featured users? Less links? Any feedback is appreciated, but preferably keep it constructive.
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