~ {warcadia} ~ War is Peace

This weeks upcoming Xbox Live Arcade releases are Marathon: Durandal (800 points) and Spyglass Board Games (400 points). Marathon is the classic FPS from Bungie, and considered the precursor to HALO. All the art has been redrawn in HD for Marathon. Personally I am looking forward to getting my ass kicked at chess on Live! Though I tend not to like games that have that live vision camera running. You can imagine why.

Two different ads have appeared online now suggesting that the Xbox 360 may get a $50 price drop. There is still no official word from Microsoft, but it’s looking more legitimate now. I could be just a summer sale being done by the individual stores competing with each other. But let’s hope it’s a permanent official price drop!

CheapAssGamer

Shadowrun was in trouble before it launched. Not a lot of people were talking positively about the game, and those who cared about the Shadowrun franchise were just scratching their heads wondering why this wasn’t an RPG. On the console side, gamers unanimously agreed that no single-player and only 9 maps made this game not worth $60. On the PC side, it was only $50 but required Windows Vista AND and Xbox Live account if you wanted to be able to play along with people on the 360. The hopes of a PC Gamer fans getting to own a console player with the superior mouse and keyboard control for a shooter was dashed, as FASA made sure players on the PC didn’t have the accuracy they were used to in their shooters. Overall, this complex shooter had an uphill battle, and the team lead from FASA going onto podcasts complaining about the low review scores didn’t boost sales amazingly!

So I wasn’t really too surprised when I was shopping for games and saw Shadowrun already under the heading “discounted items” at Play-Asia.com. I think a game with cross-platform play between the PC and 360 will be great when its the right title. I don’t think this is the one to sell us on the idea. Hopefully Universe at War will do it right!

I love me some Forza 2. I have never been a car guy, and don’t even really like driving. But Forza 2 has me coming around. I check out “rides” now on the streets, and I even watched a race on TV. The whole draw is the career mode which has me learning this unforgiving sim in order to win as much money and as many cars as I can. It really appeals to that pokemony “must collect everything” mentality. ( note: I do NOT play pokemon) With over 300 cars, collecting everything would be quite a feat. A quick race always turns into “just one more try”.

Well it looks like we can expect even more cars and tracks for Turn 10. From the websites Weekly Pitpass Report:

“I’ve gotten my inbox stuffed with questions and requests for Forza 2 downloadable content — are we going to have more cars or tracks? When is it coming? The general answer to that question has always been “yes,” we definitely have DLC up our sleeves and will release a series of car packs and new tracks starting in August and running probably through a good chunk of fall. Forza Motorsport 2 is definitely here to stay. We’re also going to continually keep an eye on community and its successes and problems, patching and tweaking where we need to and rewarding those who are especially helpful or give back to the community.”

I don’t see myself needing any more cars soon, but new tracks… I might be able to part with some points for those.

Oh and that screenshot is my very souped up Honda Civic with horrible paint job.

PlayStation.Blog seemed to be on the mark with their prediction. Hasn’t happened yet, but expect to be inundated with the following features within the next 24 hours, especially if you live in Japan or Europe, for some reason.

* Ability to rearrange games on the XMB
* Option menu now includes “eject disc”
* Press triangle on the XMB to eject the disc
* XMB backgrounds
* Change the folder classification
* Emoticons
* Change CD output to 44.1/88.2/176.4kHz
* Force 24Hz output for Blu-ray over HDMI
* Change PS3 video settings in-game
* “Bit Mapping” in the “Music Setting”
* Save AVCHD type animations from a Memory Stick
* Change settings like upscaling while playing PS and PS2 games
* Add bookmarks
* Web browser security function in the browser’s tool section
* Avatar moves during audio visual chat

I don’t get the excitement over ejection, but the backgrounds, avatar movement and game rearranging tickles me a very soft and washed out red. Perhaps i’m exagerrating.

You should also know that the European PS Store is getting the Heavenly Sword demo on Thursday, finally. Thank heaven for UK PSN accounts. *snicker* (That The Darkness demo aint half bad…)

PlayStation.Blog confirmed that PS3 firmware will be getting the 1.90 revision in a few days. PS3Fanboy speculates for Tuesday, and i’d say that’s Tuesday tops since Wednesday resides in a rundown trailer just outside of early-part-of-the-week territory.

No features are confirmed yet, but it’s suspected that XMB access during gameplay will be the big one. I sure as hell would love to see that. And how about allowing me to switch off those sight-obtrusive messages that block my opponent in Virtua Tennis whenever one of the sexually frustrated teens on my friends list signs in or out. I could use an on/off switch for those.