June 6, 2011

E3 2011 – Microsoft– Kinect

Kinect was the biggest fea­ture at the Microsoft press event and with good rea­son. It was a huge hit over the Hol­i­day but with lit­tle fan­fare for the core gamer and with a very small library still no most have titles out­side of Dance Cen­tral. This issue they tried to address this E3. They brought out the big guns to try and declare that Kinect was for the “hard­core” and still appeal to the casual audi­ence they have already captivated.

After Don Mat­trick took the stage, Peter Moore for EA (funny to have the for­mer Microsoft exec on a MS presser again) took the stage to intro­duce that Kinect will be fea­tured in Tiger Woods, Mad­den, and Fifa fran­chises; to what extent it was not men­tioned. EA would con­tinue the Kinect dance with Mass Effect 3 reveal­ing its Kinect fea­tures in a live demo. Dur­ing the demo it was revealed that you will be able to choose dia­log choices by sim­ply speak­ing them mak­ing the con­ver­sa­tions more involved with the player.

Ubisoft would be the next to show off its Kinect tech with Ghost Recon: Future Sol­dier. They showed off a short trailer for the game then moved on a new fea­ture of the game called Gun­smith, and this is where the Kinect fea­tures come to life. Gun­smith is a new weapon cus­tomiza­tion suite that gives around 20 dif­fer­ent pieces of your weapon to cus­tomize, inside and out. There are over 20 mil­lion dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions and pick­ing out the weapon that is built for you and your sit­u­a­tion is just a ges­ture away. Using Kinect you will be able to scroll through parts and weapons in a breeze while being able to have cus­tom load outs acti­vated with just a few sim­ple words. At the end of the Gun­smith demo, it was announced that all future Tom Clancy games would have Kinect integration.

There were more Kinect “core” titles shown. A brief trailer for Crytek’s Ryse, which was code named King­doms last year, shows a bru­tal first per­son fighter set in, what looked like Rome. Forza 4 was shown and how Kinect will use head track­ing for cock­pit views. Forza 4 will be release on Octo­ber 11^th. Peter Molyneux, head of Lion­head Stu­dios, came on to announce a new Kinect Fable title, Fable: The Jour­ney. The title will be out in 2012 and looks like a rail shooter with other ele­ments, at least what I gath­ered from the demo. The PC hit, Minecraft, will be com­ing to Xbox 360 with Kinect sup­port more on a release date later.

The tone would change and the fam­ily fun side of Kinect was shown. Kudo Tsun­oda would take the stage to present Kinect Fun Labs; which seems like a cul­mi­na­tion of every­thing they left out at launch but in a hap­haz­ard fea­ture set.  The fun Labs will be avail­able on the dash­board to every XBL mem­ber, and as I am writ­ing this should be avail­able for you to use. (When I checked after the con­fer­ence it was nowhere to be seen) In the Fun Labs there are appli­ca­tions such as cre­at­ing avatars from a body scan, object scan­ning (they brought a stuffed ani­mal to life dur­ing the demo), and fin­ger track­ing that you can use in a Pho­to­shop like appli­ca­tion. I under­stand these are just tech demos of what the hardware/software combo are capa­ble of, but this is not what I had in mind for these fea­tures. I’ll let you know what I think of it when I get my hands on with Fun Labs at a later date. Dis­ney­land Kinect was shown, look­ing like an inter­ac­tive tour though the theme park, kids were involved with the demo. Then Time Schaf­fer took the stage to show off his stu­dios (Dou­ble fine) take on Sesame Street in Once Upon a Mon­ster, kids were involved in that demo as well. The Star Wars Kinect game was finally shown and demoed. It looks to take some of the great­est chap­ters in the saga and you’ll relive them in the eyes of a generic Jedi. It looked ok using ges­tures to hack and slash through bat­tle droids but the ges­tures and the ani­ma­tion just weren’t match­ing up and you have to say “light saber on” to acti­vate your weapon, really? I really am hop­ing for more from Lucas Arts.

Two of the Kinects hol­i­day hits are get­ting sequels, Dance Cen­tral and Kinect Sports. Dance Cen­tral 2 will have two play­ers danc­ing as well as the abil­ity to import the music and DLC tunes from the first game into the sequel. Kinect Sports Sea­son 2 will have more great motion con­trolled sports and will hope­fully make you look less like a tool than the two guys doing the onstage demo. The sports this year will be foot­ball, base­ball, golf, ski­ing, darts, and tennis.

For more on all our E3 cov­er­age head over to E3 tab and check out the lat­est and great­est news.

June 6, 2011

E3 2011 — Ubisoft

Next on the list was Ubisoft’s event. Before I start can I just say 1. just give us the info, you’re not funny and 2. hire peo­ple who speak eng­lish or make them learn it bet­ter. I can’t under­stand half of what you just said about Track Mania…not that I cared but I digress…Here is what Ubisoft had to offer:

Ray­man Ori­gins — This live demo showed some co-op and brought me back to the SNES and Sega days. It had a old school feel­ing with it’s well ani­mated 2D side scrolling action. The game will sup­port a 4 player co-op.

Dri­ver San Fan­cisco — Noth­ing spe­cial unfor­tu­natley. Dri­ver will have a mul­ti­player fea­ture though.

Far­cry 3 — This actu­ally looked decent. Got a lit­tle sneak peak of game­play and seemed to have a mix­ture of stealth and regualr cap bust­ing. The dia­log was a bit rough because they cen­sors had a field day with the “beep” button.

Broth­ers in Arms: Furi­ous Four — 2012  - This is another squad based shooter set in WW2. A mix­ture of funny char­ac­ters and over the top style action and humor may make this game one of the bet­ter BiA titles.

Adven­tures of  TinTin — Adven­ture style game.…they didn’t have much to say hon­estly. Peter Jack­son and Steven Spiel­berg just talked about how good it was. Other than that I don’t really know much.

Ghost Recon: Future Sol­dier — Showed off some great look­ing game­play. Showed the 4 player co-op on a mis­sion to secure a VIP. It had good graph­ics and really smooth move­ment and shoot­ing. It looked like a blast to me.

Ghost Recon Online — This will be a free to play PC game. It will also sup­port the achieve­ments you earn in Future Soldier

Track Mania 2 — This is part of Mania Planet which is a hub for other online games for PC. Basi­cally it’s Mod Nation Rac­ers with realism.

Rav­ing Rab­bids — Kinect — Nov 8 — The party game comes to Kinect.….wooo.…..

Just Dance 3 — Oct 2011 — This is wear I took a restroom break.….

Rock­smith — Oct 2011 — Yet another Rock Band/ Gui­tar Hero –ish game. Rock­smith is sup­posed to be more real­is­tic than the other gui­tar games out there as well as being able to teach you how to play real guitar.…we’ll see

Assas­sins Creed Rev­e­la­tions — Nov 2011 — First they showed a cin­e­matic trailer which was great then they gave us a look at game­play. The cut scenes looked nice but the graph­ics don’t look much dif­fer­ent then the last one. We did get a chance to see a smoke bomb in action with the com­bi­na­tion of eagle vision to take out three ene­mies. Then we saw Ezio run­ning through a crazy course of burning/ explod­ing ships in the har­bor. Looked pretty good.

I didn’t think Ubisoft had that strong of a lineup out­side of Assas­sins Creed and Ghost Recon, but we will just have to see how it pans out.

June 6, 2011

E3 2011 — EA’s Game Changers

EA just fin­ished their press event and heres what they showed us:

Mass Effect 3 — March 6, 2012 — The live demo showed some great graph­ics and really showed off a much larger scale for the action and fight­ing. It was also said that if you played the pre­vi­ous Mass Effect games that your deci­sions in them would all come together in this installment.

Need for Speed: The Run — This new NFS title will be a race across the USA. They have added the auto log fea­ture to this one and it will also fea­ture action out of the car as well. The live demo showed this fea­ture to be a sim­ple but­ton tim­ing excer­cise but it will be an inter­est­ing fea­ture. With stolen police cars, fight­ing, and heli­copter chases this NFS seems like it will up the action element.

Star Wars the Old Repub­lic — Giant dis­ap­point­ment. No release date and the trailer that was shown was the pre­vi­ous two trail­ers mixed together along with only a few new scenes. Like is said, disappointed.

SSX — Jan 2012 — SSX will have three modes: Race, Trick, and Sur­vive. You will be able to hit the slopes on any major moun­tain range in the world.

Fifa 12 — It will have bet­ter defense sys­tems, ball con­trol, and a new impact engine for tack­ling. Fifa will also get Foot­ball Club. It’s a social hub for stats, leader­boards, and chal­lenges at no extra cost.

Mad­den 12 — Aug 30 — As with every year, new AI, new col­li­sion sys­tem, and new player per­for­mance sys­tem. It’s Mad­den peo­ple. You play one, you’ve played them all.

Sims Social — Sims on Facebook.….yea.….

Reck­on­ing — 2012 — This is a 3^rd per­son fantasy/ action rpg style game. It has your typ­i­cal magic and regualr fight­ing sys­tem. Can’t say it really was any­thing great.

Over Strike — Set in the near future, Over Strike has you play as one of four mer­ce­nar­ies in a group with futur­is­tic style weapons and tech. If this turns out to be a four player Co-op, this could be a fun one.

Bat­tle­field 3 — Beta in Sept — Full game Oct 25 — BF showed off the new Frost­bite 2 engine with a few scenes which looked great. There was a mul­ti­player trailer but it was very quick and didn’t really show much. Like the Auto Log for Need for Speed, Bat­tle­field will intro­duce the Bat­tle Log which is their social hub for stats and leader­boards etc. They showed a live demo from the PC ver­sion which looked nice but it was all in a tank. Never showed any­thing on foot. It was an open field tank bat­tle that even­tu­ally turned into a small base assault with the tanks.

All in all EA showed some inter­est­ing things. More to come from E3!

June 6, 2011

E3 2011 — Xbox Future Revealed

ZOMG!! E3!!! Yep Microsoft started the mad­ness and here is a list of all that what shown or men­tioned. The list also shows release dates and Kinectablilty. Kinect able means that they use some Kinect features.

Call of Duty: Mod­ern War­fare 3 — Nov. 8

Tomb Raider

Sims 3 Pets — Kinect

Fam­ily Game Night 4 — Kinect

Mass Effect 3 — Kinect able

Ghost Recon: Future Sol­dier — Kinect able

Gears of War 3

Ryse — Kinect

Halo Com­bat Evolved Anniver­sary — Nov 15

Forza Motor­sport 4 — Oct 11

Fable The Jour­ney — Kinect

Minecraft — Kinect — Win­ter 2011

Dis­ney­land Adven­tures — Kinect — This Holiday

Star Wars — Kinect

Sesame Street: Once Upon a Mon­ster — Kinect — Fall 2011

Kinect Fun Labs — Today (Check­ing on that)

Kinect Sports Sea­son 2 — This Holiday

Dance Cen­tral 2

Halo 4 — Hol­i­day 2012

CABXYZ will bring more detailed info on each of the titles later on.

June 3, 2011

Electronic Entertainment Expo!!!

The biggest gam­ing event of the year is just a few days away! All the big play­ers com­ing together to show us want we can expect to see in the com­ing year. Can’t go? Can’t watch it live? How will I get my E3 fix?? No wor­ries The Gamers Blog has you cov­ered. CABXYZ and yours tru­ely will be bring­ing you daily updates for ALL your E3 cov­er­age. We will have all the info hot off the press con­fer­ence floor as we get it. I will also be post­ing a spe­cial Gamer Rant : E3 edi­tion. Daily updates, spe­cial posts, and maybe if your good a few suprises, what else could you ask for? You say another give­away? Sure why not! Check us out dur­ing our E3 cov­er­age for details on another give­away. What are you hop­ing to see this year at E3? C’mon Star Wars Old Repub­lic! Fin­gers crossed.

May 31, 2011

Hands-on Preview: Dungeon Siege 3…..

I wasn’t always a fan of RPGs or ARPGs, but that has been chang­ing as of late. I have enjoyed Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and its sequel, all of the Bethesda games (Elder Scrolls (start­ing with Mor­rowind), Fall­out 3), the Fable series if you want to call them RPGs of some sort, Torch­light (which I may start my sec­ond play through here shortly) and of course any­thing that comes from that great place in the sky called Bioware as of late (yes, I am still cur­rently enjoy­ing Dragon Age 2). Nor­mally my key gen­res of choice are action/adventure, rac­ing, FPS, and some sports titles here and there to round it my gam­ing port­fo­lio. As I grow older though, dun­geon crawl­ing, gath­er­ing large amounts of loot like swag at a con­ven­tion, and stat and skill track­ing are becom­ing more and more sat­is­fy­ing. I feel I am keener on these ele­ments because I feel like I am get­ting more out of my game and build­ing char­ac­ters instead of tak­ing on pre­de­ter­mined avatar. Enough about me already lets to the game.

Dun­geon Siege 3 marks the first DS game to be pub­lished by Squa­reEnix and to be devel­oped by Obsid­ian Enter­tain­ment. To get this out of the way because I heard quite a bit of groan­ing when I men­tioned Obsid­ian, always know for great ideas but failed exe­cu­tion and QA, this game is com­ing along quite well  and from the demo I played, fears can be put aside. Now, that is not to say that there are some gripes I had, but the demo of DS3 was less buggy than all of Fall­out: New Vegas (zing!). It’s your typ­i­cal hack and slash with loot and char­ac­ter build­ing abound, and enough lens flairs to make J.J. Abrams jeal­ous. The com­bat sys­tem is close in com­par­i­son with Dragon Age 2s sys­tem, (mind you I played this on the 360 early this morn­ing) A would be your typ­i­cal attack but­ton and X, Y, B would be your skills that you would acquire from lev­el­ing. The Left trig­ger blocks while acti­vat­ing a new tray of traits mapped to the three but­tons pre­vi­ously men­tioned; the left bumper switches between attack styles. I played as Lucas Mont­baron, one of only two char­ac­ters avail­able in the demo, which plays like a typ­i­cal war­rior class. Lucas has two load outs, one using a sword and shield, the other using a larger two handed weapon. While equip­ping each weapon type your pow­ers tray loads with cus­tom attacks and spells for each type. The right bumper is used as an action but­ton and to pick up loot and is by far the best idea to come from this game. Play­ing a lot of Bor­der­lands recently, I can’t stand hav­ing X pick things up, reload­ing, and open­ing crates at the same time, this small con­cept works won­ders in this game. While whal­ing away at an enemy just a tap of the bumper and just like that nab some loot while not doing some­thing stu­pid amongst a hec­tic bat­tle. The cam­era pans out and makes the game look rem­i­nis­cent of Baldur’s Gate or you can have it up close via Dragon Age. This obser­va­tion was tak­ing dur­ing my time with the game alone. I have yet to try the co-op and have no idea if the cam­era is sta­tic with more peo­ple to con­cen­trate on. The action is solid, there is lit­tle I have to gripe about in the com­bat depart­ment, my main gripes come from the menus; there are just TOO MANY DAMN MENUS! I know it is a RPG at heart but has stream­lin­ing menus ever hurt any­one? There is a main page, then a page for armor and weapons with around 8 to 10 tabs on that page, a page for upgrades and those have tabs on them as well. I know the game wants to be deep but make it acces­si­ble with­out a learn­ing curve for your menu sys­tem. The only other real gripe I have and this is just a per­sonal one, new armor you acquire does not change your appear­ance. I know this is stu­pid to com­plain about but damn it, if I pick up a dragon helm, I want it to look dif­fer­ent than the turkey I am wear­ing. All of the weapons have a dif­fer­ent aes­thetic approach to them but really? Is armor that hard to con­jure up?

I really like the game other than my few gripes I had, I am going to give it another shot later today and hope­fully can get some friends to join the loot hunt as well. I was look­ing for a good action RPG to play with some friends over the long sum­mer months and this may be the one I choose, Dag­gerdale was in the run­ning for this until I got my hands on that unpol­ished turd. Dun­geon Siege 3 releases for the Xbox 360, PlaySta­tion 3, and PC on June 21^st and the demo is out now on Xbox 360 and will be avail­able for the PS3 and PC come June 7^th.   

May 25, 2011

Gamer Chat? Nope, This is Gamer Rant!

Ok so Gamer Rant is going to be my lit­tle out­let to unleash the frus­tra­tion in the gam­ing world. This rant is about good ol’ Call of Duty. First things first. When I played Call of Duty 4: Mod­ern War­fare I was blown away. That game raised the bar and set a new stan­dard for first per­son shoot­ers and it was a fan­tas­tic game. There I said some­thing nice. We fast for­ward to now and we have Mod­ern War­fare 3 on the hori­zon. Here is the prob­lem, with the excep­tion of zom­bies (great idea) what exactly is new about the next Call of Duty titles? You get a new story right? Run through maps shoot­ing every­thing and blow stuff up. Mul­ti­player is dif­fer­ent? No…you pay for a glo­ri­fied map pack really. My point is since Call of Duty hit gold with the first Mod­ern War­fare, they haven’t shown us any­thing new or dif­fer­ent since. Yes zom­bies was a good thing, but now Black Ops gave us a shop­ping style lev­el­ing process. Ohh I get to buy things now. They gave us play­er­cards so kids can make a rough image of a penis next to their name. Ohh the cre­ativ­ity! Still not with me on this? Ok try some­thing for me. I am sure every­one has seen the newest MW3 trailer because it plays on TV every 10 mins. Step one: watch the trailer. Step two: take out any­thing that says 3. Step three: real­ize that trailer could be used for any other CoD game because its noth­ing new! “That wouldn’t work for World at War because it was set in WW2.” Abso­lut­ley correct.….I see my argu­ment has failed mis­er­ably. Now don’t get me wrong this is a prob­lem for all shoot­ers alike. I only use MW3 because its what they are try­ing to shove down our throats this time. I really hope with a new game will come some­thing more inter­est­ing than the usual dis­mal repeat of the pre­vi­ous year. I want to see what Bat­tle­field 3 is going to do. I as a gamer, just want some­thing new. I don’t want to pay $60 for a new video game case.

May 25, 2011

Portal 2 Review Part 1: Single Player

^MC Escher and Por­tal. Both hand-in-hand with mind-blowingness.

This game is so huge, I’m going to have to split the review into two arti­cles. Now, I know I’m quite late on the scene here, but this isn’t a review for peo­ple who wanted to know whether the game was buyable instantly. Rather, this is my opin­ion on the game as some­one who was hes­i­tant and forced to wait, and it goes out to oth­ers who were also hes­i­tant and/or forced to wait. So, here it goes.

Graph­ics: Shame on you for even inquir­ing about this. Graph­ics, in my opin­ion, really bear no per­ti­nence to game qual­ity. How­ever, I must say that Por­tal 2 is beau­ti­ful. The atmos­phere of the story in every area is per­fectly matched by the col­ors and tex­tures of your sur­round­ings. Even on low res­o­lu­tions and graphic set­tings, the game is still pretty. When cranked up, it’s amazing.

^It looks nice even in places that are sup­posed to be ugly.

Sound: The voice act­ing in this game is also superb. Ellen McLain returns as GLaDOS, and two new fre­quent voices (I won’t spoil it for those of you who are sav­ing the plot­line) by Stephen Mer­chant and J.K. Sim­mons also per­fectly fit their roles. The ambi­ent music and sounds work together to cre­ate an amaz­ing atmos­phere. If you’re still not sold, how about the fact that Jonathan Coul­ton (my absolute favorite white boy musi­cian) returns for the final song?

^This lady is GLaDOS. And the tur­rets. And the announcer in TF2. And the Com­bine Over­watch Announcer in the Half Life 2 games. And she sings opera.

Game­play: Por­tal 2 is the per­fect sequel to Por­tal. All the physics-bending you love is still there, along with all sorts of new mod­i­fiers, includ­ing three dif­fer­ent col­ored gels that mod­ify any ground or walls they touch, cubes that redi­rect lasers, and many more fun new toys. The game starts off fairly easy, but the head-scratchers come quickly. By Chap­ter 6, you feel like a genius every time you solve a sin­gle cham­ber. It’s smooth and doesn’t really lag, and any sort of dam­age you take is bal­anced enough. If you’re unfa­mil­iar with Por­tal, close this win­dow right now, open up Steam (down­load Steam and set up an account if you haven’t already done so), and pur­chase Por­tal. Por­tal is beyond worth the money, runs on most com­put­ers, and you can fin­ish it in about four hours. I’ll wait.

—-

Wel­come back. I’ll let you wait another four hours to de-blow your mind.

—

Yeah. Now, Por­tal 2 is just like that. Only BETTER.

The Story: Holy. Balls. This is the best story I’ve got­ten out of any game in over a year. I’m not going to spoil any of it for you, so just trust me on this. You will not be dis­ap­pointed with Por­tal 2’s sin­gle player story. It’s truly amaz­ing. The whole sin­gle player story is just per­fect. I have not a sin­gle com­plaint. It’s per­fect. The humor is there, and it’s darker and fun­nier than before. Creepy semi-hidden areas? Check. Other ran­dom creepi­ness that really adds to the whole game? Check. It’s just unex­plain­able. Play it.

^Cake. Descrip­tion. Recipe.

Now, so far, I’ve done noth­ing but praise Por­tal 2. The whole game itself is per­fect. The only prob­lem I have with it is the price tag. I haven’t fin­ished the Co-op mode yet (expect a review by next Tues­day), but the game is still too short to deserve the full $60 price tag. I’d draw the line at about $40. Even­tu­ally, there will be a sale, and you’ll be able to get Por­tal 2 for a more appro­pri­ate price. I’d advise wait­ing until then, unless you’re deathly afraid of spoil­ing the plot­line. In that case, go ahead and buy it. Play it through a cou­ple times; there are quite a few inter­est­ing quirks you might not notice on your first runthrough.

Over­priced­ness aside, this game is amaz­ing. Were I using a numer­i­cal scale, I’d give it a 42/42. Why 42? Because, it’s the answer to life, the uni­verse, and everything.

May 20, 2011

L.A. Noire

Ok so L.A. Noire came out last Tues­day and I dove right into it. Now I am sure peo­ple see the Rock­star Games and go “Ok, more GTA and Mafia type games.” Well here is what I say to that person…Shut up. Yes Rock­star pub­lished the game but L.A. Noire only bor­rows dri­ving and com­bat from GTA, after that it is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent game. Noire goes back in time to L.A. in the 1940’s (1947 to be exact).  The premise is pretty easy to grasp. You’re a cop and you’re solv­ing crimes. The best thing about this game is the story telling. As you play you feel like a detec­tive and you start to run the out­comes through your head try­ing to solve the case. You start as an aver­age patrol­man and work your way up the ranks to traf­fic cop, homi­cide, etc. A neat fea­ture is as you progress you have a part­ner who helps out with giv­ing you direc­tions, dri­ving, or giv­ing an opin­ion on the cur­rent case.

The game­play works like this: you and your part­ner get assigned a case. You go to the crime scene, look for clues, and ques­tion wit­nesses or sus­pects and that will then turn into other leads to con­tinue the inves­ti­ga­tion. Each case plays like an episode, but as you go you will start to see a big­ger story ark. The atten­tion to detail in this game is some­thing you would only think t0 find in a great rpg. When your col­lect­ing clues you can look all over the crime scene find­ing things use­ful and find­ing things not so use­ful. Whether exam­in­ing the body or look­ing in the bushes for more evi­dence there is always some­thing inter­est­ing to find.

After you have col­lect­ing all the clues (or what you think is all of them) you can inter­view a wit­ness or other P.O.I.‘s (per­son of intrest). This is a really fun and new fea­ture to the game. As you ask ques­tions you really need to pay atten­tion to how the per­son reacts and talks. Every­thing from eye move­ments, facial move­ments (yes they can show expres­sions) to body lan­guage needs to be con­sid­ered. They really did a great job and mak­ing the faces look real and have the lips matched up with the words they are saying. After they give you an answer you can select three options: Truth, Doubt, or Lie. Truth is sim­ple. You think they are telling you the truth. Doubt is the option you pick if you think they aren’t telling you the whole truth. Then my favorite, you can call them out on a lie. How­ever if you pick this you must back up your claim with a piece of evi­dence you have found. Now if you pick the wrong option you will not revieve xp points and I will reduce the points you can get at the end of the case. As I have found out, call­ing out peo­ple on a lie and being wrong makes them very, very angry.

At this point in the inves­ti­ga­tion, after clues are col­lected and peo­ple are ques­tioned, is usu­ally when the action kicks in and let me tell you I have seen it all. Run­ning perps down on foot, car chases, and good ol’ fash­ion shoot outs are usu­ally how cases get solved. Besides the main story, as you play you can respond to dis­patch calls and go do lit­tle side mis­sions which can con­sist of a shooter or a bank rob­bery. You can also com­man­deer vehi­cles incase you for some rea­son ramped a curb into traf­fic and destroyed yours.……you know, in case. You also unlock out­fits along the way to change up your nor­mal look.

So yea, L.A. Noire is a slower mov­ing game. Not to the point of bor­ing you but to the point of great sto­ry­telling. You mean I can’t just shoot every­thing and kill hook­ers?? Go back to play­ing Call of Duty please.…this review is for big kids. I am not a kid! Ok then take your sim­ple mind back to GTA and spam more rock­ets because that doesn’t make you have to use your brain and we know how bad it hurts you to use it. L.A. Noire is a fan­tas­tic game all around. I  am already will­ing to call this at least one of the top 5 games of this year. The stength of this game is the story and I hope that other games will see this and take note. L.A. Noire could be the begin­ning of a new way to play video games.

May 19, 2011

Dont miss out on your chance to save the galaxy with your FREE STEAM COPY OF MASS EFFECT.

Do you feel down about the state of the galaxy? Do you wish you had the com­mand­ing author­ity of a super badass bent on erad­i­cat­ing evil while at the same time being dash­ingly awe­some or ter­ri­fy­ingly douchy? Well wish no more!!! Now is your chance to win a FREE steam copy of MASS EFFECT. Its your turn to travel the galaxy kickin in doors and nut sacks, sav­ing the day and get­ting the freak­ishly hot alien chick.

Ill keep it sim­ple. All you have to do is share your thoughts with TGB. You MUST post 1 com­ment under this arti­cle and then post 5 com­ments under any arti­cle (all 5 com­ments do not have to be under the same arti­cle) and let us know whats on your mind. Post­ing 1 com­ment here and then 5 com­ments any­where else will enter you into this con­test, and you must be a reg­is­tered user to par­tic­i­pate. The pro­mo­tion will run for a week and end next Thurs­day 5/26/2011 at 12pm (noon). TGB staff are not eli­gi­ble for the promotion.

This is a Steam game and will require steam to down­load and play, if you dont have steam heres a link to get it, http://store.steampowered.com/about/, its free and quick and easy to set up. Who­ever wins the game will either have to add me as a friend in steam or give me their email address so that I can deliver the game to you. If there are any ques­tions feel free to post them here or con­tact me at pimpmasterf@thegamersblog.com.

Sys­tem Requirements:

Sup­ported OS: Microsoft Win­dows® XP with SP2 or Win­dows Vista*
Proces­sor: Intel P4 2.4 Ghz or faster / AMD 2.0 Ghz
Mem­ory: 1.0 GB RAM or more (2.0 GB for Vista)
Graph­ics: DirectX 9.0c com­pat­i­ble, ATI X1300 XT or greater (ATI X1300, X1300 Pro, X1600 Pro, Radeon 2600 HD, and HD 2400 are below min­i­mum sys­tem require­ments); NVidia GeForce 6800 or greater (7300, 7600 GS, 8500 are below min­i­mum sys­tem require­ments)
Hard Drive: 12.0 GB or more free hard drive space
Sound: DirectX 9.0c com­pat­i­ble
DirectX®: 9.0c

* WINDOWS VISTA OR WINDOWS 7 USERS: Launch­ing “Mass Effect” from Steam requires the set­ting “Run as Admin­is­tra­tor”. If the User Account Con­trol fea­ture of Win­dows Vista is enabled, launch­ing “Mass Effect” from Steam will result in fail­ure. For users with User Account Con­trol enabled, launch Steam using the “Run as Admin­is­tra­tor” option or launch from the win­dows shortcut.