Today on Offworld we played I wish I were the Moon, likely the only directly Italo Calvino inspired game you'll see all year, and heard about a number of new games worth getting worked up about: a new Wii music game from Rez/Lumines creators Q Entertainment, a firmer release date for the new Ghostbusters game, and Mama moving from Cooking to the Garden. We also looked at a set of sexy new DIY Game Boy LED hacks, saw an Xbox logo fly over 17th century Hamburg, heard a convincing case for more normality versus heroics in games, watched a pitch...
Section: Gaming News, Consoles, Xbox-360 The infamous Red Ring of Death (RROD) has been a plague on the conscience of Xbox 360 owners since the system debuted. Playing a round of Halo 3 or exploring the world of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, only to have your system freeze up and then instantly parish is not something gamers wanted on their minds, especially considering that it might take two weeks - or longer - to get their systems back. I know it’s something I think about whenever I turn my system on and I bet it’s on your mind as well....
Section: Gaming News, Consoles, Xbox-360, Gear, Audio, Game-Companies, Developers, Publishers, Genres, 3D, Action, Strategy, Web-Sites, Official-Sites Halo fans may have another item to add to their holiday wishlist - the Halo Trilogy - The Complete Original Soundtracks boxed set. Sumthing Else Music Works’ has just announced that the five disc release, which also comes with four tracks from Halo Wars will be available both in stores and for download on December 2, 2008. Amazon‘s currently listing the set for $26.99. If you search for Halo at Sumthing Digital, the Halo soundtracks are $9.99 each, so the boxed set ends up...
Section: Gaming News, Features, Gift Guide, Consoles, PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox-360, PCs, Mac, Windows, Handhelds, DS, Gear, Displays, Hardware Tech and computer retail store Micro Center has a whole bunch of stuff on sale starting Black Friday (November 27, 2008) through the whole weekend. It begins at 8 a.m. on Friday and ends 6 p.m. Sunday, November 30, 2008. Sale items include Acer PCs for $299, 22 in. flat screen monitors for $199, 1GB MP3 player for $0.99, a min tripod for $0.99, cameras, computers, printers,, RAM, video recorders, hard drives and more. Some deals may also be availabel on...
Can you feel it? It's the last Friday before Black Friday. You've got exactly one week to plan out where you're gonna hit—what are you're hoping to grab this year, anyway? Today, we've got a few pretty excellent deals: This Double Guitar bundle from Red Octane comes with Guitar Hero III and World Tour, and one guitar from each, for only $120, way down from $230 originally. My personal favorite, though, is the entire seven season run of Buffy for just $70—DVD, but you can't get it in HD yet anyway, boo. (Firefly though, squee!) This way for more savings:...
BringIt, a company that offers gamers the opportunity to challenge friends and earn prize money, announced Friday that it has launched its open beta to users across the world, allowing them to wager cash on BringIt and challenge others to head-to-head gaming on a selection of console titles. "Gamers have shown great interest and support for competitive gaming, so we are pleased to offer BringIt as a player-driven service that quickly connects gamers, allowing them to play legally for cash while getting a more intense competitive rush," said BringIt CEO and founder Woody Levin in a statement. BringIt works...
Yesterday, Dr. Pepper announced that for the first time ever, it would feature a professional athlete on its bottles. This athlete doesn't come with ripped arms, or muscular legs, but he does have some thumbs of steel. Tom Taylor, who plays Halo 3 professionally (putting in up to 15 hours a day of practice), has not only landed his first endorsement deal with Dr. Pepper, but has also signed a three-year sponsorship contract with Major League Gaming to the tune of $250,000. New York City-based Major League Gaming organizes teams and professional gamers to compete in tournaments around the country....
iPhone and iPod touch only: When you see a book, CD, DVD, or game at a friend's house you want to look up and bookmark instantly, fire up SnapTell Explorer on your iPhone or iPod touch and take a photo of it. Similar to a bar code scanner (except you photograph the item cover, not its bar code), SnapTell automatically looks up your item and gives you links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Wikipedia, and straight-up search engines so you can compare prices and find out more about it. SnapTell's results aren't 100% accurate—once it gave me a strategy...
Quick Version: Do not, I repeat, do not rip Halo 3 to your hard drive because it will load much slower than if you played it straight off the DVD drive. Halo 3 was also shipped before Microsoft gave the green light for this added feature in NXE, so Bungie was unable to implement it into the game. Long, extended technical answer: If you really, really want to know then hit the jump for an explanation from Bungie’s “uber engineer and Chief Caching Officer, Mat Noguchi.” The Xbox 360 HDD has a section for games to use called the utility...
The U.S. video game industry defied economic doomsayers and grew 18 percent in October, the first month of the industry’s critical sales season. The NPD Group reported that the industry is on a course to hit a record $22 billion in sales in 2008. That’s surprising, given the weakness of U.S. retailers in October. But it suggests that games are at least somewhat recession resistant, as many observers have been saying all year long, perhaps because entertainment provides an escape from the real world. Overall sales were $1.31 billion, up 18 percent from $1.12 billion a year earlier. Year to...
High-res Straight from the horse’s mouth: So you’ve been wondering what the Halo 3 Recon announcement was all about, huh? We’ve got all the info you can handle! The December issue of Game Informer Magazine has 10 pages packed full of info and screenshots straight from Bungie. We also have another 10 pages of our annual Holiday Buyer’s Guide featuring the coolest gear for all types of gamers. All of this plus much more so don’t miss this issue! Subscribers will also get some added content on Nov 17 when Unlimited hits right here on GI Online....
A round of applause for Eurogamer, which did the thankless task of testing out the NXE’s HDD Install option and comparing it to normal method of playing games off the DVD. Several games of all shapes and sizes were checked, including Gears of War 2 (or should I say Gears of Bore, yuck), GTA IV and Halo 3, and found that, on average, you’re likely to shave a few seconds off your loading time by installing a game to the hard drive. Take Gears of War 2. Running the game off the DVD, as you do now, the initial...
