Microsoft is cutting the price of the XBOX 360 Elite, the one with the 120 GB hard-drive, by $100. Now it’ll retail for $299. The move isn’t much of a surprise, given that Sony had priced the PS3 for $300.
Posted in: Cheap Thrills, The Artful Gamer
Tags: Microsoft, Xbox 360 |
A double dose of the upcoming releases, covering this week and last! What to look out for this (two week period)!
* The Orange Box is a compilation of 5 games, including Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episodes One and Two (each of which are seperate games from the original Half-Life 2), Team Fortress 2, and Portal. All of these games are of the utmost quality, and this is one hell of a deal for FPS fans. The Half-Life series’s narrative campaign sees three installments here, but Episode Two is the main draw, as it is the newest, and the versions of the other two games are re-releases.
Team Fortress 2 is a team-based multiplayer-only killfest where players choose from one of nine character classes to join the fray as, and has been getting rave reviews. Capping the collection off is Portal, an intriguing puzzle game played from the first person perspective using a gun-like device that can create wormholes. The player navigates three-dimensional puzzles by designating entrances and exits to these wormholes, and using them as insta-warps to transport himself to places otherwise unreachable. Quite hard to explain; it is best if it is seen in motion.
* Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is an interesting melding of a typical fantasy roleplaying game quest with a puzzle game in the vein of Bejeweled. The puzzles serve as the means of battling enemies that appear in the quest, and as you go along, your character gains experience, gold, and spells and abilities to influence the outcome of the puzzle battles along the way.
* Playstation 3 RPG fans will want to check out Folklore, and PSP owners will finally get their hands on the long-awaited remake of 1997’s strategy masterpiece Final Fantasy Tactics, which sports an all-new and surprisingly archaic period-English translation, along with stylish animated cutscenes.
* Are you a fan of early ’90s Neo-Geo 2D Fighters? Well, the place to be this week is on the Wii’s Virtual Console, which sees Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, and World Heroes all in one place, and for much less than the hundreds of dollars the home verstions of those games used to cost!
Full list of games for each console after the jump. MORE »
Posted in: The Artful Gamer
Tags: Folklore, New releases, Play Station 3, Puzzle Quest, The Orange Box, Wii, Xbox 360 |
EA has been rolling out some pretty clever marketing ads for the upcoming Simpson’s videogame. This time around they are spoofing the popular Everquest. It’s spot on, just like the one they did for GTA.
Just hearing “my ears are pointy” (can you guess which character says that?) delights me to no end.
Posted in: The Artful Gamer
Tags: Nintendo Wii, PS3, The Simpsons Game, Xbox 360 |
What to look out for this week!
- Halo fanatics (they’re out there…) may be interested in the Halo-themed Xbox 360 hardware out this week, done up in a Master Chief-style olive drab and copper trim.
- Japanese-style RPG fans could do worse than to check out Eternal Sonata, a fantasy loosely based on the music of Chopin. As described by the Namco Bandai website: “On his deathbed, the famous composer, Chopin, drifts between this life and the next. In his final hours, he experiences a fantastical dream where he encounters a young girl facing a terrible destiny and the boy who will fight to save her. On the border between dreams and reality, Chopin discovers the light that shines in all of us in this enduring tale of good and evil, love and betrayal.”
- The Growlanser release on PS2 should excite some in that same demographic.
- The Playstation 2 also gets a heaping helping of the karaoke franchise SingStar for the musically inclined.
- Action and shooter fans should probably check out Syphon Filter on PS2, Coded Arms for PSP, and Warriors Orochi for hack-and-slash fun on PS2 or 360.
- In addition to physical console releases, each of the current generation systems from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo feature downloadable titles for their respective online networks. Releases for one of these platforms listed above will be marked in parenthesis in future installments of this column:
PSN – Playstation Network (Playstation 3)
XBLA – Xbox Live Arcade (Xbox 360)
VC – Virtual Console (Wii)
This is not a comprehensive list, as other titles for these three “virtual platforms” can appear at any time, with little to no warning. Remember to look both ways before connecting to the server.
Posted in: The Artful Gamer
Tags: Halo 3, New releases, Nintendo Wii, Playstation, Xbox 360 |
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