Level Orange

OK, so this might not be the most accurate depiction of me, but then again, I did try to make it as accurate as possible. I’ve played around with the new Avatars with the new Xbox 360 dashboard (wisely being marketed as the New Xbox Experience, or NXE, for anyone not into gaming), and I have to say, it’s kinda neat.

I’m not particularly a fan of the plans to capitalize on things like clothes and accessories and whatnot for the Avatars by game publishers and licensors, but I can understand the business sense of it. And after personally tinkering around with the system, I can see where it’s starting to come up short, assumedly so that third parties can come in and add even greater value to it.

I’ll be interested to see just how much a Halo or Rock Band t-shirt costs for an Avatar. One can only hope that a whole new outfit wouldn’t be much more than say, a set of gamerpics (roughly a buck or two), but with some publishers eager to nickel-and-dime gamers for every little item, I wouldn’t be surprised to see purchases like this broken down even further. “Want a new bracelet? How about a new baseball cap? That’ll be $1 each, please.”

Yeah, let’s hope not.

Today comes news of the first downloadable content to hit Xbox Live since the April release of Grand Theft Auto IV. The new episodic content, titled Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, will hit XBL on February 17, 2009 and is the first of two new episodes to come to the platform. No other details, such as plot or price point, have been revealed, but stay tuned!

“Making these episodes has enabled us to expand the narrative and the experience of interacting with a game world in really innovative ways,” said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. “We hope fans of the game enjoy the new way of experiencing life in Liberty City contained in this first episode.”

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Recently, after purchasing and installing the new iPod touch 2.0 update, I ran into a serious roadblock in trying to get a stable wi-fi signal with my home network. At first, everything seemed fine. I immediately downloaded the apps for AIM, Facebook and Twitter and they all worked as expected, but within a day or so, everything went dead. Safari couldn’t access web sites. Twitter couldn’t load new tweets. Nothing had changed in my router, nothing had changed in my iPod’s settings. I couldn’t figure it out.

After doing some searching and reading through Apple’s own support discussion forums, the problem started to reveal itself. My Linksys BEFW11S4 was a trusty old 802.11b router had served me well for the last several years. I bought it way back when Wireless-B was still relatively new and figured it would always be good enough for my purposes.

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Thanks to my involvement with Podtacular, I was sent an invite from Bungie to check out the Halo 3 beta, but FOUR DAYS EARLY! This, of course, is because of the Friends & Family program, where Bungie has chosen selected members of the Halo gaming community to get a sneak peek before the thousands of others get to have at it.

My first impressions
All I can say it “FUN, FUN, FUN!”

Out of the three maps, I’m liking High Ground the best so far. Valhalla seems way too big for only eight people, and Snowbound, while it’s got some fun spots, has too much open ground IMO.

All the gadgets are pretty cool. So far, I’ve seen the Power Drainer, Bubble Shield and Portable Grav Lift, and the Bubble Shield is by far the most useful of the those.

The weapons are great too. The AR is back and looks like a great all-purpose starter weapon, new spike grenades are damn deadly, and even weapons like the Carbine and Plasma Rifle seem to be stronger now. On the other hand, rockets don’t lock on anymore, the Spartan Laser takes a lot of timing and the Spikers have been all but useless, and the new turrets remind me too much of Lost Planet, meaning that they’re really unwieldy and make you a big target when you’re in open ground or in really close quarters.

Overall, I’m really liking this early preview. Frankly, my interest in Halo had faded a while ago, but this has really brought me back into the fold. I was willing to wait calmly for the next six months or so until the game releases, but not anymore. I WANT HALO 3 NOW!

If you’d like to hear some first impressions, be sure to check out the Episode 113: Halo 3 beta impressionslatest episode of Podtacular, Episode 113: Halo 3 beta impressions.