Birthday Goodies!

Today is my birthday and I got some Xbox goodies from Michelle! She got me a Play and Charge Kit as well as a 2100 MS points voucher. Awesome! Now I can finally buy Assualt Heroes!

I got myself a stripper for my birthday but she wasn't quite what I expected (see pic)..... no wonder she was charging half price! Michelle will love the pic... don't ask...

Xbox Live!

I had my first taste of Xbox Live this evening. Riaan (my brother-in-law) also got a 360 yesterday but last night we didnt manage to get any gaming going due to the router on my side blocking the Xbox Live traffic. All we could do was send some text messages. They came over here (we are housesitting for friends at the moment) this afternoon and brought my headset and my copy of Gears of War along. I managed to change some settings on the router and we were able to start a voice chat. We then played some Gears of War coop and just finished playing some Crackdown coop now. I don't have a Gold account at the moment and I'm just using a 48 hour Gold trial. I know for a fact that I am getting a 12 month Gold subscription for my birthday on Tuesday though and Im very excited about that. Here's to many hours of future Xbox Live gaming!

Upcoming Dashboard Update

I am really excited about the upcoming 360 dashboard update which should be released in the first or second week of May. There are some really cool new features thats been added of which the Live Messenger integration is probably the biggest. I am also really keen to try out the text input device thats coming out (see previous post) although the model shown in the pics that are going around is apparently not the final design.

Also. my 360voice page should now reflect my gaming activities more acurately since I purchased the wireless adapter a while ago.. so check it out here if want to see what im playing. Previously I would play games but it wouldnt be reflected because my 360 wasnt always connected to the net.

New Xbox360 goodness

Well by now everyone knows about the new Xbox360 that was anounced called the Xbox360 Elite. It's basically the same as the existing ones but it comes with a 120GB harddrive, a HDMI port... and it's black! Of all the new features it's the colour that excites me most. Since there is no Video Marketplace in the UK (and even if there was I wouldn't use it due to the poor internet speeds here) there is really no point in getting a bigger HDD. I still have over 10GB free on my current drive and I have every single Xbox Live Arcade game on it. The HDMI port doesn't excite me either since I use the VGA cable to play on my PC monitor. So all that's left is the black colour... not really reason enough to buy a new console is it? At least the black controllers will be available seperately so I'll probably pick up some of those.

Then there's also the new text input device. I'm still not sure if this is real or not though.. it just looks fake. But Major Nelson posted the pics so there must be some truth behind it. Apparently its going to be an add-on for the controller so you'll just plug it into the socket where the headset usually goes. Looks like the headset will then plug into that again. We'll see when/if it's released I guess.

Lots of Xbox360 gaming

There has recently been a resurgence in Xbox360 gaming for me for a couple of reasons. First off it's because I joined a service called Swapgame which allows you to rent games for as long as you want them or to have as many games in a month as you can manage to receive and mail back. The first game I tried was Dead Rising. I really liked the demo of this game but the full game disappointed me. I didn't like the controls and it just wasn't as much fun playing it as I hoped. I sent that one back and am now have The Godfather. I have not gotten far into it yet but it looks like the type of game that I could spend quite a few hours on.

The second reason for my 360 resurgence is because I also purchased 2 new games. Amazon had a 2 for £40 special and I managed to pick up 2 games I've been wanting for a long time... Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Fight Night Round 3. Of these two I have been spending a lot more time with Fight Night than GRAW. I simply love Fight Night. I can see why quite a few gaming sites and magazines voted it best sports game for the 360 last year. The visuals are amazing and the controls and gameplay is spot on.

I am also still playing Crackdown every now and then because I have yet to finish it and since last night Riaan (my brother-in-law) and I have started playing Gears of War again. We finally finished it earlier on Insane difficulty and started a new campaign again on Hardcore... just for fun.

Unfortunately my 360 Voice site is not reflecting all of this activity since I have not been connected to Xbox Live while playing or for quite some time for that matter. I hooked it up earlier so it can update my gamerscore and to get the latest update for Gears of War. I'm seriously thinking of getting the Wireless Network Adapter though.

PSP Impressions

Well my last post was about the PS3 and now this one is about the PSP. It almost seems as if I have gone over to the dark side (since they're both black.) I am borrowing a PSP at the moment just to try it out and see if I might be interested in getting one. My first impressions weren't very good to be honest.. I really thought the graphics were better on the PSP. I was kinda surprised by how blocky the visuals are even on such a small screen. But I have only seen 3 games so far and will want to test it a bit more before deciding. I am currently playing Need for Speed Carbon on it.

PS3 Hands-on!

Well I finally got some hands-on time on a PS3 the other day. I played some Motorstorm and a bit of the demo of Resistance. Motorstorm is quite cool. It has good graphics and is a fun game to just pick up and play. I didnt enjoy Resistance however but thats mainly because of my dislike of playing FPS's with a console controller. The PS3 itself has some cool features but not enough to make me want to spend £425. It also has needs a lot more games to make it more appealing.