Holy poop. That's about all I can say right now about Gears of War. Thanks to our MVP lead, we were able to get behind the closed doors and get a hands-on demo of Gears where we all got to play the multiplayer version of the game. Our group of eight was split into two and we were pitted against each other in a deathmatch

How could you not love playing with a massive hunk of a man who grunts with the passion of a rhinoceros? How could you not love running up behind someone and instead of just knocking them in the back of the head with the butt of your gun, you start the roar of your chainsaw and split them in two?

The visuals in the game are good - I've seen better but in no way did it detract from the fun of it. The game uses the Unreal® engine to do all its dirty work and it handles it beautifully. The only slight distraction I noticed was during the press briefing demo that Cliffy gave. During the single player campaign, a slight lag could be seen when moving from one stage to another. No doubt this was just a loading sequence catching up and hell, it's better than having to sit through an actual load screen. If it was something else, hopefully it will be fixed by release.

I was on Team Cog and we were taken down in the first game. Being the competitive people we are, though, we came back with a vengeance. We took the other team out 4 times! The representative that was coaching our team had a bad habit of coming over and screaming "B B B B" in my ear. YES! I GET IT! B is the chainsaw! I will never forget that now, dude. Thanks!

I managed a pretty nice sequence of chainsaw hackup and teammate resurrection - yep, that's right, resurrection. You can shoot a player until he falls down but if you don't keep shooting him, he has the chance of being resurrected by one of his teammates. Hmmm Sounds familiar...ShadowRun applied this idea to their game, too. I'm hoping this new concept will cut back on some of the spawn killing that goes on.

The weapon system reminded me of the Ubisoft games where you can bring up your inventory and select your favorite killing apparatus. We had the chance to pick up rocket launchers, sniper rifles and others. There is also an annoyance factor built in with reloading. You have to time it correctly or else your character cusses at you and jams the gun. I'm happy to say, I only managed to do this once. Don't think for an instant that you can be trigger happy run and gunners, either. This game makes full use of the aiming. If you think you'll kill your enemy just by firing wildly, it ain't gonna happen. Spraying fire is really spraying fire. Stop, aim, shoot. Those three words will be your friend.

I'm sure the game will draw fire for being violent but there are some of us in this world who have control over ourselves and can play games like this without feeling the need to then go to the shed, pick up the chainsaw and go on a butcher spree in the neighborhood. Maybe people should go under psychological testing before being allowed to play games. UGH. having said that, this is not a game I would like to see in a 10 year old's hands.

Something emphasized in this game is the use of teamwork. Without your team, you are fairly useless. Sticking together was the only way my team succeeded in smashing the competition. After all, it won't help you if you go off as a lone wolf, get pegged but have no back-up to resurrect you - have fun in observation mode. You will also want to get acquainted with cover. To survive, you need to shield yourself and finding some kind of cover will do this. You have the opportunity to stay in cover by rolling, sliding and turning from one spot to another, which is kind of cool.

I was so disappointed when we had to leave. I can't wait for this title to come out. Now, there's no such thing as a Halo killer in my mind but this will definitely be one hell of a sidekick for me. I can't wait to chainsaw my friends in half. We all love each other...really we do.

Today we were in for a real treat. The MVPs were given a private session with the EA team and we got to play some Battle for Middle-earth II for the XBox 360. Louis Castle (VP of Creative Development for the 360 version of the game) came to talk to us about everything that went into creating it.

I think I was the only RTS virgin in the group so I was really interested to see if this game could bring me into the genre. We split up into two small groups and had face time with the marketing guys, community leaders and the developer of the game.

I went to the back of the bus with the COOLEST group and I got an RTS primer. Of course I'm familiar with the storyline and for some reason, decided to show my age by admitting that I played the text based "The Hobbit" way back in the day.

Now given, I am always seeing complaints about EA's servers and bad online play but I have to say, at least the single player portion of this game was really amazing.

I'm one of those who searches for the tiniest details in games. Little things really show you how much the developers and art directors appreciate their product. They also allow for a more submersive experience. There's nothing worse than seeing a beautiful game ruined by repetitive actions or speech. This game made great use of these small things. When you get a game that gives you the ability to send Trolls to pick up trees but they start fighting because they go for the same one, you know it's going to be good. I was told about but didn't see a troll scratch his butt and reel in digust when his hand gets close to his face. I'll be sure to look for it in the full release. (I hope they leave that in.)

The lighting and texture maps really were beautiful. There are maps in the game ranging from snow covered mountains to lush, green, rolling hills.

I really don't expect much detail from a game such as this because there's just so much going on. I would have thought the action would make the graphics suffer. Not the case - you have the ability to zoom in on your armies and see tiny details such as arrows in legs and folds in clothing. One of my favorite features was having a troll pick up an elf and watch him struggle to get free.

I watched first as the "experts" played and finally got the guts to show my newb skills with the game. Luckily, the guy who played before me had left a nice army for me to fight with but I still managed to get them all killed in about 30 seconds. My trolls were throwing rocks, bashing things with tree trunks, and elves but they still couldn't defeat the stupid elven guys. BAH... I did, however, learn how to poison my arrows so that any hit I got would release a continuous poison.

The basic controls were easy to pick up, move with the left stick, spin and zoom in and out with the right, A is the action button, B is cancel action, Y is find your way to the last waypoint, clicking on the left thumbstick will take you back to your fortress. Easy enough for me to pick up fairly quickly. You also have a creature menu where you can make your "soldiers" perform several actions. As I pointed out before, you can make trolls either throw rocks at the enemy, pull a tree out of the ground for use as a weapon or pick up a troll for the same purpose.

Like other RTS games, you will need to build up your resources and structures before going into battle. Of course you can keep building your army as you fight. You can also instruct your builders to contruct tunnels from point to point.

Another nice feature is that you can resurrect your heroes in your fortress.

The game is taken and designed completely from the books and movies so I'm sure fans of the series will feel right at home. It got me interested enough to pick it up.

This is how E3 should be...

A big thanks goes out to the EA guys: Aaron, Louis, Amritz and Scott for giving us the opportunity to check out the game.

Nope, I'm nowhere near finished with my blog entries but today I am just trying to recover from the havoc that was E3. With that, I again want to thank everyone who made the trip so frickin' cool. All of the MVPs, John Porcaro, Cesar Menendez, Major Nelson, TriXie, the EA guys, all the bloggers who came by the bus including that weird HiDef guy who only came to steal twizzlers and most of all, Tony Hynes. Yep, I said it before and I'll say it again. This guy has completely turned around the MVP program for us. He does whatever he can to make us happy and I can only hope that he's proud of the way we represent the program.

We love you, Tony! :-D

Day one of E3, to me, is the absolute worst day of the expo. There's always a lot of pushing and shoving as well as people going crazy trying to get as much schwag as possible. This year was no different. I decided that I would take a bunch of photos and do a quick run through of all the booths to get a feel for what was there.

The doors opened at 11am and like last year, it was marked with a pretty daring parachute jump courtesy of the Army.

I watched this from the comfort of my patio chair outside of Microsoft's Blogger Bus. This bus is outfitted with leather chairs, wireless internet, two 360's, snacks and drinks. Most people who keep active blogs or run news sites were invited to come and hang out while they got to take a break from the madness and upload their thoughts.

I walked through the event with Godfree (GTR) for a while. I got to see a little Moto GP 3, some cool wrestling stuff like chairs that had been thrown, outfits, head-dented garbage cans and more.

Huxley was in the next booth so I squeezed in to see some people playing. This is one of the games that takes advantage of the ability to play either on your console or on a PC. It looked like an amazing game but I do wonder what the pricing will be to play it. I also wonder if PC gamers will be able to take advantage of the console gamers by cracking codes easily. Just another, "wait and see".

After my first pass-through of the event having been elbowed in the chest, pushed into a booth by an overzealous man who needed a blinky neckalce, hit in the crotch with an inflatable sword, and getting the run around with an interview with a certain developer I decided it was time to just go back to the bus, calm down and try to finish my blog from the press event.

Lots of people were stopping by the bus - some who were allowed to be there and some who were intent to get a peek or a seat for nothing. We drew the line with the pizza, though. That's ours biatch!

I went back in for a second pass and worked my way back to the XBox booth where I met up with an old friend from the XBox policy department. That's right - POLICY - this means the guy who can make sure that if you don't play by the rules, you go bye bye.

Major disappointment was in store for me since they didn't have hands-on time with Gears of War even though they said they'd have this during the press event the day before. You could only get this if you had an appointment with the developers. Godfree, was lucky enough to be able to do this so check out his audio at GamertagRadio.com. For the rest of us, there was a theater set up where Cliffy B basically did his demo again. Cool but would have loved to actually play a little.

That night, we attended the C3 party which was a lot of fun as usual. Like last year, we all got a nice up close and personal look at the games without having to beat a bunch of people up just to sneak a glimpse. This year's party was much bigger than last years so there was a little waiting involved but not nearly as bad as during the day. I got to play ShadowRun, Crackdown, F.E.A.R., Table Tennis and Dead Rising. One of the coolest parts? I got to meet Moe! She's that fargin cool chick from 1up that made the finalists to be the new Frag Doll. She is just as cool in person as she was when I talked to her on 1up.

Here is a really brief summary of the games I played and my initial impressions. I am trying to keep in mind that these are still all demos so fine tuning may be needed but here you go:

ShadowRun: I got to the game when the training was half way through so it was a little confusing to begin with. Eh - I just switched off the machine and started over. The play seems to be centered around stealing ancient artifacts from a tomb-like setting but you have special abilities such as gliding and teleportation. I played several rounds of capture the flag against the AI. It was fun for a couple of minutes but got a little repetitive after 5 rounds.

Table Tennis: Ok, this was very cool - Rockstar set up a table tennis tournament with the winner getting a trip to Paris, France. Of course, being the chicken I am, I didn't sign up but many of the MVPs did and had a lot of fun with it. I played a couple of practice rounds with Zamees and Fatty Chubs. I'm proud to say, the GamertagPics founder and my "boss" won the whole damn thing baby!! He won't be taking me, unfortunately but the lucky gal going is well deserving. I want a plastic Eiffel Tower damnit!

Dead Rising: I had to go through a fairly long intro scene that cut into my playing time but then it went straight into a helicopter sequence where I figured out that you could take photos for points. There were lots of scenes of zombies and carnage for my photo-taking pleasure. It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do but I'm a little slow so - ya know... I did get a nice photo of a half blown up, flaming zombie which got me about 200 points. I'm going to try and get back to it today since I only got a little time with it during the party.

F.E.A.R.: This game was very, very dark. One of the hard things about playing games here is that you're usually picking up from someone else's checkpoint. When you've never played before, it's a fast learning curve but this one I picked up fairly quickly. All the good stuff was there, jumping, shooting, reloading, death, carnage, darkness and gloom. What more could you want?

Crackdown: I played this with Fatty Chubs and after about 10 minutes of shooting random gang members who were roaming the streets we got a little...bored. I just don't think it has enough to take away from the GTA series. There didn't seem to be a point except to shoot people. Even with my bad attitude that gets boring after a while. The style was a little off for me, too. The idea of the cel shading was pretty cool but I just don't think they pulled it off. The characters looked awkward and choppy but the fact that you and your friend can roam the world together or apart was pretty cool. The idea of having your friends jump in at any time was pretty cool but again, just not enough to keep me enthralled.

Peter Moore made an appearance at the party, too, which was pretty cool but we're hoping to get some more face time with him later this week.

Today I plan to take a closer look at Sony and Nintendo's booths but judging by the lines that were already forming this morning, I won't be seeing the Wii just yet. I got some info that not only do you have to wait in a 3 hour line outside the closed booth but once you get in, you have to wait another hour to play all the games. Some people who got in said they spent the entire day in there waiting in lines. Not my idea of fun and while I am here to report on this stuff, I'm not going to miss out on other stuff waiting in line for something. SORRY!

So I'm off again to check more stuff out. Damn, I hate leaving this bus. It's so comfy and quiet...

BTW, have I said lately that Tony Hynes is THE SHEEEEEIIIIIIAAATTTTT? Well, the entire XBox team is - Ceeeeeesar, John, TriX, Major, and all of them. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be here and a happy girl I am because of them. Tony gets the special love because, well, he just looks after us really, really well.

Be back soon!

OHHHHH I almost forgot, I picked up a little something for one of my favorite xbox.com and gamertagpics.com forum posters. I did promise him a Hello Kitty pin but they aren't to be had anywhere so I got him this instead: SEE! I didn't forget hahahaha I'm sure you'll look great in it.


Feelz Good will look great in his Serious Gamer Disguise Kit

One of my fellow MVPs Fatty Chubs and his friend Trapper came up with a really unique and funny idea. Instead of listening to me talking about my XBox time, why not just listen to my XBox? Check out my 360's very own gaming blog at 360Voice.comYou may know Fatty already as the man who regularly holds 24 hour gaming marathons. The guy has to sleep sometime so what a great idea to have his XBox blog for itself.


Also, the Live service and the XBox forums were taken offline for a big update. One of the cool additions was the ability for GOLD members to send and recieve messages from the 360 to the xbox.com site and vice versa. The only thing you can't do is listen to voice messages via the website. How cool is that, though? You can now send messages to your poor friends who are working and tell them how much fun you're having playing your games. MUAHAHAHAHA Although someone did that to me so it's not so funny BAH.E3 is coming up faster than ever. I had a dream last night that I went there but for some reason I left early. When I got home, I started crying maniacally trying to figure out a way to go back. WTF? I'm so weird...


In Oblivion, I finally became Grand Champion of the Arena, did a bunch of Mage quests and a couple of Fighter's Guild quests. I'm a level 22 and don't really want to level up too quickly. What does suck is that all of my armor is enchanted so I can't repair it myself. I can't build up my armorer skill either. I've started getting my goods repaired and then rob the person doing it. Does that make me a bad person? HAHA