COD : Modern Warfare 2 Prestige Edition Unboxing

Just a quick blog post to show you what comes in the Prestige Edition Box. Basically, you get everything that comes in the Hardened Edition, but with the Night Vision Goggles too.

Night Vision Goggles

Collectors Stand

Steel Book with Metallic Finish

Art Book

Game Manual

Token to download the original Call of Duty

Images below

Finally a little video to show you how good the night vision goggles are
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Anyway, blog done, time to get my game on BassJunkie5120 if you want to add me on the Xbox

Tags: Art Book, blog, Box, call, cod, Download, duty, Edition, everything, Finish, game, Goggles, google, Hardened, images, Manual, Metallic, modern, night, night vision goggles, of, post, prestige, prestige edition, Steel, Token, vision, warfare, xbox, youtube

Social Networking for Gamers

I like most of you, use twitter, facebook and occasionally pop on to myspace to see how many bands want to be my friends.

Anyway, on the 4th of October, through total fluke read through a twitter conversation, and noticed a load of twitter entries from @squ1r3ll, with updates on his gaming status….linking to a site called raptr.com.

Being a bit of a gamer I’ve tried for months to get my gamertags, achievement, out to my friends and virtual friends, but the only way I’ve found to do this is manually.

I tried a number of facebook apps, and had varied success, they would either change my status to “Darren is playing…..” after a couple of hours of gaming, or just not bother at all. The achievements would post to my feed, however this was a manual process, I belevie the app is called “Xbox 360 Live GamerCard”.

Anyway, raptr.com, what is it…well let me tell you, it’s fantastic, and what I’ve been looking for, for ages. You sign up (using Facebook connect if you like) and add your gamer profiles, eg Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, Warcraft, etc etc, what it then does is monitors and reports on your gaming activities, eg which game your playing, on which platform, and records how long, and any achievement you may get.

Xbox live is monitored through the feed that Microsoft so kindly provide, and updates almost in real time (can be a 5/10 min delay), PSN tracking is currently broken due to Sony putting a restriction on their data. Everything else is tracked by the client.

The client is a custom messenger type client that can also run your msn, gtalk, aim, yahoo, xfire and icq, however this is the key to tracking the stats on your PC/Mac. On initial install it will scan your hard drive for games, and add them to your collection (both on the client, and on the website), any new games installed it will pick them up and also add to your collection.

When your ready to play a game, just start as normal and this will change your messenger stats to “Darren is playing xxxxxxx”, as it does with your online raptr status too, and logs the time played. When finished, it calculates the time you were playing and adds this to your tally on the website.

With the site you also get the option of a couple of signatures with varied information, all updating in real time, varying from currently playing to, the last/most played with you longest played 6 games.

Once you start to build up your friends, it will give you a ranking out of your current friend on a particular game (bases on the number of achievements you have), you can also compare achievements on a game with upto 3 friends at a time.

Finally one very cool feature of Raptr, is that when you get an achievement, it will tell you what percentage of Raptr users who have that game, have gained that achievement, giving you an idea of how hard it was.

The only downside with Raptr, is that it is unable to check your PSN stats, now this is through no fault of their own, it just seems Sony is being a little protective about their data. You can update your playing time, but this is manual, hopefully some day in the future, they will allow this.

From googling the PSN issue, I stumbled on a number of other social networking for gamer sites, GamerDNA, Playfire and Giantbomb.

I haven’t used any of the sites as much as I’ve used Raptr, however they all seem to be kinda tracking my stats.

GamerDNA, does seem to track PSN stats, and pull through the trophies, but there seems to be around a 2 day delay

Playfire, Love the layout, but again doesn’t pull through the PSN stats/trophies, doesn’t track time, and also about a day behind.

GiantBomb, I only signed up for this last night, but it’s already tracking my Steam, Warcraft and XBL, but again, no PSN.

All in all, it’s good to more and more of these sites popping up, I remember the day when gaming was deemed as geeky, however seems every man and his dog is doing it now, and it’s now socially accepted.

Personal recommendation, give Raptr.com a try, it just works and if you do, feel free to add me as a friend

My ID’s for the sites are as follows

Raptr

GamerDNA

Playfire

Giantbomb

and no, Raptr isn’t broken, I’ve actually spent that much time playing Borderlands

Tags: achievement, apps, client, com, couple, Darren, day, facebook, fluke, game, gamer, gamer profiles, GamerDNA, gaming, gaming activities, Giantbomb, hard drive, mac, Microsoft, monitors, msn, new games, number, pc mac, Playfire, psn, raptr, real time, restriction, site, sony, status, steam, time, twitter, virtual friends, xbox, xbox 360, xbox live, xfire

Halo Wars

Last weekend I noticed that Halo Wars demo was available on the Microsoft Marketplace, and though, it’s an RTS on a console, it’s going to be terrible, but I downloaded, and really enjoyed. I’ve tried other RTS’s on the console, eg C&C, but felt that they don’t work as well as on mouse and keyboard. I’m the kind of person who has groups of units mapped to my 1-9 key for quick select, and like to attack multiple enemies at one..this isn’t possible on the console, or should I say, not as easy as hitting a number key.

So anyway back to Halo Wars, I’m quite a fan of the Halo series, they are probably not the best FPS’s on the planet, however the storyline is pretty good, the characters, weapons and vehicles are memorable, and these are all present in this RTS.

First of all, Graphics, to be honest, the graphics aren’t any better that you would find in other recent RTS’s, they are good and clear, but I can’t say anything wow’d me. However, the cut scenes are fantastic ! I mean really fantastic, think the likes or the final fantasy films, or Flight of the Osiris from the Matrix (Animatrix). Between each level, there was a couple of minutes of cut scene, it was so good, I thought to myself, why oh why don’t they make an animated film, it would be brilliant ! The game I believe is set 10 years before Halo one, so no Master Chief, however there were many Spartans in the game.

Next, Sound, Gorgous, Gorgous sound, the music, was very simular the the Halo series, so as you can imaging when the game got going, so did the music. The sound effects, voices where everything you’d come to expect from the series, and utterly brilliant.

Next Gameplay, this was the most important for me, as I was pretty sure it would suck, hard to control, no where near as good as a mouse and keyboard, however I was wrong ! You can tell this game was designed for the 360, the buttons and control system worked seamlessly, and at no point through the 15 levels did I ever get stuck on which button to press.

All in all, a very enjoyable experience, and can’t wait to get on line and kick some ass. The game has taken me 10hours and 16 mins to beat, however some of that time, I was pretty drunk. The game is only 15 levels long, however there is the online play as well as the skirmish still to do.

1o/1o

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