Finally I got my hands on the full version of the game. Snagged it at Target during a Black Friday sale for $48. Just a little gift to myself. So where to begin, where to begin. The beta was a blast I should say and I played the three available maps like crazy. I almost topped out my ranking on the beta, so I learned the maps really well and I upgraded my weapons. I could hold my own in most cases.

Flash bang to the present!
The beta is so over and its all Live Now Soldiers. This game has been out for almost a month and people have been fraging like crazy on this game. We have 16 new multiplayer maps to run and get use to. Better yet I have 16 new maps to run and get use to, a lot of people have already done that. Funny how the match making works or lack of I guess. It's tough is all and will take time to level up and get use to the maps and get the weapon upgrades I need.

Picture yourself, dropped into a hot zone with only a sling shot. Sorry, I'll try not to be so negative here... a fully automatic slingshot... that better? Your a level one in a map you've never seen and you have the limited scope to use. Take a step and use your compass, watch for targets. Bang! Your dead, having fun now? Kill cam shows someone way across, who knows where, but what's that little red dot on me. Don't worry, you'll see plenty of that over the next 3 hours son.

Rule number one
He who has the red dot sight rocks and he who doesn't gets rocked! Little tip for someone starting out new here or well after the others have been playing for a month now, pick up weapons when you can on the map and drop that sling shot, you just might get lucky and snag someone's red dot sight and find you'll last a little longer. Other than that, play hard, play harder, hunker down, and hope you level up and complete the challenges to get your very own red dot sight. The one you get to keep.

It's a little harder to tell in the dark night photo to the left, but a hint of red is in the middle and well, every one's rocking with these. It's a cool thing and helps you get those kills. Just like the melee attack in Halo 3 is one of the deadliest attacks. What's a Halo 3? Never mind, back to CoD4... the point is, this on just about any weapon will improve your kills, hands down. I remember in the beta taking out people on Overgrown way off, just with the help of the little red dot. Funny how it looks on the screen, that dot has to be as big as a Stop sign or larger if you were to stand next to the poor guy about to get popped.

What about the campaign?
What about it! Ok, it's cool and I don't want to give anything away. It's a good story line and the only trouble I've had is with a couple commands. Use that little Yellow Circle on the compass. Get'er centered and haul to that area. Something needs to be done in that area. But I did have a couple issues, I needed to pick something up or hit something and wasn't sure just how or what I needed to do. I wish the AI would have took me over to what I needed and pointed at it.

Death From Above
Now for the cool part and a level I'll want to play over and over. Death From Above, puts you into the safety of an AC130. Here's a sample of the the view you get. Ever seen those military video files of them taking out a target. You get that cool thermal video and the target has no clue he's being watched. The last thing he remembers is the Big Bang and the lights going out. This looks fairly realistic and one of the coolest things I've seen, next to the dead solider I looked at, who had two noses, four eyes, and two mouths. Talk about freaky, I know war is a shock, but I didn't think it would make me see things. In the end, get this game, you'll love it, might hate a bit of it at first, but in time you'll love it still. Oh and I'm a level 6 or 7 right now, so come on out and give the others something to hit and that includes me.

Well it was a good run while it lasted and don't get me wrong, I'm sure I could have kept using iTunes with a Zune, but to really experience all Zune has to offer, I decided to download and install the software. It's a little bit of a learning curve from what I've been use to using, but all in all, I really dig the interface. Just check out the cool collection interface with the Unscripted 360 Podcast.

From music to pods, I run the gambit in listening pleasure, I even like to throw in some audio books from time to time. I really like how well the player handles the videos too. I know a iTunes has a good setup, and I've been using it for years, but its time to say goodbye or see you around sometime. I'm going to keep it installed and might need to pull it up for something.

So I'm looking forward to hooking up my Zune at some point with the Software, but even if you don't have a Zune, the software is pretty cool to use. It's running great as my media player on the PC so far. Head over to www.zune.net and download a copy.

Zune Update
I'm still waiting to hear back on exchanging the Zune 30 out for one with a better screen. Everything looks great, just a defect on the unit sent out. Not sure how long things will take with the holidays around the corner, I'm at the mercy of the web right now.

A new toy in my collection perhaps. I haven't thought a lot about the Zune, well at first at least and when I did, I mainly thought of it as Microsoft's answer to the IPod.

Plus its always good to let things roll out and have any upgrades, tweaks, or bugs fixed as well. Now they are set to roll out another new Zune.

For now, I do have an ok mp3 player and it has a built in FM tuner as well, but I need those extra SD cards to expand the memory and storage. So I bought a 1 gig card and then it end up in my daughter's digital camera. You know how stuff like that happens, right? I could also mention that my wife has the IPod with Video, but I've always told her its her's and that I'm fine with my little mp3 player.

So I start reading more and more about the Zune's now and they actually seem really cool and there it is, a built in FM tuner. Am I just that crazy about the radio? Sure its cool to hear a few stations and its a nice feature that the IPod's don't have. So I mention to my wife about them and that they seem pretty cool.

Little did I know, she's picked one up for me as a gift. She had it in plain sight more or less and I never saw it. Funny how that can be the case sometimes, so I'm talking about them more and she begins to think I've actually seen it and all of a sudden she hands me this boxed Zune 30. Wow, things just don't happen like this everyday and what an awesome gift. She got it at a steal more or less and it looks really cool, accept for the two tiny flaws on the screen. So we are going to look at getting it exchanged and perhaps upgraded now.

But I have to tell you, I'm impressed with this little player and all the features. I just wish the tiny flaws were not there, I'd be playing around with it now and not writing this. I'm sure at some point something might happen and the screen will get scuffed, but I do my best to take care of things and at least I'd be ok with it, if I'd made the two flaws. So for now I wait... knowing, it will Zune Be Mine... Oh it Will and I'm looking forward to it! Thank you Honey, thank you so much. :)

You know what's tough, all of these games that have hit this year. Watching all of your friends playing them too. I'm not made of money and have to watch what and when I buy stuff. A few games came out of nowhere and took me by surprise and being new to console gaming, this is a great time to get into the Xbox 360 and playing on Xbox Live. Early into the year I wrote a piece on Shadowrun and then listed my Top 5 must buy games for this year. The games appeal to me and what I want in gaming for myself and gaming for the family.

Well I own 3 out of the 5 on that list and I decided to upgrade my Top 5 once again. So out of nowhere came Call of Duty 4. I was happy to beta test this game and played it like crazy and as long as I could. It's an awesome game from what I've seen so far and will clearly challenge Halo 3 in sales and playtime.

The Orange box or Half-Life 2 series, Team Fortress 2, and Portal collection for Xbox 360. Great value to put 5 games into one set. You still have to pay $60 for the set and its the only way to get a hold of Portal which looks awesome. Another game set that took me by surprise. With CoD4 and Orange box, we are looking at 6 games, thankfully I'll count them as one.

MotoGP 07 is from the old list and I still want to get this game. It was almost a year ago I held an Xbox 360 controller in my hands at Best Buy and the demo I tried was none other than MotoGP 06. I was hooked for sure. I already new I wanted an Xbox 360, but seeing the graphics and game play first hand started it all for me.

Rockband & Guitar Hero III and in that order I think. See as a little kid, I wanted to play drums, so how cool is it that a game has come out that can let me try and be a drummer at least. The best thing is value in the package of a Guitar, Drum Kit, and Microphone along with the game. Rockband is really 4 games in 1 and allows up to 4 people to play at the same time. Guitar Hero III was announced or leaked just shortly after the release of Guitar Hero II this past Spring. The best thing about Guitar Hero III is it comes with a wireless Guitar and the controllers should work with both games. Great way to get a second guitar for both games.

It's here at last, now the graphics and play for Assassins Creed are really top notch. This was also on my Top 5 to buy list, but the hard part is knowing that this is a single player only game. I'm just not sure how much I'll like playing it over and over. I might need to wait for price drops on this one and may need to look at a rental only for this title. I'm sure it's a great game, but its just hard to shell $60 for a title like that. At least with the other games I can play them over and over and most of them have some online play to offer too. In the end, its still an expensive list and no way will all of these land in my stocking this year. I might have big shoes, but I know they aren't that big for my line up.

On November 15, 2002 Xbox LIVE® launched in North America and now on their fifth anniversary, the latest membership figures show more than eight million members are now actively engaged in the largest social entertainment network on TV.

So to celebrate, Xbox Live is 5ive has gifts for everyone in some shape or form. Take part in the big anniversary celebration, including a Play & Win sweepstakes, a chance to play against top developers, free Marketplace content, and lots more! Check out the video retrospective while your online and don't forget you can get download Carcassonne for free today as well. Thank you Xbox Live.

I got this idea from Bungie.Net and decided to give it a try. It's really neat how you can save pictures and movies with Halo 3, but you can take that to another level with edits in programs like Photoshop.

So they had a story on making your own comic and the art work looked pretty cool and I decided to give it a try. I just might need to see about making a comic strip after all.

Thank you Bungie for making such a cool game and making it easy to do stuff like this. I'd thought about drawing a comic and using Photoshop, but I hadn't thought about using a whole game system to create one. Maybe I should give it ago and do some Comic Fan Fiction.

Bungie.net has released some new features to is website for Halo 3 fans. Located under your Career Stats is a new feature called Heat Maps. Its a cool infrared map or should I saw Hot map that shows kills. The darker red areas are the hotter kill zones.

You can use this to check out kills with and select various weapons and of course you can also select deaths by and see where your biting the bullet so to speak.

Looks like this is a new feature they just started using so it will take some time to build up a pattern. Check it out if you haven't noticed it, just another feature they've added online. Tip, deaths by all weapons, move to black and white areas to live longer. :)

Other News
Well I've switched off the Halo 3 theme for now and moved back to a regular Xbox 360 theme. All though I've been playing Halo 3 fairly solid, I'm also checking out other games & demos from time to time and feel its time to let Master Chief rest a bit. Besides everyone already knows how much of a Halo Fanboy I am already. Check back for more news & reviews and have fun playing.

It's one of my favorite contest campaigns to date and I have 34 days left to play. Sure I enjoyed the play and win Halo 2 contest this past summer. I've enjoyed the Halo 3 sweepstakes, coming back at various times and entering to win. Trix and Treats was a cool idea as well and all in all the contests and giveaways are a lot of fun.

Now the latest contest is called X marks the Spot and its a online scavenger hunt for the most part. Each day you need to search out 10 green X's scattered around various sites affiliated with Microsoft Xbox 360. You search with the daily clues for 24 hours and then enter the word you find with the green X. Each correct answer gets you an entry for the giveaways and they have daily prizes, weekly prizes, and grand prizes for all. It only takes one entry to win and they give you a total of 360 chances. Now I missed the first 10, so the most I can net will be a total of 350.

What I really think is great is how they work this with all of their partnerships & sponsors. Your visiting all of there sites and searching. That's eyeballs guaranteed to see your site at some point and a chance to catch their eye at some point. I really hope they continue to offer contests like this, its a lot of fun and I think its a brilliant campaign. Now if I can only get them to add TXPaladin as a contest answer, that would be cool.

Wow, its been awhile since I've blogged here. Sorry about that. I've been busy with various things offline with family and other projects. Perhaps my massive attempt at blogging something Halo everyday, up to the launch of Halo 3 wore me out. Actually, I've just been playing solid and have let the writing just rest a bit. So to kick things back off a bit, here's my thought's on Halo 3.

Halo 3 so far so good
Actually its been great and everything I could hope for in the game. As far as the campaign goes, I'm starting up on act VII and I guess that puts me at 2/3 of the way complete. The hard part is online play is great and I've enjoyed playing in matches with various groups of friends on live.

I actually feel like I'm a better player in Halo 3 than Halo 2. I can only think it has to do with me playing more and enjoying the game in general. The online Co-Op is pretty cool, something I'll need to get use to, having only had a small taste of it. I really want to finish the fight first and get to the end of the game. Then I can see about heading into some more Co-Op.

I think everything Bungie promised was delivered in this game and it offers endless amounts of game play. If you haven't checked out Halo 3 yet, I don't know what your waiting for. This is clearly the best of the best in the Halo series.

Well I need to wrap up here, I hope to get back with some more gaming news and even have a podcast planned, going to dabble around with that a little bit. In the meantime, catch you online sometime, unless you catch me first.