TXPaladin on Live

Well I finished the story mode in Co-op last night and loved it by far. I had my brother over as part of the Team Six and in the role of Knight, he had a grand time as well. I think he has the Xbox 360 Fever too now.

It must say something for a game, that when its all over and he's ready to go through it all over again too. I think we'll have to go at it in Realistic mode next time, but for this run through and on Normal, it was very entertaining for sure, I can't see ever playing it on Casual.

Graphically I thought it was really good, its not a photo realistic look and feel along the likes of CoD4, but I found it visual and entertaining and I was drawn into the atmosphere that Ubisoft had created for Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

I'll have to see what the AI do on Realistic, because when a fire fight breaks out in a room, shouldn't it bring those Terrorist from the next room into the battle. But if that was my only small quirk in the game, then I'm very satisfied with the whole package to say the least.

We still need to try the Terrorist Hunt modes and look at some of the online play for the game. But for what I've seen so far and in the squad based style & play for Co-op, this game is tops and I haven't had so much fun with a game for quite some time. I'd say it was when I finished CoD4 story mode and they wouldn't even let me tell the team members what an where to go in that game.

Speaking of telling them where to go, the voice commands are kind of a cool feature for sure. Just remember that on Split Screen Co-op to have your team mate wait a few seconds so the other two can execute the command given, otherwise its funny to watch Knight trying to go Rambo on the whole room on his own.

The following was released over at Lionhead Studio's in a blog and it appears that some items will no longer be available in the Collector's Edition and that a price change has been made as well. Sounds pretty good to me all in all and I'm still looking forward to this set. Not to mention giving one of these away in the Power of 360 Fund Raiser on October 20th all of this Live on LAGtv.Com.

I'm happy to see that this blog post confirms that the Spartan style armor has been included and that even a tribute to the Halo Energy Sword is also apart of the Collector's Edition. To see what the energy sword looks like you can view a clip of in game footage and look close at the sword on the Heroes back and when he enters a darker area of the game too.

I think its cool to see these small overlaps and tributes between the games and for fans of both lines of games. The blog post has been added below for you to view here.

We are happy to announce the Fable II game is in manufacturing and confirmed for Oct-21 in North America and Asia, Oct-24 for Europe.

However, due to supply chain issues**, we are revising the Fable II Limited Collector’s Edition and the estimated retail price will be reduced from $79.99 to $69.99* USD in North America or as applicable in your market.   *These are estimated retail prices; actual retail prices may vary worldwide. ** we are gutted

The premium box, five printed fate cards, and Hobbe figure will not be available as part of the Limited Collector’s Edition.  We apologize for any inconvenience. 

The Fable II Limited Collector’s Edition will now include the following content at this discounted price:

•Fable II game disc
•Bonus DVD with new ‘Making-of’ Feature
•Bonus in-game content (requires Xbox LIVE®)
◦‘The Hall of the Dead’ Dungeon
◦‘The Wreckager’ Legendary Cutlass Weapon
◦Spartan armor and energy sword
To further show our commitment to the faithful fans, we have created a special Fable album for free download for a limited time!  This includes a wonderful selection of Fable 1 music and 3 brand new tracks from the upcoming Fable II soundtrack.

Go to http://www.sumthingdigital.com, and enter “FableCollection” promotion code.  This will be available beginning October 6, 2008 @ 9am PST.

[UPDATE: By a suggestion made in the comments of this entry, we're going to release the Fate Cards as a downloadable PDF for you to print, plus we can also confirm the new LCE version will have the original LCE artwork).]

   
Video: Keep it Clean

Bungie released a teaser video on the 1 year annivesary of the launch of Halo 3. Titled Keep it Clean and with a message at the end stating Prepare to Drop, it pretty obvious to any Halo fan what was in store for all, well to a degree at least. What you see is vehichels that the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers use to get down to a planets surface to launch attacks and become the first wave.

The ODST are known as Hell-jumpers and the reason is its one hell of a ride down and extremely hot and they make a huge impact to say the least. These are not Spartan super soliders here and they don't have the protective Mylar Armor. So I was really excited to see the teaser and learn a bit more about their upcoming project to say the least.

It was rumored that Bungie was working on an ODST FPS game and this looks to be closer to the truth with a tie into to Halo 3 now. Buzz also has this as being more of a squad based game along the lines of a Ghost Recon meets Gears of War type of game and with all the blood. It appears this is being rolled out more as an expansion to the Halo 3 campaign than a separate game, but as to how big of an expansion, how it will drop to us, and the cost of the new content, it's yet to be known. If you watch some of the clips though and pay attention near the end, you'll see a Jan 09, 09 date flash really fast. Now the clock is ticking again in my mind at least.

This came out last week from Major Nelson and I'm really liking all of the new features and options. I still think this is going to be great and its not going take away from the gaming at all. I know my kids will love this as well and as they grow older. Watch the end of the clip and you'll see a button for Gamerpics too. Makes me wonder if we'll have an option to put our Gamerpics on the shirts or something like that.

  
Video: Avatars in the new Xbox experience

Yesterday the Zune 3.0 update was released and with a huge list of improvements and features. What I really love is the fact that a lot of this came out with the news about the new 120GB & 16GB players. At least the new features are available on the old players and your not forced to upgrade. So what all do you get with the new players or the 3.0 update then?

A cool thing I love is the built in radio tuner and they have now setup the ability to tag a song that is being played and purchase it later from the marketplace. If your near a Wi-Fi Hotspot, you can download it direct or simply sync back with your main PC and download it when your connected. It was also announced that a partnership with McDonalds for free Wi-Fi access to the marketplace is now available.

The installation of games for the Zune is another cool feature now and you get hooked up with a copy of Hexic and Texas Hold'em to play. I don't think they could have picked two better games to give us. I'm looking forward to downloading more of the free games to try out for the Zune now as well. I'm even looking to learn more about XNA programming and creating some games myself.

Audiobooks for the Zune are available with a partnership between Audible.Com and OverDrive.Com now. The OverDrive feature works with a lot of the public libraries and allows you to check out audio books for a limited period of time for free. Audible.Com is a pay service for their collection of books.

A free 14-day Zune Pass trial is now available, giving you access to the wide selection of Markeplace music titles all for free as well and the new Dynamic Channels, allowing you to subscribe to these much like a podcast and providing various playlist collections and updated artist information.

So if you’re a Zuner like me, then make sure you get the new Update and if your not, then what are you waiting for?