Rebooted SSX Seems A Step Too Far

First, an admission. I was a HUGE SSX fan back in the day. I'd go as far as to say it's probably one of my all time favourite game series out there and I've been wishing it back for a while. Well at the Spike VGA's it was announced, and the fans went mild.

Finally hit 40,000 thanks to Sgt Slaughter and others.

Well, I finally broke 40K, which is not bad going seeing as I now have 6 weeks to make 5000 points. This week has been full of ups and downs, playing Mini Ninjas, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja Bionic Commando: Rearmed and passed the 40,000 mark with WWE Legends of Wrestlemania. My thoughts about each game are below.

How I learned to hate Pat Benatar: 45K Challenge

This weekends been busier than I thought it was going to be thanks to an unexpected Paramore ticket (thanks Allan, still will pay you back in some way for that) so I've been unable to play as much as I'd like. I thought I'd get the annoying Band Hero achievements out of the way.

45,000 Gamerscore Challenge

I've been really bad at blogging for the past few months, mainly due to unemployment = no games but I digress. I checked my gamerscore earlier and saw I was just off of getting 40K. Now with nothing to do in the foreseeable future, I've decided to go for 45,000 Gamerscore before the new year.

Before I begin, I have to admit, I am not great at gaming, far from it. I see this as a good chance to complete some games in my back catalog that I've been meaning to get back to and finish. (I'm looking at you Mirrors Edge). If you do want to give me a hand, then please feel free to lend me any game that you may not be needing, Or anyone else reading this, send me free stuff!

I'll be posting (usually) daily posts of any achievements I've been getting and thoughts on games. I've got a list of games I'm wanting to play through: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Mini Ninjas, Mirrors Edge, Dragon Age, Fracture, Prototype. So I'll see how things go and post back with updates.

Current Score: 39187

Just Cause 2: A Dissection

Just Cause 2, for all intents and purposes is a good game. Unfortunately it could have been a lot more than that due to several factors. Why was this game only good, and not the great game it could have been?

Dragon Age Gets A Sequel

Dragon Age:Origins was very much the black sheep of the BioWare games portfolio when it came out last year, overshadowed by the similarly excellent Mass Effect 2. Now though Dragon Age gets the sequel it most rightly deserves with it's existence announced by US games magazine Game Informer. I can only hope that Dragon Age 2 follows on from the excellent Dragon Age as it was most definitely in my top 3 BioWare games.

Picture is after the jump...

Forgotten Classics: DS

This is the first in the hopefully regular series in games that you should check out for each console. I'll not be going over the games that you SHOULD have for each console. For the DS, the games you should have are New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart DS, Brain Training, Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/HeartGold/SoulSilver.

So onto the first game...or is it games.....

Dance Central, Kinect's Killer App?

At Microsoft's E3 press conference, Harmonix, creator of Amplitude, FreQuency, Rock Band and many other games, announced that it will have a game for Microsofts new Kinect motion camera called Dance Central.

E3: Nintendo

This years E3 is probably the biggest for Nintendo. After talking about what I feel will happen to the big 3 in their press conferences, I will finally talk about Nintendo.

E3: Sony

E3 is starting tomorrow so I shall be taking a little look at what to expect from the console developers. I already talked about what to see from Microsoft, so now on to Microsoft's biggest rivals.

Apologies

Wow, this hasn't been updated in a while, and for that I apologise. Its been a busy few weeks for me personally with some unplanned events (jury duty, trip to Dundee) and as a way of saying sorry I will strive to post something at least once a day. I will be adding the final 2 E3 predictions, some E3 analysis and some other game guides for console owners, starting with the DS.

Insomniac Games New IP To Be Multi-Platform

Insomniac Games, creator of Ratchet & Clank and the original Spyro The Dragon games, has announced that its new IP is going to be published by EA and will be coming out on Xbox 360 and PS3.

Fable 3 Comes With Out Of Albion With A Collectors Edition

I'm a sucker for a special edition of a game I'm looking forward too, give me a making of DVD or some artcards and I am happy to pay a little bit more. Give me some special DLC as well, and we might have a deal. Fable III is coming out later this year and comes complete with some nice treasures for you to paw over. Full details inside.

Some Japanese Music Finally On The Way To Rock Band?

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I'm a huge fan of Rock Band, I don't hide that. I also have a soft spot for some Japanese music.

With it looking seriously unlikely that the Rock Band Japan project that was announced last year, Harmonix contacted JRock fansite JRockRevolution's readers to list the bands that they wanted to see in Rock Band. The results were maybe a little surprising or unsurprising how you look at it.

ModNation Racers Just Got A Little More Awesome

Sony's new tag of "Play, Create, Share" needed some help from the VP of Artistic Modification, Kevin Butler, and SCEA SCO Jack Tretton to really drive home that ModNation Racers will try to do to kart racer what LittleBigPlanet did to platforming games, though it's not just platforming for the sequel.

Seriously though, why does Sony not show the brilliance of Kevin Butler in the UK? It has to be better than some of Sony Europe's previous adverts.

ModNation Racers comes to the UK this Friday.

E3: Microsoft

Have you got E3 fever yet? The biggest gaming event of the year (arguably) is just around the corner with the Big Three showing off their goods to the world. I'm going to take a guess at some things that will happen in each developers conference.

Microsoft

This Christmas season is an important one for Microsoft. With Project Natal coming out they're hoping to get their tendrils into the rich vein of money that Nintendo opened with the Wii and DS called "the casual market". Sony is doing the same thing with the Playstation dildo backmassager Move and expect both Sony and Microsoft to follow the Wii with its minigame collections using their motion technology.

The Microsoft press conference is going to feature the Cirque du Soleil for their "World premiere of project natal". Now wasn't Natal shown last year? I think what they mean is that they're going to show actual games and not just some mini-games. This conference is also being shown on Spike TV and MTV in the USA at least. Handy for the Americans out there, but it should mean that the new Rock Band 3 is going to have some prescence. Hopefully it'll be a better demo than 2008 when they let Peter Moore loose on The Hives.

Also expect to see: Fable III and Peter Molyneux make some wild accusations that doesn't actually happen in the game, Microsoft announces Natal Sportz that comes onstage to rapturous tumbleweed, Activision shows off Call of Duty: Black Ops that will feature "exclusive" DLC featuring your favourite maps from Modern Warfare 2 and cost 1600 MS points for 5 maps.

Crackdown 2, Halo Reach, Gears of War 3 and Bulletstorm should all see demos or trailers too.

I'll do my expectations on Sony and Nintendos press conferences over the coming days.

The dawn of a new blog

Hello,

Welcome to my gaming blog, Use X With Y.

What does that mean, well if you've ever played any adventure games you should be able to think of some things to replace X and Y with.

So what will this blog contain? Well it'll have news, reviews, some features, that kind of thing.

I hope you enjoy the blog as much as I'll enjoy writing and gaming.