Conflicker test and Assassins Creed 2 update

I don't know if you've heard as much about Conflicker as I have, but I'm half worried. Ive loyally patched my windows and run anti- syware and virus programs, but am never sure if I'm contaminated. Well here's a website that let's me know once and for all. Hope nobody has gotten infected!

So for those of you who don't know there are two Assassin's Creed trailers that can be found here. Interesting note that contains spoilers of a sort. If you click the logo at the end of the trailer it opens a PDF file that you print out. Then click the triangle logo on the left which will open 5 different e-mails (you need a webcam for this, allow the site to access your webcam). Hold the images you were printed up to your webcam and the website will analyze it and if it's the proper image it will display a 3D model. VERY cool. you can rotate your paper and the image will rotate. Also, the arm image will ocasionally turn into color, I can't tell what dictates that though. ALSO: Idea for a project, you seem to need some white border for the image to show up but if you slowly take off more and more of the border, if you get it small enough, you can tape it to your arm and be an Altair wanna-be!

How to: Game with a beat

So on another post I gave you some great songs to game to. Now I want to take a bit of time to talk about the 3 ways to listen to it on your Xbox 360.

1) Download it to your hard drive. Simply burn the music on a CD (WARNING: It must be an AUDIO CD in order to save the music on your hard drive). Put your audio CD with that list of music or your favorite into the tray and close it, then follow the instructions conveniently placed below

To rip music from a CD to an Xbox 360 Hard Drive:

1. The Xbox 360 music player will launch and CD playback will begin.
2. Select Rip CD to view the Rip CD screen. By default, all the tracks on the CD will be selected. If you do not want to copy all the tracks, manually de-select the tracks that you do not want to rip.
   
3. When you're ready to generate your audio files, select Rip CD again to begin ripping.

2) If you don't want to download your music to the xbox 360 hard drive then put your music onto a flashdrive and plug it into where a wired controller would go, you can play it like normal from the media section.

3) You can stream music directly from Windows Media Manager 11 to your Xbox 360. Complete details can be found here.

Bad news in my book

So I was just looking at google news and I saw there would be a Lego Rock Band being released. Honestly, I'm getting annoyed at Lego. I loved to play with them as a kid but the whole idea of taking a game and making itc characters legos and calling it a new game annoys me...Whatever, buy them if your kids like Legos I suppose.

I also saw another article claiming that video games are addictive. First they cause violence, now they're addictive. I don't really buy into that. I think its more the enviroment of the homes that kids are raised in causes them to be violent, so they want these games where they can be violent and get away scot free. Maybe they do cause violence or addictive, we'll see as the industry expands.

Quick note on "Graphics" to "Visual"

I've decided to change the graphics section in my future reviews to a visual section. That's just because almost all xbox 360 games have great greaphics now-a-days. I think its more important to talk about the games visual qualities (the ammount of filler, effects, immersion, realisticness, etc). Don't worry, if a game's graphics are 15/10 or -2/10 you'll still hear about it.

Pump up game music

So over my many hours in a car on the way from Boston to Maryland to Virginia to Pennsylvania and back I decided to cook up a kick ass list of songs that will get your blood going. My next post will be on ways to listen to the song on your 360. I made a playlist on youtube found here (has swears).

Here's the list of titles and artists:
Vela to Norma - Last Winter
Believe - Breaking Benjamin
Runaway - Amber Pacific
Pompeii - E. S. Posthumus
You're Gonna Go Far Kid - The Offspring
Night Drive - All American Rejects
War - Sick Puppies
Topless - Breaking Benjamin
Plaster (One Step Closer) - Linkin Park (Hybrid Theory)
Blow Me Away - Breaking Benjamin
Unknown Soldier - Breaking Benjamin
The Beast - Tech N9ne
4-2-0 - Kottonmouth Kings
Why We Thugs - Ice Cube
X Gon Give It To Ya - DMX
300 Violin Orchestra - Jorge Quintero
Headstrong - Trapt
Bleed it out - Linkin Park
Numb - Linking Park
Down with The Sickness - Disturbed
Here Comes The Boom - Nelly
Can't Be Toutched - Roy Jones
Let's Go - Lil John
For All These Times Son, For All These Times - Lost Prophets
Do You Call My Name - Ra
Piece By Piece - Strata
The Feel Good Drag - Anberlin
You Make Me Sick - Egyptian Central

End war

There will be a full review coming soon, but right now I would like to share some tips for Endwar.
ARTILLERY: Artillery absolutely pwns. Acording to the rock-paper-scissor method the game is run on it is good against almost everything. They also stay in the back of the lines so they won't get killed and so they'll level up very well, and stay that way.
Following that strategy, pop 2 artillery on the field, along with 2 engineer or infantry (I prefer engineer because they can deal with vehicles and once they are in cover they are set. Also, once you unlock automatic weapons you can mow through other infantry pretty fast). Use the artillery as your main damage dealing weapons with the engineers mainly capturing bases (this is mostly for conquest). Also have some attack choppers (or whatever they are called) in the field to use as your eyes to find targets for infantry.
BE CAREFUL OF DEFCON: Ive already lost two of my best units to kinetic strikes. I suggest jsut trying to take half the bases and thats all since I think that doesn't out you into DEFCON (I need to check that). If you do go into DEFCON space your units out, and have fast ones be moving. From what I can tell it takes 10 seconds or so for the missile to land, so if they move fast enough they will only be damaged.

In other news I will be away until Wednesday and probably can't post. Try to enjoy your time without me.

My attempts at fame

So I just signed up for Blog Catalogue. Its a sweet site that has lists of tons of blogs in categories. Here's the link to the video game section.
I'm finding lots of neat sites. Any bloggers out there might like to try Blog Explosion, you look at other blogs, other people look at your blog.
I also found Zimbio, which is a collection of...information? It has blogs, news articles, everything.

Where they at?

Just some thoughts. A lot of trouble for me has been in how to get games cheaply. Here are some websites that I have found which are more trustworthy (IMHO) than ebay, but still not on the large company grid (amazon, bestbuy, etc).

Switch Games: Here you can trade games with other people through the mail. They even have their own system of showing you who has what you want and wants what you have. Once you sign up you make your wish list and the games you have for trade and your on your way!

Craigslist: At Craigslist you find people in your local area who put up postings of what they have for sale, email them to find a meeting place, and buy/trade it. Games are frequently cheaper here than at game stop or other stores.

Review: Assassins Creed (xbox 360)

I've decided to make this easy for you. Sectionalized and everything. Yes, "sectionalized" just became a word.
Genreal Premise: You are Desmond, and your DNA holds the story of your ancestor, Altair. You travel through Altair's story (he's an assassin) and deliminate 9 targets, leading up to an exciting conclusion (I'm spoiler free, if you want a more detailed [anything] just let me know and I'll fill you in).

Story: BRILLIANT, combines modern day "things" (dates, global warming, drawings of the Nazca lines which are a lot of lines (in Peru) that, when viewed from above, are actually giant animals. Here's a website with everything explained in depth *SPOILERS*: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=175552). The story is intricate and involves the future and the past in a very intwined way.

Controls: Fairly simple: D-pad selects your weapon of choice. High and low profile selects your movement. If I tried to explain it, it would be a few paragraphs, instead I'll let you know that it is very easy to use, although at times Altair jumps (for example) when you didn't intend for him to, or in the wrong direction. Although that doesn't happen very frequently. I fell confident that anyone who has played another xbox 360 game before will be able to learn the controls fast, and master them in 30 minutes to an hour. Most of the game you will be running over roofs parkour style (jumping from one edge of a roof and grabbing on the ledge of another, pulling yourself up, and running around in near impossible ways in general).

Graphics: Stunning! The cities are very large, and all the buildings give it a real feel. The thousands of people walking the streets also gives you a sense of really being in the game.

Gameplay: Here is where the main fault of the game lies (unfortunetly). The premise is great. You pickpocket, eavesdrop, interrogate, or perform deeds in order to find out about your target. Using the information you learned, you stealthily assassinate them, and flee without being seen. In reality, in order to use your information (like the lcoation of gaurds) you have to go through multiple screens many times, and remember the location of all 12 of them. Also, you perform the same 6 tasks for ever assassination, for 9 assassinations. It gets real old, real fast. Another major problem is that while the cities are very expansive, they could be 1/3 of the size and still work just as well, since you only use 1/3 of the city at a time and everything else is filler, as you run right past it to your objective. Here is every complain in full, if you want to read them all (http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/11/review-why-assa.html). While it is possible to "correctly" play the game, it takes MUCH more time.

The "Kid angle": Rated M by the ESRB. There is a lot of blood with the sword fights HOWEVER it can be turned of in the options menu. The game IS focused around killing people however, so don't expect there to be rainbows. As I will say time and time again, think about your kid and what his friends play. If all his friends have the game, he's seeing this anyways. If anything get the games so he gets bored of it and wants to play something outside. Very minimal swears. There are a few graphic scenes (legs get broken) but its more the sound than the sight (they just go the wrong way past the knees).

Overall: This game is about $20 right now, which is a bargain for videogames these days. You could rent it and play it hardcore for 2-3 days and finish it (that's what I did) don't expect to get all the flags though. Here's the link to Amazon to purchase Assassins Creed for yourself. I would really recommend just renting the game however, seeing as once you finish it there's nothing else to do.

Lets get the show on the road!

Like any immature 16 year old boy, I enjoy video games, so now you all can hear what I have to say, and hopefully it will help you decide whether or not to buy games. I'll try to get a game up per week. All you have to do to help me is be a loyal reader and click on any links that you think look cool. Or send me your reviews/guides! I promise I'll credit you however you want. You'll hear from me soon.
-One Honest Gamer