Lookin' Good...

 CH-CH-CHAINSAWS is what every game needs. But alas we can't always get what we want.  Luckily for me (and you) Gears of War 3 delivered (the chainsaw that is) plus a little more. Along with some other additions this game is looking really good. Really Really Good.

Last Thursday (April 7th) I was lucky enough to attend the Gears of War 3 Multiplayer Beta Preview, at Microsoft Canada. This is the second time I have had a chance to attended a preview event such as this. The first being Halo: REACH in September. Which was a little different. But this was only a beta preview where as when we saw Halo:REACH it was ready to ship and I had already been able to play the public BETA for that at home.

So as we arrive at Microsoft Canada here in Toronto, we are greeted and while enjoying "refreshments" we are placed on 5 person teams for a DeathMatch tournament. Shortly after we are given the pleasure of having a brief presentation by EPICs own Executive Producer, Rod Fergusson (follow him on Twitter @GearsViking) about what to expect in the new GoW3.  Now here is the thing that really blew me away. Rod Fergusson loves Gears of War.  Now I say this because, when I worked as a Video Game Tester at VMC in Montreal, none of the producers be it executive or otherwise that I talked to about the games I was working on had never played any of the games that were being discussed.  So it was a very refreshing experience to see him talk about the game in way that showed he actually had played it and also ENJOYED playing it! After he told us about the games new features and answered some questions from the attendees, it was on to  the game.

The tournament was played out in 5v5 Death Match, best 2 out of 3 rounds of 10 respawns a side. Locust vs COG. The level was Trenches and it was fought fast and furious. Unfortunately for me, my team was eliminated during the first round of play. So all in all I had about ten minutes of actual game play. :'(  The only new feature I had a good chance to see in action was the new Tac-COM which is an amazing improvement from previous versions. Not only does it display a map of the level your playing and where your team mates our on it. It also shows you the positions of the weapons on the map! Blew my mind! We were also told about some new finishers but in the heat of battle trying to do them was a little harder then I thought. Also the new weapons were fun too, a super close range sawed off shotgun and the Pendulum Wars Lancer with the bad ass bayonet. Several tournament rounds later a winner was decided and they were presented with the spoils of war....Cool trophy bro!

After all was said and done it was a very well done event and it was quite evident that everybody had one hell of a good time! Thanks to everybody who worked so hard to make it a killer party! I look forward to more of the multiplayer beta and seeing the new campaign in the fall. Which I'm sure I will talk about in great detail.

-Brad Out!

 Also, the cup cakes were DELICIOUS!!!

Gears 3 you say....

....So tomorrow is going to be a very interesting day.  So I am lucky enough to be invited to the Gears of War 3 Beta Preview Event!!!  So yeah, what do we know so far about Gears of War 3, well this look like a good place to start-->HERE. That is an old trailer but gives us all a good idea of what this whole crazy Gears universe is about. Fighting crazy aliens on a far of planet ravaged by endless war. Sounds exciting.

    I would just like to take this time to actually thank EPIC for doing this because when they first released Gears of War 2 the multiplayer was horribly broken. On the second day of it's release i waited 45 minutes to join an online game that only lasted about 5-7 minutes......WTF! Not only that but it took them months of tweaking and behind the scenes fixes to get the online experience up to snuff! Just look at THIS article detailing all the many fixes they had to implement only several months after the game was released.

   Now hopefully there was enough interest in the game BULLETSORM, which is EPIC's new fast paced, in your face FPS that comes with access to the GoW3 Beta to guaranty enough people online playing the damn thing! I tried the demo, it was fun but not quite fun enough for me to spend my hard earned cash on it. Especially when Mortal Kombat comes out this month as well(I can't even wait!!!OMG!!).

So with that said I will be posting about the Gears of War 3 Beta very soon.

-BRAD Out!

For a friend.

I created this blog to share my passion with my friends. So it feels only right that I post something that has to do with one of my friends IRL first. In my spare time while not working for a living, I have been taking retro consoles and fixing them for my friends in hopes that one day someone will pay me lots of money to do it.  So aside from cleaning game cartridges and helping to get my friends hurting consoles back into working order, I guess i will be *pimping out* these consoles.

So to start I will be refurbishing, painting and doing a LED light mod on my Friend Mike's SNES. As you can see it is a regular old boring SNES. Same grey colour, same purple switches and lack of BLAST PROCESSING!!! But soon it will be something more.

-BRAD Out!