1200? Ouch. This one should be worth it though from what I've seen.

rotfl

Speaking of Heroes. Something interesting I just found out. You know when you see an actor and it bugs you where you've seen them before? Greg Grunberg (the mind reading cop) was doing that to me, so I looked him up tonight. Turns out he's been in a ton of stuff including Alias, NYPD:Blue(where I remember him), Felicity and more.

Anyway to make this relevant, I was scrolling down his imdb profile and apparently he was the voice of Ethan Thomas, the protagonist in Condemned. Very cool.

I didn't like him in Alias at all but he's not so bad in Heroes. I do sorta hope he dies soon though. :)

Maybe he's an allegory?

allegory
n 1: a short moral story (often with animal characters) (syn: fable,
parable, apologue)
2: a visible symbol representing an abstract idea (syn: emblem)
3: an expressive style that uses fictional characters and
events to describe some subject by suggestive
resemblances; an extended metaphor

Glad I got all those 1600 point cards for $5 at Best Buy.

how'd you manage to score those (pts)...


must have missed something

There was a deal a while back when you bought any 360 game you could buy a points card for $4.99. It was found at the time that the Gears of War pre-order box counted as a 360 purchase, so you got a T-shirt (GoW preorder) and the points card for $9.99 + tax.

They were running a deal online if you pre-ordered Halo 3 you could get a points card for $4.99 but I think they charged you the full amount of Halo 3 now.

damn, i actually pre-ordered BOTH, but didn't see those deals. Maybe its because I went through gamestop/eb games

Tempting to get GEAR of WAR at buy.com for $40 ship.

seriously friggin worth it, if you can afford it

how many did you end up with? With those and the free one from True.com, I have(5 unopened still) around 13-14k points.

Sold all my shirts for $10+ so all the points ended up being free. :) My cheap ass is still hesitant about a 1200 pt game. I also still won't bite on Lumines based on principle.

But it's really really really fun. :D ;)

1200 points is a lot, but I like supporting the indie games. I'll give the demo a shot and then decide if it's worth the points. Of course, I downloaded the full version of Small Arms but haven't played it at all yet, thanks to the Wii and Zelda. I need to take more vacation time and finish some of these games. :lol:

Same here. Keep the faith, brother! ;)

No Lumines for me either. :( And I really want to play it. I'll just have to look for the PSP version cheap sometime.

Is there a game for this week? I haven't looked too hard yet, so I figured I'd ask here.

See post #523 in this thread.

Thanks.. Not sure how I missed that post. :lol:

Hmm.. 1200 points is expensive. But if it is indeed fun, and for that 1200 points you get the whole game, I could be persuaded. I do like puzzle games.

so they are rolling out more high-cost stuff, but still no word on the other add-ons for Lumines. Where is my Madonna video, dammit!

I never had a problem with my 360 until this afternoon, when I turned it on to play some NHL '07. When I turned it on, the dashboard popped up, but it was in black and white and the picture was really muddy. Of course, I figured it was the component cable, so I messed around with that, but it didn't make a difference.

The only thing that solved the problem was turning the console off and then back on again.

Anyone have any idea of what could've caused this weird problem? It worries me, considering I've already had three defective consoles.

Here is pretty good review of RoboBlitz for those of you on the fence.

Review Link

im blocked from that site :(


has anyone tried the demo yet?

Cut and pasted for those who can't see it:

Gameplay this fresh doesn't come around often enough these days!
RoboBlitz is a title that's hard to place in the genre conventions we're used to. Part platformer, part puzzler, part third-person shooter, this innovative title puts out-of-the-box thinking to use in full force.

You play as Blitz, a one-wheeled robotic custodian aboard a space station that houses a superweapon by the name of 'Space Cannon.' You share residency of this space station with a robot inventor by the name of Karl. When the Space Cannon comes under attack from evil robotic beings known as the NOED, (Yes, I spelled it right... ;) ) Karl, who is permanently suspended from the ceiling, finds that he's unable to repair all the main subsystems of the Space Cannon by himself in order to blast the MegaNOED out of the sky and save all of creation. That's where you come in.

You're sent to 6 different operating systems within the space station that are key components to fueling, cooling, and otherwise operating the Space Cannon. These systems offer vastly different challenges for Blitz to overcome. The tasks you have to complete range from maintaining a fuel supply to the cannon by directing barrels to the cannon via conveyor belts, to powering up an inverse-tesla coil through picking up, and manually inserting batteries, to charge it, to sending coolant to the device to keep it from overheating by navigating pipes, cogs, and fans. However, it's how you go about doing these tasks that makes this game so unique.

Blitz is noticably different that your average platforming hero...he has no legs. Instead, Blitz rolls about the Space Cannon on a single solitary wheel. This gives the controls a unique feel without being overly abstract. Blitz, being a custodian, also starts off with no guns or explosives at his disposal. Indeed, for the first portion of the game, your offensive capabilities are limited to a circular spinning attack, and smashing objects into the ground after picking them up with your arms. However, to aid him in beginning his task of powering up the Cannon, and subsequently, becoming the universe's savior, Karl endows him with an EMP beam to disable his robotic foes.

As you progress through the game, you will pick up green metallic cards, amusingly referred to as 'Upgradium.' This Upgradium is indeed used to buy new enhancements for Blitz, such as a plasma cannon for more suitably defending himself, a double-jump for enhanced maneuverability, a mid-air flip that slows the game down when performed to give the game a bit of Matrixy flair when used, and a 'Gravity Goo' gun that causes any object it coats to have anti-gravity properties, which isn't as gross as it sounds. There are also some armor and firepower upgrades in addition, making for a very well-rounded set of equipment. The fun doesn't stop there, though.

Around every four stages you complete, Karl will give you a shout. He's quite the adept inventor, despite his obvious lack of mobility. Early in the game, you're introduced to the Point-2-Point device. It allows you to place two nodes, called points, that will attract to one another, invariably pulling lighter objects towards heavier ones. This later upgrades to a personal tractor beam that you can use to not only pull lighter objects to you, but allows you to zoom towards better grounded objects, and even the environment itself, allowing you to do your Spiderman thing, if you dig that notion. (Who doesn't?)

One of the first things you'll notice about this game is that it's gorgeous. It should be. It's powered by the highly-lauded Unreal 3 Engine. (See: Gears of War, Rainbow Six: Vegas, among others) RoboBlitz features beautifully rendered environment aglow with large amounts of normal-mapping, bloom, dynamic shadow, all running at near-60 frames per second without skipping a beat. In fact, the game looks so beautiful, you'd forget it was made to fit under a 50MB size limit for Xbox Live Arcade. For those not in the know, that's smaller than the 360's standard memory card holds. So, if it's so small, why does it look as amazing as it does? I'll tell you...

RoboBlitz doesn't come with any textures. You know, those things the game uses to make all of the environment and characters in the game look like they're supposed to? Without them, everything would look white and grey? So, if it doesn't come with textures, why am I seeing them, you ask? It MAKES them. Yes, you heard me. The game uses the power of the Xbox 360 to make its textures on the fly. This technique is used to save on memory so that the game comes in a smaller package. I'll spare you the complicated jargon about how it works, but to put it simply, the game has the formulas it needs to make those textures as the next area loads.

Despite the fact that, every time you load a new mission, the game has to build its textures from scratch, the load times in this game are minimal. As you enter a new area, the game's frame rate stutters a bit, but this is done in such a way that it never intereferes with your gameplay, and the wait inbetween stages never exceeds 7 seconds. Mind you, 2 or 3 of those seconds take place while you're still leaving the area, so you're never left waiting long.

RoboBlitz could probably be beaten in around 4 or 5 hours if you know what you're doing and 'blitz' right through it, forgive the pun, but the gadgets and physics are so much fun to play with, you'll spend a good portion of your time fooling around with them, or trying to use them creatively to get those hidden-away Upgradiums. You could easily spend 10-15 hours messing around, and exploring every nook and cranny in this game. Possibly even longer.

Oh, I've completely forgotten something, in all my gushing about the complex engine. The boss fights against the NOED. Once you've managed to get most of a system's components online, invariably, a NOED comes to try and screw everything up. The great thing about these boss battles, though? They're just as fresh as the rest of game.

You'll hardly ever find yourself repeating the same task during a boss fight. None of this 'hit him the same way 3 times for each part of the fight' stuff from the days of old. Once you use a tactic on the NOED, they'll either try to take away your ability to employ it against them, or they'll one-up you, even going so far as to turn your own clever trick against you. All of the boss battles are solved by using the unique components that make up each system you've spent your time restoring against the NOED. You'll never feel like any of the NOED are a pushover, and likewise, the NOED never seem to difficult to defeat, either. Each victory feels like an accomplishment, because you really have to think out each step you take thoroughly.

Long story short, RoboBlitz is one freshly entertaining game, and gameplay this fresh doesn't come around often enough these days!


8.7
great
Gameplay
10
Graphics
9
Sound
9
Value
9
Tilt
7

I just got done playing the RoboBlitz demo for a bit, and I think it might end up being my first purchase in a long time.

The controls take a little bit of getting used to since everything is physics-based. You can think of it as not just moving your character, but applying a force in the direction you want Blitz to go.

so, when you stop moving the control stick, he still moves in that same direction?