Video Games Today

What do you get when you combine Bioshock with Call Of Duty 4? You get F.E.A.R 2: Projet Origin A game that I believe to be the biggest game so far this year. Don't beleive me? Watch the video.




NOTE:This video was made sometime last year, so it's not an accurate representation of what the game's like today. If you want to see what it looks like now, download the demo on XBL.

Enjoy!
The VGToday Crew

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I'd like to welcome VistaSmoker707 to the VGToday staff! He will join us as another writer for the site to help us bring you more and more articles a day! He will be starting in a week or so, after we get him settled in, but for now please leave welcoming comments for him and you might get a response!

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Halo 3 once again loses it's number rank on the Xbox Live NPD numbers this week with Call of Duty: World at War taking the number one spot. Halo 3 has pretty much consistantly held the top spot since releasse, except for a week or two when big releases come out (Like GoW2 and GTA:IV). So, go forth, and rally your 12 year old friends and get back on Halo quickly, before it is too late.

Enjoy!
The VGToday Crew

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First off, welcome to VGtoday's new little "column" that will be published weekly, or biweekly, that will give you tips and/or guides on how to get those precious achievements. This week we discuss how to rack up a good 175 gamerscore easy, with the new Gears of War 2 DLC Achievements!

More Mystery, Less History (15g): For this you need to win a multiplayer match on each Flashback map pack and it cannot be Wingman. Just go into a private match and put 1 bot on casual on execution, and make the round limit "1". Do this for each map, and you will have the achievement in about 5 minutes.
Bound by a Shared Past (15g): This is the same thing as "More Mystery, Less History" except you must win on each map on Wingman. Just put the settings on 9 bots on casual and round limit on "10" and you should have the achievements in no time.
The Roof! The Roof! The Roof... (15g): Read "More Mystery, Less History" and just do that on the combustible maps.
Forged in the Fire (15g): Read "Bound by a Shared Past" and just do that on the combustible maps.
Skeletons in your Closet (20g) & Trial by, and on, Fire (20g): These are some of the more time consuming achievements on this DLC pack. If you put the Horde mode on casual you should reach wave 10 in about 15-25 minutes depnding on how fast you go. You must do it on each map so 15-25 minutes on 8 maps should take you roughly 2 Hours - 3 Hours 20 Minutes for 40 gamerscore.
Annex: Now With Execution Rules (75G) : Note, this is the ONLY achievement in this bunch that MUST be played in a public match, which means you CANNOT boost this in private matches. Just load up the Flashback or Combustable map pack and try and get annex. It should not be too difficult because EPIC increased the chances of annex showing up in those playlists.

Good Luck!
The VGToday Crew

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The Demo for LOTR: Conquest has been up on the Xbox Live Marketplace for awhile and we have a little demo impression/review in store for you. The game is designed by Pandemic, the makers of the Star Wars: Battlefront series, and published by EA. The game released January 13th 2009 in North America, and on January 19th 2009 internationally.

LOTR: Conquest, in general terms is Battlefront with LOTR skins, but much much more. The gameplay in LOTR:C goes back to the style seen in the first Battlefront game, abandoning the annoying "Must have 'x' points to get 'x' unit", excluding heroes. Heroes can be desirable in certain situations, but right now with the demo's selection of heroes the heroes can be more of a burden and arrow magnet rather than being helpful. For example, the Balrog is slower than any other unit in the game, so if your opponent is an archer and is backtracking shooting at you...you can never catch him to kill him. Plus annoying button setup on some heroes can cost you your life. For example, when using the Balrog for the first time, you might try pressing "A" to jump or move fast...instead he stops and taunts the opponent for a few good minutes.

The game has multiple modes on the retail, but on the demo you can only play capture points. In this gametype you capture flags to gain points every interval, the more captures per interval, the more points you get. These capture points also allow you to spawn on them, making wait times in between fights less prevalent. One holdup on the game is the small choice between classes and how deep each of these classes are. Sure, there are different combos and ways to play each class, but after you learn those the game gets repetitive.

My personal opinion on the demo is that the game could be a hit or miss. Due to the relatively low hype about this title in Q1, I do not see this the big sleeper hit of 2009. It is fun, but lacks the huge longevity of multiplayer giants like Call of Duty and Gears of War. Stick around for our full game review coming soon!

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As many of you may have heard, 1up.com has recently been sold to UGO, but what happens soon after is what hits home the hardest. Soon after taking over the throne of 1up, the exec's at UGO decided to lay off most of 1up's staff. The current list includes:



If you are familiar with 1up, and it's staff, you realize that many of those names are executives and/or some of the greatest writers on 1up, and in the business in my opinion. Not much else to say but, for me, 1up is official dead. I hope all the laid off get greats jobs somewhere else and do great.

For a full lengthy post on this, visit Jeff Green's blog: http://jeff-greenspeak.blogspot.com/2009/01/no-youre-not-same-1up.html

The VGToday Crew

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Bethesda released some more details about the DLC and we are here to bring that to you. First, the level cap will be raised for purchasers of the DLC from 20 to 30, but if you have finished the game with a character...you're out of luck, you have to start a new one for the DLC. Also, ninja armor (as seen above courtesy of Xbox360Fanboy) will become available. As puclically known, the DLc will also include areas in Alaska where you fight against Chinese survivors. The DLc is priced at 10$ (800 Microsoft Points) and is due to release this month for the Xbox 360 and Pc.

Enjoy!
The VGToday Crew

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That is right, for people who did not get the code in their copy of Gears 2 or if you bought the game used, you're in luck! The Map Pack is now available on the XBLM for a cheap price of 5$ (400 Microsoft Points). Sure, it should be free...but for those that got the game used (Priced at 54.00$ Used), you saved 1$ overall! Here at VGToday wish that Epic would just migrate the Flashback maps into the normal playlists and not have a seperate playlist just for Flashback...same for combustable, but thats never going to happen.


Enjoy!
The VGToday Crew

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You heard it right, Epic is acknowledging the bugs in the currently multiplayer game and promises to fix them. Included are fixes for melee through walls, shotgun and boomshot blasts going straight down when fired from the hip, and much more! Mark Rein from Epic made the announcement on the Epic Forums, here is what he had to say:

As I mentioned before the break we’ve been working on a major title update for Gears of War 2. This update will address bugs and exploits as well as add some new achievements related to downloadable content. We don’t have an exact date for it but all indicators are it will go live within January. If that changes we’ll let you know.

We’re fixing a whole bunch of online exploits. For example we’ve fixed the ability to wield an invisible shield, melee through some walls, gain infinite Lancer ammo and equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously plus many more.

We’re also making several small changes to improve the overall online gameplay experience. A few of the ones that might interest you are; increased penalties for quitting matches early, adding additional spawn protection against planted grenades and chainsaw attacks, and adding the ability to see the Submission flag carrier destination by using Tac/Com.

We know you folks love achievements so on the achievement side we’re adding achievement progress numbers to the War Journal, increasing the frequency of in-game Achievement progression notifications and adding some new Achievements for DLC.

This is just a very small list of some of the things that will be in the next title update but one more item which has been talked about a lot in our forums deserves a special call out...

About that shotgun...

We fixed the client side hit detection on the shotgun so that in a high-latency (i.e. “laggy”) match, the shotgun will be more reliable. We’ve also fixed another bug whereby shotgun and boomshot rounds could strike the ground when firing from the hip.

So there’s a brief status report on the next title update. At some point I expect we’ll post a more detailed list but I assure you we’re working hard to get this out the door and once it’s done we’ll start working on the next update. We’ll try to do a better job keeping you informed of our progress on future updates and we’ll try to be a little more active in the forums once this update is released.

Enjoy!
The VGToday Crew

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