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Traditionally the big video game releases have happened in October and November with a bit in December to lead up to the big holiday selling season.  The first change happened I think in 2007 where some big gaming releases moved forward to pre holiday September and even August with Halo 3 and BioShock.  This holiday season it is going the other way to post holiday season releases.  Many releases were delayed to avoid the crowded holiday season or for a little more polishing.  The only problem is now the beginning of the year is so crowded that some titles are now moving back to April-June.  Here is a sampling of just what is coming to XBox 360.  There are huge games coming to PS3 as well like Heavy Rain and God of War III.  Many of this games are multi-platform but some are 360 exclusives.

Jan 5 - Bayonetta and Darksiders

Jan 12 - Army of Two: The 40th Day

Jan 19 - Dark Void

Jan 26 - Mass Effect 2 (Day One must buy for me)

Feb 9 - Bioshock 2 (Day One must buy for me) and Dante's Inferno

Feb 16 - Aliens vs Predator

Feb 23 - Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction (Day One must buy for me)

Mar 2 - Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition (A maybe for me, also I would like to try the first game still as well)

Mar 9 - Final Fantasy XIII

Mar 16 - Dragon Age: Origins Awakenings (First expansion pack (not DLC) for Dragon Age)

Mar 23 - Just Cause 2

This is just the first 3 months of 2010 and almost all of these titles were originally slated for Fall 2009 (if not years earlier in Splinter Cell’s case).  Not all of the above titles are AAA guaranteed hits but a bunch of them are.  It looks to slow down a bit in April but the only slow times may be June and July.  Most likely in August it will all start over again.

Luckily for me I still have some Amazon and Best Buy gift cards from Christmas to use toward the three main ones above for me.

One of my traditions is the getting and playing of video games around Christmas.  A more recent tradition is taking some left over vacation time to stay home and play the games.  Due to the way my vacation rolls over I always seem to have time available to use this time of year.  I think my first one was playing KOTOR in January of 2004.  I have had several gaming vacations in the years since for games like Mass Effect in January 2008.

This year was no different.  For Christmas I got several games to play.  For the XBox 360 I got Left 4 Dead 2, Ghostbusters, Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition, and I used an Amazon gift card to get Assassin's Creed II.  For the DS I got Scribblenauts (which Kelly has so far played even more than me) and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story.  For the Wii I got New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  I even bought Kelly some games as well.  I got her Rock Band 2 and a bunch of tracks since she enjoyed The Beatles: Rock Band game so much and also Toy Story Mania for the Wii.

I started my Video Game Vacation by finishing up Borderlands on 12/30 so I could send it to my brother to share the love as I did with Batman: Arkham Asylum.  I then played Ghostbusters 12/30 – 1/1.  It was a good game if you want to play what is basically the third Ghostbusters movie in game form.  It was pretty short only taking me about 5 hours to beat.  Next I played Force Unleashed 1/2 – 1/5.  This game was a bunch of fun, using your light saber to cut up all the bad guys.  The game took about 7 hours for the main game and then another 2 hours for the DLC that was included for free in the Sith edition.

Throughout these games a bit of Modern Warfare 2, SMB Wii, Toy Story Mania and Scribblenauts was played to fill in the gaps.  The next game I started was Assassin's Creed II on 1/5.  I am still playing the game at this point and I am about 85% done I would say.  Hopefully I can finish it soon because it is a lot of fun.

This however may be one of my last Christmas Video Game Vacations since my wife has indicated I should use my vacation time at more appropriate times throughout the year.  We will see what the next Holiday brings.  If you want to see a humorous automated reporting of my gaming you can see my XBox 360 Blog.

While playing Dead Space in the last week of October my 360 started freezing several times.  Each time I was able to power off and back on and it would work for another hour or so.  Then on Oct 29th it finally had the Three Red Rings, also know as Red Rings of Death.  I didn’t do anything about it right away but I went online to http://support.xbox.com/ to at least see my options.  I also registered my 360 since I hadn’t previously done that.  It said my 360 was outside of the standard 1 year warranty.  I tried to start the repair process online but due to an upgrade to the site it appeared that service was offline.  I didn’t want to call since I knew it would be a painful waste of time.  I kept checking the site to see when it was available again.  Finally, on November 4th the online repair service was back online.  I went through and entered the repair request, the site was still a bit quirky but it only took about 10 minutes for the entire process, much less I am sure than it would have taken on the phone to even begin the process.

Here is the timeline of the repair process, I will keep updating as it progresses:

Oct 29 – Three Red Lights
Nov 4 6 PM– Entered request for repair on http://support.xbox.com/
Nov 5 12 AM – Got tracking number for return box
Nov 7 3 PM – Return box arrived at house
Nov 10 10 AM – Box picked up by UPS
Nov 13 11 AM – Box delivered to Microsoft repair facility in Mesquite, TX
Nov 14 6 AM – Microsoft acknowledges receipt of my 360
Nov 15 11 AM – Microsoft says 360 is repaired
Nov 17 4 PM – Box leaves Microsoft to return to me
Nov 20 7 PM – I picked up package from UPS

Almost exactly 16 days for the turnaround, which isn’t great but isn't too bad either.  Most of the time was waiting for shipping back and forth.

I purchased my Xbox 360 during one of the first pre-order sales on 8/23/2005.  I then got it about 11/22/2005.  As many have experienced a high percentage of Xbox 360 from the first 18-24 months had severe overheating problems to the point of basically destroying themselves.  I think every person I know that has a 360 has had it fail at some point, which is a pretty high failure rate, some multiple times.  I however to this point had been the “lucky” one.  Mine had never really had any issues.  This was assumed to be because I had it in a well ventilated rack with a high exhaust fan drawing air out of the larger room into the rack space and out into another room.  It seemed the 360 was going strong.  Over its lifetime Microsoft extended the warranty on the 360 from 90 days to 1 year on all issues and then to 3 years on just the three red light issue.  I thought mine was going to outlive its warranty, but that might not be the case.  Over its life I could count the number of lockups on both hands, which is pretty good.  Then last week while playing Dead Space (good game) it hard locked several times one night.  It seemed to survive and keep going afterwards.  Then last night while playing the On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness – Episode Two it locked up again (without letting me save, grr).  This time I turned it off and then turned it back on and got what you see to the left and below.  I don’t think it is totally dead yet, but it is definitely dying.  Now the question is will it die totally for warranty service to accept it before time runs out on 11/22/2008.  We will see.  Kelly is of course heart broken over the idea I might not get to play Xbox for a while.

I wanted to post some thoughts on Mercenaries 2 as I am just about 2/3 through it and I think I can speak to it pretty well.  The game has been reviewed average at best, it averages a 73 at both Game Rankings and Metacritic. I can’t say that I totally disagree with these scores.  That being said the game does have some redeeming values.

I will start with the bad with this game because if you can’t get beyond that the rest of my review won’t help.  First, this game is very buggy.  I have had a few crash bugs but not too many.  There are some really odd physics bugs, like the one in the screenshot of floating (in the air) storage containers.  Also the usual clipping stuff but it seems to be worse than recent games in this case.  The graphics are just bland, the textures are pretty low res and the poly count on most items is low as well.  The story is so thin that it barely explains why you are doing what you are doing.  After getting about 2/3 through the game I have seen maybe 30 minutes of poorly written cut scenes that can mostly be summed up to I don’t like these people go blow them up.  The last annoyance is enemy mystery boxes that endlessly spawn guys.  In some cases the buildings keep spawning guys even after the building has been blown up and is in flames or is rubble.

Now after beating up on the game I will give it some praise.  The game is at its core just fun.  Basically this game is a big open world game where you get to run around blowing EVERYTHING up.  When I say everything I mean everything, from trees to castles with some ships and lots of vehicles and enemies.  There is a huge variety of vehicles including motorcycles, big rigs, tanks, helicopters, jet skis, ships and some cars.  I haven’t found anything yet that I can’t steal and drive myself.  The driving (flying) mechanics seem to be pretty good as well (even if the controls are silly).  The world itself is large and has lots of different terrain and elevation.  Once you are in the world there is no loading, the only loading is entering your home base and the various faction bases.  While you are running around you have a choice of about 20 handheld weapons as well as calling airstrikes.

Some other quirks are just questionable design choices I think.  It is REALLY hard to die, I mean you have to try to just run into a firefight and stand still and get hit over and over.  Along these lines the vehicles are pretty tough too and while in them you are invulnerable until they are destroyed.  While driving most vehicles you can’t shoot and they have a gunner spot for co-op, but without co-op the vehicle just seems incomplete.  The entire map is immediately visible if not accessible.  Similarly every objective in the game is outlined in the menu at the start of the game removing what little surprise the story might provide.  There is really no consequence to angering a faction since you can just pay them off.  One of the factions is on an island which makes getting there annoying if not hard at times.

The final question is would I recommend this game, maybe?  If you played the first and like it then definitely yes.  If you just want to run around a big world blowing things up then yes.  If you want a non-buggy game with any story at all well then pretty much no.  The game was in development for a very long time, it started sometime around the launch of the 360 if not before.  It seems that they just got tired of working on it and just shipped it out rough edges and all as a result it could have been great but rather is just ehh.

Rumblings have already started regarding the Xbox 3 or 720 or what I think it will be the 1080. I figured I would add my own predictions to the mix. I have no knowledge to really base these predictions on other than watching the technology and video game world. I will break the predictions down component by component and try to give some reasoning for each.

Overall Goal – When the Xbox 360 and PS3 were being designed they were hoping for 1080p but really only barely managed 720p. Many games actually run at 600p or 640p for performance reasons. Even with today’s graphics chips 1920x1080 at 60 fps is possible and in another year it should be almost guaranteed. Also by the time the next Xbox comes out TV and Blu-Ray makers will have drummed 1080p into the consumer consciousness. I think one of if not the major selling points of the next Xbox will be the ability to play games at 1080p with a locked 60 fps. This is where I get the Xbox 1080 naming idea. It also works out well as a combination of 3x360.

Processor – This one I will admit is just a random guess. I can pretty much guarantee it won’t be cell based though. I also don’t think it will PowerPC based only because that architecture appears to be stuck in neutral recently. Although since the last one was a joint design between Microsoft and IBM they could do the same again. My bet however is an Intel CPU, probably a quad core hyper threading CPU that can execute 8 threads at once. It will be in the 3-3.5 GHz range but be much more efficient than the existing 3.2 GHz processor in 360.

Graphics – As I said above the goal of the graphics processor will be to be able to 1920x1080x60 fps with 4xAA probably. There is no reason to do anything beyond 1920x1080 since that will be the top of what consumer displays can do for the foreseeable future. Given another 12 months of graphics improvements hitting a locked 60 fps at 1920x1080 with some head room for AA or AF should be quite doable. The maker of the chip could be any one of nVidia, AMD (ATI) or now even Intel. I wouldn’t even venture a guess at this point.

Sound – This one is pretty much a stab in the dark. I am guessing it will do real time encoding of at least Dolby Digital + or maybe 7.1 channel 48 KHz PCM. It will most likely also support decoding of Dolby True HD and DTS:HD MA and bit-streaming the same.

RAM – I have to believe that the next Xbox will share the uma architecture of the first two. With that in mind it will need really fast RAM for the graphics, probably GDDR5 by the time it is built. I figure a minimum of 2 GB of RAM but a more likely amount of 4 GB. This both based on price and need.

Hard Drive Storage – This one is fairly easy. It will most likely be a 500 GB 2.5” SATA drive. It might be bigger or smaller but probably not much. The other variable is if the next Xbox will be able to have 360 drives attached full time or just for initial transfers. As always more is better especially given the possibility of total digital distribution.

Optical Storage – There is much discussion currently about the death of standard distribution methods and the switch to digital distribution. I don’t think 100% digital distribution will be possible even in a few years. I base this primarily on Internet access speeds and the size of games. I don’t think there have been any dual layer BD-ROM games on PS3 yet, but there have been 3 disc DVD games on 360 which is about the same as a single layer BD-ROM. That is about 25 GB for a single game. Currently the top end of Internet access is about 20 Mb/s. At that speed and a best case scenario it will take 171 minutes or about 3 hours. However on the more common 3-6 Mb/s connections it will take 9-19 hours. Remember these are best case as well, not the way real world access works most of the time. I don’t think it will get all that much better in the next 12-18 months.

With all the above in mind I feel pretty confident in saying the next Xbox will have a BD-ROM drive. This is purely based on availability and storage size. I am not saying it will play Blu-Ray movies, but it probably will just for convenience. I don’t see it being anything else unless some new optical format magically appears in the next 12 months.

Alternative Storage – One of the possibilities I wanted to mention was the idea of using something like USB thumb drives or SD cards as a distribution medium. It is in a way going back to the cartridges of the NES-N64 era, only now they can hold 32 GB and not cost too much. I don’t see this as likely but not impossible.

Network – It better have Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n built in. If wireless is a freaking add-on like the 360 then someone should be fired.

Controllers – Even with the success of the Wii I can’t believe that there won’t at least be an option of a standard controller. Most consider the 360 controller to be close to ideal so I can’t imagine much change if any at all with the next one. I would also bet there will be another controller that will be a cross between the Wii-Mote and the current 360 big button controller.

Online – With the coming revision of Xbox Live it is obvious that Microsoft is pretty sure of its path regarding online. Whatever the next Xbox is or does I am pretty sure it will have the current (or soon to be current) Live with probably just more revisions. Hopefully they won’t break compatibility or the profiles from the current system.

Backwards Compatibility – This one is tough to predict. When the 360 was announced and for a year after release people continued to harp on the 360’s lack of 100% backwards compatibility. Now however the PS3 has totally dropped PS2 backwards compatibility only 18 months after the console launched and no one really seems to care. I think Microsoft will have some level of backwards compatibility simply for PR even if they don’t have 100%. This is all dependent on the architecture and how Microsoft transitions developer tools.

Release Date – There are two options I see at this point either fall 2009 or fall 2010. I am inclined to go toward 2009 since some people are already talking about it. The flip side is that not too much is being talked about yet so it might not be until 2010. Either way it will be announced at whatever is the E3 and then release in Nov.

The other twist that I think is possible is that Microsoft leaves a the 360 on the market for online stuff and tries to target Arcade games to both platforms.  A $150 arcade pack could live for quite a while like the PS2 is for Sony playing Live Arcade games.

Pricing – Who knows $400?

There it is, my predictions for the next Xbox.  In 12-18 months it will be interesting to see how close if at all I got to the real specs.

One of the games I got for Christmas was Mass Effect for the Xbox 360.  This game was made by BioWare who is well known for their long line of RPGs, recently with more action and less turn based.  The only previous game I have played by BioWare was Knights of the Old Rebulic for the original Xbox.  Most of their games have not been the type I like since I am not a traditional RPG fan.  I also played KOTOR2 which was very similar but made by Obsidian instead.  I played the original KOTOR over my Christmas break for the 2003 holiday season.  It was my first year working at a school and had a long time off.  I then spent the 2004 holiday break playing KOTOR2.  Each of these took about 40 hours of total play time, some of those hours were more enjoyable than others.  Now for the 2007 holiday break I have spent a good amount of time playing Mass Effect.  The total time according to the game clock was 37 hours, however I think it was less than 35 and there were just times I left paused for quite a while.

As I said I don't usually play RPGs since I don't like them as much as other game types.  I got into KOTOR based on the idea it was a Star Wars storyline.  I wanted to play Mass Effect as I trusted the developer and there looked to be some real advancements in the game this time around.  The game is based 150-200 years in the future with the Human race being able to travel the universe and having met many other alien races.  If you played KOTOR (or I am told any other recent BioWare game) you immediately know the basics of this game.  There is the main character and a possible group of six additional characters on the team.  When you go on a mission you pick two others to complete your team of three.

I will get the bad parts of the game out of the way first.  The game's interface and controls are not straightforward and they are also not explained during the game much at all.  There is a little explanation in the manual, but if like me you didn't read the manual cover to cover you may be lost even more than usual.  This was most apparent in that it took me 10 hours of game play before I knew about the ability to use and control powers in the game, that is just silly.  The next annoying interface is inventory management.  Equiping your players, buying and selling equipment and finding the best mix of equipment literally took me hours throughout the game.  This has been a problem for this game engine since at least KOTOR and I know there has to be a better way.  Simple things like only showing items that apply to a given character would be great or being able to manage all 7 players at once without having to change screens would help too.  I sure hope they improve it in Mass Effect 2.  Other common complaints didn't seem to effect much or at all.  I never had a problem with save games getting corrupt or the autosave system.  I had a handful of frame rate issues, but very rarely.  The loading screens while more frequent than I would like never seemed too bad, that might be due to lowered expectations due to many reviews mentioning it.  The last little issue was texture pop, especially from loading.  You would see a blob, which would then refine its geometry and then usually two steps of texture application.  It didn't happen often but was very obvious when it did.

Reading that last paragraph you might think I thought the game was broken or flawed, that really isn't the case though.  The best way I can prove that is to say that I played this game for 35 hours and thoroughly enjoyed it.  You may see other reviews saying they finished the game in 15 hours, which I am sure is possible however to do it you would have to skip a large majority of the side quests and only concentrate on the main plot quests.  I chose however to do every possible side quest (those that were offered to me) and as a result reached level 50 in the game which I think can only be done by doing everything.

The reason I played all the side stuff is that I have a collectors mentality for the most part.  The other reason was that often the side quests fleshed out character back stories or added to the overall story.  The one downside to all the side quests was the repetitiveness of the survey missions as you explore the universe.  The other problem was the landing missions.  These landing missions were mostly driving a 6 wheel armored personnel carrier around chunks of the planet.  This driving missions weren't too bad and some were actually quite fun as you explored and encountered enemies.  The downside was in many cases the terrain seemed to be generated by a random map maker with a likeness for steep cliffs and jagged edges.  It was frustrating at times trying to climb certain mountains because they were basically vertical with a few pixel wide peaks.

The story was pretty average sci-fi fare.  The universe it compares most to for me is Babylon 5.  There is a central space station called the Citadel that serves as the hub for government and has mysterious beginnings.  A lot of the story is about a parent alien race that created the technology that was found and allowed later races to rapidly advance.  The last major chunk of the story is a hidden race of ancient super evil.  Your goal as the main character is to investigate what is happening concerning the main villain.  In the process you learn of the ancient race coming to kill everything and begin trying to stop it as well.

One of the much touted advances in this game was the new dialogue system.  This system allows for 2-6 responses to a branching discussion tree.  The tree is based upon the main characters backstory which was chosen during the character creation.  It is also based on your previous actions in the game.  The last two pieces are whether you have upgraded your character with either charm, intimidation or both.  These allow you to push the conversation using those talents.  The main difference is whether you want to be a paragon (good) or a renegade (bad).  Often times a renegade will choose to beat up or kill someone to get something from them rather than verbally convincing them.  The end result is often the same it is just how you get there and people's reactions to your methods.

The story got better and better as it went I really enjoyed playing through it.  The ending is quite a thrill ride.  The only complaint I have about the ending is that you choose your party members with probably close to 10% of the game remaining.  I hope you choose well.  The ending is obviously left open for sequels which is no surprise since this has been sold as a trilogy all along.  The question is can BioWare get all three out on the 360 before it goes away.  If not it may be a long time before the final part comes out.

This game was assumed to be a game of the year contender prior to release.  After release it wasn't quite so perfect.  For me it is in the top five if not top three for me.  I still think I liked BioShock better simply because it was just as good if not better but it was better paced and more condensed experience.  If you liked KOTOR or other BioWare games you will probably enjoy this one.  Further bang for the buck is really there.  There are even incentives to play through again, which I may try and just do the story only and speed through it.

One of the features of Mass Effect for the Xbox 360 is a very detailed character creator, especially in regards to the face.  I decided to attempt to re-create me.  Looking at the pictures side by side I might have been able to do better, but I think I did ok on my first attempt.  Let me know what you think.  Oh and this a picture of me right about when I beat it after 35 hours of playing it.  I will talk more about the game itself in a later post.

I am not sure if I was tweaking up my eyebrows in my picture or I just got them really wrong on Mass Effect.  Also it appears due to shadows that I have the eyes sunken too much in Mass Effect.  I think the eyes, nose, chin and hair are pretty close though.  I may try again just to see how much closer I can get.  Oh and I needed to tweak the ears closer to head.

One of the greatest video game months for me is coming to a close with Halo 3.  It has been almost 3 years since the release of Halo 2.  There is an assumption that many have waited until now to purchase Xbox 360 consoles, we will see once the September NPD numbers come out or sooner via VG Chartz.  The pre-orders alone for the game top 1 million and may be closer to 2 million.  There is an expectation of 3-4 million copies to be sold in the first week.

The hype machine for Halo 3 has been in full effect since about the E3 timeframe this year.  Hype had been happening even before but it was revved up to full speed this summer.  Everything from TV commercials to branded Pontiac cars and pre-order sales at 7-Eleven stores.  If you want Hal0 3 Slurpees, Mountain Dew, Doritos or several other items you are also covered now.  Also if what is out now isn't enough there is more coming like action figures and other branded merchandise.

The madness will truly start Monday night as people start to lineup for all the midnight launch parties across the country.  I pre-ordered my Legendary Edition just after Thanksgiving last fall.  I got my shipment notice from Best Buy late last Thursday.  Unfortunately it is being shipped via the UPS /USPS combo method.  The last time Best Buy did this it took quite a while to actually get the package, I am hoping to just get it by next weekend.

See you in online on live in Halo 3 multi-player!  Maybe I will actually play a few more games online than I seemed to on Halo 2 according to my stats.

Originally I was going to put this in with my birthday post but I felt it deserved its own post.  Some small spoilers ahead if you haven't played Bioshock.

I didn't think I had time to play Bioshock on my birthday.  I didn't start playing it until the night of Wednesday Sept 12th and kept playing on a day off I had on Sept 13th.  I have played it quite a lot since then until yesterday when I got the last of the achievements I was going to get.  I actually got all but one achievement which is for beating the game on the hard difficulty level.  I did all but 3-5 without any help from a walk through.  In the end there was a few things that I didn't notice or realize.  I went back and found some audio recordings and one upgrade station I missed to get some achievements.  I also had to restore and redo one part because I bumped off a character too early on accident which would have eliminated about 5 different achievements for several reasons.

I have to say Bioshock is one of the best games I have ever played.  At its core it is primarily a shooter with some interesting weapons (powers).  The thing that really makes the game great is how it is all tied together.  The story is really good and well told using numerous methods.  The design and layout of the underwater world of Rapture is quite amazing.  Also little details like sound effects and music seemed to always be there when you expected them.  There were a few powers and weapons I rarely if ever used other than to see how they worked.
My order of most used weapons:

1. Wrench
2. Research Camera (helps you learn how to attack enemies)
3. Grenade Launcher (primary weapon against big daddies)
4. Shotgun
5. Pistol (rarely used)
6. Machine Gun (rarely used)
7. Crossbow (never used)
8. Chemical Thrower (never used)

My order of most used plasmids:

1. Electro Bolt (my favorite by far)
2. Security Bullseye
3. Incinerate
4. Hypnotize Big Daddy
5. Telekinesis (mostly used to get stuff and every once in a while against nitro splicers)
6. Enrage

I never even acquired (bought) Winter Blast, Insect Swarm, Cyclone Trap or Target Dummy.

The story had some pretty good twists in it and made you think about what you had done and why.  The ending boss seemed a little out of place in the way the fight went.  The ending while very short seemed satisfying, there are two primary endings and one slight variation.  I would highly recommend this game if you area shooter fan at all or just want a really well done atmosphere and story.  You can see what others think on Game Rankings, it seems most liked it.  One small hint, don't attack Sander Cohen when you have the chance, it will allow you the chance to get several achievements.