It has been about a month and half since I posted about making some extra money by reading emails (original post) and I thought I’d give a quick update. When I last posted I had made $46.73 and a $25 gift card. Now, I’ve made $91.14 and I’m a little over half way to the of getting another gift card. I’m still earning through the same sites as before, but I’ve added one additional site based on a comment someone left on the original post. The site is ClixSense. Unlike the other sites they don’t actually send you an email. Instead you just go to their site and click ads. Each ad you click makes you a few cents which doesn’t sound like much, but when there are hundreds of ads to click it adds up pretty quickly. From the original sites I was using the one I’ve made the most with so far is InboxDollars, but SendEarnings is not to far behind. If you have any questions about it just leave me a comment and let me know. I’ve found this to be a great way to make a little extra money because I spend most of my day working on a computer; so whenever I get an email with a paid ad I can just open it right then.

I’ve been playing Guitar Hero III the last couple days and I’ve found that the biggest difference from Guitar Hero II is the Battle Mode. Personally I’m not a big fan of Battle Mode, but I’ll put together a full review another time. Today I’m going to take a look at some strategies and tips for getting through the battles.

First, off a quick overview of how the Battle Mode works. There is a tutorial in the game that covers it pretty well, but basically any time you would have gotten star power now you get battle power that can be used to attach your opponent. Once you have battle power stored up it will give you attacks to use on your opponent. These attacks are activated just like star power is activated by tipping your guitar up. You have until the end of the song to make your opponent loose. You can’t simply end higher than your opponent on the rock meter you have to actually make them loose.

The Attacks

• Broken String: One string/button on the opponent’s guitar will not work until it is fixed by rapidly tapping the button.
• Difficulty Up: This attack increases the difficulty level your opponent has to play.
• Amp overload: The fret board will shake and cause the notes to blink, making the scrolling notes difficult to read.
• Whammy Bar: The opponent will have to use the whammy bar repeatedly before he can play notes again.
• Power Steal: This will steal your opponent’s power-up. If they do not have one it does nothing.
• Double notes: The opponent will have to play any single note as a two-button chord, and any two-button chord as a three-button chord.
• Lefty/Righty flip: The fret board will be mirrored, requiring the attacked player to change his handedness.
• Death Drain: After the players go into Sudden Death mode, all Battle Powers turn into unstoppable Death Drain attacks. When Death Drain is unleashed upon the opponent, a figure resembling a winged Grim Reaper will appear to have a constant negative influence on their opponent’s rock meter. Every mistake the player makes accelerates their rock meter drain, and eventually the Grim Reaper will block the player’s view of the frets and thus the player will fail, since their Rock Meter will be put past the failing red range.

The first thing to keep in mind is that this is a video game and you should treat the battles like a boss fight in any other video game. This is not how most people are use to playing Guitar Hero. Most of us play Guitar Hero to have some fun jamming to songs we like. Battle Mode will be very hard for you if you treat it this way. However, if you treat battle mode like you do other video game’s boss battles then they fights may be hard, but they are winnable.

Like boss battles in other games you need to try and get every power up (attack) that you can. Even if this means missing other notes right after the battle (star) power notes. Without any attacks you will not win. Unlike playing normal songs in Guitar Hero it is ok to miss a few notes in Battle Mode as long as you get all the attacks and don’t miss too many a note here and there will not cause you to loose.

Once you are getting every attack available during the battle you need to use them effectively. Like in a boss battle in a shooter you need to use them when your opponent will be the weakest or when it will have the strongest effect. There are a couple things to keep in mind to do this. First, you attacks are stackable. You can have up to three of them stored up to use back to back. Some of the attacks, like Double Note and Difficulty Up are most effective when you can use them at the same time as something that will force your opponent to miss notes; like Broken String or Whammy Bar. Second, be sure to use your attacks when they will make your opponent miss the most notes. Generally this is right as they are starting a nice long section of notes. Finally, building on this last tip, use the attacks so your opponent not only misses notes, but so they miss the battle power notes. If you can cause your opponent to miss a note right at the start of the battle power notes not only will the rock meter go down because they missed notes but they will not have any way to attack you back.

So, for best results put all three of these strategies together when you can. Save a couple of attacks to use together and then use them right at the start of the battle power notes to make them miss notes and not get any attacks to use on you. However, it is better to use a single attack and stop your opponent from getting the battle power notes with attacks that will force you to miss notes no matter what (whammy bar, amp overload, or break string). It is better to keep them from getting these attacks than it is to get two or three attacks stacked up to use against them at once in most cases. If they are getting attacks from the battle power notes that I can still play through (lefty flip, double note, or difficulty up) then I’ll save my attack for when I have two attacks stacked together. Using this strategy I’ve not had too much trouble with any of the boss battles so far. Once in a while things will not go your way and you may have to retry a battle, but for the most part using this strategy of keeping your opponent from attacking you and maximizing your attacks will give you the win every time.

If you have other tips or strategies please leave me a comment and let me know about them.

If you found these tips helpful you can

I beat Tony Hawk Proving Ground’s main story line this weekend. I still have a few side challenges to get and then I’ll probably go back and try to get Sick on every challenge. I have been really enjoying the game so far. There are a few little changes that make Proving Ground much better than the last Tony Hawk game, Project 8. With Project 8 new challenges would not unlock until you had a certain percentage of the previous challenges completed on Pro and Sick, but they were so hard I could not get all of them complete. In Proving Ground as long as you complete the challenges on Amateur the next ones open up. It also seems that the Pro and Sick levels are a little more reasonable. Additionally, the stat upgrade levels are a lot easier to level up in Proving Ground than they were in Project 8. The other minor but great change is that they got rid of the special meter. Now you can just throw the special tricks any time you want after you unlock them. These three things made the game a lot less stressful and more fun.

I also really liked how the main story line was split into three forks. Even better is that you can do as much or as little of each of these story arches as you want and in any order you want. The three story line areas are Competitive, Hardcore, and Rigger. The Competitive challenges are the most like the old Tony Hawk games where you’re trying to get high scores and trick combos. These are complimented with the new Nail-the-Trick additions (I’ll get to those in a minute). The Hardcore challenges were the most unique from past Tony Hawk games. They consisted of doing things related to agro pushing (again I’ll get to that stuff) and skating bowls. The Rigger challenges were similar to a few of the ones in Project 8 where you can add or changes the level layouts. However, these have been greatly expanded over what few things there were in Project 8, and they are available anywhere in the game world. Just hit the back button and it pulls up the rigger menu allowing you to add and modify the items in the level. Yes, it is one large level again with portions unlocking as you play, but I really like this map layout better than Project 8. It is quite a large map, once you get everything unlocked, that consists of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC. The three cities are linked together smoothly in a sort of triangle type fashion using bridges and subways.

I’m not sure how they did it, but there are more things you can do in the game than ever before, yet the controls seemed simpler than Project 8. A couple of the new things you can do are the agro push and checking. Agro pushing allows you to get some extra speed to make larger/longer jumps. The checking option is actually one of my favorite additions. When you are skating around you can pull the left trigger and you shoulder check. Combine this with the agro push and you send people flying. It is hilarious and great stress release after falling in a trick or combo to check the closest pedestrian. They also expanded the Nail-the-Trick mode. Before all you could do were flip tricks, but now you can also do grab tricks, finger-flips, and body spins in the Nail-the-Trick mode. I liked Nail-the-Trick before but now it is great. You can combine the flips and grabs together to makes some crazy combos. The also added Nail-the Manual which you activate the same way as Nail-the-Trick, but instead of doing a trick with the thumb sticks you pull the right trigger and it allows you to prepare for a manual. The combos I was making with Nail-the-Trick into Nail-the-Manual were some of the best I’ve ever done in any Tony Hawk game.

In addition to all the great skating there is also a video mode that allow you to take videos of your skating and share them. The video editor was pretty impressive. It allows you to add music, adjust camera angels, and add overlays. After throwing some great combos it is fun to put those video clips together and send them to my friends to show off.

I’ve heard quite a few people saying the prefer Skate to Tony Hawk Proving Ground, but not me. Sure, skate is more realistic, but it is also a lot harder. I prefer to be able to pull a trick after a couple tries not after hours of practicing. Sure, Tony Hawk is not realistic and no one can do that kind of stuff in real life, but I’m not playing a video game to do the stuff I can do in real life. I play games to have fun, and Tony Hawk Proving Ground is a lot of fun.

Some of you noticed I was playing the Guitar Hero III demo last night and messaged me to find out about it so I thought I’d give everyone my thoughts on it. First off, for those who are not aware, there are two places to get your hands on the demo. The first is in the December issue, number 77, of Official Xbox Magazine on the demo disc. That is where I got my copy. The other place you can find it is on the Tony Hawk: Proving Ground game disc.

The demo has 5 songs and the tutorials on it. If you’ve played Guitar Hero II the tutorials are pretty much the same with the addition of one explaining how the battle mode works. Basically, in battle mode your star power becomes battle power you can use to make it hard for your opponent to play. The two attacks the demo shows are “break a string” and “overload amp.”
With the string breaking attack you have to keep hitting the fret/color for the broken string a few times until it is fixed. Until you do that you can’t play any notes of that color. The overload amp attack seemed to make the window for playing the notes smaller, but I could be wrong on that one because I only used it on the opponent in the tutorial and did not have it used on me. I’m still undecided if I like the Boss Battles thing they’ve added for Guitar Hero III. I know it is a video game and boss battles are a classic video game thing, but part of what I like about Guitar Hero II is that you can just play it for fun and as you get better you level up and unlock more stuff. I think the Boss Battles may take away from that a little, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

So, not to what I’m sure everyone is curious about. The songs included

• Lay Down (by Priestess)
• Even Flow (by Pearl Jam)
• The Metal (by Tenacious D)
• Hit Me with your Best Shot (as made famous by Pat Benatar)
• Rock You like a Hurricane (as made famous by Scorpions)

I had a lot of fun with these songs. I was able to get 4 starts on two of them and 5 starts on two of them my first time through. For me this is really good because until last week I did not own Guitar Hero II. I had played it at a friend’s a few times, but not enough to get good or anything. I could be wrong but it seemed like these songs were easier to play than the ones I’ve been playing in Guitar Hero II recently. Not a lot easier, but a little. It could be they put the easier songs into the demo though. Either way, I had a lot of fun playing these songs and I look forward to when Guitar Hero III is released.

I did notice a couple enhancements I really liked. First, on the screen where you choose which song to play it shows not only the song title, but the bang and release year. I’m not good at remembering song titles so this is a nice addition for me because it helps me recall the songs better. Also, the graphics looks better. They’re not a huge leap ahead of Guitar Hero II on the Xbox 360, but they are better.

After playing the demo (a couple times) I promptly put in Guitar Hero II and started playing because it was a lot of fun and I needed something to hold me over until Guitar Hero III is released. I was looking forward to Guitar Hero III already because it has more songs and looks to be a lot of fun, but now I’m really excited about playing it soon.

Stranglehold is a run and gun shooter. You have the ability to take cover, but I don’t think I ever did. In the game you play Agent Tequila, Chow Yun-Fat, and you are essentially playing through the sequel to the movie Hard Boiled. You can definitely feel the John Woo influence on the game. It is what separates this from most other run and gun shooters. When you approach any obstacle you will automatically slide across it. Additionally, the left trigger is your dive/interact button. When you pull the left trigger you can dive in the direction you’re moving, slide down railings, jump off walls, and swing from chandeliers. During these moves any time you’re aimed towards an enemy, and there are plenty to aim at, the game automatically goes into slow motion letting you get a better shot. All of these pieces together make it feel like you are really playing through a John Woo movie.

Each kill you make during one of these moves is rated between 1 and 5 starts and those stars then power up your special meter. The special meter has 4 levels. At the first level you regain a little of your health. There are plenty of health packs around the levels so I seldom used it for this, but in a few tight spots it comes in handy. The second level of the special gives you a precision aim attack. When activated the game goes into slow motion and your aim zooms way in allowing you to make really accurate shots. Then, once you shoot the camera follows the bullet to the person showing the hit. The AI reactions are spot on to these hits as well. If you hit a guy in the leg he will start hopping around. If you hit him in the shoulder he’ll drop his gun and hold his shoulder in pain. If you hit in the head or chest it takes the guy down on one shot. The third level of special move is the barrage attack. When you use it you reload your gun and the game goes into slow motion again. Then, until your special runs out you stay in slow motion and your gun shoots really fast with unlimited ammo. This is great for rooms with a lot of enemies. Just activate barrage and charge them. Later in the game when you get the rocket launcher give the barrage attack a try with it because it is a blast to have unlimited rocket ammo. The final special attack is a spin move. You do a shooting spin move and it automatically hits the people around you taking them out. It is also really useful when you’re surrounded.

In addition to the run and gun game play there are a few points where you get cornered and have a stand off. In a stand off you can’t move you’re feet and the enemies can’t move either. You can lean side to side to dodge. So, once a standoff starts you basically dodge incoming bullets while taking out the enemies around you. I actually found the stand offs to be a lot of fun because in a lot of cases you could blow up stuff behind the enemies and take them out that way. The very last stand off in the game is pretty hard just because of how many enemies there were, but it only took a couple tries.

I did not bother playing any of the multiplayer. There are plenty of other great multiplayer games out right now so I did not spend any time with Stanglehold’s. For me this game was about playing through a John Woo movie and just having fun running and gunning.

Most of the achievements were all pretty strait forward for things like getting a set number of kills or completing a certain level. I got a large portion of them playing through the story the first time. I did play through a couple levels a second time to get a few specific ones, like 50 kills while handing on a chandelier.

I’d recommend renting Stanglehold. It is about a 7 or 8 hour play though, but it is still a lot of fun. I had a blast playing through it and doing all the kinds of crazy moves that only happen in the movies.

So there was a second DLC Pack for Band of Bugs released last week. It is titled Ninja Sticks of Fury. Here is the official rundown:

NinjaBee announced yesterday its newest expansion pack, Ninja Sticks of Fury, for the Band of Bugs title. With this new expansion pack comes a new shadowy character, new achievements and a bigger challenge than anything that came before it.

The new campaign is set in a new desolate and mountain area beyond the known Insect Kingdom. Featuring a new unit class, players guide a ninja named Vail who leads a group of mercenaries while a mysterious group wreaks havoc across the snowy wasteland. The ninja adds a new level of strategy to Band of Bugs, forcing players to think in new ways.

Band of Bugs has gained popularity for its innovative level editor, which allows any user to create unique content for their friends and the community. Ninja Sticks of Fury adds a brand new unit and a winter tile set to the editor allowing level designers to push their creativity to the limit. The Snowy environment is not only available in the editor, but will automatically enhance select existing maps already in the game, adding new variety to old favorites.

Band of Bugs was released in June, 2007. It is available on Xbox Live Arcade as both a free trial and as a full game for only 800 Microsoft Points. It supports 1-4 players in co-op or in multiplayer versus modes and also supports the Xbox Live Vision camera. One of the few turn-based tactics games available, Band of Bugs provides gameplay deep enough to be satisfying to established fans of the genre, but friendly enough to appeal to casual gamers.

I played through the 10 new levels this weekend and had a blast with them. Band of Bugs is one of my favorite Xbox Live Arcade games and every time they release additional content for it I’m impressed with how much fun it is. This new pack, Ninja Sticks of Fury, was exceptionally fun because in addition the new unit type and some great level design the dialog is hilarious. The main character in the expansion is Vail. He is a ninja with an interesting past. It plays out really well because he has a love interest who turns out to be a little bit crazy. Besides the dialog I really enjoyed the levels in this DLC. They were laid out in really fun ways and took some new strategies to beat that made them a little bit harder than the last DLC. Personally I found the last DLC pack pretty easy and this one was more fun because it was a bit more challenging. It still was not super hard or anything, but had a nice level of challenge to it.

For anyone who played Band of Bugs and enjoyed it I would recommend getting the Ninja Sticks of Fury expansion pack. It is pretty cheap and you get an achievement when you beat all ten of the new levels. Hopefully NinjaBee is already at work on more expansion packs for Band of Bugs because these are great fun.

When I saw that another free Xbox Live Arcade game was being released I had high hopes for it because the only other free Arcade game, Aegis Wing, was a blast. As the game started up and I saw the nice clean menu I still was pretty impressed. I read through the How to Play and Control information and it seemed pretty strait forward. So, I started up a game and found out why it was free. The gameplay is crap. You pretty much just need to push forward to move and keep shooting non-stop. There are a few spots you need to weave around some obstacles, but nothing to fancy. Apparently whoever made this game like Mario because the tracks have coins scattered across them you need to pick up. The coins can then be used to unlock better cars and to upgrade you car. Why would a driving game have coins you need to pick up? Why not just give us points for number of kills and the finish time? It is a stupid idea that works very poorly. In addition to the lousy game play the graphics in the actual game look like crap. I’ve played Nintendo 64 games that look better. I’m not sure why they spent so much time making a nice looking menu only to have a crappy looking game. Sure, the game is free and you can get 200 achievement points, but even then this game is still not worth playing.

The second demo I tried out today was The Simpsons Game demo. It was pretty much what one would expect from a Simpsons game. Hilarious dialog, cartoon graphics, and the Simpsons characters doing some fighting. I really like this demo once I figured out what they wanted me to do. The camera controls took a little getting use to, but over all they were not to bad. The graphics looked pretty much just like the TV show and movie which adds to the feeling of playing an episode of the cartoon. I don’t want to ruin the demo for anyone who has not played it yet because it is pretty funny so I’m not going to discuss the specific details of the demo. It is an adventure game where you play as the Simpsons. Each family member has different abilities and attacks that you have to use to navigate through the game and defeat the enemies. The humor in the game seemed geared towards adults but the game play is geared towards a younger audience. Maybe it is because it is a demo but pretty much every intractable item pops up a tip showing which character can use the item and how they can use it. I’ll probably rent The Simpsons Game to play through the story line and enjoy the humor. I’m not sold on it yet, but I’ll probably add it to my GameFly queue and get to it eventually.

I took some time today to catch up on the demos I’ve been downloading and not playing. I started with the Conan demo. It is a controller killing button masher…I mean hack-n-slash game. As you can see in the screenshot you play as Conan. I’m not sure if there is a real story line to the game, but there were some cut scenes in the demo to give my thumbs a rest so that was helpful. If you like button mashers you might want to check this one out because there are some pretty decent combos. The game is not for the faint of heart or younger gamers because it is very bloody and gory. Most of the finishing moves involve a lot of blood and include decapitations. The graphics were ok, but nothing special. The one big issue I had with the demo besides my thumbs getting tired was that the dialog is very repetitive. By the time the 10 to 15 minute demo was over I was already tired of hearing the same stupid one line attack phrases. I’ll not be bothering to play the full game, but if you’re really into button mashers this one is not the worst one out there by any means.

I’ve been playing a lot more Halo 3 and I’m loving all the different parts of it. I’ve found all the skulls. My favorite so far has to be the Grunt Birthday Party. It never gets old to have grunts explode with confetti. I’m also really enjoying playing around with the theater. Taking clips and pictures from the games and sharing them with my friends is pretty cool. The picture here is a grunt that landed in a tree during a co-op mission. You can see another perspective of it here. I also have some videos of some matches I was playing the last few days shared here. If anyone has cool videos or pictures shared leave me a comment with the link and I’d love to check them out. I love that I can go back into the theater after multiplayer matches make clips of my friends dying spectacularly and send it to them.

I’ve also been having a blast playing co-op Legendary with some friends. I’ve only turned the scoring on once so far, but once I finish the game on Legendary I’m definitely looking forward to giving it a try with some skulls turned on and getting the achievements for scoring over 15,000.
I’ve mostly been playing the matchmaking game types with my friends, but we have played a few custom game types that some guys made that were a blast. The rocket race variants are cool, but I’m really liking the D-Day game types where you have one team starts on the beach Last Resort with battle rifles and the other team starts on the cliff with mounted turrets (lots of turrets). The map has been cornered off so you can’t leave the area and there is some cover out in the water, but not a lot. It is a lot of fun because the Battle Rifles and turrets counter each other really well. If anyone has any other cool game types they like let me know and I’ll check them out.