I beat the Halo 3 campaign on Normal last night. I really enjoyed the story. It was nice to finally finish the fight. I don’t want to give anything away and give spoilers, but I’m still unsure how I feel about the ending. If you’ve beat the campaign let me know what you think of the ending in the comments. I’m planning to go back through and play it on Legendary so I’m interested to see how the ending changes, if it does at all, when I complete it on the hardest setting.

The new weapons were a lot of fun to play with and I’m glad that both the enemy and squad mates AI are smarter than in Halo 2. I actually could ride the gunner in the Warthog and not have the AI roll it over all the time. I still prefer to do the driving and let my squad mates man the gun, but it is a lot better. The new vehicles are a lot of fun to try and get use to controlling. I’m glad they added some new stuff to drive. The level designs are a nice reminder of the first two games with similar architecture but a less run down style. Overall I really had fun playing through the campaign.

I also played a few levels of co-op and had a lot of fun. One of the levels I played co-op was on Legendary and even without any skulls turned on (because I’ve not found them) I would have had around 10,000 points if I had not dies so many times. So, I can see that getting the achievements for getting 15,000 points on the co-op will take some doing, but if we had not been goofing off and trying to board all of the enemy vehicles we probably would have finished it in time to get at least a 2X time multiplier.

I’m looking forward to playing tons of multiplayer, playing through the campaign again to find the skills, and beat it on Legendary. For the rest of you who’ve spent the last few days playing Halo 3 as well what are your impressions?

I’ve never played a Crash game before, but I had a little time today (but not enough to put in Halo 3) and I thought I’d give it a try. It is clearly geared at a younger audience than me, but if I had kids between 10 and 14 they would probably enjoy it. Crash of the Titans is a pretty linear platformer, but it does the basics very well. One thing I really liked was that when you fight larger opponents after you beat them you can then ride on their backs and control them. This made the fighting more fun as I kept trying different opponents to see what their attacks were. Graphically there is nothing spectacular here, but it is fine for a younger audience. I’ll not be buying or renting this game, but if you are a pre-teen or you have a pre-teen you night want to give it a try.

I have the new Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 sitting next to my Xbox 360, but since I know starting today I’ll be playing Halo 3 for a few weeks I did not want to start into Tiger Woods and then take a break from it. So, last night I was look for something to play for a while, and I remembered that Eets: Chowdown released a Puzzle Pack with 20 more levels in it a while back. So, I played through the new levels last night and really enjoyed them. I beat all of them in a little over an hour, but since I had already finished the rest of the game I was familiar with what to expect. This made it a bit easier for me to beat them quickly. For the most part I’d say the new levels are about in the middle of the difficulty level, but a couple of them took quite a bit longer to figure out. The new levels do have some cool new items in them that were fun to use. The giant chocolate chips that melt and then explode are a lot of fun to use. I had forgotten how much fun Eets: Chowdown is to play. My only complaint about the Puzzle Pack is that they did not add any additional achievements with it. Other Xbox Live Arcade games have added achievements when they add downloadable content and it would have been cool to have Eets do the same, but even without any achievements it was well worth the 200 points. I had a lot of fun with it last night and hope that they release some more Puzzle Packs in the future.

So a friend of mine told me about 2 weeks ago that he found a great way to make some extra money in his spare time by read emails. I did not believe him until he showed me the $40 bucks he had made the two weeks before. So, I decided to give it a try. BrightSpot.tv does a similar thing where they pay part of your GameFly account when you watch their videos so it did not seem too far fetched. I signed up with the five sites he recommended 10 days ago and so far I’ve made $46.73 and a $25 gift card for Chili’s/Macarroni Grill. I’ll give you a brief overview of each site and how to get the most money out of them.

MyPoints
This doesn’t pay you actual cash like the other 4 sites do, but instead you earn points that you redeem for gift cards. I quickly earned enough points to get a $25 gift card fro Chili’s/Macarroni Grill, but a large part of it was from bonuses that are a one time deal when you first join. I suspect my next gift card will take longer to earn. Most days I get 4 or 5 emails from MyPoints. In addition to getting points for receiving emails you can also earn points by signing up for free offers. Personally, I’m not doing any sign ups, but some of the them do seem pretty decent if I was interested in those services. So, you may want to just take a look at the sign up offers. They also offer points for shopping on the web sites listed on their page. If you were already looking to buy something online through on of those sites you might as well at least get some extra points for the shopping you were going to do anyway.

InboxDollars
So far I’ve made $17.48 with InboxDollars. $5 of that is a sign up bonus that everyone gets when they join. I get 7 or 8 emails a day from them. They also have offers where you can make money for signing up for different services, but the nice thing about there is you know exactly how much money you’re going to make for each one. Personally I’ve not signed up for any, but the one thing InboxDollars does offer that I’m taking advantage of is they pay you $1 for each survey you complete. When I actually remember to go take the surveys it seems like they have 3 or 4 available a day. Sure it is not much, but most of them take just a couple minutes and they make for a nice diversion from the actual work I’m suppose to be doing.

SendEarnings
SendEarnings is an almost identical clone of InboxDollars in terms of the site layout and design, but I can live with that since I’ve made $9.55 with them so far. They offer $1 per survey like InboxDollars does, but they seem to have slightly less surveys and emails since I’ve not made as much with them yet. I did sign up with them a couple days after InboxDollars so that is probably part of the reason I’ve made less with them.

Hits4Pay
Unlike the previous sites Hits4Pay only has the pay reading emails parts, but none of the surveys or other offers. So far I’ve made $12 with them. The adds in the emails are a lot lower quality than the other sites are, but I’m still getting paid for them so I’m not really that concerned about it. I get about 8 to 10 emails a day from them.

Deals ‘n’ Cash
Like SendEarnings this is a clone site as well. Deals ‘n’ Cash looks just like Hits4Pay, but with slightly fewer emails. I get maybe 6 to 7 a day from them making me $5.78 so far. Not a lot, but since I’m already getting the other emails I’ll stick with them and let it add up over time.

So, as you can see none of these sites are not going to make you rich, but an extra $40 every few weeks is no to shabby.

I got Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 from GameFly Saturday. I’ve not had time to play much, but I did try to at least create my character. First, I tried to do it on EA’s web site because I’ve heard that the face looks more like you when you have their servers do it. Unfortunately their web site for the game face was down do to high demand. So, I used the vision camera to do it and after two tries I stuck with my first one. It doesn’t really look like me, but I’m not sure what I could have done differently to get it to look better. When i did it with Rainbow Six: Vegas you can tell it is me (without hair) , but with Tiger Woods 08 you can’t even tell it is me. Has anyone tried creating your game face on Tiger Woods 08? If so, did you get it looking like yourself? Hopefully more EA games in the future will have the option to scan your face in when you are creating a character. It would have been cool to have this in skate, but as far as I know it is not in there.

Before trying the demo for Spider-Man: Friend or Foe today this game was not even on my radar, but I’m really glad they released a demo for it because it is a lot of fun. It is a basic brawler/beat-um-up type game set in the Spider-Man universe. However, instead of fighting his normal enemies Spider-Man is forced to team up with them after they all attacked by an even stringer enemy. The graphics have a cartoon style that work really well for a Spider-Man game. I like that instead of just following the script from the last movie they decided instead to make a completely new storyline. The game is designed to be played on the same box. There is not co-op over live, but this is the kind of game that is best played sitting on a couch with a friend anyway. When playing it alone you can easily switch between the two available characters (Spider-Man and a teammate). Each character has their own unique attacks and combo moves that you and your teammate can exploit to hammer on the enemies. Overall this is a simple button masher with a few combos to keep it from getting to repetitive, but it is still a lot of fun and that is what counts to me. I plant to rent this one and have a friend over some weekend to play through it.

I spent some time with the THPG demo today and after being completely frustrated with the skate demo it was good to get back to a familiar skateboarding game. If you played Project 8 then you’re already pretty familiar with the gameplay style. Yes, it is arcadey and completely unrealistic, but it is fun. In addition to everything they had in Project 8 there are some cool new additions. First, they have expanded the Nail-the-Trick mode to add the Nail-the-Grab and Nail-the-Manual. Nail-the-Grab flows well with the already existing Nail-the-Trick and I’m looking forward to trying out the Nail-The-Manual because in a couple of the videos I’ve seen it looks really seamless. They have also broken down the skaters into three types. The competitors, the hard core, and the rigger/builder. Each skater type gets new attributes/skills and plays the game differently. Additionally there is a built in Video Editor for showing off all the cool tricks and lines you skate. This Tony Hawk iteration has three main cities it takes place in: Baltimore, Philadelphia and DC. IT is nice they went back to real locations after Project 8’s giant mess of a city. Overall Tony Hawk Proving Ground looks to a nice step up from Project 8. Personally I’m sure I’ll be playing it for a while. Hopefully the last few challenges are not as impossible as they were in Project 8.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Nothing has been worth reviewing on XBLA and I’ve been playing Overlord and Shadowrun mostly. Now that I’ve completed Overlord though look for new reviews of the games I play next coming shortly.

I started playing Duels about a week ago and I think I’m addicted. I’m still enjoying WeeWar, but it has taken a back burner to Duels. Duels defines itself as follows:

Duels is a Player vs. Player (PVP) Strategy Game:

*** Spoiler Alert ***

I watch The Fountain this weekend. Has anyone else seen it? I don’t think any of my close friends have because if they had I think they would have warned me about it. It was not a bad movie, but it was a very weird movie. The movie is about Tommy (Hugh Jackman) and Izzi (Rachel Weisz). Tommy is a doctor researching new drugs to cure cancer. Izzi, his wife, is dying of brain cancer. In the process of looking for a cure for cancer Tommy finds the Tree of Life/Fountain of Youth. Unfortunately, he does not find it soon enough to save Izzi’s life. The plot is actually pretty complex because it cuts be current time where Izzi is dying and he is looking for the cure for cancer, the future where Izzi is dead and he is presumable 100s of years old sill mourning her loss. The movie is about learning to deal with death, both your own and the ones you love. To further make the plot more complex there is also a third part of the story line which is a book that Izzi was writing when she was dying. She wrote all of it but the last chapter and asked Tommy to finish it. This book is about a Spanish Conquistador looking for the Fountain of Youth for the Queen of Spain. I actually would not have minded the entire movie being about this Conquistador as it was a pretty cool story line. Despite have a complex and weird plot I really like how the three plot lines from the past, present, and future all tie together. I don’t want to spoil to much if you’ve not seen the movie, but in the end all three plot lines work together beautifully with Tommy learning to accept death as a part of life.

Right after the movie was finished I would have told you that I did not like it because it was so weird, but now that I’ve had some time to reflect on it I recognize it is a good movie. I really like how all the three sub-plots tie together in the end. If you’ve not seen The Fountain and you’re looking for something different than the average action of comedy movie then I’d recommend checking it out.