I wanted to take a minute and mention AdultGamingEnthusiasts.com to everyone. The site is focussed around bring adult gamers together in a place where they can discuss games and organize groups of adult gamers to play together. The majority of the people on AGE are Xbox 360 owners, but there is a little something for every adult gamer out there. There are a couple of things that make AdultGamingEnthusiasts.com a great community. The first is that everyone there is an adult so we don’t have any of the teenage whining that has become so common on Xbox related forums. Instead there is some great discussion on new game releases, what game rental sites are best, and if Rainbow Six: Vegas or Gears of War is better.

Second, there are regularly scheduled Game Nights that allow adult gamers to get together and play on Xbox Live without having to interact with a bunch of little kids. There are a couple great benefits having adult only Game Nights. Everyone is a good sport. There is none of the racist or vulgar language you find in general public games. Also, since most everyone is an adult they have an adult lifestyle with kids, a job, and less time for gaming. This puts most of us on the same skill level so we’re not going up against a bunch of kids who have all the time in the world to master their games. All of these things combined to make Game Nights one of the best things about AGE. The current game night rotation is:
Mondays: GRAW2
Tuesdays: Gears of War
Wednesday: PGR3 (next week this will switch to Forza 2)
Thursday: Rainbow Six: Vegas
Friday: Co-op matches
Currently their is discussion going on where Shadowrun will fit into the rotation.

Third, there are frequent tournaments and leagues formed around specific games. We’ve had three round-robin Gears of War tournaments and a Gears of War league is starting up. A ten week Rainbow Six League, and a Rainbow Six: Vegas Tourney. There is another Rainbow Six: Vegas tourney scheduled for June 2nd. There is also a Tiger Woods 2007 ladder and a PGR3 ladder.

Overall, AdultGamingEnthusiasts.com is the best online community I’ve ever been a part of. If you’re into gaming and are an adult swing by sometime and check it out.

When I opened my offer to send Joost invites to anyone who requests them I never thought I’d get over 500 of them, but at this rate I’ll hit 500 before the end of the week. I’m still sending out Joost invites to anyone who wants them so if you’re interested in checking out the Joost Beta just leave a comment with what email address you want me to send it too. If you’d like a little more information about Joost check out my review here.

Over the last few weeks there has been quite a bit of Downloadable Content (DLC) that adds new levels and game modes to popular titles on the Xbox 360. Today I’m taking a look back at which games had DLC that was worth buying. I’m only going to focus on games that I actually have played. Lets start with the most recent and go backwards.

Crackdown
A little over a week ago Crackdown got an update that the developers have been promising since before it was released. In addition to this free update they also released two add on packs. First there was a title update that includes options to reset the gangs, easier orb hunting, and some fixes/enhancements for some glitches.

The first add on pack, the “Free-For-All Pack” was also free. It includes a lot of cheat code style options, vehicle impounding, and Psychotic Mission Trials. The vehicle impounding sounds pretty cool. Take an car back to the agency and then you can access it from the agency garage. If you can impound every vehicle type there is an achievement for it. The other achievement tied to this pack is a huge 100 points for complete all of the Time Trial missions at the Psychotic difficulty level.

The second add on pack, the “Getting’ Busy Bonus Pack” cost $10. It contains a ton of new vehicles, weapons, and game modes. The Vehicles look pretty cool but I’m not sure I would use them that much other than just to try them out because I don’t drive that much in Crackdown. I find it more fun to jump from roof to roof. The new vehicles are the Agency Buggy, the Agency Racecar, and the Agency Armored Vehicle. To go with the new cars there is also a new Street Racing game mode to play with them in. In addition to the cars there are also 5 new weapons. They are the MSK Lobber, EX1 “Proximity Charge”, HRX “Harpoon”, MZ360 “Mini-Gun”, and VS1 “Cloaking Device”. These look pretty fun to play with in the 4 new game types. They have added Max-Agility Rooftop Races, Stockpile, Checkpoint Chase, and Rocket Tag.

I originally rented Crackdown and played through the story. I wish I had waited to play Crackdown until after all of this new content was available because it seems like it these new items would be a lot if fun to play with. After beating the last boss I took some time to grind out the achievement for getting my character all the way leveled up, but by the time I finished doing that I was tired of Crackdown. With all this new content, and a good portion of it for free, I’m thinking I may try Crackdown again see if I can find the rest of the orbs and get some of the other new achievements. However, since I already have more games I want to play than I have time to play them in I don’t know if I’ll buy the Getting’ Busy Bonus Pack. It does sound like it would be pretty fun, but I do not know if I’d really play it long enough to be worth the $10. I guess on this one I’m going to wait and see how I feel if I ever get a chance to get back to Crackdown. If you want the full details on all this Crackdown DLC you can get it here.

GRAW2
Ubisoft has released the “Throwback Pack” for $10. It contains 7 maps which, compared to some of the other $10 map packs, is pretty good. However, all of the maps are ones that have been reworked from previous Ghost Recon games. It is still nice to have 7 more maps, but it would have been cool if there were some new maps as well. The maps included are Bonfires from Ghost Recon 2 Tactical Pack 2, Peninsula from Ghost Recon 2, Mountain Base from Ghost Recon 2 Summit Strike, Mountain Falls from Ghost Recon 2, Desert Gulch from Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Fishing Village from Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and Jungle Mines from Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter Chapter 2 Expansion. Full details here. Personally, I’m not purchasing these. I only play GRAW2 once a week, and over half the guys I play with are also not getting the maps so I don’t see a need to get them. However, if GRAW2 was a game I played more regularly then I would be picking these up.

Gears of War
The Hidden Fronts Map Pack was released for $10. It contains 4 maps titled Bullet Marsh, Garden, Process, and Subway. These maps add some interactive environments which is an interesting twist. You can get the full details here. They will be free for download starting September 3rd, but by then my guess is people will either have already purchased them or will have moved on to another game. I have not bought these maps yet because I only get a chance to play Gears of War about once every other week. Since the map pack was released I played once but the guys I were playing with had not purchased the maps either. I’ve not decided if I’m going to buy them or not. I like playing Gears of War, but I don’t like paying that much per map, and I don’t think I play often enough to make it worth the $10 price. However, if I get a chance to play Gears of War with the guys on my friends list for an extended period of time I’ll probably cave and buy the new maps so I’m not the one looser in the room who does not have the new maps.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
They released Heroes and Villains Expansion Packs for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Each pack is 500 points or you can get the combined pack for 800 points. The expansion packs contain eight new characters. They are The Incredible Hulk, Magneto, Hawkeye, Sabretooth, Doctor Doom, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, and Venom. Each one has its own powers, skins, dialog, conversations, and even achievement points. More details here. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance was a lot of fun when I played it. I beat it once I started a second game on Hard to get more of the achievements, but then I never got a chance to finish it before I got engrossed in other games. I still plan to buy the expansion and playing through the game on hard, but I have no idea when I’m going to find time to do that. I think the expansion packs are worth the $10 for both of them since they add so much replay value to the game. I enjoy playing games like this for a few levels with each character so I can get a good feel for them. With 8 additional characters and new achievements there is a lot more for me to play with the expansions.

Rainbow Six: Vegas
I’ve previously reviewed the Player’s Pack Red Edition for Rainbow Six Vegas so if you check my blog regularly you know I think it is worth the $10. It contains 5 maps and 2 new games modes. More details here. I really like the new maps and the new game modes are great. I’m not going to spend a lot of time covering this add on pack again, but with everything it adds the $10 is a great deal.

Halo 2
When the Blastacular Map Pack was released for Halo 2 about a month ago I ranted about how lame it was they were releasing maps for a game that is over two years old. At $4 the maps are cheaper than the Gears of War maps that were recently released, but more expensive than any of the other maps packs that were released. I guess is you’re still playing Halo 2 on a regular basis it is nice to have the new maps, but even then $2 a map is not that great of a price. If you’re still playing Halo 2 and not the Halo 3 beta you can get more info about these maps here.

In addition to these games there was DLC released for Test Drive Unlimited, Bullet Witch, NBA Street Homecourt, Tetris Evolution, Blue Dragon, Alien Hominid HD, and Guitar Hero II. If you bought any of these pieces of DLC let me know if you think they were worth it or not.

I played Aegis Wing for a few hours Wednesday night while I was waiting on the Halo 3 Beta to be fixed and released. It has been a while since I’ve played a side-scrolling shooter, but my maneuvering and dodging skills came back quickly. I started playing a little single player and then I got an invite from a guy on my Friends List. I played the rest of the night in a room of guys doing 4 player co-op. The game was ok in single player, but it really shines on co-op mode. When you’re playing with other people you can merge your ships together. When you do this one person flies and the other people who are attached can shoot in any directions (instead of just shooting strait ahead like when you are not attached) with a more powerful weapon. We quickly worked through the game on Normal mode and proceed to play it on the Insane difficulty. I really like playing it on Insane because in addition to really being a challenge there are no extra lives. If you die you can only get back in if one of your teammates picks up an extra life. When they do get the extra life you spawn back in. This leads to some great teamwork as you try to work together to keep each other alive.

The game itself looks good. It plays like most classic side-scrollers with each level getting harder by sending more enemies and harder bosses at the end of each level. Unlike some side-scrollers your ship is very maneuverable. This makes it pretty easy to dodge enemy attacks with a little practice. Also, instead of dying with only one hit you do have some heath which lets you take about 4 hits before dying. I prefer it this way because one-hit-kills games are really annoying. I found Aegis Wing difficult enough to be challenging but not so hard I got annoyed with it.

There are four super weapons that are available all have distinct features that make them useful. The shield protects you from attacks, but does nothing to hurt other enemies. The laser does a great amount of damage, but only in a strait line. The homing missiles spread out nicely, but if there is not enough enemies around then some of the shots will be wasted. Finally, the “Gorgon Burst” knocks out other ships around you but leaves a lot of debris on the screen that will kill you if you hit it. The achievements are a mix of co-op based ones and ones you could get alone. One thing to note is that the achievements don’t seem to be stackable. So, you have to beat it on Normal and on Hard to get them all. However, you don’ have to play the whole game to get the achievement for winning. You just need to beat the last level. So, you can join a co-op game in progress and as long as you beat the last level you get the achievement for beating the game.

For a game that was given away for free I’m really impressed. The could have easily charged $5 for this and I would probably have picked it up. It is nice to see that Microsoft is not so money crazy that they have completely forgot about us, the gamers.

While I was waiting around for the Halo 3 beta to be release last night I took some time to check out Soltrio Solitaire even though I knew I was not going to buy the full version. The game looks decent enough, but I never though the graphics would be an issue. My biggest issue with this game is that they are charging $10 for a set of 18 versions of solitaire. $10 may not sound like a lot of money, but when I can play the same games on my PC for free it is. Not only can I play them free on my PC, but they play better on my PC. Because there is no mouse to play with on the Xbox 360 they have setup the game so that when you move the controller around the screen to select cards it jumps from card to card instead of moving around freely. I found this extremely frustrating because it slowed down how fast I could play the game. They tried to compensate for this somewhat by giving you a quick play button. By moving the cursor over a card and hitting B it would play that in the best available spot. The problem with this is that if there are multiple places the card could play you have no control with this method on where the card goes. Instead you have to pick up the card with the A button and painstakingly move it where you want it. When I play card games I want to go from play to play as fast as possible. So, I was glad to see they included options to speed up the animations, but even on the fastest setting the animations were still to slow for my tastes. After about 5 minutes I was getting pissed about how slow the game plays. The achievements for Soltrio Solitaire are pretty standard with some you could get easily and others you’re going to have to work for. However, even if you are a big solitaire fan this game is just to cumbersome to play for more than a game or two. The only case I can see for recommend getting this game is if you have a spouse/girlfriend/mistress that you want to get into console gaming and they really like solitaire. In that case it might be worth the $10 to get them to play on your Xbox 360, but keep in mind that if they get into console gaming you may end up having to shell out another $400 bucks for a second Xbox 360.

I finally got the Halo 3 beta downloaded late last night and after I finished watching Lost I played a few games. If I have time I’ll get a longer review written about the Halo 3 Beta after I play it for a few more hours, but after playing only three games here are my initial impressions.

Within the first 30 seconds of playing I realized a couple of things. First, I miss the Halo 2 party system. Since I mostly play games with guys on my friends list I don’t mind the multiplayer system that games like Rainbow Six: Vegas, GRAW2, and Gears of War have, but the Halo system is just so much nicer. The option to merge parties after a match and to veto the game type are great options. I really hope other developers see how great this is and copy it, or that Microsoft adds party support directly into the Xbox 360 so it can carry over to every game.

The second things I realized is that I’m not use to playing such a fast paced game. I’ve been playing mostly Rainbow Six: Vegas and a little GRAW2 both of which are much slower paced games. The tactics I’ve picked up playing these games do carry over pretty well to Halo 3. Just at a much faster pace. After getting a feel for the levels I was able to school some guys using some pretty common GRAW2 tactics like flanking and getting an elevation advantage. The other big thing I’ve picked up in these tactical games that helps a lot with Halo is using bursts of fire instead of just holding down the trigger.

I also quickly noticed that a lot of the weapons have had little tweaks made to them. The needler seemed to track a little less, but do more damage. The brute shot now holds 6 grenades instead of 4. The shotgun only holds 6 shots now. It was nice to have the assault riffle back because it seems more accurate than before. The battle rifle works as well as I remember. The rocket launcher seems to fire a bit slower and does not lock on any more. The new weapons are pretty fun to use as well. I had a blast sticking people with spike grenades. Also, the spiker seems to be a solid addition to the dual wield weapons. I was dual wielding the spikers for a while and got a good amount of kills at short range. All of these little changes are going to take more getting use to, but seem like they work well.

I did run into one issue where I was getting a message that the beta was not available but all of my friends were playing in it so I know that was some strange issue. I guess I need to keep in mind there will be issues since it is a beta. My other annoyance is that I have to start up Crackdown all the way each time I want to play Halo 3. This would not be to bad except Crackdown is one of the slowest loading games I’ve played on the Xbox 360. Overall I’m looking forward to trying it out more.

I’m sure by now everyone is aware that the Halo 3 Beta is not yet available for download from within Crackdown like it was suppose to be. I’m not really that surprised. Items that are reported to be up on the Xbox Live Marketplace on a certain date often don’t make it up there until later. This has been especially true of game demos. However, given the publicity around the Halo 3 Beta being released to the public today I’m surprised that they were not ready. From what I see on Major Nelson’s blog (which is down do to high traffic levels again) there is an issue they are working to sort out with the release of the Halo 3 Beta via Crackdown. I’m still holding out hope it will be up in time for me to start it downloading on my lunch break. Once it is up I can’t imagine how long it will take to download the 1.1 GB Beta with so many people trying to download it all at the same time. I remember the original Halo 2 maps taking hours to download the day they released. I figure this will be the same. If by chance they do get the issue sorted out and I get it downloaded I’ll post tomorrow with my first impressions. If they don’t get it fixed I’ll probably be checking out the new Xbox Live Arcade games.

I beat the last level in Eets: Showdown today. According to LiveEye I’ve played it 15 hours and 42 minutes so far. Not bad for a $10 game with 123 levels, and I’m not done playing it yet. I still want to play some 4 player Marsho Madness. I played 3 player on Saturday and it was a blast. I think with 4 people I would be able to get the 1,000,000 point achievement. My only complaint is that I have to get it all of us here on the same Xbox 360. If I could play Marsho Madness over Xbox Live that would be perfect. I also want to go back through the levels still and see if I can get the par score and time on each level. Finally, there are a couple other achievements that I want to try and get. Like I said in my review, this game is well worth the $10 price tag.

There is something about first person shooters and alien invasions that just go together. Blacksite: Area 51’s developers know this and have built the game around it. After playing the demo a couple times I generally like what I’m seeing. The demo starts with you arriving with your other 2 squad members at the edge of a small town. You have to search the area for another squad that stopped reporting in. Your squad is easy to command with a simple “point at what you want them to interact with and hit the right bumper” control scheme. There is not as much squad control depth as in games like GRAW2 or Rainbow Six: Vegas, but there is enough to have some help killing the aliens. The one thing I never did figure out about my squad was why they can take cover behind objects, but I can’t.

The demo is pretty short. There are basically two fights between you and a group of attacking aliens and then it ends, but it is long enough to admire the destructible environments. Everything I found to shoot was damaged by my bullets including cars, gas pumps, walls, and signs. The items that you would expect to explode all do so if you shoot them enough. The graphics look good. The level of the demo is a night time outdoor area so I don’t know if the whole game is like that or just this level, but it is not so dark that you can’t see a large portion of the level.

There were a few things I found a little bit strange. First, the grenades seem very light. I could throw them much further than in other games. Also, you go through ammo very quickly, or at least I did. There was a spot to get more ammo after the first encounter with aliens so it was not like I was going to run out, but in the overall game is seems like you would need a lot of spots to get more ammo. Maybe if I did not waste my ammo blowing cars up it would have been plenty of ammo. Finally, you can jump by hitting the A button, but you only get about one foot off the ground. Why bother having a jump button if it is only a foot off the ground?

During the credits and screenshots after the demo ends it mentions that you’ll be able to play through the game in co-op mode, but it does not say with how many people. Additionally, it mentions being able to drive vehicles in the game, but I never found any in the demo that I could drive.

The much anticipated (at least with the people on my friends list) Forza Motorsport 2 Demo was release today. I’m not much of a racing game fan, but I gave it a try anyway. It looks great and for a demo there are a lot of vehicles to try, but none of them have an autopilot option so I still ended up doing very badly in the races I attempted. For those of you who are racing games fans Forza 2 look amazing. If you try the Forza 2 demo let me know what you think of it.