XBox 360 Rally

Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Hann… well, no. Hanukkah is over, but still. I hope you had a good one.

See you all on Wednesday.

A sting operation in El Paso, Texas where fugitives were informed that they had won free electronics including Xbox 360s, has resulted in over 100 arrests.

“Our goal is to try to keep El Paso safe and arrest as many fugitives as we can,” said U.S. Marshal supervisor Gerry Payan.

The operation was aimed specifically at targeting those with past illigal entry, violence and drug charges (because apparently all gamers are drugged up illegals with hot heads ). 129 warrants were cleared in all, and over $25,000 worth of traffic fines were collected.

Just more proof that the Xbox 360 draws you in. But remember south Texans… if you are told you won a free 360, in the words of Admiral Ackbar “It’s a trap!”.

[Shack News]

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Hi, boys and girls. It’s just me, your friendly neighborhood JW, here to remind you all that we’re currently looking for people to replace us here at Xbox 360 Rally. All you have to do is go HERE, fill out the form, and wait to hear back. It’s really not that hard.

So, get to it already — so Paco and I can get to the NEW site!

In two pretty unrelated Halo 3 blips, “Chevmeister” over on the Bungie.net forums has posted downloads for all the multiplayer maps sans weapons, power ups, vehicles, etc, just a nice empty sandbox for you to fill (not sure why Forge wasn’t made like this already). Click here and start downloading those right away, awesome job to all the users that helped out with that, this should come standard with Forge and placed as part of the first update that Halo 3 will receive, but for now, at least they made it easy enough for users to share such things (possibly they can share their information with the Unreal Tournament devs).

The second part to these quick blips, Halo 3 madness has invaded even the intelligent people over at MIT, known for their pranks, have transformed a statue of John Harvard into Master Chief with his assault rifle in hand. For larger pictures with different views, click here, they made sure to get some pretty detailed shots in before the prank was taken down at the early hours of 8am where I guess only those in on the prank got to enjoy it, and of course all of us with an internet connection and a love for good old fashioned shenanigans.

[Thanks to Xbox360Fanboy for Cleared Maps info | MIT Prank info thanks to Brian over at TalkingNFL.com]
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Ok, people, here’s the deal — Paco and I are on our way out. We’re taking over at 1PStart.com in an effort to restore it to it’s former glory. …that, and I just plain want to write about another game every once in a while, is that so wrong?!

Anyways, here is what we’re looking for: A competent, capable writer with a love for all things Xbox. Now, by competent writer, we mean someone who spells “you” correctly, and knows when to capitalize. If you can do that, you’re a shoe-in. So, CLICK THIS DAMN LINK, do the required stuff, then get paid to play video games and write about stuff.

…hell, Mike and I did the hard stuff already, and YES, the GTA4 Banner contest will continue, and I will still give you a copy of GTA IV… or something. So, hop to it.

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Filed under humor, but the person/people who did this, SuBZ3r0, took their time, it is amusing but not wacky in any way. I said enough, watch this video.

(Slow news day, you guys don’t really want to hear every single Halo 3 news blip do you!?! We can bring it if you want! But its time to look in the mirror and know that you have heard enough! Other games are being ignored! Other sites agree! We are all going to buy the game anyways! /rant)
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You know, last week I didn’t do t3h w31rd, and then this week… not too much happened. So I may be scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I did what I could. So, without further adieu, I present to you “t3h w31rd”…

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Sarcastic Gamer has been the source for some of the funnest gaming parodies out there; their song about the PS3, “How to Kill Your Brand”, was awesome. Well, the guys at Sarcastic Gamer are at it again, with this ballad to the awesomeness and earth-shattering importance of Halo 3.

So, listen to this song, then go out and pre-order Halo 3 if you haven’t already. You’ll be helping the starving children.

[Sarcastic Gamer]

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You know, this “Yahtzee” fellow is quickly rising up my list of the funniest men alive. His latest review, for my GotY BioShock, is simply brilliant.

Brilliant.

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So, there was a guy with the gamertag ‘Scar’ who somehow got his hands on the Halo 3 Epsilon Beta. So rather than playing it in secret, gushing about it’s awesomeness only to his closest of friends, this guy posts about it on the INTERNET!

Hello? Dude? The internet… yeah, it’s EVERYWHERE! My 90 year-old grandma surfs the damn internet!

Either way, Microsoft found out that it was him, and banned him from Xbox LIVE… until the year 10,000!

(Thanks Mark for the image)

UPDATO MAGNIFICO!
If you thought being banned until 10,000AD was bad enough, I have something else that will either make you even more sad for this guy, or will make you laugh his ass off — he had a gamerscore of 61,000!

UPDATO MAGNIFICO 2.0!
Ok, so apparently Mr. Scar here didn’t steal Halo 3 Epsilon, or somethin’. I’ve seen him on just about every message board refuting this claim — it doesn’t matter, dude. You still got your ass banned until long after we’ve colonized Mars. The story isn’t so much about the fact that you got your hands on Epsilon as it is that Microsoft gave you the eternal ban hammer. Suck it up, and move on.

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This should be included in t3h w31rd, but I’m at school, and I’m bored shitless.

It appears that Microsoft has committed a bit of a booboo. You see, a worker in the UK discovered that, after a customer returned their Xbox 360 Premium because of an incompatible power socket, their entire stock is American! Turns out, Microsoft accidentally shipped twenty THOUSAND (that’s four zeros) US consoles to the UK.

Smooth.

You see, because the UK uses a different style of power outlet than we do in the US, this essentially makes these twenty-thousand units useless. But what I am curious about is whether or not there are 20K UK units floating around the US somewhere.

Because I would buy one — and give it away via one of our popular contests.

[NeoWin]

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When we announced the Sonic photoshop contest, I honestly didn’t expect to get some of the quality work from you guys that we received. Believe me, picking just 5 winners was hard, very hard. So below are not only the 5 winners, but also some bonus pictures that were near winners and deserve to be seen, they were quite amusing. Lets get this started.

First Place: Loved this piece, you got the gold Sonic turning into the blue Sonic right when PacMan bit the pill, so simple, yet executed well, congrats!

Second Place:Loved the detail’s of the cars hitting in the background shooting off the coins, quality on this was top notch. Click on the pic below to experience in its full size.

Third Place: I was surprised at not more Gears of War ones, but its okay, because this entry saved the day by not only being nice quality, but brought teh funny. Click on the pic below to experience in full size.

Fourth Place: Simple idea, pulled off perfectly, got a giggle out of me, and the caption helped a lot with the sarcasm, nice job for an underrated game (Dead Rising folks!)

Fifth Place (A TIE!!!): How can there be a tie you say, well, it is because h00d00 entered a million times! For the most part his were all top quality too. In fact I couldn’t just pick one of his entries as the top five, so I went ahead and gave up two spots for him (don’t worry, he is still only getting one copy of Sonic). Now this first one just was such an obvious choice to have as an entry, c’mon, Sonic, in a race, basic, yet perfect. Click on the picture to enlarge to full size)

h00d00’s second entry came close to home with me, because it touched on an issue I remember covering not too long ago, about the XBLA game Durandal and people getting motion sickness (link)

So there are the five (and a half) winners! Hope you agreed, if not, drop a comment. I also want to leave you with some of the ones that didn’t get to the top five, but damn, they are well worth a mention and a view:

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Sometimes, a video is enough for a post, this is one of those times, our spanish brethren Juegos ( -->Xbox666 -->) has posted a video that I just had to share as well. Instead of the usual ads of a game showing various split scenes of action, The Simpsons just went ahead and did a parody of war video games. From what I understand, a lot of the game itself is going to be parodies of other video games as well, and with the last Simpsons title, “Hit & Run” being a pretty good game, im actually really looking forward to this new title.

For a few more Simpsons clips if you missed them, click here.

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It is a sad sad day, it is time to close the series of posting these videos, I now present, with the help of YouTube user , the last episode of the short stint of Red vs Blue episodes promoting Halo 3

First time hearing of this series of videos? Enjoy living under that rock? For you, in order of the special five episodes, click the following links for ep 1 (Upward Mobility), ep 2 (Personal Spaces), ep 3 (Fully Equipped), and ep 4 (Open House). Thanks to the Rooster Teeth guys for making these, I am not the biggest 1-800-MAGIC fan, but I wish them success with that series.

I always called Halo 2 the “AOL of First Person Shooters” because of the way it was made so easy for anyone to pick up and play for the most part, even joining and online game was just a button click away. So now over at an AOL sub-site GameDaily they offer reasons why you should stay away from the upcoming monster seller that will be Halo 3 (Copy and pasted below so you don’t have to go to an AOL site):

Who cares?

With over 1.5 million preorders, an aggressive marketing campaign and plenty of hype, Halo 3 is just as important as Brunswick Bowling. Ok, that’s not entirely true. We dug the beta, and playing through the single player campaign alongside three buddies can be a fun time, but we refuse to drink the Kool-Aid for the following reasons…

Shaky Narrative

Halo 2’s single player campaign left us empty and unwilling to “finish the fight”. After bludgeoning Covenant in the original Halo, we grew to despise the Arbiter in its sequel; the good-natured alien that seeks to destroy its former comrades. We keep imagining scenes of it and Master Chief fighting side by side, which pushes us further away from the game. We’d much rather play from the enemy perspective and kill UNSC forces instead of slaughtering more aliens.

Multiplayer Feels Too Familiar

Like thousands of other gamers, we played the hell out of Halo 2’s multiplayer mode, so much so that after nearly three years of constant fragging, we desperately need a new experience. Bungie introduced some cool new weapons into Halo 3, including the Brute Spiker, yet that may not be enough to hold our interests.

People Cheat

Halo 2 multiplayer was sweet until scumbags began exploiting the system, thus ruining an enjoyable experience. Halo 3 will likely suffer a similar fate, and it won’t be long before gamers teleport around the map and pull off other crazy shenanigans.

We Bought Into the Halo 2 Hype

At the time, Halo 2 was the greatest first person shooter for Xbox, featuring excellent multiplayer and attractive visuals. With that being said, we regret awarding the game a perfect ten, especially after dissecting the single player campaign a second and third time. We plan to avoid the hype this time around, and deliver a review that reflects the quality of the product.

Ill give the list one thing, the cheaters, man, that pissed me off, but like many, I am just attempting to have some faith that Microsoft will have some tricks up its sleave to make sure that won’t be as big as a problem as it was before.