XYBA Podcast Ep 17

Andy, Eric, Jeff, and Josh are back with the last XYBA Video Game Podcast of 2007. We discuss games we played on holiday and games we got for Christmas. Good times.

00:00 - Intros
00:35 - Games We're Playing :|: Geometry Wars: Galaxies, Gundam, Viva Pinata: Party Animals, Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, SceneIt, Call of Duty 4, Half Life 2, Guitar Hero III, Tenchu Z, Transformers, Contra 4, New York Times Cross Word Puzzles, The Simpsons Game, Rock Band,
50:57 - Gaming News
1:02:30 - What We Are Looking Forward to For Gaming in 2008
1:34:38 - Rantz :|: Jeff goes off on Sony and their firmware restrictions

Download XYBA Podcast Ep 17

I'm Pretty Good at Geometry Wars

I'm not good at Geometry Wars: Galaxies, but I'm not bad either. I recently went to San Francisco with the family for holiday and I needed a game to take. So I bought Geometry Wars: Galaxies on the DS. I wasn't a fan of the demo on the Xbox 360 and this game is pretty repetitive, so I get bored with it.

This game is good for trips to kill some time and I had plenty of free time. With all this free time I was able to score in the top ten on one of the planets. You can actually view me on Geometry Wars site. Just go to the leaderboards and go to the planet Minduo. I'm aplusj. Boo yaka. I think I'll try to place higher seeing as how I'll probably be bumped very soon.

On a side note, the Geometry Wars site is pretty cool. They've made it so that it's friendly to browse if you are using the DS browser, Wii browser, or your regular browser. Neat idea.

Give the Gift of MS Points

Well, you could always give the gift, but it used to only be in these gift card forms. Now Microsoft is allowing US members buy Microsoft Points for other gamers, as long as they know those gamers' Windows Live IDs.

Unfortunately, you can't yet buy M$ points for people just by knowing their Gamertag(which would make more sense).

You can buy and give the points from Major Nelson.

Gamercards Now Track Old Games Too!

After the recent "Fall" Dashboard Update for the Xbox 360, gamercards are now keeping track of when you play original Xbox games on your system as well. The symbol for all older games is a white original Xbox and the achievements are always 0 out of 0.

Now, seeing these older games on someone's gamercard is only available when looking at their gamercard while on Xbox Live. The website xbox.com and other gamercard tracking sites do not show the older games.

It's definitely an interesting little tidbit which will help me to cyberstalk what my friends are doing even more! That's right, I saw you playing Spongebob: The Battle for Bikini Bottom!

The Falcoln has landed

The new line of Xbox 360s is on shelves now. But it's not something you'll see advertised. Because all the changes are internal.

Codenamed the Falcoln, the new interior systems reduce power consumption, heat and noise. The older system was known as the Zephyr. Not every system out there right now is using the Falcoln, but you can tell from the box which system it is.

If you are buying a 360 at the store, look on the side of the box where it compares the three different SKUs. At the bottom, there will be a label like this:



If the Watts listed is 175W, it's a Falcoln. If it's 203W(like mine), it's still a Zephyr.

I'm Heroic!

I know many of you will be upset, but I gave Bungie another $10. I bought the Heroic Map Pack today. And I don't regret it!

Rat's Nest is pretty fun. Santana and I were able to dominate on the outer track with a Warthog and when that got destroyed, I was able to jack a Ghost and continue to rain destruction upon the other team. The interior middle can get pretty intense with the various bridges and passages. There's even a hammer in the middle, but I SUCK with the hammer.

Stand Off is very big. On Capture the Flag, I was able to defend the base almost entirely by myself with a shotgun and some plasmas. We were able to score at the last second to win. Regular slayer is fun here too. You can see far across the map on this one. Which is apparently why there are no snipers on the map. There are battle rifles, shotguns, lasers, rocket launchers, Warthogs and Mongooses, though.

Santana really liked Foundry, but I was constantly killed. It's definitely an intense map because the enemy could be in any direction and it's not really that big. The cramped areas definitely make for some interesting situations.

But one of the main reasons I wanted to buy the Heroic Map Pack was for the extra stuff in Forge. I spent a good portion of today making a map on Foundry by deleting everything and building from scratch. There's a lot of options. I did play with a soccer ball for a while, but it didn't make it into my final design.

So go ahead and flame away. I can take it. After all, I'm heroic!

(BTW, this is our 300th post! Hoorah!)

Topless Wii?

Possibly old news to some of you, but a British magazine has put out a series of videos called Topless Wii on the internet. In the videos, one or two girls play a Wii game while topless and you can guess what game they are playing.

For research for this post, I studied the videos. There seem to be 13 episodes so far. In the first eight, there is a blonde and a brunette. In the beginning of each episode, they say the name of the video and then take off their shirts before beginning to play. After episode 8, nobody ever wears a shirt again. In episodes 9-11, it is a new blonde girl. In episodes 12-13, they pair up the two blonde girls. Even though there are 13 episodes so far, they seem to only play the same four games. Of course, it is still the Wii...

While the Wii has a large children's market, Nintendo doesn't seem to be crying about the free publicity these videos are bringing. And of course, it is Europe where nudity is pretty common in advertising.

I will say that Warioware Smooth Moves looks perverted enough when being played by clothed people...

Get Your Legendary Halo 3 Cheap!

So... your 360's been broken since Halo 3 came out and you still don't have a copy? Or maybe you're finally getting a 360 for Christmas. Either way, if you want to get your hands on Halo 3 Legendary Edition for $70 off, check out Wal-mart.

For a limited time, Walmart is selling the Legendary Edition for $60, the price of normal Halo 3 regularly. If you don't want the fancy helmet, they also have the Collector's Edition for $48.

Of course, I don't know anyone who doesn't already have Halo 3 but maybe you do. Could be a Christmas gift for someone. I have been looking for something to buy my mom...

Make Your Own Themes

I found this posting that shows a template for making a background for your Xbox 360 Dashboard. Now you can finally have that theme of your dog!

You can actually make any picture a background by looking at it through the Pictures option and then pressing Y to make it your background. This template makes it so the image isn't stretched or covered by the blades.

The only problem is that whatever picture you make your background is the background for the different sections. You can't make multiple backgrounds.

I even made this sweet XYBA Podcast theme:

This Game Brought to You... by Army

The Army has opened a new office with the sole purpose of designing video games. These games would be used to train troops in realistic military simulations.

I wouldn't expect these games to ever go to the public(or be much fun). But apparently the military is sick of paying third parties to make their training games and simulators. The new office is part of the National Simulation Center out of Kansas.

The tool kit they are working on now would allow soldiers to create and customize different scenarios. However, it isn't slated for release until as late as 2015. Won't we all be using Virtual Reality by then?