I've been a Giant Bomb Subscriber for quite a while now and looks like both of these sites are owned by the same publisher. Because of this they decided to give a promotional GameSpot subscription for some of the Giant Bomb users. Looks like I'm (partially) back here.

I have to admit that the main reason I didn't feel like using this site was those annoying ads. Now that's out of the way I'll be glad to browse both sites. Thanks CBS and whoever thought of this promotion ^^

Hit me up there too. Would love to have more blog and forum posts to read posted by you: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/nintendude/

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Now they took down the chat and ripped the On The Spot show apart, what do you have left for me? Nothing worth mentioning. Lack of ads might be good but that doesn't really change anything if I'm not even using the site to browse anymore.

The only thing I might re-sub for a month is well covered E3 with exclusive live footage and developer demos. If the E3 coverage will be anything like the one last year and before that, sign me up. That means there needs to be enough live content. For me, it was the thing I signed up for and also will be if you plan to exploit E3 the best way you can ^^

Oh right, there is that game collection list which I will be using from now on also. It's so much better than the Giant Bomb one.

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Couple things I could praise over Giant Bomb are collection list with personal scores and bigger forums (note that bigger is not always a good thing).

I decided a moment ago that I'll stick around checking how things are going over this side until my subscription ends. (Maybe few times a week from now on instead around twice a month.) Additionally The HotSpot is something I haven't listened this year at all so I should check out that stuff also. Maybe I'll see something worth subscribing even, good enough E3 coverage might change my mind for example.

I could use GS after my subscription ends but I know those freaking ads would drive me nuts for sure, so that option is out of the question really.

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I have had my xbox for over a year now so I'm not really surprised it failed on me now. I'm not sure when Mircosoft updated the hardware but I was quite sure it didn't have the more heat resistant parts in it.

I'm currently playing a bit of Aion: The Tower of Eternity on my free time. They just opened the servers for Open Beta and the game is feeling quite good. Not sure if I will start playing it after the 1 free month I get for purchasing the game, though. Need to think about it more when the beta is over.

I still haven't really used to the idea of paying for MMO games. When the WoW was released I wasn't too into MMOs. Later, around a year after the Guild Wars was released, I thought it might be a good idea to try. I liked the idea of being able to play it once in a while when I felt like some RPG action instead of feeling to play the game over others just because I constantly pay for it and want to get most out of my money.

I played Guild Wars for for some time but felt like the PvE was too shallow because of the low level cap. I never ended up playing with a PvP character for some reason, maybe I was just so used to story modes of other games before GW.

Next I tried quite many other free MMO games, the ones which use micro transactions to make income. I never felt like buying anything for those since the game enhancements didn't feel enhancing enough or the game wasn't good enough to make me feel like I'd want to support the game up-keeper.

Later after I bought my Xbox 360 I thought to try Final Fantasy XI just for fun. It was the first MMO I paid for and the first with a subscription. It seemed nice since it was relatavely new and different because of the console controls. btw, you can use an usb keyboard on Xbox to write in the game. FF XI was really hard to start, first of all after I created my character and entered the world for the first time I had a instant feeling of being lost and had no idea what to do first in the town. The game totally lacked a tutorial and markers on map to point where to go. I played the game 1,5 months in total, mostly because I found a nice link shell (=kinda like a guild) to chat in with other people. The reason why I ended the game so early was that you can't really solo after the few first levels and it didn't really help that you need to have the party members in the same level range +-2 levels if your own so everyone could get most out of the party. Note: They fixed this just after I decided to quit the game so it's not that restrictiong anymore.

Next I went back to 2Moons one of the free MMO games I played before Final Fantasy. Actually this time it was the European server of the game instead of the US one, the game is known as Dekaron outside US. I played it around 3 months and got to twice higher level this time since I knew so much about the game and leveling was a somewhat faster because of that. I used to like it a lot back then and paid a tenner for some discounted items such as pet, autofishing enabling exp rune and some event items which let the player to do some event quests.

And now around 10 months later, after I gave up on MMOs because I had something better to do before gowing to army, there is this new AION. I'm really interested to see what the game brings with it and more than anything I'm interested to see if it will be enough to make it worth the subscription.

Oh btw, I got the aluminium MacBook around 6 months ago. Really big upgrade compared to my quite old Table-top PC. Windows with BootCamp is great addition to the OS X which works for everything else but games.

That's about it this time, bye for now ^__^

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I'm quite stunned how many new features 360 is gonna have with all of those last.fm, twitter and facebook stuff. It's also gonna be great to be able to rent some movies here in Finland (the current thing isn't available over here).

The real time motion capture stuff looked nice also, though I kinda hate those casual Wii games so I'm not that excited about it really, hehe. I think Sports and Extreme Sports games will really benefit that feature if it works well enough. As long as the motions won't lag too far behind.

Oh and I've been waiting quite long time to see more of Alan Wake and was really satisfied with the short demo they showed, Remedy is a local game house after all ^^. Oh yeah and Metal Gear should be quite cool also, not a fan really but the games are definitely worth a play.

Gonna add some more impressions when I check the rest of the press conference ^^

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There is a crystal case on it so it won't get scratched and I wouldn't even think of using my DS without screen protectors.

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If they would have called it a live demo, or something which doesn't make people think something that's many hours long*, I would have been able to change my plans a bit to see part of it live.

I also would have liked to get the emblem since I'm still somewhat preferring Nintendo over other game companies. (In the lack of more "hard core" games and other must buy titles on Wii I needed to get 360** .) I still really like those great Game Cube era styled less casual releases of Nintendo outside the "Wii [stuff]" games.

*around 3 hours or more

**this was at the time when they revealed Wii Music and had their worst E3 press event ever, I finally realized that the casual market was going to be in way too dominant part of Nintendo at least during the next year or few. I got 360 to keep me entartained enough.

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Downloading without paying is illegal and downloading without paying for something what's 100% worth it, is just damn stupid.

That's all and see ya next time.

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For new players the International server registeration page is here. Download page should appear after the registeration form.

(ok I admit that it's a referral link but I'm offering my help also ^^ always fun to have more good people on friends list anyway and I like to help players, new to MMO or not.)

Btw, if you are looking a bit different kind of MMO with much darker theme 2Moons/Dekaron might be it. 2Moons is the US server and Dekaron is the European server, I'm currently actively playing on the European server but don't mind to help out on the US server either. I have around 60 level Segnale (=healer) on both servers.

Drop a comment if you have some general character creation questions or your in game name if you want me to add you on my list and help out in game with other stuff.

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Brobably not many of you have heard of this excellent music game series since the previous games haven't been released outside Korea and Japan (and maybe some other countries around there), so I'll try to explain the gameplay a bit.

The aim of the games is quite simple. There are 4, 5, 6 or 8 rows of notes (depending on the mode) falling from top vertically towards a red line displayed on the botom side of the screen (pretty much in Guitar Hero fashion actually.) Like in most of the music games, you are supposed to press a corresponding button when the notes are overlapping the target line. You'll hear a sound every time you press a button so the aim is pretty much to make the background tracks complete with keysounds, perform badly and the track will sound just as bad as you are playing.

Check out:
- The new trailer here and gameplay footage of a good player playing DMP1 here.
- Game pages for the previous PSP games are here and here.
- Read more about the new game here. (Sadly there was no GS story yet.)

Stuff about DMP:
- With easy 4-button songs the games are very playable by anyone.
- First PSP DJ Max game was released in 2005.
- DJ Max Portable 2 is one of the best selling PSP games in Japan.
- A song named Dreadnought in first DJ Max Portable was removed from the english language "international" version (sold online for importing) because the backround video of the song had a stick figure with Gearge W. Bush's face on it.
- Default 8 button mode key configuration: ◄, ▲, ►, □, ∆, o, L, R (6 notes from left to right + the 2 big red ones). Also analog for the long-shiny-spinny-thingie-notes.

So if you have PSP be sure to check Fever out when it's released.

I have played the previous games since the release of second so I'm definitely glad to have something new to play. Bought my PSP for those games and they are still the only ones I have. Actually I could post some videos later when I have time. The framerate might not be ideal, with the video mode of my still camera I have, but I'll post something if I manage to get decent footage.

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Played until level 16 but I need to go to sleep now, way too morning again. Level progress is auto-saved on a cookie so it's easy to continue later.

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Just made my 800th post. ^^ Also I broke the 100,000 read posts mark the same day. (that is 08/15)

[.../edit...]

Kinda stupid but I would have wanted to see my post count at 777 which was 4 posts ago...

Only 109 posts to go for the next one . Wait... that's kinda much . Maybe I'll aim for the next hundred and play something instead of posting that much, heh.

[Ugh needs to think of more stuff... way too lame otherwise]

Um, I'm playing Final Fantasy XI on 360 currently. I like it since it's different compared to the other MMO:s. Couldn't say it being really a beginner friendly game but Wiki helps alot. If anyone else plays on Ragnarok server, let me know.

[What are the chances really? The game has around 20 servers...]

Hmm and about the (sort of) new page layout. I already hate it, I should have gone back to the old page after checking out the beta. Plus I gotta say I absolutely hate the way emblems are hidden now, kinda unbelievable that they are even more useless now.

[Ah, better. Maybe I'd need to set a word limit for my blog posts xD]

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I'll now list the games I decided to buy so I won't forget them later, heh.

Fallout 3, Prince of Persia 4, Sonic Unleashed, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Resident Evil 5, Mega Man 9, Pure, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, Dead Space, Soul Calibur IV, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Final Fantasy XIII.

Oh my god, I never realized the list is this big and what's even worse I left out 5 games* which I'd also want to check out. o_O I doubt I can pick up all of these, actually it all depends how far apart the release dates are.

Btw. the Nintendo's Press Conference this year was worst ever, they didn't reveal any game I'd want to buy really.

Thanks for reading. If you bother, you could also throw your own to-buy list in the comments section. Nice to see what you think ^^

_____

*Tomb Raider Underworld, Bionic Commando, Fable II, Project Origin and Guitar Hero 4.

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The screen on the left is my old tube TV (with the video feed) and on the right is my new PC Screen sitting on my bed in a tilted position. (with the chat and website on top) The live show is so long that it's nice to lie down while watching.

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I bought PSP more than a year back around the time of the release of DJ Max Portable 2 since I'm huge rhythm game fan. I got the PSP only for DMP games and I still think it was a good choice even though I haven't really been interested in any other game on the device. I mean DMP2 is one of the most long lasting games ever, been playing it quite frequently since the release and haven't really got bored yet. PSP was the first not Nintendo console (or handheld) I ever got.

Few years back when the GameCube was one of the current generation consoles I didn't even think about getting PS2 or Xbox because, after all, Cube was quite similar to the other two consoles. But now the current generation is quite different especially in a perspective of a Nintendo fan. The multiplatform games are basically nonexistent on the Wii, ok there are few but also those tend to be PS2 ports which isn't really in par to my requirements of a current generation game. Don't get me wrong they can be good, Guitar Hero 3 for example.

So yeah I ended up getting an Xbox360. I needed a new monitor for my PC and since the one I got had an HDMI port I thought why not to get something to use it. Speaking of which, one thing why I didn't get Xbox before now was the fact I didn't have anything to display the image in full definition, I know it's not that big of a deal but I didn't want an HD console for my dated TV.
(note: here in Finland we don't have High Definition TV broadcasts yet so HDTV isn't that obvious thing.)

I think that's all for now. As you can see I added my XBL Gamertag on my profile. If anyone wants to add me to their XBL list please do so, it's always nice to have more people on the list to play online with.

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I noticed that I got my 24th GameSpot Emblem after the Player's Ball show which ended just a moment ago. I wasn't even expecting to get one really since I hadn't noticed the TGS 07 Emblem yet either, it appeared kinda late so that definitely was a surprise. Anyway 4 full rows of emblems which isn't anything amazing but still nice to see those little icons stacking during these years on to my profile . I might throw a word or two after next 6 are on there just to have something to post on this page, heh. My profile seems to be on level 25 currently which is quite nice number as well.

I think I'll be commenting on Metroid Prime 3 next time, they are going to release it during this month over here in Europe. I think there's no way it being better than the first one since I really love that game, but hey they can always try . It's kinda sad this will be the last Metroid Prime game made by Retro Studios. Especially since I consider Metroid being one of, and maybe the best, game series ever made.

Ugh, it's over freaking 8am over here so I'd really have to go to sleep instead writing this kinda pointless update right now. I'm so glad On The Spot won't start 4:30am, wouldn't definitely watch that live even though I'd have next day free from school like now. So yeah, until next time... ZzzzZzzzzZzzz

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(The last part won't fit here as well as it did in the comment section of the marathon but there's no reason to take it out either. Also changed the personal form from "you" to "them" of the first part to make the text more suited here)

If you also watched the marathon I'm quite interested to hear your opinions about it too so go on and comment if you have something to say.

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