Reason #51: Why I'm glad to be a Ducks fan

Reason #51 why I'm glad to be a Ducks fan:
Our fans don't make "incredibly threating" phone calls. USC fans on the other hand...

Reason #24: Why I'm glad to be a Ducks fan

Coming in at reason #24 why I'm an Oregon Ducks fan, our players know that you go to the bathroom during halftime.

Via The Kansas City Star:
"When nature calls...With just seconds left in regulation and K-State lined up to inbound the ball and run a last second play, Bill Walker was overcome with an urge too strong to control. he stepped to the sideline and relieved himself with several towells. KSU lost to Oregon in overtime, 80-77."

I'd hate to have had the job as the Kansas State equipment manager last night. No one could pay me enough to deal with piss soaked towels.

Old Spice Experience Challenge

The Old Spice Experience Challenge is back but this time they've teamed up with 360voice.com.

Head on over to 360voice.com and sign up for an account. The challenges begin on 12/5/07. Read all about the rules here.

XBOX 360 "Fall" Update Details

Here's the full list of XBOX 360 Dashboard updates:

http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/2007/11/30/december-2007-system-update.aspx

Mini Review: Assassin's Creed

I've been playing Assassin's Creed for about the past 2 weeks and it's lived up to the hype for the most part. It's a solid game and it definitely falls in to the 8 out of 10 range. The graphics are beautiful and the control is solid. It's fun to run around the cities on the tops of the buildings, hopping across beams and climbing high points. The storyline is fairly decent. I'm not too in to what's going on with the happenings in the past but the story in the future has me intrigued. I'm curious to find out why I've got to go back and relive my ancestor's past.

The biggest thing keeping this game from being a really great title is that it starts to get repetitive pretty quick. Once you've gone through one city and an assassination, the rest of the assassinations are essentially the same. The cities even look very similar which doesn't help out Assassin's Creed. The formula is essentially this every time: Enter the city by blending in and then seek out a high point. Climb the high point to unlock some tasks in the area. Complete the tasks that give you information and then go to the hideout. Go back out and get more information. Oh, but you need to climb some more high points to unlock some tasks so you can get more information. Once you've got all the details on the mission, head back to the hideout and get the go ahead with the assassination. Perform the assassination, hightail it back to the hideout to complete the "level". Rinse and repeat.

The only thing that's really keeping me from flying through the story and getting it over with, is trying to complete some of the achievements. But, I might just flip on the turbo switch and fly through the last part of the game since I'm not being offered anything really new. Overall, I give the game a Rent It.

Giving Him The Business!

I was unaware that giving someone the business was a penalty in college football.

Poon Fight

Makes me wish there was more video. I'm sure the Ducks fan would've made our mascot proud.

Time Waster of the day

Thanks to the Sheldon comic strip creator, Dave Kellett, I now have something else to do when I'm bored...throwing paper into a trashcan

Source: Sheldoncomics.com

10 Free XBLA games for Euro 360 owners

I saw this while I was catching up on my RSS feeds.

Now, everyone else can feel the pain that Euro XBox 360 owners have been feeling. There's a promotion going on where if you have bought or will buy a 360 between October 1, 2007 and December 14, 2007 you and your friend will be rewarded with 10 free XBLA games. Fill out this form and you're on your way to gaming goodness.

Here's the freebies:
Every Extend Extra Extreme (E4)
Sonic the Hedgehog
Street Fighter II - Hyper Fighting
Bomberman Live
Marble Blast Ultra
Spyglass Board Games
Small Arms
3D Ultra MiniGolf Adventures
Assault Heroes
Zuma Deluxe

After I thought a little bit, don't we have a promotion in the US for new 360 owners? Oh yeah, there's that little thing about giving away Halo 3 to new owners here. Regardless, I'm still happy to see Euro gamers getting some kick backs finally.

Source: Savygamer.com

Cheaper EA games?

Well those analysts are at it again...they're now saying that they expect EA to cut the price on some EA Sports titles for the holidays. They say that 14 titles are affected and mention NBA Live 08, Tiger Woods 08 and Madden 08. The Playstation 2 also gets mention that its sales of EA games is down and it might just be showing the signs that the system is finally dying.

I'm not sure what to make of this rumor. I'd love me some discounted EA Sports games (NHL 08 and FIFA 08, I'm eyeing you!) but there was that nasty word in the article that wants me to disregard this whole thing: analysts. I don't know who these analysts are but the ones I've heard from in the past seem to be full of shit and don't know what they hell they're talking about. I'll keep this rumor in the back of my mind so I won't be surprised when I see price drops. Price drops are bound to happen and for sports titles they're usually fairly quick since they're updated each year. All this really means to me is that I'd be able to play some of these games quicker than expected.

Ahead of the Bell: Electronic Arts

Note to Self: Do not do Lambeau Leaps

And from the "that ain't right" department...we have phantom crotch grabbers and Lambeau Field. I definitely won't be jumping into any stands for a while because you know people are copycats. Read more on the jump.

Do you know this crotch grabber? (620wtmj.com)

Live is 5ive Freebies

Yet more fun stuff has been announced for the Live is 5ive anniversary. Now we're getting some free themes. Go download them if you want. I'll probably download them just to have them but I won't use them. I don't like most of the themes out there since they make it harder to see what's on the screen.

Live is 5ive Freebies

Cal Band- Video Game Show 2007

This by far the best thing to come out of Cal-Berkeley in a long time and probably the only thing I'll ever like about Cal.

The Marching Band starts off with Pong, then goes onto Tetris, Mortal Kombat, Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, and finishes the performance off with Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros covers. Watch and enjoy the awesomeness.

Zune & XBox news

The new Zune 2.0 firmware is out today and I'm really liking the new features they've added so far. I haven't played with the software at all but based upon the screenshots, and other people's comments, I'm kind of wanting to trade/sell my 5.5G 30GB iPod. I enjoyed my iPod for basically the podcast aspect of it but now that the Zune has podcasts built in and it's got a bigger screen I'm losing my reasons to say that an iPod suits me better. I also like the social aspect of the Zune. It's pretty nice to see what your friends are listening to and what your listening habits are...by checking out a website. Oh yeah, and there's the wireless syncing. Woot.com or Amazon.com might be getting my money for a first generation Zune.

In the world of the XBox, the XBox Live service turns 5 years old this week and there's a bounty of goodies associated with it. First, they're giving away Carcassonne for free on Wednesday. I was tempted to buy this when it came out as the demo played well. But now it's free and I'll be all over that. Second, there's also a sweepstakes where you can win some XBox gear and all you need to do it register online and play a multiplayer game on the 15th. Lastly, if you've been an Live subscriber since 2002, you'll be rewarded with 500 microsoft points, which I won't get since I think I've been a member since '04. So, Happy Birthday XBox Live and thank you for the gifts!

Change in format

I'm thinking I might just go with more of a general blog instead of just solely achievements. There's always some good news items that I want to discuss and that I usually flag in my Google Reader RSS feed. I need to come up with a new name in the meantime, bear with me.

2000/2000

It's been a while since the last post and I've gotten my gamerscore to jump up quite a bit. I started up my Gamefly subscription again and Madden 08 was my first title.

The Madden 08 achievements were pretty easy to get. There were only a handful that required some effort to get. I thought the game was okay. I prefer to play the NCAA series more than Madden; it just has a better feel to it.

And speaking of NCAA Football 08, I finally got the last three achievements to get the vaunted 1000 gamerscore. Now, I can start playing some online games. I did play one game online recently but I blame lag on my loss. It's hard to run the option and pitch to the RB when there's a delay in button presses.

The next game I got from Gamefly (apparently via carrier pidgeon as it took 6 days to arrive) was The Orange Box. I beat Portal in essentially one night and that was a blast. I only got a handful of achievements from the game but I'll revisit it to try to knock those out. Portal is just a blast to play and the humor in the game is great. I played some Half Life 2 next and it's pretty good. I stopped playing for now since I got to a point where I died like 5 times in a row...which caused me to pick up some Halo 3.

I need to finish Halo 3 since I in act 8 right now and I want to get a co-op campaign going. Unfortunately, I'm running in to the same thing with Halo as I was in Half-Life. I've gotten to the point where I'm just being hammered with enemies and constantly dying. It gets annoying fast when you play for 15 minutes and you don't even get to a checkpoint before you die. I'll give it another shot this evening and if I don't get too far I'll probably try to see if I can find anyone online in Puzzle Fighter to get a 7 gamerscore and get my gamerscore back to something even. This is important because I want to get a nice round 10,000 gamerscore, which is less than 900 away.