Every month, Escapist Magazine offers up a new video game review by a gentleman named Yahtzee. Aside from being absolutely spot-on about the games he plays, the reviews are hysterical and incredibly well produced.
This one for Halo 3, along with another one for BioShock, are classic. If you're at work, break out the headphones. He can get a bit 18+ at times.
Blue Ginger
This place is great. Noisier and busier than we've ever seen it, but not much has changed here in the last 5 years. They still have Alaskan Butterfish (which one of us orders every time we go, this time it was Lori), and they had Sapporo beer. Sapporo, along with Kirin, is one of those beers that I will never in a million years think to get at the liquor store, but I love getting it at restaurants. Go figure.
Anyway, I got the Korean Hanger steak and piece of bittersweet chocolate cake for dessert, and Lori got the aforementioned butterfish and ... ummm ... some sort of dessert. I forgot what. But I DO know it came with a side of sorbet. Awesome dinner all around.
The highlight of the dinner was probably the company at the table next to us. We have no idea who it was, but it was four gentlemen (two from a small company, two from a large company) having a business meeting. The best part was the incredibly loud french guy who was the head of the larger company, telling the guy from the smaller one that to him, their company "... was small change. The revenue from any dealings with you will be insignificant. It is the market we care about, we don't even care a little bit about the money. This is NOTHING to us." I caught myself staring at Little Fish's blank expression a few times, as this french guy kept putting kicking him down a few pegs. This went on for about 45 minutes. Quality entertainment. We almost tipped them, it was so good.
Bioshock
This game is a must-have for anyone with an Xbox 360 or a PC. It's incredibly fun, and much more cerebral than most 1st person shooters. The idea is you've been taking to this underwater Utopian city (which, as with most Utopias, has crumbled). The scientists in the city have basically ignored morals and, for lack of a better description, come up with ways for people to have force-like powers (shooting fire, lightning, ice, telekinetics from their hands).
So not only do you have an array of 1950s-era weapons, you are also sorta like Darth Vader. Pretty cool.
You can hack into the computer systems of the city, turning security cameras/gun turrets/vending machines from enemies to friends, you can invent new weapons by combining pieces of multiple weapons ... and you can murder little demon girls.
Seriously.
I'm only about 1/20th of the way through the game, but so far it's delivering on the hype. Highly recommended.
Went to GameStop yesterday to trade-in Gears of War while it still had some value, and ended up on the pre-order list for BioShock (which releases on August 21).
If you have not heard of BioShock, check out the video below.
I've never seen a game get such high reviews; the lowest one I've seen so far is a 94 out of 100. If you have a 360, either get the demo today or just wait until tomorrow to get the full version. If you've already played the demo, you already know that purchasing it won't be a bad decision!
If I'm not mistaken, the PC-version of the demo also releases today ...
I'd been eyeballing this contraption for a while, and buy.com finally ran a deal on the Logitech Harmony Universal Remote w/ support for the Xbox 360.
Is it entirely necessary? Of course not. Is it nice to have if you're juggling 4 remote controls for different components of your setup? Absolutely. I'm probably about 3 years late to the party on this technology, so bear with me as I describe how neat this thing is.
The remote plugs into your computer via USB, where you tell the software what components you own and what your 'Activities' are (watching TV, watching DVDs, playing Xbox, and so forth). The remote then assigns actions to all of the physical buttons on the remote, as well as allowing you to customize buttons and labels for the 'soft' buttons that appear on the lil' green screen (4 at a time, and you can create about 10 pages of buttons per Activity).
So, let's say everything in the room is off and I press the button for "Watch TV". The remote then:
Well ... maybe not NEW. Microsoft has announced a blacker version of their Xbox 360. This version includes HDMI-out (which, admittedly, would be nice) and a 120gb hard drive (compared to the 20gb that shipped with original 360s).
"It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black."
After getting over the standard "OMG I NEED THIS NOW!" reaction, I quickly realized that I most certainly do NOT need it. If anyone out there can visually tell the difference between Component and HDMI, that would be quite impressive.
Contrary to popular belief, there is NO built in HD-DVD support, and there is NO quieter/cooler-running processor. The guts are, for all intents and purposes, the same as before.
The larger hard drive would be nice, but who is filling the 20gb drive now? I'm sure there are some folks out there using these as media centers, so maybe it's a good upgrade in those cases. MS has graciously offered up the new hard drive as an add-on for $179.00.
Ok ... I'm done convincing myself there's no need to upgrade. I think.
