06
Jan

Top 20 Xbox Live Games of 2008

By Russ Crandall 3 Comments
Categories: Editorials and Games


Major Nelson released some Xbox Live stats the other day.

No surprise that FPS kings like Teh Haloez, Gearz, and CODs topped the list, but Guitar Hero III was a lot higher than I expected. What I found most interesting was how high some demos were on the list, while the actual retail game was lower (BF: Bad Company), or didn’t even make the cut (Too Human).

1 Halo 3
2 Call of Duty 4
3 GTA IV
4 Gears of War 2
5 Gears of War
6 CoD: World at War
7 Guitar Hero III
8 Battlefield: Bad Company Demo
9 Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Demo
10 Rock Band
11 Fable II
12 Mirror’s Edge Demo
13 Madden NFL 09
14 BF: Bad Company
15 Rainbow Six Vegas 2
16 UNO
17 Castle Crashers
18 COD: World at War Multiplayer Beta
19 Forza Motorsport 2
20 Too Human - Demo

What was your most-played online game of 2008? I would have to say that Left 4 Dead, COD4, and Rock Band 2 were my top plays.

06
Jan

Film Review: JCVD

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Movies and Reviews
Tags:


Man, my wife really didn’t want to watch this film. I was shocked - why wouldn’t she want to see a Jean Claude Van Damme flick? Especially after the band we were in had a song called “JCVD”? Regardless, there are times when you have to do what’s best for the family in general, so I forced her to watch it with me the other night. And guess what? She liked it.

In JCVD Mr. Van Damme plays himself, who is caught in a real-life situation not unlike what his characters sometimes go through. The film plays out in a gritty and realistic manner, and it has some moments of sheer brilliance. Many events are true to JCVD’s life while others are fabricated, and it’s hard to draw a line between them. The most intriguing part of the film for me was his 6-minute monologue, which made me seriously consider how I felt about him as an actor. After reading up on the film a bit, I found out that 30% of the film was unscripted, which makes it that much more impressive.

Is it my favorite Van Damme film ever? I don’t know, I’d have to re-watch Bloodsport, Kickboxer, and Time Cop (oooh, my wife would love that). But is it his BEST film ever? Hell yes.

05
Jan

360voice.com Weekly Recaps - 1/5/2009

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Games
Tags:


First recap of the year! Oh, and I forgot to post a recap last week. Admit it, you didn’t even notice. I had a serious increase in gamerscore, while Tyler remains offline until he gets his roommate to call Jim Carrey in to fix their cable issues. And maybe sing some Jefferson Airplane.

Mark:
It is hard to believe another week has passed. Here is the recap: Oh man are my cores just rocking… TheJesusZombie played seven days last week! SEVEN! That is a NUMBER SEVEN followed by NO ZEROS! HOT! Our gamerscore saw a 150 point boost which is good. I guess that is what completing 12 achievements can do!

I was feeling a little bored last week and told TheJesusZombie to try a new game: Tom Clancy’s EndWar™. It wasn’t as cool as I thought it would be. Oh, and I want to mention that TheJesusZombie’s favorite game last week was an RPG… Fallout 3 in fact… He played it on 3 of the days.

Russ:
Another week, another recap… and you love me for it: onionsaregross played 6 days last week… pretty solid I guess… I’m not feeling that picky lately. This wasn’t just low-key gaming either… our score bounced 1110 freakin’ points! Can you believe it? In one week? YES! Getting 61 achievements has that effect.

In the ‘new game’ category, I only have one to talk about… Marvel Ult. Alliance. I wasn’t even going to mention it, but I figured my readers might get mad. So there it is. Also, I think onionsaregross’ favorite game last week was Prince of Persia. He played it on 4 of the days.

Tyler:
It is hard to believe another week has passed. Here is the recap: I wish I had something good to blog about, but I don’t. In my fantasy world tyler808 and I played all these great games and got all this gamerscore… but that didn’t happen. Not a single day of gaming took place last week. Maybe next week!

05
Jan

F-U-N

By Mark Hill 1 Comment
Categories: Editorials and Games
Tags:


A strange thing happened during a mini-marathon session of Fallout 3 last night. The game became…fun.

I’m not saying that I didn’t like the game before yesterday (it was my #3 Game of the Year after all), but it definitely wasn’t what I would classify as the traditional definition of “fun.” Fun games are games like Mirror’s Edge, Call of Duty, and Portal; all active and exciting. Fallout 3 though, was feeling drawn out, tedious, and like somewhat of a grind. I was getting killed a lot and often having to try things over and over again before I would get lucky. Last night, though, it all started to come together, and I attribute it to two specific things that happened: First, I got up to level 8, which I feel is when I my character really started to get strong enough to compete and not get killed by every Molerat that crossed my path. Second, and more importantly, I realized two things at the same time; that none of the achievements are difficulty-based, and that I could change the difficulty to easy (or even very-easy) mid-game.

So it may be a bit of a cheaper way to play, but I’m having a grand old time ripping through the Capitol Wasteland with strong weapons, a surplus of ammo, plenty of HP, and more bottlecaps than I can spend. Good times.

05
Jan

Planet Earph

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Television
Tags:


I did something bad. I followed Tyler’s advice (as given in Threecast #8) and bought BBC’s Planet Earth for a cool $65 at Sam’s Club the other day (only $5 more than the DVD version, very nice). And what do I do the moment I open it up? I break the first disc in half as I’m taking it out of the case. Good one, klutz. Sam’s Club replaced it with no questions asked, which was nice of them.

We’ve watched a couple episodes so far and it’s pretty sweet looking, although some moments drag on a bit and I feel my eyelids drooping ever so slightly at times.

My cat seems to like it:

05
Jan

Iphone App: Queuetastic

By Tyler Miller 4 Comments
Categories: Apple, Games, Internet, Movies and Reviews
Tags: , ,

If you read this site then you should have an Xbox 360…

If you have a 360 then you should have Netflix…

If you have the two prerequisites above then you should have an iPhone and you should get Queuetastic.

There is no better feeling than when someone says, “Oh, man! You should rent ‘Ma Vie En Rose’! It is sooooooo good!” and you coolly pull out your iPhone, tap tap on the screen and BOOM! it’s instantly added to you queue and delivered in a few days.

This is the best app you can find for organizing/expanding your Netflix queues (both disk and instantt).

It’s got the essential buttons for searching the entire Netflix library, you can view film details/summaries and change the sort order of the films you look up.

It’s a lovely little app that does almost everything you need it to, minus open category browsing. Regardless, it’s only $0.99 and worth every penny plus a lot more.

05
Jan

Fake Worlds, Real Money: Arts and Cash

By Mark Hill 2 Comments
Categories: Editorials, Fake Worlds, Real Money, Games and News
Tags: , ,


I thought I’d start off the new year by doing something I haven’t done in a long time, which is buy some video game stock.

We’ve all been hearing for months now that the economy is in the crapper and that we should all start ripping the gold out of our mouths and melt it down, because soon paper money won’t mean anything as the world is thrown into social and financial chaos, but I’m a little more optimistic. It’s a fresh calendar, in three weeks someone else will be crapping in the White House toilets, and honestly, the world has more room to grow right now than it does to fall.

Residing in said world is a little video game company called Electronic Arts (ERTS). When I first began trading video game stocks back in March, the world was a different place. I would have loved to buy EA stock back then, but at the time everything was chicken and waffles, and it was trading at over $50 a share! I could not afford that. As of the closing bell on Friday, though, it was selling for a very affordable $17.44, so I bought seventeen shares, which cost just over 300 clams.

This is definitely a gamble though, seeing as how a few of EA’s big games (Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space) didn’t exactly sell like hotcakes over the holidays, resulting in many layoffs. For investors though, layoffs can mean good things, because it usually signifies restructuring in order to be more efficient (a.k.a cha-ching). Also, if when sequels come out for these games, and maybe even Army of Two, they will almost definitely sell much better, making the sub-$18 price tag a steal right now.

Fingers crossed!

05
Jan

Let’s Destroy Metal Gear!

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Books and Games
Tags:


I recently found hiimdaisy’s livejournal which basically hosts a bunch of Metal Gear Solid recaps/comics that are pretty funny. He’s finished parts one and two and he’s currently working on Metal Gear Solid 3:

“Let’s Destroy Metal Gear!” (Parts One / Two / Three / Four)

“Let’s Destroy Metal Gear Again!” (Parts One / Two / Three / Four)

05
Jan

You Should Know: The Wrens

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Music and You Should Know
Tags:


Hailing from New Jersey, The Wrens are the topic of our ninth You Should Know, focusing on their awesome third album, The Meadowlands.

You can get the whole album in DRM-free mp3 format for $1.99 on Amazon.com right now. Do it!

Click here to subscribe to this feature via iTunes.

04
Jan

Dead Men

By Russ Crandall 2 Comments
Categories: Games
Tags:


I have a stack of new $10 games thanks to Gamefly and Circuit City, and after finishing Prince of Persia yesterday I decided to give one of them a go instead of finishing up BioShock again. BioShock just doesn’t feel “new” enough for me yet - I think I need to wait another year before traversing through Rapture again, so that it feels fresh like the first time.

I settled on Kane & Lynch: Dead Men for several reasons. Mostly, it’s made by Eidos, who made one of my favorite games of the last generation, Freedom Fighters. Also, it’s an entirely new IP and it’s not a FPS, and I don’t know anyone that’s played it through yet. I’ve spent about 30 minutes with it so far but I’m laying off on making any judgements just yet. They do cuss a lot, though, I’ll tell you that.

03
Jan

What Is This, A Center For Ants?

By Mark Hill 6 Comments
Categories: Editorials and Games
Tags:


I discovered a new hobby while playing Fallout 3 last night. I call it “shooting giant ants in the antennae, sending them into a frenzy, and sitting back and watch them spit fire on each other.” It’s a lot of fun, and if you find yourself in Grayditch sometime, you should definitely try it.

Also, if you see that scientist, tell him his stupid lab coat is worthless.

03
Jan

Hey, You’ve Got Some Jade In My Prince of Persia

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Games
Tags:


Looks like Altair isn’t the only one making a guest appearance in Prince of Persia. I just beat the game and it unlocked a skin for my female companion, Elika. The skin is Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, another damn fine game from Ubisoft. There are still two skins for each character left to unlock, but it looks like I need to collect all 1001 light orbs (a task I’m still contemplating - I’m at 750 or so now) or have pre-ordered the game from GameStop to “catch ‘em all”.

03
Jan

Real Ultimate Power

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Books and Editorials
Tags:


I am a member of Shelfari (here’s my profile page) which basically lets you make an online library of the books you’ve read. I also use GoodReads, which I happen to like better because it seems to update more quickly. I don’t actually maintain the library that well, but I can export my Delicious Library and that’s how I get my book profiles online without doing any actual work.

BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS POST IS ABOUT!!!

I got a Shelfari friend request (with a nice personal message to boot) from the author of Real Ultimate Power. You know, the ninja guy, Robert Hamburger. I guess he also wrote a book called GHOSTS/ALIENS, too:

I took a minute and read through realultimatepower.net again, it’s still as funny as when I first read it five years ago.

03
Jan

Cheapskate: Just What I Needed Edition

By Tyler Miller 4 Comments
Categories: Cheapskate and Games
Tags: , ,


Circuit City is currently selling the black wireless Les Paul Guitar Hero guitar for $20. That’s $40 off the regular $60 retail price of what I consider to be the best guitar for rhythm games of all time. You can pick it up at your local store, or order it online here. Orders of $25 and more get free shipping, too. And yes, it works on Rock Bands 1 and 2.

That’s not the only deal to be had at the store, though. Mayhaps you prefer the wired X-Plorer guitar? 10 smackers. Or howzabout a drum throne for $15?

03
Jan

Weekend Entertainment: Leprechaun Sighting and One Crazy Lady

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Television
Tags: ,

I will never understand the people in the first video. Regardless, I wanna know where the gold at.

Cheetah Lady:

Enjoy your weekend!

« Previous Entries
Send us tips or requests
Subscribe to our RSS feed
Subscribe to threevue by email
Subscribe to our podcast, "threecast"

Archives

Mark Hill:
Russ Crandall:
Tyler Miller:

People like us. We have

  • 120,545 visits

this many people are totally into threevue.com right now:

web tracker