Artless Gamer

A bit short for an ODST

Released and made available on the Xbox Live Marketplace only yesterday, Halo Waypoint lives up to expectations. When I heard of this little tool coming to XBL, I wanted it to combine the entire Halo community, all news, all achievement tracking and ViDocs into one platform.

A few hours ago I downloaded it and was far from disappointed. Here’s a rough overview of what this tool can do for you. Note that those are just the features that I discovered. There may be more as the service is fleshed out with more content.

• Achievement tracking of all Halo titles, including Halo Wars
• Keeps track of your gamer score, only counting points from your Halo titles.
• Offers you all the community news under one platform.
• Brings all the latest trailers, player videos, in-game screen shots and more media under one platform.
• Offers different daily programming, ranging from Spotlights to Behind the Scenes, Machinima, Strategy and more.
• Halo Legends!
• Free Avatar gear!

According to what I understood from the Halo Legends previews, players get to watch the 4 first Halo Legends episodes for free over Waypoint. Each episode will be available for free for the first 24 hours after upload. I am not entirely sure how easy this will be to handle for people in different time zones, but I’ll do my best to catch them when they’re live.

While you’re browsing the Waypoint, it also shows you if there are any buddies currently playing Halo. This way you can quickly jump out of Waypoint and into a match. The interface is not clunky, holds up the overall Halo theme and is backed by a hint of the old epic soundtrack.

Any Halo player should download this tool since there is essentially no reason not to use it. It’s free, it’s small, it combines all the useful community features people have been asking for and it provides you with some very cool unique and regularly updated content.

Click here to head on over to the Xbox.com Marketplace and add it to your download queue.

Popularity: 30% [?]

If you are only a little bit like me, you will make careful decisions on how you buy your games. I consider whether I need this title based on its genre, based on the content, the re-playability, the maximum amount of hours in the game, the depth or lack of multiplayer and many more.

On some occasions I have to prioritize and cut down my options. Guitar Hero Metallica would have been one of those cuts. I don’t see why I should pay $40 to $50 for a disc with a few Metallica songs on it.

I suppose this is the kind of conclusion you come to when you aren’t a Guitar Hero fan. Anyone with any real interest in the game would have probably gone and checked out the actual track list for the game. I can’t help but think, however, that a lot of people will pass on this game merely because they think that it’s not worth the money.

After all, it doesn’t state anywhere on the box that over half of the disc is filled with other awesome bands. On the back of the box it just says something along the lines of “Rock with Metallica blah blah blah and the bands that influenced them.” They list the Metallica tracks  but not the ones by the other artists. If I was in the store with no option to get more information on the game, I wouldn’t buy it. I want to know exactly what I’m getting – no surprises.

Metallica Songs

All Nightmare Long
Battery
Creeping Death
Disposable Heroes
Dyers Eve
Enter Sandman
Fade To Black
Fight Fire With Fire
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Frantic
Fuel
Hit The Lights
King Nothing
Master of Puppets
Mercyful Fate (Medley)
No Leaf Clover
Nothing Else Matters
One
Orion
Sad But True
Seek And Destroy
The Memory Remains
The Shortest Straw
The Thing That Should Not Be
The Unforgiven
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
Wherever I May Roam
Whiplash

Other Artists

Alice In Chains – No Excuses
Bob Seger – Turn The Page
Corrosion of Conformity – Albatross
Diamond Head – Am I Evil?
Foo Fighters – Stacked Actors
Judas Priest – Hell Bent For Leather
Kyuss – Demon Cleaner
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Tuesdays Gone
Machine Head – Beautiful Mourning
Mastodon – Blood And Thunder
Mercyful Fate – Evil
Michael Schenker Group – Armed and Ready
Motorhead – Ace of Spades
Queen – Stone Cold Crazy
Samhain – Mother of Mercy
Slayer – War Ensemble
Social Distortion – Mommy’s Little Monster
Suicidal Tendencies – War Inside My Head
System of a Down – Toxicity
The Sword – Black River
Thin Lizzy – The Boys Are Back in Town

Perhaps they should have just called it Guitar Hero Metallica and other bands that are better than Metallica.

So don’t skip this one just because its only Metallica – it’s not. There’s much more to this game than James Hetfield’s ugly mug and if you ask me, drummers should get a break on this one. If Lars Ulrich can’t keep a beat, then why should the player?

Popularity: 7% [?]

BF:BC 2

Our first Gripe of the Week isn’t really that much of a gripe. At least not for me. For a couple of days, now, people have had access to this new Battlefield Bad Company 2 trailer. And just like in the previous version, they gift early buyers of the limited edition with unlocks that normally have to be earned by playing the campaign or rising in ranks in multiplayer.

The issue I may have with this is why my fair chance in the game should be compromised by a couple of gamers that essentially bought themselves a better chance at dominating the battlefield. Everyone scoffs at the lame kids who buy WoW accounts in order to jump right into their overpowered level 85 character – they get called names, get harassed, reported to Blizzard and shamed on the forums.

“Level your own character, loser.”

How is that any different from people who get very useful unlocks from the get-go without having to earn it, just because they bought a limited edition of the game? The only way it is different from buying WoW accounts on eBay is that the developer encourages it. But that is just marketing. It doesn’t make it one bit more legitimate or acceptable.

These days consumers want to get paid to buy your product. So give them something extra for buying your game and they’ll gladly fork over the money. That’s how you acquire customers these days and the gaming industry isn’t the only industry that works this way. Nobody is to blame, here. Except the consumer, perhaps.

Personally, I don’t have that much of a problem with it. I get pwned no matter what kind of gear I have available and I will gladly earn all these unlocks regardless if some players had it before me just because they bought some special edition with the developer’s golden booger smeared on it. As a matter of fact I will try to get a limited edition of the game, because I am one of those people who never even got to level 60 in WoW and I probably would have bought an account off eBay weren’t I such a pansy and afraid of being banned.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Assassin's Creed

You may have noticed the new video on the sidebar. This is the first part of the new Assassin’s Creed trailers that are going to be officially released on YouTube in the coming days. The first one is already online. These are official videos and show a little bit about the history of the game’s history and character.

I can’t say how excited I am about this game. The first part was amazing to experience, even though the game play was stupendously repetitive and not very enjoyable over longer periods of time. According to many previews, reviews, podcast celebrities and developers, we no longer have to sit on park benches for ages, listening to people and waiting for the right time.

This game is no longer a time sink with questionable fun payout. I don’t have to reiterate the many reviews that are already out there for this game. Just go look for one of them and then watch this very cool video clip.

Click here to watch the clip on YouTube.

Popularity: 44% [?]

ZOMG. So much memory.

As many have already heard, Microsoft is going to ban the use of unauthorized memory cards with the release of the upcoming Dashboard update. This update will introduce some features such as Twitter, Facebook and LastFM support amongst some other useless addons that will keep me from playing games and instead lurking on Twitter.

I can understand the general panic about this change as even myself have had some issues with save game backups and the lack of readily available official memory units. I have opted not to use any unauthorized hardware and have simply abandoned my old save games that were on my RRoDed Xbox 360.

I can deal with it. At least it gives me a good reason to play all these wonderful games again. What worried me most, though was whether I would be able to still plug in a regular HDD to watch movies.

Good news, then. People in the update preview program have already reported that hacked USB HDDs are still working after the update. To me this means that regular USB drives are still accepted by the Xbox and I can still watch my movies. I hate streaming.

TLDR?

USB HDDs still work after the new XBL update that will ban all unauthorized storage devices.

Popularity: 52% [?]