It’s been a while since I’ve been on, and knowing the lack of fans, I’m sure I wasn’t missed. Either way I’m back, and as the title says I’m all outta gum. Makes me sad. Onto current gaming affairs, I’ll begin with my gaming update, Super Smash Bros. Brawl style.

As of it’s release day, March 9, Nintendo totals sales to around 1.4 million, becoming one of the fastest selling games for the Nintendo Wii. It garnished scores up to 4 out of 5 ratings, and a mass of fans have cried out with joy over this game, me included. With characters ranging from Kirby, Mario, and Captain Falcon, with hidden and new entries in the series, like Solid Snake, Wolf of Star Fox fame, and even Meta Knight from the Kirby series. With new items, such as the Smash Ball, allows the character to unleash a devastating final move, and the Assist Trophies, items that send a character on the field to attack your enemies with sometimes powerful attacks. With the introduction of the adventure mode Subspace Emissary , this game in the Smash Bros. series has a ton of amazing new features and characters, expect a review from me soon.

In recent events, my step sister had another performance last night with her new band, Ashley Austin and Southern Rule at the Back Porch Grill in Grapevine, Texas if you didn’t know that I resided in Texas. They were amazing, except for one show boater, but besides that they did great. If you haven’t heard of them you should definitely check them out here.

Leave some comments and join the fan club, it’s free at the moment, just go see them, I’m sure you’ll enjoy them.

In other news, I’ve done some searching and found some worth while information, including Mass Effect 1 and 2 coming to the PS3, which I think might do an amazing job at but my hopes for ME being an Xbox Exclusive seems to be shot if the rumors come true. Capcom is apparently in works with Dead Rising 2 for multiple consoles, including PS3, once again destroying the Xbox Exclusive rules. Those ideas would be fairly decent, though once again break the exclusivity rule and that just ticks me off, the idea that once upon a time Microsoft claimed that these games and any sequels would be exclusives only, which made the idea that owning a 360 would be a good idea based on it’s content, such as Mass Effect, Dead Rising, and Halo 3, though I do know that one will only be for 360, unless Bungie decides to change that, be an independent company now.

My final word on this blog today is this message to Harmonix and Activision. When you milk a product for what you believe it’s worth, the product goes stale very quick, and with the release of Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS, I think you’re hitting that mark. The concept is original and may be innovative in terms of using the DS but with the low blow you’ll receive from Aerosmith and most likely this one, the party game of choice might be switched very soon.

Just when I thought I knew Half-Life company Valve, they reveal a side of their gaming profile I seemed to have missed. In a recent NVIDIA PC Gamer exclusive from Valve, 4 add ons where made available on Steam for free. The pack of freebies includes Oddly named and weirdly addictive ball blasting game Peggle Extreme, Portal: First Slice, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast add on, and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. Though not all the downloads have been completed on my Steam account, I’ll update you on what I do know of these titles. Peggle Extreme is an update of an older game, Peggle, duh, where you control a turret that launches a ball at multi colored pegs and so on to finish each level. You see many Valve backgrounds and voices, from the Combine shouting, to the dieing sounds Gordon Freeman makes, to APERTURE Science Glados voice over, the infamous G-Man even makes an appearance.  Portal: First Slice is the supposed demo of the amazing dimensionally bending game with the robot boss who’s missing a few screws (and some cake). Why they’d release a demo this late but either way it works for me, I loved the game already, owning the 360 version of The Orange Box. The Half-Life 2 add ons are the basic Half-Life add ons, though one is more of online battles and the other is an expansion of the original game, they are meant for HL2 which in the end equals out to amazing gameplay and hours of play and replay ability. 

On another front, my search for a way into the game biz is proving more and more of a challenge as the day goes by. Game Journalism is a tough thing to find information on, I turned up a lot that was helpful but the stuff I need to find is still yielding a negative on my radar. I try to contact game journalists who already have a ton of experience but most of the time I can never get a decent response. I post this in search that by some off chance anyone can lend me a direction to head in, to get me moving in a some what right path. Just post a comment here, or email me at gamereviewer711@yahoo.com

At this time I head off to dream my little gamer dreams and maybe get a good night sleep in. Wish me luck and may peace be with all of you. Wow, cheesy ending.

I realized just a few days ago that I have neglected my blogging duties. I guess with recent events, it slipped my mind to write something every now and then. Oh well, it’s in the past and now here I am once again, alive, refreshed and full of….. words and phrases that are stringed together to make thoughts in blog form.

As of 4 days ago, I finally reached the end of Assassin’s Creed. I am missing 11 achievements for the 360, but besides the fact that I don’t think getting all the flags will serve me, (if I collected them all, what would I do? Throw a flag party?) so I finished my first of many runs through the awesome game. With an ending that signifies a sequel, I’ve been pushed to search for any leaking info on the next AC title. So far, I’ve only turned up info on a PC release and the prequel for the DS. Those and a few tips on how to make numero 2 better, some I can agree with others not so much. Below I’ll post a like to the ideas, so just in case someone from Ubisoft accidentally finds this blog, they’ll read it or just start a wild fire of debate between the non existent gamers who flock here.

Tips for AC2

Other news from the gaming world rests with Sony, dishing out two new bundles, one for PS3 the other for PSP. Last week was GDC (Game Developer’s Conference for the newbies), which apparently Sony claimed ‘08 was to be there year in gaming, where they rake in the gamers that Microsoft so skillfully took from them. I, myself, don’t own a PS3 or PSP, I have a broken down PS2 and sold my old PSP but from what I’m reading lately I’m starting to think I’ll be adding Sony back to my list of gaming products. I was convinced that when MGS4 came out, it would be the game that I would shell out my money for a PS3 just so I could own it, I love the MGS series and what better for Sony to do than read mine and other gamers thoughts and create a bundle just for us. A 80GB PS3 and a copy of MGS4 will be available hopefully around June. I like the idea of it, even though it’s right around $500.00 after tax. Though, I’d be more likely to give away my cash for this bundle if I were getting say a bundle-exclusive gift/content. Snake Eye patches, I’d take that even though most wouldn’t, or game content that will add some new features or videos at the end of the game that stand alone game holders wont see until months or more down the line for a download. The other Bundle is the a Blood Red PSP with the enigmatic game character Kratos from God of War in bundle with a copy of the G.O.W. PSP game, a copy of Super Bad UMD and a voucher for Syphon: Filter: Combat Ops from the PlayStation Store. Not a bad deal if you ask me, just enough to get me to go out and spend $200 to reclaim a collectors PSP and get some cool game with it. It’s release is pending for June as well, coincidentally. I’ll include pics of the bundles I found below, just to get a good look at what you’ll need to find on their releases.

That’s all I have for the moment, not really much I can think of, once I have some sort of update I’ll bring it to you. Anyway I’m off, got a music thing to go to. Jam session, and seeing as how my Step sis is in the music business I have to go with her for support. I’ll go ahead and give her website a plug, maybe someone will visit it. Ashley Austin Music

I’m gone, and as Master Chief would say, since he had to, “Permission to finish the fight.” I would have said “Permission to kick some alien ass, sir!” but Bungie knows what they’re doing, hell they made $170 million in sales on the first day of selling for Halo 3 because of it, I obviously have no right to question their dialog. Anyway, Adios

As the final day of the weekend is about to pass, so does the sickness in my belly, giving me a clear and bright look into the next week. I had a fairly interesting Saturday Night, minus a freezing moment in a car, a stomach lash into the early morning hours. I took a visit to Gamestop yesterday, searching for XBLA points and turning in an application. Turned out to be pretty good, had a nice talk with one of the managers about games and so on, reserved my copy Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and walked out a pretty happy guy. Found out that Dark Sector, the game where you play a assassin sent a dead city infected by a disease that mutates you into a super powered bad ass, is something I can’t remember until after I leave the store. Then I learned that GTA 4 was pushed back because of reformatting of game engines from the Unreal Engine to the Euphoria engine, the same used in SW: Force Unleashed.

Downloaded the Halo Heroic maps, a few trailers of games, dark sector and Dead Space and an episode of Family Guy that I never seen. And still have points left over, pretty good for someone like me.  Checked my stats on this blog earlier and I’m not getting any traffic, kinda sad, but it’s new and I’m working to get people to visit. I just hope it works soon, or else I’ll just be blogging to myself.

With my sickness nearly passing, which the exception of stomach pain, I’m up to bloggin and gaming. First off I’d like to talk about the newest Guitar Hero game being released, based fully on the classic rock band Aerosmith. All their songs, all them, all the time. My thoughts, not such a great idea, Aerosmith is an awesome band and all but an entire game playing their songs? Maybe if it was a majority of their songs mixed in with some other classic bands like in a world tour, one band out rockin’ the other for rock supremacy, then I’d be more inclined to try it. Older gamers begin to flash back to Aerosmith’s game for the Genesis where they go out to save the world from the NON ( New Order Nation) who takes over everything and bans music and video games, etc. If they reinvented that, maybe that would sound better than an all Aerosmith GH. For more looks on this subject look to these guys take on it at the address provided.

http://www.arrowpointingdown.com/blog/?p=14

http://www.theheadofalfredogarcia.com/?p=32

Any onto other matters, it’s been storming like crazy around here, not a bad thing but the weather seems unnatural for me. Had to run my POS car up to Discount Tire in it, not enjoyable. Earlier, this AT&T guy came by to upgrade our stuff that will allow us to get our sat service and phone bill cheaper. While he was here he mentioned something that interested me, besides his iPhone. He said in Dallas they’re starting what he called the 8.0 by 800 service for online services, giving a gamer one hell of an advantage during online play. I think gamers everywhere should keep an eye out for this, because if it works well in Dallas it will certainly spread farther, and give gamers everywhere an huge upgrade to their playing. I don’t have much else to do for the rest of the day, or that I know of anyway, and my 360 is staring at me in weird ways, ways that would make Master Chief blush. And you all know what that means, I have to play some 360, maybe some Halo 3, Bioshock, or Assassin’s Creed.

With that note I guess I’m gonna set up a match on Live and wait for my car. But before I go, I ask you to take a gander below at these vids.