Xbox 360 Fancast 152 — Drinking with Strangers
Filed under: Podcasts
This week on the Xbox 360 Fancast, we talk about one man’s quest to find a copy of the original Mass Effect, what it takes to get into the First Annual Joystiq Blueberry Muffin Tops Breakfast and, just for fun, what Xav thinks of Sonic the Hedgehog 4. It is, as always, a laugh and a half. Download the latest episode for all this and more. Also, don’t forget that it’s okay to drink with strangers, just remember to BYOB*.
*This is a joke.
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Hosts: Richard Mitchell (SenseiRAM), Alexander Sliwinski (Sli Xander), Xav de Matos (Snypz) and Dave Hinkle (KnifefightYaDad)
Produced by Richard Mitchell
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Brand sparking new Rocket Knight art
click to rocket-size
We’re going to level with you: There’s not a lot of new info to be found in the latest batch of character art from Konami’s upcoming reboot of Rocket Knight. The press release does mention a few of Sparkster’s abilities. While most should be familiar to players — wall ricochet jumps, etc — one new addition is the “burst vortex,” which can reflect projectiles back toward enemies. Beyond that, however, we’re left only with images of Emperor Sweinhart and Sparkster’s nemesis, Axel Gear, both of whom can be seen above. Konami has also released a high resolution version of Sparkster himself.
Yes, it’s not much but, when it comes to Rocket Knight, we’ll take what we can get.
Brand sparking new Rocket Knight art originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
New Mass Effect 2 DLC armor, shotgun available tomorrow
A post on the Bioware forums has revealed that two new bits of DLC will be coming to Mass Effect 2′s Cerberus Network tomorrow, February 9. Players will be able to download both a new set of armor and a new shotgun for free via the game’s DLC pipe. The Cerberus Armor ups heavy weapon ammo capacity, shields, and health by 10 percent each, and the M-22a Eviscerator Shotgun is “a longer-range shotgun with armor-piercing loads” that “also violates several intergalactic weapons treaties.”
But those “treaties” were never ratified by the Citadel Council anyway, so who cares? The new DLC should be released by 2pm ET, so you can start ganking with the new space shotty then.
[Thanks, Michael]
New Mass Effect 2 DLC armor, shotgun available tomorrow originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Swag Sunday: Bayonetta (360)
Look, alright, we’ll level with you — we’ve got a short supply of schweet schwag hanging around Joystiq Prizeland as of late. That should at least partially help to explain last week’s absence of a contest. We also kind of felt like you might’ve been overloaded with games during our holiday giveaways at the end of 2009. What’s that? No, you say? Well we suppose that the first few months of 2010 are unusually flush with quality content, so giving away a bit couldn’t hurt, right?
We certainly hope a nine foot tall bullet witch will do it for you, because that’s what we’ve got. One lucky winner (chosen at random) takes home Bayonetta on Xbox 360, chosen from the comments below (please leave one and only one) that are left in the next 24 hours. You tell us what you think is the most annoying song you’ve ever heard used in marketing a game and you may very well win yourself a vidjagame. How about that?!
- Leave a comment telling us what you think is the most annoying song you’ve ever heard used in marketing a game.
- You must be 18 years or older and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec, due in part to our aversion to snowy owls).
- Limit 1 entry per person per day.
- This entry period ends at 11:31AM ET on Monday, February 8.
- At that time, we’ll randomly select one winner to receive one copy of Bayonetta for Xbox 360 ($59.99 ARV).
- For a list of complete rules, click here.
What is Joyswag? Since we don’t keep the games and merchandise we receive for review or promotional purposes, it becomes “Joyswag,” which is passed along to our readers. Please note that Joyswag may be in “used” condition. For more info on our policy, click here.
Swag Sunday: Bayonetta (360) originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Modern Warfare 2 ‘care package’ patch submitted to Microsoft certification
Considering the Xbox 360 received the lion’s share of Modern Warfare 2 purchases, it comes as a bit of a shock to us that the already released on PS3 and PC “care package patch” is just now being submitted to Microsoft for certification. That said, developer Infinity Ward’s community man Robert Bowling tweeted as much to Game Informer’s Andrew Reiner approximately 24 hours ago when Reiner asked about a possible release for the much anticipated fixes.
As Bowling has pointed out before (and details in this forum post on the subject), the patch is set to remedy the following (you might need a pillow for all of this pure, unbridled excitement:
- Care Package, Emergency Airdrop, and Sentry Gun marker grenades sprint speed normalized.
- Fix for “infinite care package” exploit.
- Sentry Guns: Improved placement detection, preventing cases of Sentry Guns inside geometry.
- Model 1887: Bling using Akimbo and FMJ combination now has same range and damage as non-Bling Model 1887s.
- Fixes to prevent various XP hacks.
And no, there’s no date given for when it’s coming out. So stop asking. (Seriously.)
[Via Game Informer]
Read more…
Molyneux: Fable 3 news at X10 will make you ‘super pissed off’
Speaking to Gamereactor, Lionhead maestro Peter Molyneux revealed that there will be some big Fable 3 news at the X10 event this week. “There’s some very, very big things happening in Fable,” said Molyneux, “Bigger than you think, and it’s going to really upset people.” Molyneux added that he is “really scared” about telling people the news, saying, “They’re going to get super pissed off, they really are.” Still, he concluded that it’s “the right thing to do,” and confirmed that he will be demonstrating the mystery announcement at X10 in San Francisco. Joystiq’s theory: The entire story of Fable 2 was a dream sequence. Whatever it is, we’ll be delivering the news directly from X10, so Joystiq’s staff and readers can all get pissed off together.
In the meantime, be sure to watch the whole interview, which also contains some really interesting talk about Project Natal.
[Via VG247]
Molyneux: Fable 3 news at X10 will make you ‘super pissed off’ originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Xbox Engineering Blog explains smaller game installations
When the last Xbox 360 NXE update reduced the footprint of some full game installations, many assumed that Microsoft had simply employed an advanced mom-packs-your-suitcase algorithm. And while that wasn’t the most technically accurate assumption, it didn’t stray too far from the layman’s truth.
“Xbox 360 game disc layouts are optimized for the reading speeds of optical discs drives and attempt to concentrate the game disc data at the fastest read locations on the disc,” Thomas Soemo writes on the Xbox Engineering Blog. “This typically ends up creating gaps at the beginning, end, and in the middle of the disc layout where layer 1 transfers to layer 2.” Soemo, a senior program manager lead at Microsoft, explains that in creating the update, “we went back and examined how much potential space savings we could deliver to customers by removing these gaps that can occur in the middle of the game code in the disc layout.”
Removing the gaps benefited not only game installations, but the size of games obtained via Microsoft’s Games on Demand service, which uses “the same underlying technology.”
Also, your mom uses the same underlying technology.
Xbox Engineering Blog explains smaller game installations originally appeared on Joystiq Xbox on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
