Gaming Today

N'Gai to Go

N'Gai Croal is getting out of the video game punditry business for good.  Croal, best known for his appearances on G4 and on the television news networks in defense of gaming and his racism related claims on the most recent Resident Evil.  Apparently Newsweek, the magazine which pays all his bills, is having their second round of voluntary contract buyouts and N'Gai decided it was time to move on to the more hands on aspect of the entertainment industry.  In an interview with Kotaku Croal said:

"I always thought I was going to do end up in movies or something else, but I kind of got sidetracked into journalism. It's one of the most amazing things that's happened to me. But when the buyout came around again, I said to myself if I don't do this now when am I going to do it?"

N'Gai Croal Leaves Newsweek and Games Journalism - Kotaku

NXE Now Required

It appears that Microsoft are now bundling the "New Xbox Experience" onto upcoming releases.  In other words you can't play the game without first installing the update.  Don't know why anybody would prefer to stay with the antiquated blades system but there are always the strangers.  The first games to include the update are MLB 2k9 & Tom Clancy's HAWX.

NXE now included as mandatory on-disc-update - darkzero

Resident Evil 5 Achievements Revealed

The Pants Party over at xbox360achievements.org has gotten his hands on the achievement list for soon to be released RE5.  No real plot spoilers here though.  Seems like the standard array of story/difficulty/weapon related achievements and some collection types. My favorites below.  Hit the link for the full list.  No spoilers!

	Cattle Prod	15
	Defeat 30 enemies with the Stun rod.
	Crowd Control	15
	Defeat 30 enemies with the Gatling gun.

Resident Evil 5 Achievement List - Xbox360achievements.org

Xbox Live Gold Lowered

The price for an Xbox Live Gold Membership is currently on discount.  According to Microsoft this is for current Silver members only and for a limited time.  So if you've not got a Gold membership, now's the time.

Microsoft: Xbox Live Gold Membership Price Dropped - kotaku

RE5 Mercs Mode

Resident Evil 4 had an awesome bonus survival mode after you beat the game where you had to put up with an endless amount of zombies coming for you. It was probably one of the more addictive parts of the game, just short of organizing the brief case of course.  RE5s has just had their mercs mode revealed in the following video.



Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Feature List a Fake says Infinity Ward

Apparently, yesterday someone claimed to have gotten hold of a feature list for the sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.  I supposedly said something to the likes that the the new games will feature blood effects, guts, and vehicles, amongst other things.  An Infinity Ward, the developers, spokesman came out today not necessarily denying the validity of the reports, only saying that the list did not come from them and that they won't comment on what may or may not be true in it.

"People. This list is fake," posted Infinity Ward programmer Rayme "Rayme" Vinson. "I mean; I can't get into how-much-if-any is true, how much is false, etc (there's a reason why companies "don't comment on rumors"... it would NEVER F***ING END), but this list wasn't put together by anyone with any insider information. There's also some craziness that should red-flag this as "stuff I made up and wrote down" (like grass camo for snipers... that's straight out of CoD4 MP)."

Infinity Ward Debunks Rumored CoD:MW2 Features - 1UP