The First Xbox360 Meet in Brunei

It’s amazing to see support from the community from time to time. This is especially true during the recent 1^st Xbox360 Gamers Meet held at the Mall in West Street Café today.

It was Guitar Hero III's mini-tournament that took center stage, despite only using the HDTV’s speakers; it still gathered onlookers and supporters to join in on the fun with the competitors. The intense battles between eight players were electrifying and the intensity increased when the finals took place.

In another turn of events, as the last of the Guitar Heroes receives their prizes, the organizers showcased another glimpse of the future by unveiling Rock Band for the first time in public. Songs that were played were Weezer’s Buddy Holly and The Knack’s My Sharona. The audiences were ecstatic, even as far as humming to the tune.

This event was the first of its kind outside the usual Winning Eleven Tournaments which has been going around for awhile now. Overall, the event was well received and quite commendable for a first time.

The purpose for such meeting was to create awareness of an Xbox360 community in Brunei, promoting the system as well as its online/LAN capabilities and encouraged gamers at purchasing original games.

Amongst the schedule events for the day included demos of Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare which showcases what the Xbox360 does best, playing together in multiplayer.

With more encouragement from the gaming community, events such as this will only get better and hopefully have enough variety to pull off something on a grander scale. Let this be the start to something great!

For more info about the event here.

Brugamers Review: Mass Effect

It’s an action RPG in same vein as BioWare’s past effort, but more streamlined than I care to remember from the last game. Exploration, traversing worlds is fun, choosing the things to say in conversations trees opens up the option whether to be a bad ass or a boy scout – this game encourages you to make your own decisions.

The story might not be original, but to an extent it is quite entertaining in a lot ways, it’s along the lines of Battlestar Galactica episodes added with some other sci-fi fodder. It won’t win any awards, but it will make up for some really interesting story and makes you want to go on further just to delve into the mysteries of Mass Effect’s universe.

Some lags in the framerate during heated skirmishes but it won’t hamper the overall experience of the game. My only complaint is the flipping controls while driving Mako (the vehicle you use while traveling to other planet) add to the non-existent explanations on how to control the vehicle, this thing is definitely no Warthog. Fortunately, you only really have use the Mako on a few of the main missions, so it can be tolerated.

30 hours plus of gameplay. A set of interesting characters to interact with, beautiful worlds to traverse as well as equally sweet graphics and with the game setting itself up for a sequel, I think we can expect a lot from this game in the future.

New GT5 Screens

Seems like the Gran Turismo 5 love just keeps pumping. With prologue coming soon, screens of GT5 cars are spreading around the Internet, and man, do they look gorgeous. Cars from Nissan Skyline to Alfa Romeo - and of course, Ferrari series - you are just a step closer to driving your dream car, or heck, even your own car.

Found some new screenshots of GT5 on play.tm. The cars look waaay too real. Hope the prologue comes as a download as well. Anyway, click here to view the screenshots. Happy drooling!

Sexy or Disturbing?

Silent Hill. Silent Hill. Gotta love Silent Hill. Especially those bloody nurse. Who wouldn't think they're hot and sexy? Okay, maybe they can be a bit disturbing but hey, they're also women! They do walk a bit funny though. I wonder why. And that knife. Why do they always carry that? Freaky. And seriously, what's the story with their face? I'm sure behind that covered face is a beautiful looking woman. Then again, I'd rather not know. Y'know what, I'll leave you to enjoy these Silent Hill 4 scans I found from neogaf.

Click here to see the scans.

Free To Play

I'm sure you've heard of Ragnarok Online, that "free to play" online MMORPG that everybody was into awhile back (or are you still in it?). Well, apparently, those guys at Q Entertainment might be bringing a game just like that onto the PS-Store called Angel Love. Like Ragnarok, it will be free to play but watch out for microtransactions for special items.

Currently, plans are only for Japan but if you've got ways to get it, who's stopping you?

See more screenshots here

A Fable Worth

Y'know I loved the original Xbox. Even moreso than the PS2 back then. I'd spend time trying to connect it to my PC, learn how to transfer files straight from the PC and view files on the xbox hard disk through xbox community websites. It was a blast. I had so many songs in there that a lot of old songs I still listen to reminds me of the games I played it with. For example, I used to have Linkin Park's Meteora album as a background music for PGR and now everytime I listen to it in my car, I reminisce those old days, playing PGR and yet somehow my mind wonders to KOTOR. I wonder why KOTOR is always in my head whenever I think of the original green and black box?

Anyway, speaking of the original xbox, there was one game that I fell in love with - apart from Halo and Halo 2. That game was Fable. I played it more than twice. I finished the game more than twice. Heck, I even bought Fable: The Lost Chapters and replayed the game. Why did I love Fable? What's not to love? It's got a cool title! Plus, I'm a sucker for a world like Fable - which is why I love Oblivion.

I've been keeping up with the Fable news and Fable 2 has had a number of progress. Besides the scarring I mentioned months ago that Peter Molyneux shared with everyone, Lionhead Studios mentioned that the battles in the game will have an emotional attachment to it. What that means we have yet to find out.

Having family, scarrings, emotions, Fable 2 is shaping up to be what they aim for, almost realistic. I can't wait for 2008.

See more screenshots here.

GT5, Almost Too Real

Saw some latest GT5 screenshots at ThreeSpeech and they look almost too real. Check out the album section to see the screens I've uploaded.