Microsoft Drops Annual Cost of LIVE

As you may know, LIVE can be quite pricy at $60 a year. Well, MS has dropped the price of an annual membership to $40, a $20 savings. This IS a sale, so it won't remain this way forever, however a representative at MS has said that "there is no end date."

So if you're looking for a deal, jump on this whole you can, which again, we have no idea how long that is.

One Year Xbox LIVE

March Games With Gold

Update: At this point, these will be next month's GwG. Look forward to them. :D

Original: First, this isn't 100% at the moment, so don't freak out if it ends up being different.

Xbox One

IDARB will continue to be free for those who haven't downloaded it, but as this IS a rumor at the moment, you may want to get it if you haven't. IDARB is an odd party spots style game that utilizes social networking, mainly Twitter, and incorporates tweets in-game.

Rayman Legend will also be free, this is the fifth game in the main series and has received critical acclaim with near perfect scores, averaging a 9/10. The lowest score this title received was an 83% (out of 100%, obviously), and that was on the VITA.

Xbox 360

Bioshock Infinite will be free for the first half of the month. Thus is the third installment of the Bioshock series, yet taking place in another version our dimension. Infinite features Detective Booker DeWitt who's been instructed to find a mysterious girl and return get to New York.

Bioshock Infinite also received critical acclaim, receiving several perfect scores and winning many awards, including "Game of the Year" in 2013.

Tomb Raider will be free the latter half of the month. It is considered a reboot of the series (although the only one I played was the first, I think, on the Playstation), it has also received many positive reviews, averaging a respectable 8.5/10.

The game is notable for its graphic display of violence, particularly that part when she gets impaled on the tree branch in the QTE-esque river part, and offering players many ways to complete an objective.

Again, this is just "word of mouth" right now, and we'll update this when we hear verification or not.

New Zelda 3DS Title

Please note that this is just speculation, rumor, and personal desire.

So Majora's Mask came out last week, I've not yet bought my copy (hopefully I'll pick it up tomorrow, or I might start Mike Tyson'ing people), but that hasn't stopped me from looking forward to the next potential Zelda entry on our neat little handhelds.

In case you can't guess from the above image, many personal dream is that Twilight Princess will make the jump. I believe without a doubt that the system could handle the game, it's a damn powerful machine, really. This would put my top 3 Zelda games on one system, what's not to love?

No indication or solid word leads me to believe this will happen, but hell, I don't see why Nintendo wouldn't port it, it sold very well (actually THE BEST SELLING* with at least 8.5 million sales), and got critical acclaim (9.5, 9.5, 5/5, the LOWEST score it got was 8.8/10)

Why would Nintendo not want more money? If they have any business sense, it's a no brainer, and Nintendo is pretty good about heading their fans.

*according to vgsales

Destiny Weekly Heroics Get Matchmaking

Normally I'd write my own piece on this, but IGN, for what THAT'S worth, has written something on it that has quotes and other hoopla.

I'll summarize it though.

Weekly will be mandatory matchmaking, no premade groups or soloing will be allowed.

This is due to numerous complaints that not enough people have access to the content (no friends.... that play), and that it's too easy with friends.

So yeah, how do you feel about that? I'm fine, I hate waiting for people on my FL to sign in, so I'll be able to do then more often and at my own pace.

Note, weekly is the only the affected, not Nights or Raids.

Weekly Heroics to Get Mandatory Matchmaking in Destiny Update

Resident Evil Remastered

The rebirth of an undead plague that was brought back once before.... Our something.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a love/hate relationship with the Resident Evil series, I love what it used to be, but hate the newer entries as they deviate from what made it great. Obviously, if you read that, you likely know that I'll like this game, but let me breakdown the updates for you.

Story

You play as either Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield as you go on a seemingly innocent search for the lost Alpha team, but things turn to shit quickly, and the team must find a way to escape a mansion stocked to the brim with traps and tricks, monsters and other unspeakable terrors, all while searching for a means of escape and your lost team.

Gameplay

The gameplay is nearly exactly the same as the GameCube version, the static camera, the gutting controls, everything. That being said, new controls have been added to make our life easier, but we'll cover that in a bit.

It's hard to talk about sine of the features, as they can change depending on difficulty, and game mode. The typical playthrough though is a standard affair of puzzles and backtracking for items and keys, the usually for a Resident Evil game. Certain areas remain locked until you can acquire a key of some sort, and will require, you guessed it, backtracking.

Graphics

If you've played the GameCube version, you know what to expect, character models have been updated a bit, otherwise it remains unchanged. 

There's also the option to use widescreen vs traditional, if you opt in for widescreen, the game simply stretches the image to enable it.This makes parts of the screen to be cut off, but the camera pans to allow you to see everything correctly.

Controls

Are you familiar with the sucky tank controls? Where you had to stop, turn, then hold forward regardless of where you were facing? They are here. However, a modern scheme is here as well, more related to Resident Evil 4, you no longer hold forward to go left, no more stopping to change direction, but you still need to fight the camera occasionally.

The controls are generally similar to other entries on the Xbox, Y opens item box, Start takes you to options, the Triggers are used in attacking, etc. These can be changed around too, but I felt no need to mess with them.

Audio

Oh joy, audio. If you're familiar with the game and its history, you know about "Jill Sandwich" and sad Wesker, all things that I love, in fact, take 10 minutes and go watch this YouTube video.

Done? See how bad, yet hilarious it was? It's not THAT bad, but still could use work. Jill and Barry are a great on screen pair, but Jesus they have poor dialogue, you'll notice it, you'll hate it, you'll accept it.

Everyone else seems spot on, maybe a rare over-enthusiastic line, but it won't ruin the game.

The sounds were cut right from the GameCubes limited disc space. There's few variety in the sound effects, meaning that there are 4 or so different sounds for footsteps on wood, carpet, metal, etc.

Why FPS' Are Dead

Hello all, long time, no post!! But let's cut all that crap and get to the point.

So a friend and I were talking about our favorite genres of games and we came to a point where he said he loved FPS games, to which I replied, "You mean Call of Duty?"

His reaction was, "No." But is the basis of this post. First Person Shooters, are a dead genre. But why?

Well, name the most popular FPS series, if you come up with anything other than CoD, you're in denial. No FPS game can compete with the CoD series, the closest would be Halo, Gears of War, and maybe Killzone. Further proof, if you even NEED it, is that Guinness has given then the record for best selling FPS Series, they tend to do their homework.

I played Halo 4 a few months or so ago to try to mop up the remaining achievements (no go thanks to Hello Nurse! and other glitches), and there was less than 10,000 people on during late evening, which would be peak hours.

A few weeks ago I finished Titanfall, and the population for that was no better, despite it being a very fun game, it has mechs, what more do you need?

Yet CoD will easily have several hundred thousand, if not more, at any given time. Hell, even older entries are still bustling. I'm not saying it's a bad series, but they are starting to release yearly entries, all of which sell like water in the desert (i.e. very well), and very little innovation occurs after each year (the iPhone of games).

The game that is, at the moment, the second best FPS is likely Destiny, but I have to pull the numbers on that, I'll share those when I do.

But when a game is only popular for a few months after its release thanks to CoD, why should other companies try with their standard titles? If Destiny were just another single player game with traditional matchmaking, I guarantee it would be dead at this point.