Back to Crackdown

Last year when the Halo 3 Beta was going on I rented a copy of Crackdown for a month so that I could get in on the beta, which was awesome!!! In the process I accidentally started playing Crackdown and ended up really liking it. I only played through the first third or so of the game, but I always wanted to get back to it. About a month ago I borrowed a friend's copy of Crackdown and last night I finally cracked it open and started in again. In short, it's a a lot more fun than I remembered and I remembered it as being a lot of fun.

Halo 2 - Beat It

I finished Halo 2 on my PC a couple of nights ago. I still remember waiting in line the night that Halo 2 came out for Xbox. My brother Ryan and I waited at Gamecrazy in Bakersfield, CA. We picked up our copies and rushed home to play. There was a lot of criticism of Halo 2's storyline and there are certainly thing to criticize it for, but none the less it was and still is a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to diving a little more deeply into the multiplayer now.

Frontlines Fuel of War - Beat It

This one is a little bit late, but I rented "Frontlines Fuel of War" last weekend and played through it. I was looking forward to this one, but have to say that I was a little disappointed. The graphics were pretty good and it was a pretty good shooter, but the weapons felt underpowered and in the end the game just seemed to be more of the same. I checked the online action, but each game I got into only had 4 or 5 players in it. I was able to get a few points out of it, but not as many as I would have liked. I did find one glitch that was kind of fun in the achievements, you can read about it here.

What to Do???

The gamerscore blog has a great article on what to do if you have a new console and had already purchased a bunch of stuff on your other console that now won't work. You can find the article here. The steps are outlined below:

1) Attach your hard drive or memory unit.
2)Turn on the console.
3) Sign in to Xbox LIVE with the gamer profile that originally downloaded the content.
4) Go to Xbox LIVE Marketplace and select Account Management, Download History.
5) Select an item and then select Download Again.
6) Repeat step 5 for each item in your download history.

A Bunch of Random Stuff

Like I said in my last post, it's been a while since I've been able to put anything significant up. Here are a few random things that I've been thinking about doing, etc.

1) I bought the Legendery Map Pack for Halo 3 and I'm really enjoying it. They have a remade version of Lockout called Blackout, which I love. There's a new map called "Ghost Town" which is great and a reimagined version of Sidewinder called Avalanche, which is probably my favorite of the whole bunch.

2) My trek through Halo 2 on PC continues on. I'm on High Charity with the Master Chief right now and loving every minute of it. I did try out the multiplayer and actually had a really good time with it. I got a bunch of achievements and it was genuinely fun.

3) I'll be renting a game next weekend (any suggestions).

4) My brother got his 360 back after only a few weeks in the repair shop (AMAZING!!!).

35% Off Used 360 Games

I know that it's been a long time since I last posted, but I hope that this post makes up for it. Today, I checked my new Gmail account (Gmail is awesome by the way) and low and behold I found a 25% off coupon for any used 360 game at Gamestop!!! What makes this an even better deal is that you should be able to stack this 25% coupon with your regular Edge Card and walk away with a cool 35% off!!! I should also mention that the coupon is only good for a couple of days. So, without further ado here is the coupon, use it in good health and happy gaming!!!

IGN

I finally broke down last night and signed up for my own IGN Account. I've been bumming off of one of my friends for the longest time and decided that it was worth the $20/year to be able to edit my own profile, keep a list of my games, etc. When I signed up it said something about sending me a free magazine, which I really hope that they don't do. The last thing I need is another magazine coming to my house that I won't read. Anyway, I'm pretty stoaked about my new IGN Membership. The only thing I use the site for is Xbox 360 Related news, but I'm sure that I'll probably use for DS Lite stuff as well...if I ever get back to playing my DS Lite.

New COD4 Maps

Saturday, I bought the new Variety Map Pack for COD4, but didn't have a chance to actually play it 'til today. In short, it is awesome!!! I'm a huge fan of each of the maps, but I especially enjoyed the China Town map. It was amazing.
Also, it looks like the Double XP Weekend is still going on b/c I continued to get 20xp for each kill, etc.

RSV2 - Beat It

Last night Jose and I finished playing through the RSV2 Campaign. The gameplay was awesome as you would expect. I've been ranking up pretty fast toward the elite rank and my ACES have been adding up really fast. My only complaint is that the story is just plain abismal. There's just nothing good for me to say about the story, b/c it was so stupid. I was also really turned off by the foul language in the game. In the future, I'm just going to turn off all of the voices (I am glad that they included that option). My next thing is going to be to run through it on Realistic with whoever's willing to jump in with me, as well working through the Terrorist Hunts and working my way toward the coveted Elite status.

Port Forwarding and Xbox Live

After about 3 months of not knowing what to do, I finally sat down today and decided that I was going to figure out how to open my NAT, so that I could stop getting the stupid message in Halo 3 about my NAT being closed and so that I can feel like order has been restored to my network's universe.

I sat down and called Xbox Support, which was almost no help whatsoever. As I listened to the poor woman on the other end of the phone try to stumble her way through a script and to give me answers while not knowing what she was saying, I knew this would be a long process. The helpful information that I did get from her was that I needed to open up several ports on my router (UDP 88, UDP 3074, and TCP 3074), whatever that means.

My next step was to hit the internet. After poking around some forums for a bit I finally stumbled across this site, which was tremendously helpful. It wasn't exactly what I was dealing with, but it gave me enough information that I could use what I already knew and put all of the pieces together. Anyway, I am happy to report that I now have a completely Open NAT and now the world is at peace.