On Friday we were all exposed to the first gameplay footage of Gears of War 2 and after watching it a number of times I noticed a number of new things that have been added to the game. If you haven’t seen the video yet please do yourself a favour and watch it, you’ll truly enjoy it, especially if you enjoy the first Gears of War!

If you’ve played the first Gears of War you know that Locusts are a pain in the ass and by the looks of it, they seem to be more of a pain! The Locust can now sink entire cities using giant emergence holes, which is going to make for and awesome battle! Since Gears of War 2 will be using the new Unreal Engine, it allowed them to render hundreds of characters quicker, which in-turn allowed them to add hundreds of Locusts!

Since the Locusts can take over an entire city there is no way any grenade will kill them all! So instead of using grenades to attack the onslaught of Locusts, we see a vehicle called Deeicks which brings along a tunnel machine, Grind Lifts to where the Locust are occupied.

Not only are Locusts bad guys but you can now use them as shields against other Locusts! I can see this working well especially when you can’t find cover and need something to hide behind, what’s better that a Locust to hide behind!

And finally the chainsaw battles. This looks amazing! Why waste ammo when you can just saw your enemy in half! They have added a new camera angle that allows you to see how the chainsaw is driven upward through the torso and blood gushes everywhere!

I recently played the first Gears of War and cannot wait until the second one comes out in November! This is definitely a game I’m going to pre-order!

Enjoy the trailer below!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxoU8wCEr2A&hl=en]

Posted by: alberto
Posted on: May 14th, 2008
Tags: 360, gears, gears of war 2, gow, gow2, locust, of, war, x-box, xbox, xbox360
Categories: Video Games
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For the past week or so I’ve been listening to an indie playlist and while listening I’ve come across a number of good bands. Black Kids are one of those bands. A lot of the bands on the playlist are your typical indie rock bands, which are great, but not Black Kids. Their sound caught my attention and I kept going back thinking ‘who sings this again’ until I remembered who they were.

Black Kids have a dancey rock sound to them similar to Brighton’s The Go! Team but less hip-hop and more rock. You can hear how Black Kids have more rock in them in their first single I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You. It has a few guitar solos and has a natural sound to it. Not only is this tune catchy but it makes for a great sing-a-long song live! Their other single Hurricane Jane is just as catchy and a little less dancey but still awesome!

Back in August Black Kids released their first EP on their MySpace as a free download and are scheduled to release their first album Partie Traumatic in late July! Check them out and let me know what you think of them!

They are currently on tour and are playing a sold out show tonight at The Phoenix.

Links:
MySpace: Black Kids
Official Site: Black Kids

Posted by: alberto
Posted on: May 10th, 2008
Tags: black, black kids, boyfriend, florida, indie, indie rock, kids, rock, the go! team
Categories: Music
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When I go to a concert I normally leave the venue with one of three feelings: ‘Wow these guys sound great live, but not quite like the album‘ or ‘Wow these guys sound worse live than they did on their album‘ or ‘Wow these guys sound like what they are on their album‘ and after leaving The Opera House tonight I thought that they sounded exactly like they do on their album, which is great because I could understand every word that was sung!

If any of you have listened to Tokyo Police Club you know that their songs/album are short so I didn’t expect their set to be longer than 50 mins tops. Although the show was pretty short it didn’t disappoint.

On the ticket it said it was an all ages show, but I found that the majority of the crowd were 19+. I saw a few minors roaming around and one that was the bassist for the band that played before Tokyo Police Club (which I’ll get to shortly). Once I saw the crowd and how much older it was, it made the concert alot better!

TPC got the crowd involved in few songs by doing some ‘clap-alongs’ and that definitely brought the energy up another level! My favourite song of the night would probably be ‘Your English Is Good‘ followed closely by ‘Nature of the Experiment‘. They played song after song which also kept the energy level up! All in all it was a good show!

The band playing before TPC were a duet/triplet from Seattle named Smoosh. When they came on stage it was just a drummer and keyboardist, which I found odd and excited about. Odd because I would think there would be a guitarist in the mix and excited because I wanted to hear how they sounded like. They were alright, I thought they were Metric influenced with their style and sound, but thats just a personal opinion . Anyways before I end this thing, I’ll get back to the all ages bit to which I mentioned above. During Smoosh’s set they had a bassist play with them on a few tracks and when their set was over I noticed that the bassist came over to the merch stand. What I didn’t realize until later was that this chick had to be at least 14! I just found it a little funny thats all

Links:
Official Sites: Tokyo Police Club, Smoosh
MySpace Sites: Tokyo Police Club, Smoosh

Posted by: alberto
Posted on: May 3rd, 2008
Tags: club, house, opera, opera house, police, smoosh, the opera house, tokyo, tokyo police club, tpc
Categories: Concerts & Events, Music
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So it’s day two in my virtual life of Niko Bellic in Liberty City and so far its not too bad! I’ve gone on dates, played darts, bought some new clothes and have met some interesting people besides Niko’s cousin Roman.

For any of you who aren’t familiar with GTA IV here’s a little background info. You are convinced by your cousin, Roman, to come to the US and live the American Dream of money, cars, and women. However when you arrive you find out that it’s the total opposite and also find out that Roman is in a little bit of trouble.

So far I’ve gone a few missions and have gotten used to the controls for combat. Driving on the other hand is a bit different, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it. I’ve waited a long time for this game and I couldn’t be happier of how it turned out. Of course there were a few glitches that I have encountered but thats normal in a game, every game has its problems.

I’ll try and keep you all posted of my status as much as I can but not promising anything :p

Until then enjoy this …
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=H2OYjKrW8-0]

Posted by: alberto
Posted on: May 2nd, 2008
Tags: auto, grand, grand theft auto 4, grand theft auto iv, gta, gta iv, iv, theft, xbox 360, xbox360
Categories: Video Games
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