Update: Thanks for entering, everyone. The giveaway is now closed, and I’ll be e-mailing the winners shortly.
Electronic Arts finally opened the Medal of Honor beta to Xbox 360 players after a lengthy and ultimately unexplained delay. If you own a new copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, you can now register for the beta on EA’s Medal of Honor website. But if not, we’ve got a new batch of 10 Medal of Honor beta codes to give away.
Well don’t I feel silly waiting for an hour to try Kinect for Xbox 360 during E3. Microsoft is taking its motion-sensing camera on the road, touring Kinect around 32 U.S. cities, starting this weekend. Many of the games that were playable at E3 — Kinect Sports, Kinect Adventures, Kinect Joy Ride, Kinectimals and Dance Central — will be there. First up is Macy’s in Manhattan, on Saturday and Sunday, and the Mall of America in Minneapolis, from now until August 22. You’ll also be able to try Kinect at Microsoft’s four retail stores, in Scottsdale, Ariz.; Mission Viejo, Calif.; Denver; and San Diego. Full list of cities after the jump.
Hand it to Bungie for their new plan to prevent leaked lists of Halo: Reach Achievements. Starting now, they’re just going to beat the hackers by leaking the achievements first. So now we’ve got a list of six Halo: Reach achievements that don’t tell you anything about the game that you weren’t already aware of. For instance, from this list we can deduce that Halo: Reach has (a) legendary difficulty (b) Banshees (c) matchmaking (d) daily multiplayer challenges (e) items you can buy from the Armory and (f) the ability to break a fatal fall by assassinating an Elite at the bottom. Okay, that last one is kind of cool. Full details after the jump.
Watch out now, there is some serious gaming going on at a Starbucks in Anchorage, Alaska, as seen in this photo. According to Reddit commenter puppyfarts (couldn’t resist publishing the name), the guy brought his Xbox 360 and a small TV set to his local ‘bucks and started playing what looked like Oblivion. What’s stranger is that this isn’t the first case of Starbucks gaming to hit the tubes.
The multiplayer beta for Medal of Honor’s reboot was supposed to hit Xbox Live on June 21st – the same day it debuted on the PlayStation 3 and PC. Yet here we are, on July 1st, and not only is it still unavailable on just the Xbox 360, but a firm release date is as hard to find as bin Laden. Needless to say, there are plenty of gamers none too pleased about this — the beta not being up yet, I mean. Most gamers are more concerned with map packs and arguing over game review scores than the war in Afghanistan.
Keep reading for some of the most angry/funny comments.
If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and want a taste of E3, put the Crackdown 2 demo in your queue. The open-world game, in which you fight crime as a superhuman Agent, was on the show floor last week, and went online to the masses today.
Sub-Zero’s corpse torn asunder on the screen in front of me, I’m standing next to Eddie Ferrier, associate designer of the new Mortal Kombat. I had to ask: How did you guys come up these nasty Fatalities?
Ferrier can’t quite articulate the process. And how could he? Moments ago, he commanded Kung Lao to set his bladed hat on the ground, spinning in perpetuity. Kung Lao reached over the blade to grab Sub-Zero’s ankles on the opposite side, pulling the fallen fighter through, groin first. He lifts both halves of the body, remarkably intact but dripping blood. Ferrier, fumbling through a vague explanation about brainstorming with his colleagues, cracks a subtle smile. He’s been working on Mortal Kombat games since the beginning. I can tell he loves the job.
Pretty much any game with over-the-shoulder, duck-and-cover combat invites a comparison with Gears of War, but here’s Sega’s elevator pitch for Vanquish: It’s much, much faster.
I didn’t spend a lot of time playing Vanquish at Sega’s booth, but I got a sense of what the company is talking about. Cover-based shooting became a popular trope in Gears’ wake, desirable for the way it makes you feel entrenched in the battlefield. Inevitably we see variations on the theme, and Vanquish’s was good enough to make me yearn for more playing time.
Maybe you aren’t already aware, but Alan Wake has multiple collectibles: 106 manuscript pages (many only located when playing in the unlockable Nightmare difficulty), 100 coffee thermoses, several TV and radio shows, can pyramids, and over 20 signs providing Bright Falls history lessons. And that’s in addition to the ultimate collectible — Alan’s missing wife, Alice. We’ve compiled the best Alan Wake walkthroughs this week to ensure your survival against the Taken, plus guides to nab all the crazy collectibles strewn across the poltergeist-wracked town.