MMORPG Shadowbane goes FREE!

Many members of the Shadowbane Community have already noticed that a change has occured to the Billing System today; one that allows players to play for free!

Joe:
MMORPG for free?
Sweeeet!

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XBOX 360 Hacked?!

Word is out on the street that a flaw in the Xbox 360 DVD firmware may allow a hacker to install his own custom firmware in there unchecked, allowing the drive to boot backups of original game DVD by flashing a self-built firmware in there which ignores the mandatory disc signing.

Joe:
This means that if and when (and if it is worth it) they release this hack me and me ol electronics guru Bilbo will be testing it out. If it isn't worth it then it would be a no go for me. I love XBOX Live now and don't wanna leave it for just any reason.

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NCAA bracket templates - Lifehacker

Download of the Day: NCAA bracket templates - Lifehacker

For Windows only: Microsoft is offering up free downloadable templates for this year’s NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.

The templates are all free, and you can download the tournament brackets for either Excel or Visio. The Excel brackets are especially nice, including a sheet with a cool results tracker. This looks like a good way to track winners or throw together a quick tournament pool.

PSP getting an EyeToy and will play PS1 games...

Sony President Ken Kutaragi accounced that the PSP will be getting its own EyeToy. The new camera will allow you to play games interactively. I would guess this would also mean that you will take pictures and record video too.

Also, he announced that there will be a PS1 emulator for the PSP. Sony will offer PS1 game downloads to your PSP at a low price. Presumably the available titles will be ones that don't contain large amounts of full-motion video, so that they can be stored in the PSP's Memory Stick, although if the rumors are true about a new 8 GB NAND PSP then players could easily store full versions of the PS1's games just as they were originally on CD.

More news you ask?
The PSP is scheduled for a major firmware update this spring, with plans for a videophone and VoIP capability, as well as a Global Positioning System (GPS) add-on module, which will be supported by certain games. The next version of the PSP web browser will feature Flash support.

Layta!
Joe

Full Auto for the 360 gets 3.5 out of 5 stars here...

Ok...I first want to thank Lauren from M80 for the opportunity to play and review Full Auto from Sega. I was very happy to see that they wanted real people and game player reviews and not just people involved in the game industry. This review will be an honest review with no fluff... I promise!

Ok, to the game at hand...

Full Auto is a car/racing game but not just your usual car/racing game; they have added some very nice touches to the way to worn out genre. Honestly, I play some game of this genre, but never get too deep into them or play them longer than 3 or 4 hours. How is Full Auto different? Your car has weapons and you blow stuff up! That is enough to hook me for longer than 4 hours. Here is the lowdown:

Graphics: Beautiful and just made the next gen level. I only have SVid at home so I took the game to a few friends' homes and played it on HDTV TVs and projectors. Very sweet but the graphics don't make or break this game.

Modes: Good number of modes. You can start a Career and start unlocking stuff (plenty of stuff to unlock); you can choose Pursuit, Arena, Tag, and Rampage. There are plenty of mini games to play too. So mode wise... more than enough to give you reasons to buy.

Gameplay: I’m not a big car/race guy, but have play 75 percent of them at some point be it for one game or for a few hours and I have to say that Full Auto ranks high here. The only marks I have against Full Auto are that after a while this game becomes repetitive... aka: Same ol race, different car and guns. Plenty of modes help this fact but still you’re in a car, racing and shooting other cars. One new feature that has never been done in a car/racing game is the reversing of time or uncrashing ability. Think Prince of Persia. This is a nice feature but doesn't really sell the game for me. Don't get me wrong...I use it, but not that much.

Well, this is my review of Full Auto and if I rated games with 1 to 5 stars, this game gets a 3.5 because it was fun, plenty to unlock and do, and I love to blow up the environment and other cars. My only negative was after a while (for me over a week of playing it every day) it got repetitive.

Layta!
Joe