XboxSold.com BLOG

Freedom of life is a freedom we all are given when we are freed from the confines of our mother’s wombs. To take away our freedom is take away that which what makes us free.

Mega64 is against censorship, which is good because that’s against freedomness. Mass Effect 2 unfortunately is against freedom and censors itself when sexy things happen on the screen. When I play a game set in the future, I want to see it all.

Unless alien sex involves a Venus Flytrap-like monster popping out of where the vagina would normally be. Then no, I don’t want to see that sh*t. That would be gross.

Press Play’s puzzle-style platformer Max & the Magic Marker has been out in Europe for weeks now, and we don’t even have a release date for North America. What gives? The latest update on this front is that we’ll be getting it in March. Yeah, just “March.”

For the time being, the PC and Mac versions are now available digitally. The game is $19.99, sure, but there’s a demo; no need to blind buy or outright pass on Max & the Magic Marker. Although, if you’re willing to wait it out a tad bit longer, the WiiWare version will cost half as much.

I’m probably going to regret saying this in the near future, but for now, I feel like I’ll never grow tired of these games that involve you actively drawing to solve puzzles. You know, stuff like Crayon Physics and, uh, something else that doesn’t immediately come to mind.

It wouldn’t be a modern-day racing game without downloadable cars, right? Ferrari lovers will be pleased to know that Need for Speed SHIFT is about to get an all-Ferrari add-on soon. Exclusively hitting Xbox LIVE on February 16 for $10, the “Ferrari Racing Series” DLC contains the following cars:

• 1996 Ferrari F50 GT
• 2005 Ferrari F430 Spider
• 2005 Ferrari FXX
• 2005 Ferrari Superamerica
• 2006 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano
• 2006 Ferrari F430 Challenge (Online/Quick event only)
• 2006 Ferrari F430 GTC (Online/Quick event only)
• 2007 Ferrari 430 Scuderia
• 2008 Ferrari California
• 2008 Ferrari 16M Scuderia Spider

But wait, there’s more! 46 new career mode challenges and 125 Gamerpoints are also included in this fine digital package. It’s been quite some time since Ferrari has been involved with the Need for Speed brand, so this is cool to see.

As for the Xbox 360 exclusivity, yeah, I don’t know. Seems like business as usual, though.

Yes, you read that correct. This week’s Monday Masculinity Teaser is none other than the famous phantasmagorical stallion sidescroller game, Robot Unicorn Attack. It’s already sold 2 million copies worldwide, won three Game of the Year awards even though we’re only in February, been banned in Australia by the Cryptozoology Intelligence Agency, received its own Mountain Dew flavor, won American Idol thanks to Avril Lavigne, and has beaten Avatar for an Academy Award. None of this is reality of course, but sadly, neither are unicorns. As for unicorn robots, I don’t know, but I’m sure MonsterQuest is filming another laughable episode about it soon.

Surprisingly the gameplay is great for a flash game. I know, I’m shocked, scared and a bit embarrassed, but solid game design is solid game design. You get three wishes (lives) to last as long as you can in the endless magical sidescroller land, with all three rounds added up for your final score. You can jump and double jump to create rainbows, with jumps floating farther the longer you hold down the jump key. Along the way you run into score boosting fairies you can collect to shoot magic out of your horn, as well as star block obstacles that you have to dash through to survive. As you do better and better you’re blessed with dolphins that swim along with you on screen, and while you play you’re graced with this Chad-mazing song you didn’t know you loved until just now:

• Open your eyes, I see. Your eyes are open.
• Wear no disguise for me, come into the open.
• When it’s cold (when it’s cold), outside (outside), am I here in vain?
• Hold on, to the night, there will be no shame.
• CHORUS:  Always, I want to be with you, and make believe with you, and live in harmony harmony oh love!
• CHORUS
• Always.
• Melting the ice for me, jump into the ocean.
• Hold back the tide, I see. Your love in motion.
• When it’s cold (when it’s cold), outside (outside), am I here in vain?
• Hold on, to the night, there will be no shame.
• 2X CHORUS
• When it’s cold (when it’s cold), outside (outside), am I here in vain?
• Hold on, to the night, there will be no shame.
• 5x CHORUS

You can thank the blood, sweat, and tantric tears of Adult Swim for this fabulous fantasy game that you will be playing against your will all night. If there was ever a flash game deserving of a Web fad with the strength of Chocolate Rain, Numa Numa, All Your Base, and the other great memes of the Internet, then surely Unicorn Robot Attack is worthy. “Harmony! Harmony! Our Love!” “Yatah! Us! Us! Us! Us!” Share your high scores in the comments below, and please correct me if any of the legendary lyrics are incorrect! Now if you’ll excuse me I think I need to take a shower now. But “there will be no shame.”

Famed videogame composer Nobuo Uematsu is an awesome guy to talk to and hang out with. Seriously, meeting with him was one of the highlights of my writing/blogging career. The guy that made Final Fantasy sound like Final Fantasy is coming to a Boston-based anime convention in April.

Uematsu will attend as an invited guest to Anime Boston 2010, set to go down on April 2-4th at the Hynes Convention Center and Sheraton Hotel. Go with your copy of Lost Odyssey in hand and be prepared to elbow your way through the crowd.

Also in attendance, and in the same category of game music, is Video Game Orchestra. The Boston-based group will be there to perform game tunes, this year appearing with a 90-person ensemble.

Any of you in the Boston area thinking of going? I would.

Anime Boston 2010 Books Nobuo Uematsu and the Video Game Orchestra [OSV]

Man, I feel terrible for Blake Griffin. First, he gets drafted by the perennially hapless, possibly cursed Los Angeles Clippers. Then, before he even plays a single NBA game, the Clippers reveal that he has a stress fracture in his left kneecap; the injury sidelines him for the entire 2009-10 season. And now, it appears that he will go down as the last cover athlete in EA Sports’ NCAA Basketball series.

In a fiscal report earlier today, Electronic Arts laid out its slate of planned releases for the rest of its fiscal year 2010. The expected EA Sports games were there — Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, NCAA Football 11, Madden NFL 11, NBA Live 11, NBA Jam, NHL 11, FIFA 11, and EA Sports MMA — but NCAA Basketball 11 was nowhere to be found. As pastapadre.com points out, this isn’t all that surprising considering the poor sales of the NCAA Basketball games in recent years and a nagging collegiate licensing issue.

EA hasn’t officially announced that NCAA Basketball is canceled, but that’s essentially a foregone conclusion at this point. I guess they’ll transfer those folks to the NBA Live 11 team, which is going to need all the help it can get now that Mike Wang has gone back to Visual Concepts under 2K Sports.

EA Fiscal Report Indicates Cancellation of NCAA Basketball and New Fighting Title [Pastapadre]

It’s not much of a secret that EA has enjoyed solid Dragon Age: Origins sales, but we didn’t have a number on it until this afternoon. In a press release blasted after the jarring EA conference call, it was revealed the old-school RPG has sold over 3.2 million units according to EA estimates. That’s, uh, a lot by most standards.

EA and BioWare are releasing a full-featured expansion for Origins this March and apparently whipping out some sort of new DA title in fiscal 2011. We’ll try to figure out what the latter is while also taking stabs at what made so many people want to buy Origins. We’re guessing it was Manson. Or the fact that the game rocked. Either way, we’re happy.

This latest trailer explains the close combat in Aliens vs. Predator. Ironically, the video only tells you the Xbox 360 controls, which already has a control layout in the demo. The demo that really needs help with the controls, the PC version, has been left high and dry. You’re just going to have to guess the keys for that one. 

Anyway, if you’ve been getting hacked to pieces too many times, this video will show you how to deal with a close encounter. It’s all about the block button. Yes, we didn’t know there was one either until someone outside of the demo pointed it out to us. 

People are starting to get the hang of counters and blocking in the demo, which is starting to annoy me as it’s getting harder to win matches. I don’t like being challenged, least of all by smartass Predators who think they’re cool just because they look like insectoid Bob Marleys.

As part of a concentrated effort to keep second-hand sales low, EA plans to continue dropping unique content delivery services — like the ones present in Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 — into its games through fiscal 2011.

Speaking during the recent financial conference call, EA CFO Eric Brown said as much, adding that these services “benefit” original purchasers: “In fiscal 11, we will continue to introduce new service and product features that benefit the unique registered purchasers on PC and console games. Our most recent example is the Cerberus content network introduced with Mass Effect 2.”

Later in the call, EA COO John Schappert said that all of EA’s fiscal 2011 titles will “have an online component, both downloadable content and online play.” We’ll take this to mean you’ll probably want to steer clear of the “Used” aisle in order to access the full EA.com sign-in experience.