Happy New Years e'rebody

Celebrate good times, come on! Happy New Years to you all, here's to a brighter and better 09!

Don't Update That 30GB Zune!

If you've got a 30GB Zune unplug it from your PC now! It turns out that MS's latest firmware update for the year is causing a loading glitch that makes 1st gen Zunes inoperable. MS is looking into the problem and has posted a statement on the Zune support page that says "Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We're aware of the problem and are working to correct it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!"

It looks like the QA team took off a little too early for the holidays.

U dont spell that with 8.

Well i just saw this video for the new EA game called Skate2 im pretty sure you all have played skate. it looks the same only with a few new things. some new skaters (no surprise), same town just new spots, and what im looking forward to is the move able environment.Also for u female gamers or dudes who like to make females. u could create a female skater pretty cool. well im looking forward to this game. even tho i dont think ill get it cuz im broke. but yeah looks really cool.

Pics from snowstorm

Finally setup my account for my phone so I can start mobile blogging. Here's some pics I took of our recent blizzard.

Steam Sale 'til Jan 2nd

It looks like Steam is feeling the holiday spirit and has reduced prices for lots of great titles by up to 75% on some games. One of the many reduced prices is for Bioshock, which is available for 5 bucks. Y'know, I never did get a chance to really play it and with it being the price of a sandwich, I think I finally might take the bite and play this game. Here's a quick price list of some hot titles:

Spore - 37.49

CoD4 - 37.49

Fallout 3 - 39.99

L4D - 37.49

Bioshock - 4.99

Portal - 4.99

Company of Heroes - 14.99

Valve Complete - 74.99

HL: Opposing Forces - 0.99

Link to Steam Sale - http://store.steampowered.com/holidaysale/

The new born.

Hello elephnat fans. i would just like to introduce myself. My name is Michael and i am proud to say that i am the newest member of the elephnat team. its really cool being apart of this team cuz they cool and funny and yeah who wouldint want to be in this. and im lucky enuff to say that IM IN LIKE SIN. well yeah there u go. my first blog.....oh yeah i would like to thank the elephnat team for letting me in. Rj Anthony and the nigga Jason. thanks alot. peace out.

Game Night: Earthbound 2

Just letting you guys know that we're still doing Game Night's at 7PM PST for the weekend. This weekend we got a special treat of a recently translated Mother 3 (Earthbound 2) for the GBA. So come on in and join us at http://justin.tv/elephnat .

Merry Christmas!

Here's to a Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone, now get back to your presents!

Polly want some End War?

Omg I had to steal this from Paranoid Emdroid's blog (one of our visitors here). This is too great!

DnD Returns!

So we started playing some Dungeons and Dragons 4e again over the weekend and even though we all lost our character sheets (doh!) I think we all definitely had a good time. Our party consists of Rhogar (Jason) - Dragonborn Paladin, Morthos (Anthony) - Tiefling Warlock, and Rickmourne (me) - Dwarf Cleric with us switching off as GM's every session. We also tried to get Tanner and Tim onboard but I definitely forgot how long it takes to roll a char, especially since I forgot how to do everything and they ended up having to go.

We'll probably broadcast our sessions as part of our Game Nights so be on the lookout for those. We still need to pick up some proper miniatures, a comic book place in Lancaster had some but none of the ones we needed. If you know of any good places to get those from let us know via comment or email, thanks.Anyway, here's a quick recap of our first session:

Morthos and I made our way to Gravelstone by carriage, we were supposed to be heading to the city of Brightmoon but had to stop here because the next carriage to Brightmoon wouldn't make it's travel for another week. So we head over to the Drunken Apple Tavern to scoop out the place and while Morthos is downing some of Brightmoons finest Wheat mead, we overheard some guy talking about how he missed his sweet ass leg which was chopped off by some Halflings and they ended up stealing his family heirloom trinket to boot, dude has some serious bad luck! Anyway we approach the guy and tell him that we can't sit by and allow something like this happen! We volunteer to get his trinket back and avenge his leg.

The guy leads us to his house attic where I'm guessing it took place. We CAUTIOUSLY search the room for anything conspicuous and after I end up throwing some socks through a wall (lol wtf) we find a hidden door on one of the walls. We open it up CAUTIOUSLY and it ends up leading to a huge grass field with a shack in the middle of it. We make our way to the shack and find 4 sleeping halflings (check!), various loot (check!), and their packs in the middle of them (check!). I found a torch in the room so I tried throwing it at one of the halflings, I end up totally missing but luckily they don't hear the loud thud. Morthos picked up the torch and smartly places it on one of them, igniting one into a frenzied fireball and ends up running into a wall knocking himself out.

We then make battle and after some heads get crunched, we defeat all of them and search the loot. We find some nice valuables to sell, some gold, and the trinket (bingo!). We then head back through the door and return the dude's trinket. All-in-all, it was a good run through and we all had fun. Stay tuned for our next epic adventure of gargantuous proportions.

The Human Psyche

In the 60s, a group of scientist conducted experiments that tested the human psyche. The now deemed unethical experiments, were well documented and now a group is replicating the tests. Known as the Milgram Experiment, researchers at California's Santa Clara University are hard at work to replicate the results. Why? i wish i knew

"In the experiment, the test subject -- called a 'teacher' -- is given a list of word questions and a control panel, capable of delivering electric shocks. On the other side of a blind partition, a 'learner' sits and tries to answer the teacher's questions correctly, each incorrect answer warranting a shock of an increasingly high voltage. Unbeknownst to the teacher, the learner is in fact an actor, and not at all a subject of the experiment. While the learner is not in fact being shocked, the teacher is fully convinced that he is, hearing pained shouts following each flick of the switch. Researchers stand by to observe for how long these 'teachers' will inflict pain upon their 'learners,' simply for the reason that the researchers order them to continue."



[Via Switched]

Finally it came.. With more!

Empire: Total War makes me want to buy a blunderbuss!

Total War has just released a new trailer showing off Empire: Total War in all it's huge line of muskets and gunpowder glory. I'm a huge fan of the Total War series and the inclusion of proper 17th century musket action and shooting at some Redcoats has totally got me pumped this morning! This game will definitely eat away at my life when it comes out. Oh yeah, here's the trailer:

And so it begins..

The first official comic from elephnat. In the future they will be longer, and of course funnier.

Enjoy.

YA chillin with aj

Spike 2008 Vidya Game Awards

Here are your Spike's 2008 VGA pulled from Kotaku:

GAME OF THE YEAR

Grand Theft Auto IV 

CONSOLE WINNERS

Best Xbox 360 Game: Gears of War 2 
Best PS3 Game: LittleBigPlanet
Best PC Game: Left 4 Dead
Best Wii Game: Boom Blox
Best Handheld Game: Professor Layton and the Curious Village

GENRE WINNERS

Best Individual Sports Game: Shaun White Snowboarding
Best Fighting Game: Soul Calibur IV
Best RPG: Fallout 3
Best Shooter: Gears of War 2
Best Team Sports Game: NHL 09
Best Action Adventure Game: Grand Theft Auto IV
Best Driving Game: Burnout Paradise
Best Music Game: Rock Band 2
Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show: LEGO Indiana Jones

AND THE REST

Studio of the Year: Media Molecule
Best Multi-Player Game: Left 4 Dead
Best Independent Game: World of Goo
Big Name in the Game (Female): Jenny McCarthy
Big Name in the Game (Male): Kiefer Sutherland
Best Performance by a Human (Female): Debbie Mae West
Best Performance by a Human (Male): Michael Hollick
Best Original Score: Metal Gear Solid 4
Best Soundtrack: Rock Band 2
Best Graphics: Metal Gear Solid 4

After looking over the list, it's kinda sad to see that MGS 4 only got best original score and best graphics. That game at least deserved Best PS3 Game, LittleBigPlanet is fun and all but in a sense it's just a basic platformer wrapped around extensive level creation tools, MGS4 was a freaking masterpiece not to mention Kojima's last foray with the MGS franchise EVER (sorry Media Molecule, much <3>

Best of the Web This Week

Go ahead and click on this link that brings together the best of the web. From the guys at Urlesque and composed by Switched. Its a great way to kill some time. Check it out.

Best of the Web This Week

[Via Switched & Urlesque]

A tiresome day

Starting from 6:00 AM Anthony and myself started broadcasting some Fallout 3. Under 5 minutes we had over 20 viewers, and under 30 we had over 40. Throughout the day we averaged at 50 viewers, and hitting our highest limit of 63 viewers (I was taking a nap, my brother took over the shift).

Nonstop from 6:00 this morning till 9:30 tonight we played for our loyal viewers, gained many favorites, and to top that all off we received a gift from one of them, which costed the viewer $1.00 . It's the fact that someone has actually bought something to give to us that tears me up. With a gain of 24 leading to a total of 47 fans we can now sleep happily tonight. We are looking forward to another weekend of ultimate gaming, starting with Friday.

I still can't believe we've received a gift from someone who enjoyed watching us. If you would like to see the gift then click the link below:

Ninja gift

It's Sunday Again?

Seems like the weeks have been flying by this month, not much to report for the week really, sorry guys. Jason and I are currently broadcasting some Fallout 3 so if you're into that, feel free to grab a nice cup of hot cocoa and join us at http://justin.tv/elephnat . We reached an all time high of 63 viewers earlier today which totally got us psyched, especially since we're looking to broadcast on a regular basis. We're thinking of doing Game Nights every weekend starting on Friday Night, either me or Jason will be playing whatever catches our fancy.

Oh yeah, we've added a calendar to help keep track of our Game Nights and what games we'll be playing. If you have any suggestions on what you want us to play just hit the shout box and we'll see if we can get it.

Home Sweet Home?

Sony released Home into the wild on Thursday as a public beta so I figured we'd give it a try since this little project ended up taking about 2 years to push out. After some issues with trying to sign-in, we were immediately hit with a create your dude screen which had your standard customization tools to tweak out your face, body, hair, and clothes. I noticed alot of the pre-set face options looked really weird, and Jason couldn't really find one that looked...well, asian, so he opted for your standard white-boy look. Anyway, they had about a handful of clothes to choose from, Jason picked out a stylish white tee with some blue jeans and we set off into Home.

After making our dude we spawned in a house, which I guess belonged to us, and it had a nice modern day look to it overlooking the ocean, nice. The apartment(?) was kinda empty with only a few couches and a coffee table in the living room. It got boring fast so we brought up the map and it showed several other locations we could visit which included a movie theatre, mall, park, and bowling alley. Jason chose the theatre and it brought up a download queue which took about 3 minutes.

We spawned inside a movie theatre room where a whole bunch of people were dancing, dancing, and doing more dancing. It was like a yahoo chat room, except in a virtual movie theatre, and what do you think a whole bunch of people from yahoo chat would do in a virtual movie theatre? That's right, dance in front of the movie screen yelling PORNO, PORNO, PROM, PRONO.

We picked out a seat in the front row and sat down next a brotha and waited a good 10-15 minutes for the movie to load. It finally came on and we watched a trailer for the movie "Twilight" and a Paramore music video, with a whole bunch of dudes dancing and chatting in front of the screen, with a bubble machine going on. And even though the trailer was set on an indefinite loop, there were still people asking when the movie would come on, yep.

We decided to check out the mall which took another 3 minutes to download and it looked like your average mall with 2 floors and a pond area, there were even groups of people hanging out. Oh yeah, billboards and advertisements were strategically placed to make sure you knew about the wireless keyboard and prince of persia. I walked into a clothes store and was suprised to find that you actually had to pay money for virtual clothes, that's right .50 cents for a hoodie.

On one hand, virtually watching a trailer in a movie theatre definitely felt kinda cool, but the whole thing just feels so weird and awkward. I don't see myself getting into all this but I think there's enough people who like the whole virtual second life scene that would support something like this. The only advantage I can see for something like this is to virtually watch E3 shows and meet famous people...virtually, oh yeah and also making a bad-ass gang and bully people at the arcade like Jeff Gerstmann did. What a weird and somewhat awesome future we have ahead of us.

GameNight Feature: Fallout 3

Game Night has definitely fallen off our radar and it's something I wanna work on bringing to you guys on a consistent basis. Therefore, we've decided to plan our Game Nights accordingly on a weekly basis and kinda setup a schedule like routine so we dont lose track of things.

So tonight will be the first of our regular broadcasted Game Night's which will always start at 9:00PM PST on our justin.tv/elephnat channel. We'll be continuing on from wherever Jason left off on Fallout 3 and we'll play for a minimum of 2 hours. So tune in, if you haven't created an account yet at justin.tv you should so you can chat with us, see you there.

Ludicrous Speed, GO!

It looks like Google has been able to work out most of the kinks with Chrome, so much in fact that they just announced that they are taking it out of beta. I must admit that about 3 months ago, things could have started off better, especially since a huge security hole was found after the first day of release. Those times are now long gone and Chrome has shaped up to be secure, stable and offers a considerable speed boost to browsing the web.

If you haven't tried it out yet, here's a link to the download (Windows only, sorry Mac peeps, not really) try it out sometime, you might find it worthwhile.

Here's some of the key things I like:

- Speed, it's been tested against all other browser's available and Chrome is currently the one who's wearing Nikes. Browsing definitely feels 'snappier' compared to Firefox/IE (haven't really used Opera).

- Sandbox engine, ever visited a horribly coded site causing your PC to hang? Chrome is able to shut down the tab only without having to close the entire browser which is pretty neat.

- More view space for web browsing. The UI is very lean and doesn't get in the way.

- Google integrated url/searchbox. I use google to search for everything, so having just one place to click and type into to cover both web addresses and web searches is very handy.

What I dislike:

- Needs to be as versatile as Firefox for power users, missing add-on support definitely hurts.

- Woud like an option to setup a comparable feature of Opera's "Speed Dial", need to add more than 9 web pages to the list.

- Missing Netflix support although I don't really watch movies off of my laptop anymore, but still missing.

Ill to be Chill

GTAIV: The Lost & Damned DLC Draws Near

First of all, thanks to Mike for submitting this to me over LIVE, almost forgot about this juicy DLC content for GTA IV. The Lost and Damned "episode" is the first DLC for GTA IV that introduces a new story for you to experience with a new central character, not Niko Bellic. Apparantly, it's about the biker gang that you have a small run in with during the main story line, but not much else has been revealed other than it'll add more content, it's the first of 2 episodes, and it'll add about 5 more hours of gameplay (story-mode wise).

I just finished up the GTA IV story about 2 weeks ago (I know, it took me forever to pick it up and play it thru to the finish) and was kinda re-amazed (real word?) with Liberty City and how detailed it actually is, so any extra new content that'll be released is probably something I might consider on actually paying for, it just depends on the right price.

GameCast - CoD: WAW

Watch live video from elephnat. channel on Justin.tv

My 360 just died during the stream, sorry folks...

edit 2 : Looks like it still has some life left, gonna try and re-broadcast...

edit 3 : Just RRoD'ed right after I updated this post. Nvm.

To Those Who Fight

Ive always thought that FF VII had the best soundtrack to any game hands down, well anything that Uematsu contributes to is certainly a good listen and just figured I'd share a little piece of this masterpiece with yous.

Cramp!

I've been distracted once again, I've gained an awful amount of pounds. And again I'm now trying to work them off, today was my 3rd day, about a few or more months break after the first 2, at 24hour Fitness. I saw Cathy, socks, there. We agreed on both going the same day. Although we both were there working on our witness he's our witness, sorry I had to quote from that Fergalicious song, we didn't actually work out side-by-side. I saw her once and nodded then went to work on my ABS!

I'm not that sore, tomorrow will be my rest day then the day after I'll continue the pound-pwnage, but I'm very sleepy. I really want to get this sweet ass armor in Fallout 3 but it feels like I'm suffering from da idis attack, it's the symptom that makes you all sleepy after a big meal!

I didn't remember how many calories I burned today but I'm pretty sure I burned away that fudge muffin I ate today, which was the only thing I ate today. 48 minutes till 6 then I can't eat. I should have ate something earlier today but too late.

Ta-ta!

chill8

A Yo

Home is Upon Us?

For anyone who still remembers Sony's virtual social matchmaking / Second Life kinda thingy you'll be suprised(?) to know that it just may be coming out this month. According to some British news site "The Times", they recently posted an article exposing a release date of December 17th. I don't know if this has been confirmed by Sony, but I did hear that Sony was looking to release it as an open beta fairly soon so your guess is as good as mine.

I never really looked at Home in a serious kinda way, maybe because I hardly turn my PS3 on for anything, but also because I didn't really see the use of virtual dudes hanging out instead of playing an actual game, but I guess some people are really into that kinda stuff (maybe I would be too if I had/knew people to play with). Regardless, Sony definitely needs something like this that will boost it's features cause as of right now they're struggling to keep up with Nintendo and MS.

Sunny Sunday..not really

Just wanted to wrap things up for the weekend, which only lasts one day for me but I still got some time in with Fallout 3 which is turning out to be a very enjoyable experience. I've been progressing through the main storyline at a decent pace (or so I think), only picking up a few side quests here and there for some quick cash. I definitely love the whole setting of the game and the story is intriguing enough to keep me moving forward (for some reason Fable II just left me a little bored). Hopefully I'll be able to finish this one, I'm notoriously bad at leaving games on the shelf after two weeks or so.



I also picked up Call of Duty: World at War and played some of that today, the game definitely reminds me of how tired I am of playing WW2 FPS. Lets count em shall we? Medal of Honor, Medal of Honor: Resistance, Medal of Honor: Frontlines, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Call of Duty, Call of Duty: United Offensive, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 3 = 8 games of killing a messload of Nazis. CoD4 was definitely a nice breath of fresh air. Anyway, I guess its ok for a shooter, haven't tried the coop so maybe that's more fun. Well that should wrap things about up for now, on to next week!

Chillin with RJ 2

Classic

Good Times.

i + ! = ( ! )

Konami has just launched a new site containing the following image:

The general consensus is that the next non-Kojima Metal Gear Solid release will definitely launch on the 360 (green power button = 360) so to those who didn't feel like wasting money on a PS3 for an MGS title, you have a chance to play some MGS5 and whatever else Konami plans to push out under the franchise name. Whether you'll want to play an MGS game without Kojima behind the wheel is another question.

Konami definitely knows that they'll be able to sell more copies (read: make more money) by pushing the franchise onto multiple platforms, so this really doesn't suprise me, especially since Squeenix has already announced at E3 this year that FahFah Firteem will be available on the X360 (a huge supporter of Sony and, well, Japan). It makes you start to wonder about Sony's future now that most of it's exclusives are jumping ship.

chill 7

Official elephnat shirt REVEALED

With Intels new processors on the market (3.73GHz Core i7 Extreme Edition 965) it was only a matter of time for people to OC the hell out of 'em.Low and behold it was the Japanese who OC'ed it to a ridiculous amount. Take a guess.....I'll wait....lol, no its not 4.0GHz, its a whopping 5.5GHz(5510.09MHz). [duck] from japan paired the new sexy intel with ASUS' ROG Rampage II Extreme MoBo.Now its time for another foreign country to beat that.Let the competition begin

chill6

U.S. Army develops new Rifle

He almosts chops off his foot cuttin up some pumpkins, but in a bad-ass kinda way.


U.S. Army is testing out a new prototype AR-15 rifle based off of the "Lancer" from Gears.


Did I fool you? Just for a second? The cool peeps at Giantbomb came across a video showcasing a guy wearing ACU (I dunno if he really is in the army, I mean, he built a Lancer) showing off a real AR-15 with a chainsaw attatchment railed on the bottom, even has a scope. Imagine a line of Marines charging at you with chainsaw equipped rifles screaming like mad banshees.

Raffle time