McWilliams’ World

Wal-Mart Sales ‘Worst in 27 Years’…

Funny…my wife shops there CONSTANTLY! How can this be possible?!

(ha ha ha, just kidding spanky-buns!)

About freekin’ time!

Major Nelson has the details.

I’ve been waiting for this a while now. It was to be release a few weeks back but apparently the initial download caused some gamers to loose or corrupt save files. So they yanked it a retooled it.

Finally available, you’ll be able to play as villains: Doom, Magneto, Sabertooth, and Venom. As heroes you can play as: Hulk (yeah!!!), Cyclops, Nighcrawler, and Hawkeye.

The packs come separately for 500 MS Points each or in a money saving double pack for 800 MS Points (about $10). I’ll be getting the double pack.

Seeing that I won’t be downloading any Guitar Hero 2 tracks any time soon, this is a no brainer of a purchase for me.

Team Xbox reports that those that signed up shortly after seeing the Halo 3 commercial will soon know if they’re in. Hopefully I’m one of them.

UPDATE

Email I recieved today:

Greetings Halo® Nation and thanks for your interest in participating in the Halo 3 multiplayer public beta.

Phase one registration is now closed. If you have been selected to participate, you will receive an email notification within the next two days.

For those of you that didn’t make it in – fret not as this phase one was just the first of three ways to secure entry into the Halo 3 multiplayer public beta. The next two paths of entry are:

Qualifying over Xbox Live® via the “Rule of Three” program in early February
Purchasing marked packages of the upcoming game CrackdownTM, which hits store shelves in North America on Feb. 20
To find out more about these opportunities visit halo3.com for detailed information.

We hope this provides additional clarity on this phase of entry into the Halo 3 multiplayer public beta. See you online!

We’ll see in the next two days!

Update 11/25/07:

It doesn’t appear like I was accepted into the beta. Oh well. I just checked out the Crackdown demo and after about 10min of playing, I deleted it. Not my cup-of-tea. Not worth buying to get into a beta. Oh well…I’ll just wait patiently for Halo 3 and hope that it is a truely next-gen successor – I’m talkin’ cooler than GRAW or Gears. In the mean time, I’ll be soon rockin’ out on Guitar Hero 2!

Source: MotorStorm pushes PS3 to the max

I didn’t read the whole article…as I can’t get to it at work, but the little text I did read doesn’t bode well for any PS3 fan.

Speaking to Edge Online, Evolution Studios has revealed that its PlayStation 3 off road racer pushes Sony’s next-gen system to the max.

Well, that’s pretty sad. Not even 3 months out of the starting gates and Sony’s new box is all maxed out. The developers can’t make the system do any more than what they’ve already done. That’s as good as it’s going to get apparently. So much for, “We’ve only tapped half of the PS3′s potential.” I hope you enjoy your limited $500/$600 game system.

From what I understand, MotorStorm won’t even support splitscreen multi-player becuase it’s too taxing. From what I’ve seen of most reviews, it’s a fairly barren arcade racer. Plus, they can’t run the game in Sony’s “True HD”, a.k.a. 1080p. It has to run at 720p at best. Boo hoo. So much for those big “the next-generation doesn’t start till we say so” promises. Here’s a little clue Sony and all you PS fans…the next generation started over a year ago – you’re late to the party. So, it appears to me that all Sony wanted out of the PS3 is to push Blu-ray – and even that’s not doing well either.

Just do us all a favor and get a 360, which as plenty of headroom left in it, a ton of games for it, a killer on-line service, a great community, and a slew of new and emerging features…you can’t go wrong.

Okay, I knew about this for a while now but seeing this article just jogged my memory.

One thing I’d love to see in Graw 2 would be live actors in the cross com. I immediately thought that playing through the first GRAW. Most of the cross com updates (news, intel, etc) is all scripted, why not have live actors? It’d only bring another level of realism to the game.

I’d also like to see more destructible environments. Nothing I hate more than splattering gun fire at windows and nothing happens. Come on! I want stuff to explode!

Thoughts?

Only 4 days left. Get in while the getting’s good!

NASA’s campaign to send the nom de plumes of people from around the world into the heart of the asteroid belt ends Sat., Nov. 4.

…

“This campaign will allow people from around the world to become directly involved with Dawn, and through that, become familiar with the mission’s science,” said University of California Los Angeles professor Dr. Chris Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator.

The Dawn mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of California Los Angeles is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the Dawn spacecraft. For information about NASA and other space flight missions on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ .

Cool stuff! I signed up the whole family and printed the little certificate.

After I read this post by Nick, my heart nearly dropped out of my chest. Nick and his young son (7) were in a hit-and-run car accident while brining his son home from karate practice. Although Nick and his son are okay, the story is fairly scary.

Although I don’t know Nick personally, I consider him an acquaintance. I know of Nick through his TopStyle CSS editor – an indispensable tool I’ve used for the last 4 years or so. In that time I’ve been a reader of his blog and all his happenings.

His post jolted me a bit. So I hope you can take a brief moment and send up a prayer for Nick, his son, and his family.

Source Article at RewiredMind.com

Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360 would be sweet! I saw some kids play guitar hero at Wal-Mart a few weeks back on the PS2 and it looked like a blast. I would love to see this come out for the Xbox but after looking over their forums it seemed like the publishers (and fans) were set on keeping it a Playstation exclusive; until I read this little juicy rumor.

Think of the implications. You could do dueling solos via Xbox Live; have an audience filled with Xbox Live members to see you put on a show or challenge you to play a certain song; or do a guitar hero contest via Xbox live in a similar fashion; download new song packs via Xbox Live Marketplace; the possibilities are endless.

Come on Redoctane! Make it happen!