Confessions of an Old School Gamer

For some time now, I have been growing more and more frustrated with the WL Spaces blogging system.  With “Confessions of an Old School Gamer” growing more and more popular over the past year, I made the decision to move CoaOSG to my own domain.

The move means I can finally present a site that is visually welcoming to visitors, yet tailored around my blogging style.

As such, all new news posts, articles, and reviews will now be posted at “Old School Gamer.”

I want to thank you all for providing the inspiration to share my gaming opinions, and hope that you will join me on my new site.

Subscribe to the Old School Gamer RSS feed.

• Grand Theft Auto IV - The Lost and Damned: 1600 MS Points.
• Grand Theft Auto IV - The Lost and Damned Avatar Clothes: Free.
• Grabbed by the Ghoulies: 1200 MS Points.

Microsoft have announced that the demo for the upcoming game Halo Wars, has broken previously set download records.  Released on February 5th, it smashed records for the most downloads in one day.

The Halo Wars demo was downloaded more than 2 million times, in the first 5 days of becoming available to XBL Gold level members.

Source.

• Scene It? Box Office Smash! – Award Winners Pack: 560 MS Points.  Add this to your download queue.
• Lips – My Happy Ending: 160 MS Points. Add this to your download queue.
• Lips – Buttons: 160 MS Points. Add this to your download queue.
• Lips – Magic: 160 MS Points.  Add this to your download queue.

• Guitar Hero World Tour - Acoustic Track Pack: 440 MS Points.  Individual tracks, ("Drive" by Incubus, "New Slang" by The Shins, and "Wonderwall" by Ryan Adams), are available for 160 MS Points each.  View all Rock Band World Tour content.

Atheistium has posted The Twit-Debate, the first in a series of new features to her site.  Posing a question on her Twitter account, Atheistium gauges the response from the community and responds in force.

Today Atheistium posed this wonderful question: -

Do you feel the party system on NXE has removed the social aspect of playing online?

Check out the numerous responses, including mine, here.

• Minesweeper Flags: 400 MS Points. Add this to your download queue.
• 3 on 3 NHL Arcade: 800 MS Points. Add this to your download queue.
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X Demo: Free. Add this to your download queue.
• Various Avatar Clothes: Free.
• Rock Band - The Fratellis Pack 01: 440 MS Points. Individual tracks ("Flathead," "Henrietta," and "Creepin' Up the Backstairs") are available for 160 MS Points each. View all Rock Band content.

A new episode of The Guild recently hit the marketplace.  As with all episodes so far, it's free to download.

Season 2, Episode 11 can be added to your download queue here.

Don't forget, Season 1 is also available for free.

Ubisoft have been answering questions posed by the community, in regards to their upcoming game H.A.W.X.

The latest update, posted earlier, deals with Boss battles (or lack of), as well as stealth capabilities.  However, more importantly is the announcement that H.A.W.X. will be packaged as two separate SKUs; one (possibly) with some sort of flight stick, one without.

For more information, head over to the official Community Q&A Thread.

According to Joystiq, Epic are set to change the face of Gears of War 2 online forever.  GoW 2 multiplayer currently relies on the TrueSkill matchmaking system, however a new proposal outlines ditching TrueSkill in favour of a ranking system (similar to that of Call of Duty 4).

In a post on the official forums, Rod Gergusson discussed the new system: -

What if, instead of skill rank, we instead showed your experience level. You would gain experience through your individual performance in Public multiplayer matches - the higher your score at the end, the more experience you acquire. Of course the experience gained across the different match types would be balanced so you couldn't just grind on the respawning game types to try and level faster. The experience requirements for each level would grow with each level gained (like a typical RPG) and we'd have 99 levels of experience for you to show off your leetness.