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Been a while since we have had a contest at The ANGRY Pixel. We got our hands on some spare code for Call of Duty: World at War map pack for the Xbox 360 which we would like to give away to you. But of course we can’t make it a simple mail-us-and-enter-sweepstakes kind of a contest as well; what fun is it then? So while keeping it simple, we have decided to ensure that at least a deserving guy gets to win the code.
If you think you should be the one getting the free code for World at War map pack, then just send us a screenshot of your stats page showing your kills and deaths. Hit jump to see an example of what your screenshot should look like. Of course we do not need to tell you that the stat page is available at the Call of Duty website. Email your entries to contest @ theangrypixel . com (without the spaces) with the subject line, “WAW Map Pack”.
Many thanks to Microsoft India for the code.
And the fight is finished! We’ve thought about this long and hard and we’ve finally decided upon the winners of our Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack contest, which entitles two lucky blokes to download the upcoming Mythic Map Pack for Halo 3 (costing 800 Microsoft Points) for the awesome price of free! We received well over fifty entries for just two codes, and we selected these two images because, well, they were just so damn artistic, something that we feel wouldn’t be out of place even on the back of the Halo 3 box! Without further ado, I give you your winners, Brett Sams (GT: A pIastic bag) and Paul Hoang (GT: jEEborz). Take it away, guys!
Who wants some?
After having finished playing The Lost and Damned and working to get a review out, there I was, thinking about what our next contest should be post-Killzone 2 and our upcoming Street Fighter IV announcement. Rummaging through HBO, we decided that we’d hit up our contacts at Microsoft India to see if we could do a Halo Wars contest, with us giving out a couple of copies of Halo Wars and codes for the Halo 3 Mythic Pack, which you’d have gotten if you swiped your charge card pfhor the Halo Wars Collector’s Edition.
So imagine my surprise when I get an email late afternoon with two codes pfhor the Mythic map pack to give away to our readers. After the initial shock and spending 20 minutes fighting a sudden selfish desire to keep one of them pfhor myself, we now have two codes to give away to our “dear” readers. (Gah!) Quite obviously, we’ve never had the habit of just throwing our prizes away, so yeah, you’ll have to work your fat ass pfhor your codes, typical TAP style. That’s right, no soap-box / toothpaste commercial inspired contests, no “figure out the uber-secret message in bold in our earlier reviews” and most definitely, none of those “be the first to email us and tell us you want to have our babies.” Nuh-uh!
When it released, Braid blew the entire world away with its art and some of the most amazing, innovative gameplay mechanics anyone had ever seen. And the fact that it snuggled comfortably into the Microsoft Xbox 360 exclusive stable all this time didn’t make the PC gamers all too happy, especially considering the PC version kept getting pushed back with each passing day.
Not anymore. According to Stardock software, the PC version of Braid is coming to their Impulse digital distribution platform come March 31, 2009! According to the pre-orders page on the ImpulseDriven site, the game will cost $19.95, almost $5 more than the Xbox LIVE Arcade version does, which should probably start another rant from the PC camp, but hey, at least you didn’t have to invest in a console, right?
With just a couple of days more for us to enjoy Ensemble’s swan song, Halo Wars, Microsoft has released the next dev diary, or ViDoc as Bungie christened them, to get the hype train rolling for the next game set in the Haloverse. After introducing us to the Spartans last time around, the new diary focuses on how the team focused on developing a strategy game that was exclusive to the consoles, including working with the vast amounts of material available in the Halo universe, getting the controls just right for “consolification” and meeting all the expectations of the fans and (former) skeptics such as myself.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice! And if that fails, an inexpensive GPS, Google Maps and front-row tickets could probably do wonders. But how do you get to Jaspreet Bindra, the man holding all the strings to Microsoft India’s Entertainment & Devices Division? Well, after trying for over four months through the usual PR channels, we finally decided to use my Xbox MVP status to try and spend some quality time with the newly appointed Country Manager and ask some really hard hitting questions that were just burning to be answered. So, last Wednesday, with a lot of help from the absolutely adorable Abhishek Kant – Community Program Manager for Microsoft India – we managed to burn up the telephone wires for the better part of an hour with the warm and very approachable Jaspreet and the Assistant Product Manager for the Xbox 360 – Sanjoy John, getting down to brass tacks about the Xbox 360 and the Games for Windows platforms in India.
We were originally supposed to schedule a video interview with him sometime next week, but with Vijay and Reggie rowing the slave galleon pretty hard next week (not to mention how every spare moment in Vijay’s life is now spent playing Gollum And Its Precious with his Leader Class Bulkhead action figure), we decided we’ll just roll with what we have for now and do the video interview when the stars are aligned just right. One note about the following interview, when you see text marked out in italics like this, that’s just me inserting my thoughts on what’s being said or just being the kooky klass klown. Consider yourself warned.
While Microsoft has managed to wow one and all with the all new NXE update, one of its features is still wallowing in the good old days of LIVE on the original Xbox: the 100 friend limit. While everything on Xbox LIVE has jumped on the current-gen bandwagon, we are still stuck with a friend list limit that has us constantly juggling around friend requests.
Thankfully, Xbox director, Aaron Greenberg has confirmed to Joystiq that they are definitely looking into it and hopefully, we will soon see an increase in the friend list limit. While refusing to commit any dates, he goes on to explain that how the friend list limit was designed for the older Xbox games but now, by being integrated with Xbox LIVE, it will be easier to implement changes.
For now, we will have to be content with micro-managing our friend list.
Just when we were about to open our wallets and reach out for the credit card!
A quick look at our Steam account gave us this sweet piece of news, which comes right around the exact same time Xbox 360 owners (except for the sad saps in Japan) will be able to join in and try to answer the lifelong question of what would happen to you in case of a zombie apocalypse. Now that the demo is out and open for all on the PC and Xbox 360, fire up your Steam accounts and get that demo ASAP, in case you have unlucky, stupid or broke enough to not get the pre-purchase and the early demo access.
You need around 3.2 GB of free space for the demo which seems to be quite on the heavier side. Time for our so-called broadband lines to choke on this. See you tomorrow evening in co-op. Me, I’m just looking for a rusty hacksaw or a zombie-on-a-diet to get rid of my ugly, useless thumbs.
So who hasn’t been excited about the New Xbox Experience (NXE) coming November 19? With a spiffy new interface, animated avatar support, Live Party with up to 8 friends, Marketplace on the web, Netflix Instant Queue streaming and a whole truckload of features including the ability to copy our games to the HDD and finally, 16:10 widescreen support – the NXE is pretty much the closest an Xbox 360 aficionado can get to the Home / Mii experience without investing in hardware the other side of the fence.
But for all those people who just can’t really wait until the software update rolls out worldwide, Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson – who had already teased a preview of the NXE for select readers in his podcast last week – has finally announced the New Xbox Experience (NXE) Preview Program. For all those that can’t figure it out for themselves, yes, you now have a chance to get your dirty paws on the NXE almost 20 days before the rest of the world!
All you’ve got to do to earn your chance to join the preview is to head on over to Major Nelson’s blog for the invitation code, which should lead you straight to Microsoft Connect here to take a little survey, where you can enter your Xbox 360’s Console ID (available under the System Info panel under Console Settings on the System blade) and if you manage to get yourself in, you should get your confirmation email on the 29th, followed by a spanking new dashboard when you sign on to Xbox LIVE this October 30.
For those of you wondering about what exactly would be there in the preview, considering features such as Primetime were recently scrapped for inclusion in a later update, here’s a partial list. A more complete list, along with a detailed FAQ should be going up on Major Nelson’s blog real soon. (more…)
Now this is something so out of the blue that we were left scratching our heads for a while. With the new Xbox Experience just around the corner, everyone is excited about checking out the new look and feel of the Xbox 360 dashboard, save for those without a HDD or a memory unit. As it turns out now, christmas seems to have come early with Microsoft playing Santa. In a surprising move, Microsoft has announced that they will be providing either a refurbished 20Gb HDD for USD 19.99 or a free a 512Mb memory card. Yup! You heard it right!! Free 512Mb memory card. What do you need to do to get one, you ask?