(This article going up recently is purely coincidence) – Gibbo :)

Every year in Europe, Microsoft host their annual Xtival “festival”. For one weekend, Xbox Live Gold is free to anyone. Not only that but there are game competitions for some of the biggest titles around right now as well deals on films to watch and music videos from some of the “biggest” bands in the world. What could possibly be wrong with Xtival? Well, it’s not as great as it sounds.

For starters, it’s absolutely pointless, especially for people such as myself, who already have a gold account. But instead of just hypothesising, I’ll go through each area of the “festival”. First up we have the game competitions. Now, I looked at all of the games listed on the Xtival page and not one had any kind of legitimate prize, other than who has the biggest e-penis. I ask you, what makes these competitions any different from just playing on Xbox Live regularly? I don’t need a “competition” to goad me into playing some more The Beatles: Rock Band thank you. Not only that, but these competitions will only bring out the people who are really dedicated to these games. This means they’re probably going to be a lot better at the competition games than you (but more emotionally scared in life). It’s always fun to have a close game but it’s never fun to be constantly outmatched by someone else and you’ll end up just feeling miserable and worthless. You could say that you’re playing against serious people instead of your typical Xbox Live degenerates but in my opinion, there is no lesser of two evils in this situation. It’s either get annoyed at people just being dicks or get annoyed at people taking the game way too seriously.

Harmonix announced today that the Rock Band franchise library has now reached an insane 1,000 songs, a cumulative total of disc and downloadable content.  For a series to expand its library this quickly in just over 2 years of its debut is astonishing, regardless of your own personal feelings towards the series.  You can view the complete list of songs here on the Rock Band website.

Yep, it’s that time again, when we get pre-emptively excited for a new Star Wars game, only for the actual product to be flawed. This time around the setting is the Spike VGA, the serious video game awards show , where as part of the deal, they get a load of exclusives to show that us filthy peasants have to wait until the event to see. Today, we were given a teaser for a new Star Wars game. Now, in an ideal world, this would be an announcement that the fabled Star Wars Battlefront 3 would be back in production after Free Radical stopped working on it when they went down. Or maybe a 4th Rogue Squadron game, full of epic space battles in beautiful HD. We can hope, but it’ll probably be something that isn’t interesting. What do you reckon it’s going to be?

This week Image launches their massive cross over event and my favourite superhero detective goes monthly.  As always a the full list can be found here and hit the jump for the Media Whore Networks guide to the comics you should be picking up this week.

Stephen King on a Toronto preview reading of his newest novel, Under the Dome, announced to a surprised audience that he is considering a sequel to his 1977 story of psychics and psychopaths, The Shining.  Currently titled Doctor Sleep, the sequel will take place with traumatized Danny Torrance at age 40 working at a house for the terminally ill.  While he appears to be an orderly of sorts at the hospice, his true motivation is to aid them in the journey to the other side with his psychic abilities.

King himself says that the story is not a guarantee, as he hasn’t even put pen to paper yet (and is still prone to change his mind about the whole thing).  While its nice to see another chapter in Danny’s story, lets hope that King doesn’t butcher the whole thing.

[Source: Torontoist]

With all of the recent hub-bub over the Stephanie Meyer sparkly vampire series, the new movie…titled New Moon is proving to be critic proof in the theatres, read on to find out what our newest author though of the movie he was forced to attend with his wife. –XR

If there’s one genre of games I think is getting the shaft over and over again that made me fall in love with gaming in the first place, it would have to be the beat ‘em ups. These games were just notorious for eating a roll of quarters faster than a German in a Mentos commercial. The funniest thing is that many of us didn’t seem to mind doing so.

I wince when I think of all the cash that I’ve dumped into the arcades in my formative years playing these games, all of that cash that could have gone to something more worthwhile like delicious snack foods or maybe saved in my own pocket so I could afford more cartridges for my Sega Master System or my Nintendo. The biggest offence are the ones that I had beaten so many times before but I continued to play and play over and over again.

Tonight’s list are just those, the games where you too might remember playing through multiple times, but wouldn’t mind going back and doing it all again…there’s no better word to describe them than classic.

I take everything this man says as gospel. I especially love how he says about most of the British groups that everyone always praises as the best bands of all time, as being ‘just a band’. I’m sure someone out there would disagree with this, but fuck ‘em my blog, my rules.

Are you ready for a familiar face in a not so familiar setting?  For those of you who just made a loud mental”Huh?!” I will clear up what was just said a second ago.  Capcom has announced that if you check out your friendly source of gaming power a. k. a. GameStop and pre-order Lost Planet 2, you will get a little multiplayer bonus.  The first is not so awe-inspiring, that being a revolver added to your weapon cache.  Sure, it is nice for those up close encounters and getting a leg up on on-shot kills, but that doesn’t compare when you get to wander around in the skin of a legend.  A legend by the name of Albert Wesker.  If you are once again unleashing yet another loud mental “Huh?!”, then, first of all, shame on you!  Second, Mr. Wesker was the big bad man that made your life a living nightmare at the end of Resident Evil 5.  If you are curious just how comfortable big Al fits into such an alien setting, then check out the photos that are just a click away.

Every geeks favourite musical gets a one shot this week and the latest issue of the best superhero comic hits the shelves along with it. As always a full list of this weeks releases can be found here and hit the jump for the Media Whore Networks guide to the comics you should be picking up this week:

I was excited when Halo 3 ODST was initially announced. A new campaign with new characters and weapons where you’re not Master Chief again? Awesome! It was later revealed that ODST wouldn’t be available as DLC, only on disc. Okay, kind of a dick move but I can work with it. Then finally Microsoft revealed that the game would retail at the same price as any other brand new Xbox 360 game. By this point I’d lost interest. There was no way I was going to pay full price for what I saw (and still see) as an expansion pack. Luckily, thanks to being a master of the art of tightgittery, I finally ended up getting my hands on ODST after lending it from a friend while he lent Red Faction: Guerrilla. Now that I’ve had the game on my hands for nearly two weeks now and after playing as much as I can, it’s time for A Brit Late. Just a note before I go into the review though. I’m only reviewing the campaign disc for two reasons because a)My friend is still using the multiplayer disc regularly and b)It’s just Halo 3 multiplayer, which you can easily find out about elsewhere. Hit the jump for my review of ODST.

Now, how am I going to get all the way over there?

Who needs Lara Croft and her giant t…ombs?  I’m willing to put money down that more people would prefer Nathan Drake and that big dagger.  This game may not be completely spotless especially when the game is sporting a de-railed traing climbing, cliched trap disabling, run-and-gunning treasure hunter by the name of Nathan Drake.  But, if this game was spotless, then it wouldn’t be worth talking about.

Yes, I’m aware this news isn’t really “media related”, but its damn exciting.  NASA announced that incoming data from the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) that a recent mission successfully uncovered water near the south pole of the moon.  This may not seem like much now, but its a stepping stone to finding out if life truly can be sustained on the lunar surface.

And now, back to your regular scheduled programming.

[Source: NASA]

Yep, you knew this was coming in the end. It would be a crime to cap off this week’s Mornin Cup o’ British without mentioning The Beatles. I don’t think I need to say how they helped change the face of music forever throughout the 60s as well as everything else they caused. You could go on all day about The Beatles, but I won’t ramble on, I’ll just let you enjoy the music. There’s a lot of songs to choose from, but in the end I’ve gone with Helter Skelter from The White Album in 1967 for the rawness of the song. It’s even considered to be the first heavy metal song, although personally I think that’s a bit of a stretch. I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s British edition of Mornin Cup o’ Music and enjoy.

Well, I’ve only got two days left and I had a dilemma. I already knew which band I was leaving until Friday, but for today I was stuck between Queen and David Bowie. Luckily for me, they happened to make a song together, meaning today’s song is the duet of Under Pressure. Both are representative of their time. Epic rock ballads, epic hair, epic clothes, you get the drill. Of course, Queen and David Bowie are both very popular and for a good reason. Both had their fair share of hits and were able to adapt from the change of music from the 1970s to the 1980s as well producing some great music. There’s nothing specific I like about both, they just both made some damn good music.