Xbox Fanatics

Building on last year’s most successful poker title and the number one brand in poker, World Series of Poker®: Tournament of Champions takes a story-based approach. Take a seat next to Chris “Jesus” Ferguson as his protégé, a new professional poker player.

Test your skills against the world’s best poker players in premier Circuit Events to win your way to the Tournament of Champions. This invitation-only, winner-take-all tournament is held every year at the Rio Resort in Las Vegas, and there’s a seat at the table just waiting for you.

Face down more poker pros than ever before, including Joseph Hachem, the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion and Jennifer Tilly, the Academy Award® nominated actress and World Series of Poker bracelet holder.

• Face more pros than ever: Put your poker skills to the ultimate test against more than 20 of the world’s top poker players, the most poker pros every collected in a video game. Raise and bluff against Scotty Nguyen, Scott Fischman, Clonie Gowen, T.J. Cloutier, Antonio Esfandiari and many others. Expect stellar creative commentary every step of the way from the announcing team of Norman Chad and Lon McEachern.
• Learn from the best: Not just a sequel to last year’s top-selling poker video game, this is high-stakes poker all the way. Check your amateur status at the door and head out on the Circuit as a poker pro. You’re not alone, though, you’re under the watchful eye of “Jesus” Ferguson, winner of five WSOP bracelets. Ferguson will teach you the personal tricks and strategies that have made him one of the world’s foremost poker players. But in the end, you’re on your own, your experience, your knowledge and your talent on display at the world’s toughest poker stage—The World Series of Poker’s Tournament of Champions.
• Unlock winning tools: With successful wins, unlock valuable tools that help you bring a better game to the table. Unlock the ability to check the odds of hitting various hands at every stage of the deal, check the rank of your hand, and even check statistics and percentages of the hands your opponents are fishing for.
• Show your face: Put yourself in the game with the proprietary DigiMaskâ„¢ technology specifically licensed for this title. Use your Xbox 360â„¢ camera to map your likeness on your own in-game character. Will your poker face stand up to the pressure?
• Expand your game: Raise the stakes with Xbox Live® play: Host multi-table tourneys, read your opponents tells via camera footage, or even test your psychic skills by playing “Blind Man’s Bluff.”

Get more information HERE

The book by Mario Puzo and classic film by Paramount Pictures serve as inspiration for The Godfather, as gamers join the Corleone family and earn respect through loyalty and fear as they rise through the ranks to become Don in a living 1945-1955 New York. Gamers create their own mob character in the game, putting themselves into the action while reliving classic moments from the fiction and experiencing original missions alongside memorable characters from the film. After a life of small-time jobs and petty thefts the player is accepted into the Corleone family, America’s most famous criminal organization. It is up to the player to carry out orders, earn respect and make New York City their own. Featuring non-linear action-adventure gameplay, The Godfather offers gamers countless choices for solving the family’s problems with brutal violence, skillful diplomacy, or a cunning mixture of both. From mob hits and bank heists to drive-bys and extortion, step deep inside the world of The Godfather where intimidation and negotiation are your tickets to the top. Players use their powers of loyalty and fear to earn respect through interactions with characters in the world. Decisions made by the player in the game have lasting consequences, just as it was in the mob underworld featured in The Godfather fiction. James Caan, Robert Duvall, and the late Marlon Brando provided voice acting and likenesses for the game. [Electronic Arts]

The Godfather is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. So when Electronic Arts announced that it was making a game based on the license, though it made sense as a business venture, it also seemed like a risky move to adapt such a beloved and well-known story to a video game. That risk paid off with the PlayStation 2, PC, and Xbox versions of the game, and the game remains mostly untouched for the Xbox 360 release. There are several minor but noticeable enhancements and gameplay tweaks in the 360 version of the game, but, for the most part, this is the same game that was released six months earlier on other platforms. That said, The Godfather on the Xbox 360 is still a satisfying, lengthy action adventure game, and more importantly, it remains faithful to the classic film while also creating a compelling story of its own.

The Godfather puts you in the role of a peripheral character that didn’t appear in the film, but nevertheless played a critical role in the story. While the character is by no means an official write-in from Mario Puzo or Francis Ford Coppola, he meshes well with the rest of the story, a large part of which is taken directly from the film. When you start the game, you can create a mobster using customization tools similar to those found in EA Sports titles such as the Fight Night and Tiger Woods games. You then begin the game and watch your father get gunned down in the streets by rival mobsters. Flash forward a few years to the wedding scene from the opening of the film, and your mother is asking the Don to take you under his wing and offer you work. As we learned from the film, no Sicilian can refuse a request for a favor on his daughter’s wedding day, so the Don sends the imposing Luca Brasi to look after you and teach you how to be a mobster.

You start off as an unofficial enforcer for the Corleone family, which means your job is to muscle merchants into paying you protection money. You do this by simply walking into a store and talking to the owner. Usually the owners won’t simply give in, but you can intimidate them by smashing up their stores (or their faces) until they start to see things your way. In a new twist added for the Xbox 360 version of the game, sometimes the business owners will ask you to do a favor for them in exchange for a cut of the business. You might have to off a drug dealer who is scaring customers away from a bakery, or take out a troublemaker who refuses to leave a hotel. These favor missions bring some welcome variety to the extortion game, but they’re so simple and easy that they’ll hardly have any effect on the way you play the game. Once you take over a business, you get a payout each week, and there are dozens of shops you can shake down all throughout the five boroughs of New York. Some stores are fronts for illegal rackets, such as brothels, gambling dens, and illegitimate importing operations, and you can buy out these rackets to further increase your weekly income.

Extorting businesses and taking over rackets isn’t all there is to do, though. There are plenty of story missions that you’ll pick up as you play. Some missions are taken directly from the movie. You’ll have to drive the Don to the hospital after he’s gunned down in the street, travel to Hollywood to reenact the famous horse-head scene, plant the pistol for Michael Corleone to use to off Sallazzo in the diner, and more. Most of the scenes are very faithfully re-created for the game, and it’s great to be able to take part in some of the most memorable moments from the film, such as Sonny’s ambush at the toll plaza and the assassinations of the Dons intercut with scenes from the baptism of Michael Corleone’s niece. In fact, the best part of The Godfather is that it handles the source material respectfully and offers enough new content to feel like more than just a by-the-numbers adaptation of the movie.

Helping to keep the game faithfully tied to the movie are the accurate depictions of the Corleone family members. With the exception of Michael, all of the characters look and sound just like they did in the movie. The voice acting is mostly excellent, with the exception being some of the stock characters that populate the city beyond the Corleone compound. The music is taken from the movie, and while you’ll hear the familiar theme a few too many times throughout the game, the music adds a nice touch of authenticity.

Read the rest of this review at GAMESPOT

They also have some great in game pictures.

When it comes to online multiplayer games, no tactical series has been better than the Rainbow Six franchise. Rainbow Six 3 and its semi-sequel follow-up, Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow, were two of the best strategic action titles to ever hit online systems, so when we first heard that the core team’s first next-gen follow-up would hit this November for the Xbox 360, PC and launch of the PlayStation 3, we began planning our tactics immediately. Yeah, knowing anything about the maps might have helped quite a bit, but that didn’t stop up from dreaming….

Read the rest of the story at: IGN

IGN has some great video’s as well HERE

View pictures of the available Themes for NCAA Football 07 HERE

 

With Xbox 360â„¢, feast your eyes upon high-definition games with lifelike graphics and delight your ears with surround-sound audio. But the entertainment doesn’t stop there. Go online and interact with millions of fellow gamers, enjoy hi-tech multimedia experiences, and communicate with friends and family. Enjoy all that Xbox 360 has to offer; with Xbox Live®, chat with your friends while watching DVD movies or listening to music.

• Games: Play cutting-edge Xbox 360 games in high-definition, including an array of top-selling original Xbox® games (hard drive required).
• Xbox Live: Get on Xbox Live—the world’s premier online gaming and entertainment service with more than two million members worldwide.
• Multimedia: Watch DVDs (no remote required); rip music albums and create custom soundtracks (hard drive required); connect to a Windows® Media Center Edition 2005-based PC and stream movies and recorded content to your Xbox 360; view and share digital pictures; and stream music from your MP3 player.
• Communication: Chat with your friends via Xbox Live while playing games, enjoying your favorite entertainment, or just hanging out. In the future you’ll also get to see who you’re talking to with video chat (coming in 2006).
• Xbox Live Vision: Put a face to your gaming experience** and make the most out of your Xbox Live® Gold subscription with video chat and messaging.

Xbox 360 is the perfect centerpiece for your hi-tech living room.

Experience the Game
Xbox 360 is the ultimate focus of your home entertainment setup. It’s available in two configurations that give consumers a choice. Those wanting the complete entertainment experience need look no further than the Xbox 360. For a suggested price of $399, get a fully-loaded console complete with a hard rive (20GB), wireless controller, headset, HD AV cables and (for a limited time) an Xbox 360 Media Remote. Check out a list of the hottest games in development here.

Xbox Live
Chat with your friends, compete in online tournaments, and game together over the world’s premier online entertainment network. With Xbox Live, all these things are possible. With an Xbox Live Silver membership, instantly connect to the world’s premier online service free*.

With Xbox 360, your entertainment choices are nearly limitless.

Shop in Xbox Live Marketplace, download additional game content, watch preview videos, and more. Xbox Live Gold Membership gives you access to all of the free Silver member privileges, plus online multiplayer, TrueSkillâ„¢ matchmaking, and much, much more.

If you enjoy the lighter side of gaming, you’re sure to want to visit Xbox Live Arcade for some coin-op nostalgia and great casual games. Get all the details about the new Xbox Live for Xbox 360 here.

Multimedia
Xbox 360 is the perfect centerpiece for your hi-tech living room. Watch your DVD movies in glorious 480p from the get go. Use the wireless (or wired) Xbox 360 controller to navigate the onscreen menus, or use the Media Center Remote (sold separately) for point-and-click simplicity.

Xbox 360 shares photos, video files, and music with a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005-based PC. Additionally, you can view photos and listen to music with a standard Windows XP computer. With Xbox 360, your entertainment choices are nearly limitless. Not only can you play music CDs, but you can rip them to your Xbox 360 Hard Drive (20GB) and pump your tunes in-game.

As an added bonus, Xbox 360 connects to an online music database and automatically identifies and titles your music, so there’s no need to type in each song manually. You can also hook any compatible MP3 player to Xbox 360 and stream your tunes without manually transferring all that data.

Your digital photos and home movies? Simply stream them from your Media Center PC and view your vacation photos at the touch of a button.

Communication
If you’ve got broadband Internet, you’re ready to chat with everyone in the Xbox Live community. As an Xbox Live member you have the ability to chat with other members via the Xbox 360 Headset (included in the Xbox 360 package).

Whether you’re planning your teamwork strategy or simply catching up with an old friend, Xbox Live lets you talk for free while you’re watching a movie, playing a game, or just hanging out and listening to music.

It doesn’t matter if your friend is across the street, in another state, or on the other side of the world. With Xbox 360, you stay connected.

*Free Silver membership requires a broadband Internet connection and an Xbox 360 storage device (hard drive or memory unit). Customers living in Korea under the age of 14 and players who have previously been banned from Xbox Live are ineligible.

**Works only with games that support this feature.

Source: xbox.com

Wow – I have added xboxfanatic.com to the TechnoReality stable. What an amazing addition. We are HUGE xbox360 fans and look forward to putting up some really amazing content – VERY SOON!