Tuesday, October 31, 2006

360 overhaul and excitement, Saint's pimped, and Saw that.

Well if you haven't turned on your 360 today (shame on you...) when you do you'll be greeted with the Fall dashboard update. It started going live about 2 AM this morning, and adds oodles of new features with the biggest being support for the new accessories (wireless headset, HD-DVD drive, wireless wheel, etc.) and some tweaks here & there for the dashboard. We're almost to November and there are lots of new releases headed out in the next couple months. I'm really looking forward to F.E.A.R. next week, Gears of War the week after that, and other games like Call of Duty 3, Rainbow Six Vegas, and Viva Pinata that I'm interested to see but, I know there's not enough time to play them all. There was a Halo 3 theme posted on the marketplace (150 MSPoints), but I gather it's a free download if you purchase the Halo faceplate that should be in stores tomorrow. I wonder if the other faceplates (Viva Pinata, Forza 2) will have similar offers?

Saint's Row is finally getting a patch (that was mentioned 2 months ago right after the game came out.) which I think mainly fixes multiplayer, and minor problems in single player game play. Just like the Fall dashboard update, when you stick SR in the 360 it will prompt you for the update download.

I finally got around to watching Saw II last week on DVD (the uncut edition was released) for the first time. Luckily it coincided with the theatrical release of Saw III so I went to see it Thursday night when the projectionist was screening it. Part three picks up immediately where part two leaves off so watching them in succession was pretty cool, although overall part three was good it did annoy me a little. It tries to tie all of the movies together by reshowing parts of the first one, and the second (sometimes from different perspectives to it's benefit). Maybe it was because I had just watched the second one an hour earlier (if it had been a year like between the theatrical releases it may have not bothered me so much.) I felt like I was having to re-watch stuff I didn't want to see again. I think this all stems from Back to the Future II while I love the series, part II was the weakest link. I was so annoyed watching 30 minutes of the original over again that it placed part II firmly below either the original or part III in my mind. Saw III overall wasn't as good as either the first or the second, but it's a necessary viewing to get the overall story and continuity of the series. I'll give it ** 1/2 stars.

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