thirdworldgamer

LOL! (The artwork is cute and well done, too)

For gamers eagerly anticipating GTAIV in Asia, there's a promotion right now which can net you 500 Microsoft Points for FREE! If you already registered for this promotion but haven't been able to play on launch day, the good news is that the promo has been extended: http://www.xbox.com/zh-SG/gtaiv/ "UPDATE: Registration for the promo is closed but for those who have registered all you need to do now is play GTA IV on Xbox LIVE on launch day (now extended to before 5th May) to get a chance to win 500 Microsoft Points! The much awaited sequel for Grand Theft Auto is coming to Asian XBOX 360 owners on April 29, 2008. Currently Microsoft Singapore is running a promotion for XBOX 360 owners with gamer tags registered to Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore wherein you can obtain 500 MS points by simply playing GTA 4 on its launch date! What are you waiting for? Grab those points so you can download the upcoming exclusive DLC for GTA4 on the XBOX 360! Eligibility Requirements: This pr...

Good news for gamers in Asia thinking of buying an Xbox 360: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aPVnmYFcu28g&refer=japan " Microsoft Cuts Xbox 360 Prices in Four Asian Markets (Update1) By Chinmei Sung April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. cut prices of its Xbox 360 game console in four Asian markets to help fend off market-share declines against Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. The Redmond, Washington-based company cut estimated retail prices in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, Brenda Hsieh, a Microsoft spokeswoman in Taipei, said today. The price of a basic version will drop by 17 percent to NT$10,360 ($340) in Taiwan and by about 11 percent in Hong Kong effective today, Hsieh said. Prices will fall 5.1 percent to 369,000 won ($369) in Korea and by 20 percent to S$499 ($366) in Singapore, according to separate e-mailed statements. Global Xbox 360 shipments will probably fall 40 percent to 9.1 million units in the year ending in March 2009 after...

Thanks to everyone who joined the "What's your Gamertag" contest! Here are the winners : TiQal: manjungle US slapshockk d22th MystiqueQA mickeyfojas Tetragnome ickerson322 faraway 888 iyabayani Brain Challenge: Isidro Bukag AngelsCircle DrAner79 Ganfoll Daizzy kyuz08 poi5on85 spoon42 pataylagi For the winners, the Xbox Live Arcade promotional codes have been sent to your Xbox Live messaging inbox. Simply input the code via the 'Redeem Code' option on the Xbox Live Marketplace. You can also get the option to redeem the code after downloading the trial version of the game that you won. Simply download the trial version (of whichever game you won), then choose to buy the game....from that point, there should be an option to 'redeem code' which can then let you unlock the full version of the game for free, using the promo code provided.

We just got back from our little vacation and I'd like to repost that our "Third World Gamers - What's your Gamertag?" contest is ending soon. Over 18 XBLA promotional codes are up for grabs (which let you play the full version of either TiQaL or Brain Challenge for FREE). The contest will end on April 26, 2008 at 9PM so if you'd like to join in, post a comment in that section right now to join! Good luck :D

...so there won't be any updates to this blog until Friday or so. Until we meet again, enjoy gaming, everyone. Have you joined our "Third World Gamers, What's your Gamertag" competition? Click here to participate and get a chance to win an Xbox Live Arcade game for FREE! We've got over 18 codes up for grabs thanks to Xbox Singapore's Asia Bloggers program. Also, join the World Cyber Games 2008! Are you intimidated that you might end up facing some super hardcore player that's mastered Through the Fire and Flames on Expert difficulty in Guitar Hero III? Don't be! Just join in for the fun of it. Meet up with other console gamers and together lets show WCG Philippines that interest does exist for game console-based competitions. For more information, check this link here or go directly to the site for WCG Philippines, http://www.esports.ph . Pinoyxbox also has an ongoing thread about the competition in this link.

From the interview of GamEX magazine in their latest issue (posted below) with Namco Bandai staff regarding Tekken 6. I just got around to reading it this afternoon, and I was quite surprised to read this tidbit. In the introduction it says: "The GamEX staff got an exclusive interview with Japan's Bandai-Namco Tekken Team, Haruki Suzaki, project director for Tekken 5 DR and Ryuichi Enomoto, International Sales Representative whent they visited the Philippines as special guests of Quantum Amusement Corp.'s Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection Tournament." Later in the interview: "GamEX: Wow! 2 years (laughs). Will it be exclusive for the Playstation 3 console? Suzaki: No, it hasn't been determined yet as of the moment , but we are developing it for Playstation 3 so you can play it. GamEX: Will Tekken 6 be available in other consoles like the Xbox 360? Ryuichi: As of the moment we have no idea" So is Tekken 6 coming to the Xbox 360? Maybe.

A few months ago we wrote up some reviews for GamEX magazine. I thought that PSICOM stopped printing the mag, but apparently that's not true, because I found the latest issue in Power Books in SM Megamall yesterday: Earlier I posted about the latest issue of Playground Magazine with the Pinoyxbox community feature. That said, I thought both magazines were quite good, with GamEX getting props for the layout and game pictures, while Playground getting props for the game articles. Both magazines are out in newsstands now, and they're quite affordable (below PHP 100 for each magazine, compared to international game magazines like EGM which cost more than PHP 500 sometimes!). Reading them is a great way to stay in touch with the local gaming scene. While the scene in the Philippines isn't as big or advanced as it is in first world countries, there is interest in console games and I think a good number of people in the Philippines do enjoy this past time a lot. The focus on loca...

The latest issue of Playground Magazine (Issue # 3) features an interview with the moderators of the Pinoyxbox Community . It also has a version of Third World Gamer's Lost Odyssey review. Pick up a copy in local newsstands in the Philippines today!

NOTE: This is my long reaction piece over something I've read over the Internet that Filipinos are more inclined to Japanese games compared to Western ones. One of the banner cries of several console gaming advocates in the Philippines are Japanese games. Some biases in favor of Nintendo and Sony stem from the concept that as Japanese consoles, they are most likely to have MORE Japanese games. Some people here in the Philippines, seem to think that console gaming revolves around Japanese games. And I simply beg to differ. Now before anything else, this same bias for Japanese made games also has its western game counterpart but for the purpose of my 'rant' on how Filipino's are Japanese game centric, I will focus more on the Japanese game bias. Like most of the gamers from my generation (80's – 90's), Japanese games served as our introduction to the wonderful world of gaming. It started with the 'Game And Watch' which lead all the way to the Super Family ...

Here's an update on the World Cyber Games (WCG) / Asian Cyber Games (ACG) for 2008. For console gaming, the Philippine team will be looking for players on the Xbox 360 platform and these are the games: World Cyber Games 2008 (Germany) Guitar Hero III Asian Cyber Games 2008 (Singapore) Guitar Hero III Virtua Fighter 5 WCG Philippines will be getting 2 players for Guitar Hero III (one for WCG, another one for ACG), and 1 player for Virtua Fighter 5 (ACG). For Guitar Hero III they will have a competition wherein the first place winner goes to the WCG (Germany), while the 2nd runner up goes to ACG (Singapore). For Virtua Fighter 5 there will be a competition to find the best player to send for the ACG. There are more details on this subject over on the official site for WCG Philippines. There is an announcement forum thread here with even more details (including the PC games that will be part of the competition). Pinoyxbox also has a forum thread on the subject of the WCG / ACG. If...

Third World Gamers, what's your Xbox Live Gamertag? Tell us and you could win a promotional token to download an XBOX LIVE ARCADE GAME for free! Up for grabs are 18 Xbox Live Arcade Promotional Codes which let you download either TiQal or Brain Challenge for FREE! [Note: 9 codes are for TiQaL while the other 9 are for Brain Training] Now that's an awful lot of promotional codes, which gives everyone a really good chance of winning! All you have to do is post your XBOX LIVE GAMERTAG in the comments section here on Third World Gamer. We'll then pick 18 gamertags at random , then send the XBLA promo code via a message on Xbox Live. Deadline for entries is April 26, 2008, 9:00:00 PM Philippine Time . We gave this a long deadline so everyone can have a good chance to find out about this and join. Just post your gamertag in the comments section; there aren't any contest rules, really, this isn't one of those contests where you have to be from one of the fifty state...

Do you believe in fate? A couple of days ago, I had this weird dream wherein I was playing Rockband with my brother and he was whining since he kept on resurrecting me since I was failing with the guitar. The dream was so vivid that the moment I woke up, I actually thought of getting out of bed just to play the game. Unfortunately, Rockband is not available in Asia with no release date given. A few months ago EA Singapore had a countdown in their official site for Rockband which was supposed to end sometime in March but now that clock has been reset and it isn't about to end anytime soon. Fellow XBOX 360 gamers from Singapore narrate that most stores in SG doesn't seem to have information regarding Rockband with rumors that they will be selling the game but not the instruments?!? It is with that small dream that our quest for Rockband has reached its peak. Ever since we played the game in the PinoyXBOX Grand EB 2007, we wanted to have one for ourselves. Me and my husband love...

Here's video from the Pinoy Gamers episode this week where the show covered the PinoyXbox/Pinoy-N Grand EB and Christmas Party:

http://kotaku.com/376625/make-uwe-boll-disappear-yeah-riiiiight "Poor Uwe Boll. Beat up some game nerds and making some shitty movies and suddenly everyone hates your guts. What gives?! Some folks dislike Uwe so much that they've created an online petition hoping to do what online petitions typically do: Nothing. That, or convince Dr. Boll to stop making crappy movies. Ha! From an interview with website FEARnet: "Are you aware that there is a petition online, signed by 18,000 people, requesting that you stop making movies? Uwe Boll: Yeah, I know that. 18,000 is not enough to convince me. How many would it take? Uwe Boll: One million. Now we have a new goal." If Uwe Boll did not exist, someone would have to invent him. Boll Interview [FEARnet via /Film Thanks, Jonathan!]" So there you have it, we gamers can *probably* get Uwe Boll out of the movie business forever. Yep, online petitions never work. But this is actually for a GOOD CAUSE! lol. I signed. What's...

On Famitsu it's been reported that new DLC is coming out for Lost Odyssey for 400 MS points. By the way, keep in mind that the DLC for Lost Odyssey hasn't been released for the US; I personally don't know why that is, however, the DLC is out for the Singapore marketplace. So if you had MS points and was wondering what region to put it in, I recommend Singapore over the USA for getting the Lost Odyssey downloadable content. The Memory Lamp DLC is already out but I couldn't buy it because my points are all in my US Gamertag! So once this new DLC hits Singapore, I'm loading my points to my SG account instead of my US one. Here's the Famitsu article about this (in Japanese): http://www.famitsu.com/game/news/1214549_1124.html?ref=rss And some pics:

Rock Band is published by Electronic Arts. That company puts region locking on all their Xbox 360 games, probably to ensure that their global distributors get an even share of revenues. Because of this, we aren't able to buy Rock Band for the Xbox 360 because our 360 is an Asian version console (only NTSC-J games work on it, or Region-free games). Rock Band is already available locally in Data Blitz stores here in the Philippines; we just can't buy it because it won't work on our 360. =( We're actually considering buying a Playstation 3 just for Rock Band, because the PS3 doesn't have any region locking built in (so it will play games from any region, apparently). The only time I ever got to try this game was during Pinoyxbox's Grand EB last year. It's a great game; it's just unfortunate that it's in the hands of such an evil publisher. (google " Take Two Interactive EA Hostile Takeover" and you'll see what I mean) It's really rea...

This might explain why Sony Fanboys are insane. Sony promotes its brand image and its Playstation product like this most of the time. It's just a video game console, Sony; why not just market it as that? What's with the false gods and the Nazi flags? Do people really worship their game consoles like this? Oh, wait....some of them do. That said, gaming is just a hobby , it's a fun one but it isn't the end all and be all of everything, as these ads seem to portray.

A recent invasion on the Pinoyxbox forums from Sony fanboys: http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b34/scytherage/trolling1.jpg http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b34/scytherage/trolling2.jpg http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b34/scytherage/trolling3.jpg http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b34/scytherage/trolling4.jpg http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b34/scytherage/trolling5.jpg http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b34/scytherage/trolling6.jpg Some of the trolling posts are written in Filipino, my native language. Yes, the "Sony Fanboy" trolling phenomenon isn't something that's limited to gamers from the First World. Even gamers from the Third World do it too. And let me tell the people from outside the Philippines something that's even more fascinating: Some of these Sony die hards don't even OWN a Playstation 3! They're only defending the PS3 because their previous system was a Playstation 2, and most of them had shelves upon shelves of PIRATED Playstation 2 ga...

RATING: Go buy it, just don't expect an awesome story and enjoy it for what it is. I've been meaning to write a review for DMC4 for the Xbox 360 for a while now. For the time that I played it (before lending it off to my brother), I did enjoy the game, and played it for quite a while. I played starting directly in DEVIL HUNTER mode (I skipped Human mode entirely) then I finished the SON OF SPARDA mode a few days afterwards. Finishing SOS mode took about a week because I would intersperse playing SOS with the 'Bloody Palace' mode that gets unlocked after beating the game once. The thing that stood out for me the most about Devil May Cry 4 is the gameplay. At Devil Hunter mode, learning how to mix up attacks and combos is pretty important, especially in later levels when faced with tougher enemies like Angelos (who can block your attacks quite easily). The game has a system which lets you buy new abilities by earning Proud Souls. You get these after each level. You can a...