Super-Secret-Special-Funtastic Preview of an Upcoming Something

It might be something about...
World of Goo!

UPDATE: Screw World of Goo (I have to beat it before I can write about it)! Check out the site soon for Audiosurf videos (handmade)!

Site Redesign

As you can see, I've just redesigned the site. The new site is a homage to one of my favorite games of all time, Warcraft 3. Thanks a lot to the creators of this template. I'll be adding some more stuff to the site soon. Read on!

Well now you can't take Rock Band seriously anymore

Some of next week's Rock Band DLC aren't your typical rock songs. In fact, some of the songs in this new pack have no rock (likely no real band either) in them. Behold, Spongebob Squarepants! Yeah, I know. Like you, I just threw up in my mouth. But seriously, who doesn't want "I Can't Keep My Eyes Off of You", "Best Day Ever", and of course, the sensation that's sweeping the nation, "Where's Gary?"! Man, oh man. The next thing you know, we'll be seeing Sesame Street in Rock Band Junior Edition.

-My sweet MS paint skills at work.

Source: http://www.1up.com/

Full Story: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173473

I Can Do Backflips Too

As you can see, I have started to incorporate news into my blog. Why? Because I like following the news despite some flaws in gaming news coverage (listen to Rebel FM podcast episode 12). I am not hoping to correct those flaws, in fact, I'm not concerned about every single tiny detail of the story. I'm just concerned about my reaction and the gaming community's reaction to the news. Most of my stories will come from 1up.com's news coverage, because I don't get out of the house much and am too lazy to fly across the country to PAX, E3, or GDC. I will credit the source in all of my blog posts and post a link to the full, in-depth story most of the time. My goal is for this site to have casual news coverage for people who care enough to read it, and links to the real story for the people who care for more complete news coverage. Now that I'm done telling you to go to a different site besides mine (don't), have a news-filled day folks (don't expect me to report on it)!

Square Enix Officially Aquires Eidos

If you wanted an epic Tomb Raider RPG, you'll be in heaven right now.

Source: www.1up.com
Full Story: www.1up.com

OnLive reveals a "Cloud Gaming" Service

At GDC this week, the company OnLive revealed a gaming service that streams games to your PC or Mac that run at 60 fps with no hiccups no matter your hardware specs. Personally, I am really psyched for this because I've sort of stopped gaming on my PC because all of the new games are too graphically intensive for my computer to handle. All you need is a 1.5 megabytes-per-second internet connection for standard definition (480p) and a 5.0 megabytes-per-second for HD (720p). The games run through OnLive's servers, so you could be playing them on just about anything. Many publishers have also jumped on the bandwagon, including Atari, Eidos, Codemasters, Electronic Arts, Epic, Take-Two, THQ, and Ubisoft. I'm sure that retailers are going to be a bit pissed about this, but this is definitely the future of gaming. Expect a beta sometime during the summer and a full launch around winter.

-Hopefully I'll be playing this in about a half a year.

Source: www.1up.com
Full Story: www.1up.com

Burnout Bikes

Why are the Burnout Paradise Bikes so awesome? Let me tell you. First of all, Burnout is an incredible game. I've had it for more than a month now, and logged over 30 hours into it. It is technically my first racing game, as I've not played much of any other racer. It is one of my favorite games of all time, and the epitome of an arcade racing game. Also, no game has better crashes. Sometimes, the slow-motion crashes can get tedious, but they're so awesomely destructive that the devil in me doesn't mind one bit. The speed in the game is also over the top. The first time I activated the boost on one of the fastest cars in the game, the Watson V16 Revenge, I couldn't comprehend how fast I was going. I had to squint at the screen to make sure there weren't any cars in the distance that I would hit in a matter of seconds.

The bikes are a different matter altogether. They're even faster than the cars (they would probably go into zero-g if they had boosts) and blow by traffic. The obvious drawback is that if you hit anything at any good speed, you will crash. Since the bikes are smaller, they don't have as much trouble navigating traffic. They way to unlock the two bikes in the game that are locked at the start is by playing through the 38 Burning Routes and Midnight Routes. These are races against the clock to get to one of the eight finish lines in the game world, along with some special checkpoint-style races. So far, I've completed about 20 events and they've been pretty easy. I can't wait to finish them. In fact, I'm going to stop this post right now and play some Burnout. That's all for now, folks!

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Flashbang, a blog about video games and some random off topic stuff that I'm interested in. I've been an avid gamer since a ripe ten years of age. I hope you'll find my writing insightful and maybe, just maybe, worth raving about (or maybe not). Anyway, that's all for now, folks.