Gearheads of War

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I needs my gearheads...

I needs my gearheads...
I needs my gearheads...

I needs my gearheads...

I needs my gearheads...

I needs my gearheads...
I needs my gearheads...I needs my gearheads...

I needs my gearheads...
I needs my gearheads...

I needs my gearheads...

Just thought I would post this again as it has been quite awhile. This pretty well somes up the fun of playing gears on a team comprised of Gearheads! This is a poem for the gearheads that I posted here quite a while ago. We were trying to get some fun stuff to put on a t-shirt... but anyway... here it is, an orginal Gearheadsofwar poem, and the best way I have of saying thank you to the GearHeads who have made my time here so great:

For those that really want to keep in touch and also just get good info and maybe phat loot (giveaways) I have a new home on the internet. The SideWinder Blog is run by me and is a nice way to share info from the gaming industry. Through some good colaboration with the gaming teams at Microsoft and others I know in the industry it should turn out pretty nice :) It is brand new so there isn't much content yet but that will all change soon when I do the official launch which will be soon. Right now I am working on lining up some interviews and getting some design work done on the blog. You can find it at www.SideWinderBlog.com You may be able to tell by the name that the folks at SideWinder are colaborating with me which means I get goodies to giveaway :) Also, you may have noticed you don't see me as much on my BluePhaze account anymore on Live.

Hey all this thread is to get everyone who wants to to post their contact info so we can continue to play together and enjoy the hell out of our shared passion for gaming, bacon and laughter...

Wow... Just Wow... can't beleive Gearheads is coming down... Hopefully things pick up for you Tyler

So I stood in line at the Midnight Launch for Borderlands at my local GameStop. Waiting for something that has been promised over and over again. A real Shooter/RPG that plays like a shooter. No dumbing down the weapons and basing your chances to hit an enemy on some hidden dice roll. But real honest to goodness accuracy controlling your fate! Let's face it, it has been tried before and had limited success. Usually due to companies focusing on making an RPG that looks and feels like a shooter, but really isn't. Fallout 3 is a perfect example of this. It looks great, it sounds great, but it feels "wrong" to those of us who are FPS/3PS players. You twitch reflexes are not so good if you can aim dead on at the enemy and the computer decides you didn't hit based on some abstract arcane calculation of your characters level + skill points + encumberance / Speed of a pidgeon * number of lord of the rings movies....

It completely breaks my willingness to continue a game that gives me a gun then ignores my ability to aim it with my mouse. Mass Effect is much closer, and the sequel is supposed to improve the combat even more. But I am here to talk about Borderlands... my savior...

So with so many titles getting moved to next year, I am interested in knowing what you are still planning on picking up this year. Honestly the games I am excited about are for the most part coming out this year (Diablo III, RAGE and Brink and now Blur being the exceptions). But for this year here is what I am looking at:

Hey there,

While I don't know you Nate, I figured I would help out a bit. XNA 3.1 is out and you get lots of goodies along with it. You most likely will end up doing yoru coding in C# but the libraries can be used in VB as well. The 3.1 update also brings along avatar support so you can start using avatars in your games as well. The nice part is if you want to do a multiplatform title, you have to do very little work in your code in order to get a game that works for both Windows and the 360. You can also develop for Zune, but with the release of the Zune HD, I would wait to see what is coming next for XNA as I am hoping  to see some Zune HD touchscreen support.

Hey all,

So figured I would see what everyone else is playing currently. I haven't been on the Xbox as much, today was my first round of Gears 2 in quite a while. I have been spending much more time playing PC games lately on my new gaming laptop. Scored an Asus G71GX-RX05 (Dual Core, 6GB RAM, Geforce GTX 260M W/ 1GB DDR3). This thing is a beast and runs Crysis at Gamer Settings with no problem.

So today is SideWinder Saturday. There will be two giveaways for those who play PC games. A Siidewinder X8 mouse, and a Sidewinder  X6 Keyboard. The mouse will be given away via twitter, Just Follow S1d3W1nd3r_24x7 and more details will come later today. The keyboard will be given away to someone who plays a Games for Windows Live title with me today, most likely it will be either Section 8 or Red Faction: Guerilla as they are the two newest titles (Batman doesn't count, no multiplayer). Anyway, figured I would share the love and give the Gearheads a crack at it as well. So here is the info to follow for giveaways:

Twitter: S1d3W1nd3r_24x7
GamerTag: S1d3W1nd3r 24x7

Man, it has been awhile. I haven't played or talked with you guys in quite some time. Been pretty crazy lately, my son (2.5 years old) had surgery on his feet last week, both of them! And my wife is 9.5 months pregnant. So any day now! I have been playing a lot of Gears 2 lately, and even though I am only lvl 42 still, I have been having more fun in the last two weeks then in the last 6 months combined. Look for me! GamerTag = BluePhaze v2

Also, I have taken on some new roles at MS. If I am not online using the BluePhaze v2 gamertag, you can usually find me logged in as S1d3W1nd3r 24x7
This is the account I use for some more official MS type stuff. So feel free to send a freind request. This friend has benifits! Follow the twitter account (S1d3W1nd3r_24x7) and you may also end up winning nice stuff! Tomorrow I will be giving away a Sidewinder Gaming mouse to one of my twitter followers... so you have 24 hours to get to it :)Spread the word, tell your friends :)

Anyway on the gaming front, I have been playing a lot of Fighters lately, anyone up for some SFIV or Marvel vs. Capcom 2?

Hope all is well with you guys. P.S. Gaming on Win 7 Ultimate X64 RTM. And yes, it is sexy...

Hey all,

I know been awhile... death in the family and working two jobs has kept me busy.

But I figured I would post on some things you may want to look out for now that the new patch is out... while I love the spirit of the patch, there are some items that are borked because of it...