I can't tell you guys how much fun we had in JohnE's room during this week's FFF.  We took a vote & the majority decided to stick with the default setup.  There weren't power weapons every five feet anymore.  Boomshot rockets, sniper shots, and torque arrows were no longer criss-crossing each other throughout the maps.  Instead, the stop and pop gameplay was evident throughout the night.  Battles for the power weapons required solid teamwork in order to be victorious.  The battles were going back and forth with the attitudes in check.  It was definitely positive for the majority of our FFF with tons of laughter, stories, and heckling.  The room was ecstatic about how great it was that the battles essentially boiled down to face-to-face confrontations instead of resorting to specialty weapons.  

I had several roadie run shottie kills which caused Machete to eventually start handing me my ass.  Unfortunately, Degrees was the primary victim of my shotgun.  Sorry bro, but that's how we "Bring da heat!"(according to the rallying cry of BAB). ;)  We all made a concentrated effort to keep the torque bow out of Machete's hands on every map that had that weapon, but he still had his share of bow kills regardless of what we did.  Machete started playing the theme music to "The Benny Hill Show" and I made the suggestion that it would be the perfect intro song for the "I Claim Shenanigans" podcast. Every time that Machete's team would win, he cued up that song. Hilarious! We were rolling with stories of our childhood because that music and show took us back to when we were kids. Really Doe was ridiculous and bulletproof as usual.  There was one game on Fuel Depot that Really Doe had 368 points (14 kills, 6 downs) & he was playing off-host.  Unfreaking believable.  3Suns handed all four of us our asses on one particular game in Canals.  I started calling out for him to end on a high note and call it a night.  LOL  As far as I'm concerned, Suns should make the shottie his primary weapon because his skill with it grows exponentially every week.  He was breaking bitches off!  LOL  Razor Hanzo joined us for the entire FFF and was forbidden by JohnE from grabbing anything that went boom.  I'll let you guys imagine why.  LOL  There was one game on Process when JohnE downed Really Doe and Razor was hopping over to curbstomp him.  I called it out to everyone that was spectating, "Watch Razor f*ck this up."  Sure enough, Doe started to rise & headshot Razor on the way up.  After that, he blasted JohnE in half and the room burst out in raucous laughter.  Razor was having a lot of success at what my Lan-crew calls "The Ricky." We had this one guy in our group that was completely heinous. All he did was aim with the shottie and if you were killed by him, it was excruciatingly painful. We guessed that if you're constantly aiming your shottie, you're bound to get a few kills. Razor had a lot of success throughout the night with "The Ricky" until he came up against Really Doe. ;) On one game on Bullet Marsh, JohnE got a no scope headshot on Suns & when we headed back to the lobby; JohnE claimed that it was luck.  As the map cycled, Suns mumbled out nonchalantly, "I wish I were that lucky."  The entire room burst out with laughter again.  Man, THIS is what FFFs are made of!  Getting back to our roots and taking a break from COD 4 & Halo 3 is definitely refreshing.  I guess that Gears may just have to be moved back to the backburner once again since GTA 4 is releasing in time for next week's FFF.  Yeah, shenanigans still exist, but when you're with good people; you make the most of your time.  BigScott and Robbins were part of the room during the early hours of FFF & broke off to either call it a night or join up in Papi's room.  Obijuan, Kenai, and Zoso joined up later on during the night after Papi's room shut down.  Obi was grenade tagging more than usual & Kenai got some ridiculous double downs with the Boomshot.  Zos got in at the very tail end of the night & dished out some pain before we signed off.  Absolutely everyone agreed that the default weapon set-up was the way to go in our future FFFs with friendly-fire on & 10 seconds down.  At one time, there were three Gearhead rooms going.  How did it go in Papi's room because we had an absolute blast in JohnE's!

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Ok gamers, it's time for our weekly game review to discuss recent releases as well as upcoming releases.  This week's release was a bit sparse.  I guess no one wanted to go up against Ubisoft's Rainbow Six:Vegas 2 or publishers are waiting to release their titles during mid-Spring.  I, personally, dug RB6:Vegas (the first one).  The second offering comes a year after the first one graced the 360 & eventually the PS3 (lots of bugs, framerate issues, texture tearing, etc- stay away from this console offering).  The 360-version was very action oriented & intense.  The improvements in the sequel seems in line with GRAW 2, just minor improvements.  Do you really want to spend $65 on minor improvements?  Retailers have a tendency to lower the price on Ubisoft's game about three months after its release.  Fry's Electronics has it on sale today for $40.  It is getting solid reviews since it's just minor changes.  The one thing that bugged me about the first game was that the graphics didn't transfer over on the MP.  Ubisoft did that so the framerate wouldn't take a hit.  This time around, Ubisoft has improved the MP graphics to mimic the single player game's.  I'll wait for it to go down in price since there's just too much out there right now.

Dark Sector is releasing next week on March 25th.  From the current hands-on previews from several game site & mags, it's chock full of bugs.  In fact, it was just revealed that the glaive (the game's uber weapon) was the result of a glitch from a thrown weapon.  It apparently got stuck in an enemy NPC & kept spewing out blood.  The developer thought it was cool & turned it into the game's signature weapon.  Talk about mistakes that became reality.  LOL  I was really looking forward to this game & from the early press play, it doesn't sound good.  I'll probably wind up skipping this one.

Well, I grabbed a copy of Army of Two.  I had a gift card for Gamestop so I only paid $30 actual cash.  JohnEmidnight also grabbed a copy as well since his son had it too.  The game has some cool things going, but it simply isn't innovative considering EA slammed Gears as being another run-of-the-mill shooter.  Well, they put their foot in their mouth because the "glass is half empty."  The single player campaign is extremely short (about 6 hours).  As Boxin has already stated, the supposed "last boss" was completely atrocious.  I really don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't played or intend to play it, but I want to save those HDTVs from being destroyed by thrown controllers.  ***SPOILER ALERT...***
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The final boss isn't a "boss" at all. The damn cutscene kills him for you!  Yes, that's right; it completely rips off the player by having a freaking cutscene finish the game for you.  What the hell?!?  I know that a lot of game mags & game sites slammed the game right before its intended release.  That's why EA postponed the first release to "work out the kinks."  Well, they did more deleting than fixing things.  EA left a lot of content that didn't fare well with the previewers on the cutting room floor.  Instead of fixing these aspects, they decided to remove them completely.  What a damn shame & missed opportunity.  There's also no jeep or tank vehicle combat in the retail copy for one thing (it's been removed due to the negative press which caused EA to rework "aspects" of it).   Based on how short the campaign was, I would have just left the darn parts in.  Although the MP is fun, especially with a good buddy; it's simply not deep enough after the fun's worn off.  If it didn't cost me $30, I would have been royally pissed.

Well, that's it Gearheads.  What's your take?  BTW: The patch for Bully is now available on XBL. It fixes the freezing glitches & framerate problems for older 360s (presumably launch units).

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