A Day in the Life of Sam Fisher
It was Saturday March 27th, 2010, the temperature was 5 degrees and the sun was shining bright. 40 teams, each consisting of 2 people, arrived on the Canadian National Exhibition grounds, in Toronto, to report for the Inside Splinter Cell Conviction Challenge.
After we registered for the event, we were provided with a sling backpack which was full of supplies. Inside the bag we were given a Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) day pass, a $50 dollar pre-paid visa card, a mirror, a fake ID, snacks, water, TTC map, and a pen and paper. We were told to report back at 3:30pm for debriefing. Once the debriefing started, we were greeted by members of the Xbox team who explained the rules of the competition. Christophe Grand-Jean came on stage to tell us about the grand prize which was a trip to Montreal, where you would get the chance to hang out with the Splinter Cell development team and the opportunity to play the game with the team.
That was it, all the teams raced out to the lobby to get the first clue and there official Xbox 360 Splinter Cell jackets. Johnny Rotten73 and I formed an alliance with Mister Switch and his partner IvIxANTHMANxIvI . We dashed quickly up Bathurst Street to King to catch the King streetcar eastbound to a local Russian Vodka Bar, Pravda. Our challenge was to get information from Ivan, a local Russian Mafia member. It wasn’t easy, we had to head back out on to the street to find Vlad and ruffle a few feathers to get some information from him. We met back up with Ivan where he gave us our final challenge in the form of an image. We had to locate, using the image, a bottle of liquor and record the size of the bottle, percentage of alcohol and the country of origin. We gave this information to Ivan and he stamped our passport, Challenge 1 in Soviet Russia completed.
We only needed to complete 3 of the 4 challenges so we skipped the Mark and Execute challenge and because challenge number 4, Isabella, was geographically closest we decided to head there. We checked in using our new identities, mine being Edward Flaspoehler. We waited in our room for a few minutes and got a phone call with the information we were waiting for. We cautiously made it to the Employee’s only basement, where we met someone who was tortured and tied up and needed serious medical attention. We gave him the little rations we had and he told us that reception was holding a package for room 304; we had what we needed to know! We got our package and got our passport stamped.
Then, we dashed west across town to Bathurst and Queen and snuck into the Burroughes Furniture store. Once inside, we had to carefully maneuver through the security office making sure not to wake the security guard in order to obtain a visitors pass. Once acquired, we ran up flights of stairs to the rooftop where we needed to locate vital information that was located on the side of a building. We than made it down to the 4th floor, where we needed to dodge security, hop on the elevator and dash around the back of the building to get our passport stamped.
That was it; it was time to get to the final destination, EB games at Bathurst and Bloor. We checked in and since we did not complete the Mark and Execute challenge we needed to locate a game that had the following UPC 6178962, which happened to be Avatar. We got our final clue, ran to the subway station and headed to Downsview station. Our new mission, locate the Splinter Cell Bus line. It was a long and agonizing 25 minute subway ride. Our minds ran through questions like, how many teams had made it the final destination? Where there any other teams on the subway with us? We made it! We were team 4 of 6 to qualify for the final challenge. We had to sit and wait on the TTC bus for the final 2 teams to show up and qualify. We waited for approximately 45 minutes and then took a quick 8 minute bus ride to our final destination. The only information we were told was that we were going to be locked up in a jail cell and tortured while the other 34 teams watched on.
So we waited for over an hour in our cell, then finally a riot occurred and we managed to escape our cells for a brief minute. We headed across the hall to the other cells, where we saw a bunch of numbers written on the wall. We quickly jotted these down and returned to our cells before the prison warden caught us and put us in the hole. A package was slipped into our cell and we had to decipher the numbers along with all the information we collected throughout our challenges to solve the puzzle.
Sadly, we couldn’t crack the code in time another team won. Congratulations to the winners, who took off in style… in a helicopter!
It was a long, physically and mentally exhausting day. As I sit here and write this piece, my body aches all over. I can barely walk around my apartment. I now know what Sam Fisher goes through on any mission and I’m really looking forward to playing Splinter Cell Conviction on April 13th 2010.
Thanks to all that organized the event it was a true blast to participate in.
read moreFebruary NPD’s
I can’t believe my eyes the Xbox 360 outsells the Nintendo Wii? Seriously? I can’t remember the last time this happened!.
- * Nintendo DS – 613,200
- * Xbox 360 – 422,000
- * Wii – 397,900
- * PlayStation 3 – 360,100
- * PSP – 133,400
- * PlayStation 2 – 101,900
So the juggernauts keep on selling New Super Mario Bros and Modern Warfare 2. I was surprised to see BioShock 2 take the top spot. I was very happy to see Heavy Rain make the top 10.
01. BioShock 2 (Xbox 360) – 562,900
02. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) – 555,600
03. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – 314,300
04. Just Dance (Wii) – 275,400
05. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 272,500
06. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) – 252,800
07. Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) – 246,500
08. Dante’s Inferno (PS3) – 242,500
09. Dante’s Inferno (Xbox 360) – 224,700
10. Heavy Rain (PS3) – 219,300
It’s time for January NPD’s!
January Hardware sales:
Wii – 465,800
Nintendo DS – 422,200
Xbox 360 – 332,800
PlayStation 3 – 276,900/li>
PSP – 100,100
PlayStation 2 – 41,600
The biggest surprised for software sales was Just Dance making the top 10. Congratulations to Bioware on Mass Effect 2 selling over 572 thousand copies
01. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) – 656,700
02. Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) – 572,100
03. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 555,700
04. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – 326,700
05. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) – 310,900
06. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 297,600
07. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) – 259,000
08. Army of Two: The 40th Day (Xbox 360) – 246,500
09. Just Dance (Wii) – 191,900
10. Darksiders (Xbox 360) – 171,200
Oh Wait I’m a Week Late, it’s NPD Time of the Month
I’m a week behind here but for good reason, I’m sick. I’ve been battling this awful cold for a week now. Anyways it’s that time of the month where the NPD group releases video game hardware and software sales. So how do December do? I think the industry did quite well and hopefully all of you got what accessories, games and hardware you were looking for.
How many Nintendo DS’s do you all own? seriously over 3 million units last month while the PSP 3000 and PSP GO! did a combined 654 thousand units. What was a little more surprised that the PlayStation 3 barely outsold the Xbox 360.
Hardware sales for the month of December 2009
- Wii – 3,810,000
- Nintendo DS – 3,310,000
- PlayStation 3 – 1,360,000
- Xbox 360 – 1,310,000
- PSP – 654,700
- PlayStation 2 – 333,2000
As I expected New Super Mario Bro’s sold a ton of copies and in some parts of Toronto a copy was hard to find. Modern Warfare 2 still continues to rack up those sales pushing total sales to over $1 billion US.
Software Sales for the month of December 2009
01. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) – 2,820,000
02. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 2,410,000
03. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 1,790,000
04. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – 1,630,000
05. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) – 1,120,000
06. Wii Play (Wii) – 1,010,000
07. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) – 936,1000
08. Assassin’s Creed II (Xbox 360) – 783,1000
09. Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360) – 728,500
10. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS) – 656,700
Review: Astro A40 Audio System
If you’re like me and play a lot of games, your significant other can really get annoyed hearing game chat and game music for hours upon hours while they try and study or do whatever they need to do. This is where a pair of headphones can come into play and really improve life around the house. I checked out all the big players in the console gaming headphone market Astro Gaming, Tritton and Turtle Beach. I decided on a pair of the Astro A40 Audio System: BXR SE Edition in the red colour. I was lucky to get one of the last pairs before they sold out.
The Astro A40’s come in 3 boxes, 1 for the mixamp, and 1 for the headphones and finally a box for the speaker tags. A word of caution to my Canadian readers the total weight of the package is 7.3 pounds and close to $80.00 dollars Canadian to ship it plus you need to pay import duties on top of that. However if you are like me and have friends in the USA, I recommend you ship it to them and repackage them and then ship them to you.
These are not cheap, plain and simple these are only available online for $249.95 USD and they come with the headphones, mixamp, headphone case, speaker tags, speaker tag competition foam inserts, quick disconnect 4-pole connector cable, quick disconnect to dual-jack connector cable (plus volume control), 3.5mm to ¼ adapter, microphone, USB cable for the mixamp. There is a ton of cables in the box but for a optical cable, if you plan on using an optical cable to set these up, you’ll need to buy one. The mixamp requires for 4 double A batteries or a rechargeable battery sold separately by Astro.
Let’s talk about the headphones there stylish, adjustable, light weight, the sound is out of this world and the feature a detachable microphone. I like this option because I can take these headphones and plug them into my Iphone and listen to my podcasts. My biggest complaint of the headphones is that after 3-4 hours of use your ears and the surrounding area can become very sweaty, maybe that’s just me!. Another cool feature about the headphones are the speakertags as they are customizable. Astro has a service for 24.95 that you can design your own tags. Next up is the mixamp the essential device to you get the 5.1 Dolby Digital sound to your headphones. One of my favourite features of the mixamp is I can control the game/voice audio by turning the dial to dailor to my preferences. So If I’m playing Multiplayer, I can take 90% in game chat and 10% game audio. The mixamp also allows me to hook up my own MP3 player to the device to listen to music or podcasts while playing those games like Fight Night Round 4 were the sound track and audio just bores the hell out of me.
Let’s start with the installation and hook up of the A40 audio system, it’s fairly simple. First of all you’ll need to put the 4 double A batteries or if you purchased the rechargeable battery insert either of those into the mixamp by unscrewing the bottom cover, installing the batteries and then screwing it back up. Next hook up the mixamp to the console by plugging it into a USB slot after that hook up the optical cable by plugging one end into the mixamp and the other into the console. Next up plug in the headphones into the mixamp and the next step is optional for Xbox 360 owners. By plugging in the cable from the controller to the mixamp this allows voice chat on Xbox Live.
First thing I did after hooking them up and panicking cause no one could hear me on the voice messages I sent them, my other option was to join various Xbox live parties to see how I sounded and to ask others how I sounded. The feedback I got was incredible and instantly provided justification for blind buying these. Yes, I had never heard what the Astro’s sounded like before, so I bought them based off reviews. Next up it was time for to kill some zombies in Left 4 Dead 2 and boy zombie killing never sounded so good before. Finally it was time to fire up Uncharted 2 on the Playstation 3. I instantly heard sounds I hadn’t heard before when I played through the game. I was so impressed, I had pass the headphones to my girlfriend and she was stunned on how good they sounded.
Overall if you’re looking for a pair of 5.1 headphones, look no further. Astro provides a premium product at a good price and they also provide premium customer service which is very rare these days.
Pros:
• 5.1 surround sound
• Control the game/voice audio
• Detachable microphone
• Mixamp design
• Custom Speaker Tags
Cons:
• They are a tad on the expensive side
• Shipping to Canada is outrageous
• 4-Pole cable is to short (yes you can buy a longer one for $20!)
• The 3.5mm cable from the mixamp to the controller is too short. Yes I understand the mixamp is designed to be sat next to the player however in my living room I would prefer to keep the mixamp on the television console.
Tehflakes.ca recommends purchasing these headphones
read moreNovember NPD’s
It’s my favorite time of the month, NPD time. As expected Modern Warfare 2 sold a ton of copies, PS3 and 360 combined over 6 million units. I was very surprised to see Dragon Age Origins crack the top ten, congrats Bioware
PlayStation 2 203.1K
PlayStation 3 710.4K
PSP 293.9K
Xbox 360 819.5K
Wii 1.26M
Nintendo DS 1.70M
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 (360) 4.20M units sold
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 (PS3) 1.87M units sold
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII 1.39M units sold
ASSASSIN’S CREED II (360) 794.7K units sold
LEFT 4 DEAD 2 (360) 744.0K units sold
WII SPORTS RESORT 720.2K units sold
WII FIT PLUS 679.0K units sold
ASSASSIN’S CREED II (PS3) 448.4K units sold
DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (360) 362.1K units sold
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL 315.0K units sold