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 4^th 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 13^th 2010.

Thanks to all that organized the event it was a true blast to participate in.

• * 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

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

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

There are only 2 differences on the hardware that I’ve found so far one being the knobs on the Renegade edition are metal compared to plastic on the regular edition. Secondly the turntable is black and gold compared to black and silver. My only real complaint regarding the turn table is the cross fading mechanism. It is has 3 positions left, center and right. When sliding from right to center or vice versa there isn’t enough of a click to ensure that it is centered. I’ve often lost note streaks because of it.  FreeStyleGames even thought of the lefties, you can detach the mixer and place it on the right.

One of the biggest complaints I have had with games Rock Band and Guitar Hero are the tracks. Being in my twenties the music in those games just didn’t appeal to me because I didn’t know 90 percent of the artists.  This is one of the single most important reasons I love DJ Hero the set list is fantastic. You have music from Eminem, Jay-Z, N.E.R.D, 2-Pac And 50 Cent mixed by the likes of DJ AM, DJ Grandmaster Flash and DJ Jazzy Jeff. This game is loaded with star power.

Another Hero game means another controller, so half of it is the record platter that contains 3 buttons green, red and blue. The other half is the mixer that includes the cross fader, effects knob , euphoria button (star power) and system control buttons .As the familiar red and blue and as notes come down on the screen you press the button. Scratches involve holding either the green or blue button while moving the platter back or forth, but on harder difficulty you’ll have to follow onscreen arrows that indicate whether to push it forward or pull it back.  When you get into the medium, hard and expert settings you add in the cross fader, which you’ll have to push left and right depending on what notes are being played during the song. Think of it this way, when the cross fader is in the middle position music from record 1 and record 2 are being blared through your speakers. Move it to the left and only record 1 is being played, move it to the right and it’s only record 2.

Beginner and easy mode are just like sound, lame and boring. For me this game started to take off once I switched to medium 5 starred all the songs and found my groove. Hard and expert is a challenge and some of the songs really do kick my ass but I’m ok with that since music in this game is incredible.  You can hook up a USB microphone and throw shout out’s to your TV, it’s lame but it could be fun at a party. Next time they tried to integrate a co-op mode by having 10 songs that can also be played using a guitar. The guitar and Turntable mode sounds but I really thought it was tacked on instead of being carefully thought out. One small annoyance I have is that you cannot fail a song regardless of how bad you suck, the music will keep playing. This is great if you wanted to just kick it at a party and listen to some great tunes but it’s hard to focus on where you need to improve your skills.

You can go on line, pick a set list and battle other people, I personally didn’t enjoy this mode at all as I could never seem to win a set list.

I hope Activision takes a cue from the fine folks at Harmonix and releases weekly downloadable mash up tracks for us to play. This is only way to prolong the life of this game.

Dj Hero makes a very good debut onto console platforms but FreeStyleGames needs to make a few improvements to the hardware, co-op and potentially a lower price as some people may find the current price tag a little high. At the end of the day this is one of the best music genre games I’ve played.

There isn’t much more to say but check out the photos

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Halo Waypoint will also provide a new challenge for Halo gamers with a career system tied to in-game accomplishments across multiple Halo games. At launch, career tracking will include Halo 3: ODST, Halo 3, Halo Wars and all Game Add-on content for those titles. Available exclusively on Xbox LIVE, Halo Waypoint will provide a dynamic experience that will continue to grow and expand with new content updated regularly.

Previews of the highly anticipated anime anthology Halo Legends, will be available exclusively on Halo Waypoint starting Nov. 7. Halo Legends is just one of the Halo exclusives that won’t be found anywhere outside of Halo Waypoint.

Check out these screen shots of Halo Waypoint

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Commander Sheppard will be making his highly anticipated return to the Xbox 360 and PC on January 26,2010

The story ends with your squad members fly out of the city in a captured Phantom and have took an engineer aboard. Eventually Sergeant Johnson arrives and tells the engineer that he intends to ask questions regarding its knowledge of the Covenant.

ODST plays very different from any other Halo game from the way the story is told to the underlying game mechanics. ODST doesn’t feel like a complete game but more like an expansion which allows Bungie to experiment and try new things. There are only a few new weapon variants, 1 new alien race and everything you shoot comes from Halo 3. The health system works a bit different, the more you get shot the more you stamina goes down that leads to your health going down. Low on health? Find a health pack to regain your health.  The other big addition is your visor, see the streets of New Mombasa are very dark and in order to find your way you need to turn your visor on. This is a catch 22 as it allows the enemies to find where you are. Marty O’Donnell does a fantastic job with the soundtrack which really does set the mood for each level.

Another new mode in Halo ODST 3 is Firefight which allows you and up to 3 other friends take on waves of Covenant troops.  Out of the box it comes with 10 maps and each map has an achievement for amassing 200,000 in points on a map. This should keep things fun and exciting for a period of time before Bungie will need to release new maps to play on. The one negative about the firefight was that as a team you share 4 lives. So if you one douche on your team that is constantly dying, you will get annoyed very quickly.

There is a second disc included with both standard and limited editions that features Halo 3’s Multiplayer. There aren’t any real big updates from Halo 3’s Mutliplayer. The second disk comes with all 21 Halo 3 maps plus 3 new maps which are only available if you buy Halo ODST. The new maps are Hetertic a remake of the Halo 2 Midship map, Citadel and Longshore.

Overall Halo ODST is a solid game and will provide you with a great story and Halo combat we all love. Overall the game’s length is could be compared to as expansion pack. It really is short but packs in a load of fun either single player or co-op. The real winner in the Halo ODST package is firefight, fighting off wave after wave of Covenant with a limited number of lives is a blast with a group of friends. I really wish that ODST came out as a downloadable expansion instead of a full retail release. The retail price of $69.99 Canadian is a bit overpriced but if you a diehard Halo fan and need your fix Halo ODST is for you.

The Facebook application is also launched from the Xbox live Dashboard and once you opt in you will you will be connected to your news feed, profile and allow you to update your status. Another cool thing is you are able to search your facebook friends and see if any of them are connected to Xbox live. It will be interesting to see how developers integrate facebook into their games.

Zune Marketplace is going to replace the current Xbox Video Marketplace and will provide consumers with streaming 1080p movies and television shows. During the demonstration, I was asked what movie I wanted to see and I picked one of the Harry Potter movies. After you select your movie, the service automatically runs tests to determine whether to stream in Standard Definition or High Definition, which is based on the speed of your internet connection. Within seconds we were watching Mr. Potter causing havoc with his cousins. One thing that was not discussed was the pricing structure of the movies, I’m curious to see if the price will remain the same or if they get increased.

I am a Twitter junkie and when Microsoft announced Twitter was coming to the Xbox live service I was generally excited. After seeing the demonstration, I have to say that it very easy to use and well designed. What you get is an application which you launch from the dashboard in which you can view tweets, retweet, search and view trending topics all of which are current twitter features. Once you close the application no more twitter updates. This is where I would have wanted some sort of background application were if someone’s @ replies me or sends me a direct message a little pop notification would appear.

Overall I was generally impressed with I had to see and I think if Microsoft is on their way to making the connected console. However there still is 100 friend limit issue… if you truly want to be connected to all social platforms, should there really be a friends limit?.