Around the Hawk: Mass Effect 3 trailer (fan made)

Here's a cool fan-made trailer for Mass Effect 3. A few of the scenes is from the newer Star Trek film, but the rest of the trailer is pretty cool.

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Around the Hawk: Madden '12 Seahawks Intro

This video showcases the Seahawk's official team introduction in Madden '12. Hopefully EA will be able to update the stadium name to Century Link Field as it's no longer Qwest Field. The background PA music that was playing was a remix version of We Will Rock You/I Want it All by Queen feat. Armageddon which was in the Sucker Punch movie. Possibly this song will make the Madden '12 soundtrack?

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Around the Hawk: Madden '12 Playbook #3 (Franchise Mode)

Many new improvements have been made to this year's Franchise mode for hardcore Madden players like us. About time EA has taken a look at improving the depth of Franchise mode. Looks great!

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Around the Hawk: More NCAA Football '12

This video shows the improvements to this year's presentation.



BlazenHawks was the first one to tell me about this video, explaining the new features to this year's Dynasty mode. I really like the fact that you can create your own coach and start out as a coordinator and work your way up. I'm really looking forward to this game now.

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Around the Hawk: NCAA Football 2012 Gameplay

Here's a gameplay trailer for NCAA Football 2012. A lot of new improvements have been made in the tackling department as well as zone defense.

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Around the Hawk: Dirt 3 Gameplay

The above video is actual game footage from Dirt 3.



This video is the release trailer for Dirt 3, available May 24, 2011.

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Around the Hawk: Rock Band 3 Setlist

While most of us may be bored of the music game genre, there are still some out there who are anticipating the release of Rock Band 3 on October 26th in North America. The game has a new in-depth career mode, new instruments, and of course an amazing 83 song setlist:

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Around the Hawk: Madden '11 Patch Details

Jerhawk's take: At least this is a step in the right direction. Ian and the team are listening to the complaints out there, and I'm sure there's a lot of them. Rightfully so. There are several issues with this game, and this patch seems to address the majority of them. Here's the official link.

Quick update for Madden fans

by Ian Cummings 08/21/10 10:41 AM

First off, you may or may not have noticed some news that was recently propped to your consoles regarding online quitters. The number one issue that we heard loud and clear out of the community was that rampant quitting had become a major problem in the online experience, both in ranked games and Madden Ultimate Team games. Well we were able to work on this over the last week and then deploy some quick fixes to the server to help deter this practice. The fixes were as follows:

1. Any quitter / disconnecter in a ranked game will automatically be given a loss. The victim will automatically be given a win.

2. We are currently monitoring the leaderboards and planning on zero’ing out the stats of any accounts found to be using quitting tactics (via high DNF / win percentages and game logs). This monitoring will be standard practice moving forward as well, as we have built in notifications to our server team that will automatically zero out any folks caught “boosting”, or using one account to quit immediately and award a win.

3. In a Madden Ultimate Team game, a person quitting will have a game burned off of his contracts for the players in the game to discourage this practice. The victim will always receive coins, prorated based on the percentage complete of the game (i.e. if it’s the 1st quarter, he’ll only get ¼ of the coins he would have gotten if he were to finish, if it’s at the end of the game, he’ll get ~90%, etc). The same note applies as above on anyone caught “boosting” after this fix is rolled out – they will be punished with bans, contract removals, or any other tactics we see fit.

4. We also found an issue where PDLC OTP boosts were being subtracted incorrectly. Anyone that had this happen has had their boost coin purchase refunded.

One thing I should note is that there is a bit of a trade-off with stats with the auto-loss / auto-win implementation. Since we wanted to roll this out as quickly as possible, there is one thing to be aware of in that average stats will take a hit when a quit occurs. What I mean by this is that if you have played 3 games and are averaging 100 rush yards per game, if a quit occurs, your rush average will drop down to 75 since you have a 4^th game with zero stats. We will look into addressing this down the line but we wanted to get the fix out for the quitters as soon as possible.

Moving forward, we are working on addressing some of the most common feedback in upcoming title updates. You all already know that we are planning on releasing an update to enable old-school pre-play controls right around the start of the NFL season, which also will include the brand new Madden Moments LIVE feature where you can replay the top games from each week. In that update we will also have numerous art, gameplay, and stability fixes included as well. Along with that, we have also planned a second update to come towards the end of September. Below is a list of the top priority issues we seem to be hearing the most about that we are looking at:

- Fixing a bug to allow friend invites to ranked games

- Generally making pass defense more effective

- Reducing number of broken tackles

- Fixing user blitz exploit(s)

- Tuning injuries

- Tuning CPU & GameFlow play-calling logic

- Improving play action blocking

- Improving kick return blocking

- Improving online connectivity issues with kick meter lag, media streaming, etc.

- Random stability improvements

Hopefully this should give you a glimpse of our current priorities and our continued commitment to keeping Madden NFL 11 relevant and giving you an enjoyable experience over the entire year. We continue to listen for any and all top issues, and the list above is by no means all inclusive or locked so feel free to drop by the EA Forums to provide any feedback on things you want fixed.

Lastly, thanks to all of you for buying and playing Madden NFL 11…see you on the gridiron!

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Around the Hawk: Deus Ex-Human Revolution

I know this trailer is a bit old, but for those who haven't seen it, this is the teaser trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, scheduled to be released in February 2011. The trailer looks spectacular.

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Madden 11: Super Bowl Celebration

More Madden NFL 11 Videos

SPOILER ALERT: If you just want to wait until you win the Super Bowl, then don't watch this video.

But to those who do watch it, what do you think is more strange about this video: 1.) One of the top plays in the game is an extra point 2.) They have Roger Goodell 3.) The Jaguars are in the Super Bowl 4.) They have Barack Obama? What?

Reading on the Xbox forums, some people weren't happy with the surprise appearance of our President in the game.
I must say, after playing the demo for Madden, this is by far the greatest improvement they made from last year to this year's version. That's really sad if the best improvement they had was a Super Bowl victory video, something that they should've had in the game years ago.

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Madden 11: Tim Tebow Highlights

I was looking forward to Madden until I saw these two plays. Thanks EA! There are several gameplay errors on both of these plays which makes me scratch my head and ask, "Why? Why are we buying this game?"

And a voice whispers in my ear: "Because it's Madden."

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Around the Hawk: Jerhawk's Best Games of E3 2010

Power Gig: Rise of the Six String is the kind of game I've been imagining for awhile, but never thought it would be created. Until now.



Ghost Recon: Future Soldier blew me away with this amazing gameplay demonstration at E3 Live.
Check out the rest of our thoughts on E3 2010 a few posts down, and post your own thoughts to this year's event. Happy gaming!

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Around the Hawk: Red Dead Redemption Review

Rockstar San Diego's new Grand Theft Auto is much different than it's previous sibblings: It's based in the year 1911. Alright, so this isn't Grand Theft Auto. In fact, this game is much better than GTA IV, which included several flat characters that nobody cared about, and a storyline that got old after the first three days. However, Rockstar's newest game, Red Dead Redemption, has that same look and feel of what Grand Theft Auto popular, just without the rocket launchers and randomly explodable cars.

Red Dead Redemption, which was released May 18th, 2010, was a game that honestly didn't get that much attention prior to its release. Until our network live member, JohnnyX77 began playing it, I never even heard of the game. So, after watching a few videos and hearing Johnny talk about it, I decided to pick it up, and I'm happy that I did.

This game can really eat up a lot of enjoyable gameplay hours for gamers, as long as you're not blasting through the main story. There are plenty of side missions and areas to explore in this wonderful open world, filled with wildlife free for hunting, flowers available for picking, and helpless stragglers being robbed and killed by ruthless bandits, whom you can choose to save or turn the other way.

Here are my Pros for Red Dead:

• So far, a great story with several characters that create actual interest.
• The voice acting is excellent for the most part.
• The graphics are visually stunning. It's great to just ride around on your horse and enjoy the sunset, if you're into that kind of thing.
• Plenty of things to do in the world. You can hunt and pick flowers to rank up in your hunting/survivalist/sharp shooting skills. Or you play a game of poker or horseshoes or blackjack, just to name a few. You can talk to a random stranger and help them out. You can even try to find burried treasure using your trusty treasure map. Whatever your heart desires, there's plenty of activities to keep you busy and eager to explore.
• So much detail was put into the game. Dust coming up from behind a carriage, the weather effect that turn the dirt roads into soggy, muddy surfaces. The progressive lighting and progressive weather really add up to a great visual experience in the game. It's amazing that the game doesn't have any issues loading up the environment as you move through the world. It's a seamless transition from one area to the other with no load times or random objects popping up out of nowhere.
• The background music is very relaxing and gives you that Old West feeling.
• The gun battles are great. The "Dead Eye" adds a lot to the gun battles, as you're able to slow down the game and choose where you want to hit your enemy. It's a lot like the VATS system in Fallout 3.
• Online play is fairly solid. You can start up a posse with your friends and play online, a lot like the squads in Battefield Bad Company 2. You can free roam around online and level up in several areas such as hunting and all the offline stuff, or you can go into a public free roam and choose to fight others, or join up in their posse.
• The online game modes can be fun. The "gold rush" game type is a lot like the capture the skulls game mode in the Halo: Reach Beta. The shoot outs prior to each game is enjoyable. This is something that would be more fun to play with friends, as is any online shooter in my opinion.
  

The Cons to Red Dead Redemption:

• It can get annoying riding your horse to the mission location, and then upon starting the mission you have to ride even further to another location while listening to the characters talk. It would be nice to just start the missions and go.
• While the auto-aim is nice in gun battles (you just press and release the left trigger to switch between targets when shooting), the aim can sometimes get stuck on a random bird, animal or your own side during gun battles, which can really mess you up.
• There can be moments during gun battles where if you're leaning against a wall and the enemy is on the other side, your character may not be able to shoot them even though you're aiming at them, yet they're able to hit you. This forces you to exit your cover and be even more exposed just to shoot back at the enemy.
• The main story seems to be short. I may be wrong here, but through 15 hours of gameplay I'm 41% complete, yet only about four of those hours were truly spent on the main storyline.
• People in the public freeroam online can get annoying where you just want to come up and invite them to your posse or a game mode, but they insist on killing you just to earn more online XP. Not the game's fault, but it can get annoying.
  

All in all, I really recommend this game to any gamer out there. Even though it's rated M for Mature, this is the kind of game that even the most casual gamer could sit down and enjoy. The variety of things to do in the game will add up in fun gameplay hours.

My final rating: 9.2 out of 10

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Around the Hawk: Xbox Community on Madden '11 Improvements

http://forums.xbox.com/32485665/ShowPost.aspx

What I found to be the most interesting post here was in a response to the NFL and ESPN licenses that EA has for Madden, Raged 10 says: "They can't use it. EA has a deal with the NFL where they aren't allowed to use the ESPN license in game. Madden isn't the only game from EA. NCAA use the ESPN license very efficiently in NCAA Basketball."

This has been something that we've been talking about for months here at xboxlivenetwork.com. Is this true?

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Around the Hawk: More You-Tube stuff

The following videos are my reactions to the NBA 2K10 My Player mode. You may also relate to this video after playing the game for countless hours and realizing that your career has been glitched. For me, this was the moment where BlazenHawks informed me that after you're sent back down to the D-League, you're stuck there forever.



So, after that moment I went back and downloaded the NBA 2K10 Draft Combine from the marketplace. After playing another 30+ hours playing through an entire NBA season, the game glitched on me again after I went back to the dashboard in the team-select screen. I was beginning to panic...



BlazenHawks has also had the same difficulty with the game. But after trying to play in the My Crew game mode last night as well as a simple My Player Pick-up game and having no games successfully start due to "network problems," Jerhawk finally snapped.



Here's that stupid History final project I was a part of that Stopable wanted to see. I'm Norman As-Sing.

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Around the Hawk: Humor Corner

I was bored, so I decided to search through the YouTube universe. Here's a few funny videos that you guys can watch if you're bored too!



Obviously, I'm Ernie and BlazenHawks is Bert. This would probably only be funny to a few of you. Click read more for more silly videos.

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Around the Hawk: Halo 3 Top 10 Luckiest Kills

Here's a funny video of the Top 10 luckiest kills in Halo 3. This is episode 31 of a series of videos created by a group of gamers that specialize in making these Halo 3 top 10 videos on YouTube. This was one of the funniest that I've seen so far, but they're all great.

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Around the Hawk: Forza 3 Review

The much anticipated third installment of the Forza Motorsport series hit store shelves October 27th of this year. Since Blazen likes to give a little history lesson in his reviews, I shall give one too.

The word “Forza” is translated as “Power” in Italian. The first Forza was released May 3rd, 2005 for the original Xbox. The game sold over one million copies and received great reviews. The second Forza was released May 29th, 2007. It was the first on the New-Gen Xbox 360, and was a great leap forward in the series.

However, Forza Motorsport 3 is by far the greatest improvement thus far. The creators of Forza (Turn 10 and Microsoft Game Studios) did a remarkable job with the third installment in this franchise. If you even remotely like the sport of racing, Forza 3 is a game you need to pick up.

Here are my Pros:

• As with the first two Forza games, this one offers the user the greatest amount of car customization and vinyl editing of any other racing game on the 360.
  
• The library of cars to choose from is extensive with over 400 cars.

• Simulation damage in this Forza is greatly improved as you can now roll your car.


• The online Storefront feature is genius. You can share custom vinyl artwork, photos, in-game movies, even custom tuning set-ups. The user can choose if they want their stuff on the storefront for free so others will download it, or they can set a price on it.


• The Auction House from Forza 2 is back, which is a plus. It’s fun to get in biding wars with other people online. It’s like E-bay on Xbox Live.
  
• Career mode is extensive. I’ve been playing the career mode fairly heavily since it came out, and I’m only about 10% through. The career mode looks like it’ll take a long time to complete, which is great. The new season mode is fun, where you start out using F class cars (which are the worst performance cars), and slowly work your way through the first year. There are six years total and they become increasingly longer and more difficult as you progress.
  




• Graphics are much improved in this game. Not that Forza 2 had bad graphics, but Forza 3 blows it out of the water.
  


• The new in-car camera view is awesome. It almost feels like you’re driving sometimes. The game probably seems much more realistic with the steering wheel as well.



• Online play is pretty good. New this year is the ability to veto a track, as well as bringing up a vote to the other players in the session to kick a player. This is good to eliminate those dirty players.
  

Here are my Cons:

• The soundtrack is mediocre at best. At least you can hear the songs playing during the race, but if you’re like me, you’d rather just listen to the iPod or Zune.
  


• The load times can take forever as you wait for the race to start.

• It takes a long time to join a session when playing Online.


• There’s only three skill levels to put the computer on. Easy, Medium and Hard. This is somewhat lame if you think about how in-depth the rest of the game is. It would be nice to have a My Skill setting like in Madden, but the computer does race alright on Medium as you progress in the Career mode.
  
• The Collector's Edition of Forza 3 is a waste of money in my opinion. For $20 more you only get a few extra cars and tracks. The normal $60 game is the one to get.

I highly recommend this game to even the most casual gamer. If you’ve ever played a racing game before, it probably won’t compare with “Power” Forza 3.

My rating:

9.3/10

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Around the Hawk: Jerhawk's Holiday Wishlist '09

The holiday season is quickly approaching. It may only be August, but I'm already making my list out to Santa. Last year, I created a wishlist that consisted of Saints Row 2, Skate 2, Midnight Club L.A. and Fallout 3. In my opinion, Fallout 3 was the only game that truly lived up to the hype surrounding it. Hopefully this year will be a little bit different...

The Beatles: Rock Band

I'm still not sure whether this game would be a good buy, or just a great rental. I love the Beatles, and I used to love Rock Band. But let's be honest everyone, these music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero were just a fad. Yes, they're fun, and they're a great party and family game, but they've gotten old and repetitive. There's only so many notes to kill. After the Beatles: Rock Band, I believe many people have strummed their last chord. This genre of game will slowly begin to dissapear into the lost vault of video game fads. The Beatles: Rock Band hits store shelves 9/9/09, the same date that many remastered Beatles albums will be re-released. I won't include Guitar Hero 5 on my wishlist, but if you're interested, it's set to release September 1st.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2





Yes, it is true that I've never owned a Call of Duty game. Well, this may be a year of change. That's right Mr. Obama, change is what we need! Everybody seems to love this game, so I may as well join in fun as well, right? This game is set to be released November 10th, 2009, along with many unique bundles. Always wanted those fancy pair of night goggles, but your mom wouldn't let you? Now's your chance! For only $149.99, you can get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and those night goggles just in time for Christmas! A great gift for the wife.

Forza Motorsport 3




From what's shown in Deus Legend's post below mine, Turn 10 has really done a fantastic job in revamping the look of Forza. This year will also include one of my favorite features: the in-car camera view. This camera angle really makes the game life-like, and if you have that steering wheel, you'll probably be confused between reality and the video game when it comes to driving. Forza 3 hits shelves October 27th of this year. Dirt 2 also looks like a good rental for you racing fans out there. That game comes out September 8th.

Halo 3: ODST






In the prequel to Halo 3, ODST or "Orbital Drop Shock Troopers" focuses on a special group in New Mombasa searching for clues behind the Covenant's attack on the city. This will be more of a wait-and-see kind of a game for me, but it could be interesting. For you Halo fans out there, I'm sure this one is at the top of your wishlists. For those of you who don't care about Halo, then you obviously don't care about this game.

Left 4 Dead 2


I've never played Left 4 Dead, but I heard it was amazing. Who doesn't love killing zombies? The killing continues November 17th, 2009.

That just about completes my wishlist for the remainder of 2009. There are many more great games coming out this year than the one's I've mentioned here, obviously. The NBA games come out in October, Activision's "DJ Hero" comes out October 27th, and "Band Hero" comes out in November. Also there are the WWE and FIFA games. If there's any games you would like added to the Wishlist, please feel free to post a comment. Don't be shy! Thanks for tuning in.

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Around the Hawk: Jerhawk the Boxer

Hey everyone, I haven't posted anything on our new site here since I couldn't seem to figure out how to create a new post! Well, I'm back, and I'm here to share a highlight.

EA Sports: ko

For those of you who haven't seen Fight Night Round 4 yet, here's a little clip I saved from the game. If you're interested about this game, check out BlazenHawk's review a few posts under this one.

Hopefully when NCAA Football 10 and Madden 10 comes out, we will all be sharing some great highlights.

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