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Aerosmith, AC/DC, Metallica, and most recently, The Beatles are the other internationally known bands that have had a music based game made after them. However, that list could have had, and still might now, another addition to it.

Adam Clayton, bass player for U2, restarted rumours after he told USA Today how they are still intestered in becoming part of a Rock Band/Guitar Hero game. It was only around a year ago that there were rumours flying around about how U2 was all ready for a game release, until they changed their mind.

However, after seeing what a HUGE success The Beatles had with their Rock Band game, U2 have changed their mind, funny how things go isn’t it.

While talking to USA Today, Clayton made reference to The Beatles: Rock Band, which would suggest that if they were to make a music based game, they would prefer to be part of Rock Band and not Guitar Hero. I personally think this would be a good idea.

Although Guitar Hero have had more band related games, with yet more coming out before Christmas, I don’t think they really put as much time and effort into the games like Rock Band clearly did with The Beatles game. It seems that when Guitar Hero make a new band based game, they simply re-skin some of the characters and include new venues. But when The Beatles: Rock Band was released, they changed almost everything in the game, plus they released a range of Beatles based instruments.

It’s quite hard to tell which would sell more The Beatles: Rock Band or U2: Rock Band. On one hand you have The Beatles with their lengthy career, however, alot of their fans will be getting on slightly and don’t play video games. Whereas U2 are more modern and most likely have a young audience, but are they as big as The Beatles?…

Last Monday, Nintendo made Wii gamers aware that a new firmware update was available for download for the next-gen console. However, the transition to the new firmware hasn’t gone smoothly for some gamers.

As with most firmware updates, the idea was not to bring trouble to the consoles, but to help improve the Nintendo Wii experience, without distrupting any current features.  Although this was the idea, it didn’t quite go to plan for Nintendo.

After the firmware update had been released, Nintendo received a rush of complaints from angry gamers whose consoles had died after downloading this update. Despite Nintendo blaming the problem to be caused by consoles that have been modified by the owners, many of the complaints are from console owners that have claimed to have never modified their consoles.

For the gamers that have had their unmodified consoles turned to stone, Nintendo have answered their cry for help. They have announced that they will be offering free repairs for any consoles that have not been modified, you simply have to prove that your console is not modified, not sure how you would do that, and you will be open for the free repair.

This problem that seems to have struck the Nintendo Wii’s, could have damaging effects for the console manufacturer. They have already seen their sales drop as it appears the Nintendo Wii ‘fad’ is slowing. Even with the recently announced price cut of $50, only time will tell whether the console will be able to stand up against the PS3 and the Xbox 360 who both announced larger price cuts last month. Plus, with both releasing motion sensing technology, similar to the Wii, Nintendo are going to have their work cut out in the upcoming new months.

If you remember, back in August I posted about the newly announced Left 4 Dead downloadable content. Well today, with Left 4 Dead 2 less than a couple of months away from release, the second pack for the original Left 4 Dead game has been released for Xbox 360 and PC gamers.

The new content, called “Crash Course“, will bring a brand new map, named ‘Crash’, which will of course be playable in single player, co-op mode, and online mode.

Unfortunately, if your an Xbox 360 gamer, you are getting the worse deal when it comes to the DLC as you will have to pay. The fee for 360 owners will be 560 Microsoft Points, however, if you own the PC version, you can get this new pack for free via Valve’s online service, Steam.

It’s quite a good time for Valve to release this new DLC pack. After a fairly long period of not much new in the game, this new pack will bring life back to the game and get gamers wanting more from the blood and gore FPS, just in time for the sequel release on November 17th.

This week has seen the release of the latest Halo game, Halo 3: ODST. This new game is like no others before unlike all the other games, you don’t play as Master Chief. So this introduces something new into the Halo universe, but does it really stand up to the previous games? I would say no.

The game starts off with your team of ODST’s (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers), they have just been given new orders to go down to New Mombasa, a super city, and begin attack on Regret’s cruiser. The way your team gets down to the city is via individual pods called HEVs, however, during flight the newly appointed mission leader redirects the pods, but before they have time to discover their intended destination, the cruiser goes into slipspace creating a massive EMP, causing all the HEV pods to shoot off course and crash.

Your role in the team is ‘The Rookie‘, no real name is given and you don’t say a word throughout the entire game. After waking up 6 hours after the crash landing, you must search around the city and discover what happened to the rest of your team.

Fortunately, the game doesn’t just leave you to search by yourself, you are given a beacon on your map where a clue is to the location of your team mates. Once you get across the city, fighting several Covenant on the way, you must then search the area for a clue. Once you find this clue, you sort of have a flashback moment where you find out what happened to that team member. However, rather than just watch a boring cinematic, you get to play as that troop and play out what happened.

After each flashback mission, you are then returned as The Rookie and must go looking for the next clue, all of which is relatively boring as the game always seem to send you to opposite sides of the map, with the enemies inbetween getting progressively harder.

Finally once you find the final clue, you are regrouped and you discover the real objective of the secret mission.

Throughout the quite short storyline, you will encounter a range of weapons, however, they are pretty much the same as the ones you would have come across in Halo 3. There are only a couple of changes, the first would be the improved pistol which has had it’s damage increased, just like the pistol of Halo 1. The second change would be the submachine gun. The accuracy and power has been improved, plus it has a silencer for ODST purposes. Other than that, all the weapons are the same as Halo 3.

New pimped out pistol.

Fortunately, they have included an extra feature alongside the storyline campaign. It’s called Firefight and it involves you playing rounds on a map of your choice killing wave after wave of Covenant, so just like the Horde feature in Gears of War.You can either do this on your own, obviously it’s harder, or as part of a team. If you’re planning to be part of a team, unless you’re really rubbish at Halo, you better get set for some long playing because team Firefight matches tend to last for a number of hours.

Moving onto the graphics, I can’t say they are anything special. The movie scenes look quite nice, however, the player graphics and general environment looks the same as what we saw in Halo 3. Considering Halo 3 was released back in 2007, I expected a little more from the guys over at Bungie in terms of graphics.

Shame the graphics weren't as good as the trailer.

My final note will be about bugs as I found with the game that there are a number of them. Whether this was just me who experienced this, but after I found the second clue, all the save features stopped working. Fortunately, I was able to finish the story from that point in one sitting, then once I returned to the campaign to see if my progress was saved, it just reloaded back at clue number 2.

I also noticed some strange things happening with characters. At one point I had to accompany another troop, but he just stood there, so I carried on, once I reached the objective, he just pinged back to me. This also happened near the end, but this time rather than getting stuck behind, the character pinged ahead to the next checkpoint, leaving me to fight off the enemies until I reached her position. I was not impressed.

Summary

Due to the graphics being basically the same as Halo 3, plus all the weapons being practically the same, it just felt like you were playing Halo 3, but with a worse storyline. If you are a Halo fan and thinking this game will answer some questions about the events before Halo 3, think again because it won’t. It just seems to be a quick game put together to earn some extra cash.

Fortunately, there are a couple of upsides to the game. You get access to the Halo Reach multiplayer beta, which hopefully won’t be too much of a let down. You also get a secondary multiplayer disc included which features all the multiplayer maps from Halo 3, plus some specially included ones, all of which can be played as a Spartan.

Good Points = Firefight is good, the weapons that have been improved are very impressive.

Bad Points = Not great graphics, pointless missions, quite buggy.

I give this game a 6/10.

Have you been searching for a dedicated website where you can sell your used gaming items? There are various websites where you can buy and sell anything from toilet rolls to televisions, but the problem with these is that they come with fees for listing your items. These fees can really eat in your profits as they tend to be a percentage of your selling price. Fortunately, there is soon going to be an alternative for selling your gaming items.

A new website called GamesTrader is being launched within the next few weeks that will allow you to sell any gaming items for free, that’s right, no charges at all. Whether you have an old console to sell, or maybe some gaming accessories, strategy guides, or just plain old games, all of it is free to list on GamesTrader, no matter what price you’re selling it at.

Alternatively, if you’re looking to buy used games, then there will be two great ways to find your ideal item. You can either search for games being sold in your local area and then collect them in person, or, you can do a country wide search and then you can purchase the items using the massively popular PayPal system.

Although no exact date has been set, the launch of the site can be expected within the next few weeks. In the meantime, stay tuned to ScroobyOnline for any further details released, also you can visit the GamesTrader website where you can signup for updates regarding the launch date for the site. Also, by signing up, you will receive a Beta access code for pre-launch access to the site.

Please be aware, the GamesTrader service will only be available for residents of the United Kingdom.