J. Paradise recently began a series over at DailyGame called Confessions of a Girl Gamer, cataloguing some of the less-fun aspects of multiplayer gaming on Xbox Live. As a female gamer, she noted some of the less pleasant behaviors of the majority of the other gamers on the system, who presumably are male, if common sense and all known statistics can be trusted.
While most of her complaints are entirely valid and each of the behaviors she describes is undoubtedly annoying, I thought there were one or two points which deserved to be responded to, given the criticism the gaming industry receives almost daily in the current political climate for promoting sex and violence. Before this and other articles get referred to in an attempt to heap the charge of promoting sexism among America's youth gets piled onto the heap, it might be worth thinking a little further on some of the topics J. Paradise raises.
Mindquirk Software has released version 2.02 of Xbox Live Friends for Mac OS X. This version fixes a problem with auto sign-in that appeared as a result of changes at Xbox.com
Mindquirk software has released a revamped version of its Xbox Live Friends application that includes a Dashboard widget, as well as a new application, Emblem Designer, for previewing Xbox Live emblems on your Mac. Emblem Designer, as well as Mindquirk's other Halo app, xstats, all part of Mindquirk's Live Suite, require OS X 10.4. Xbox Live Friends runs on 10.3 or above.
[image:9494 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Infernus has released the Macintosh version of his Halo 2 Experience Calculator application. It allows you to enter your Bungie.net level as well as the levels of players you win or lose to, and it will calculate the change in your experience points. You can download Mac Halo 2 Experience Calculator here.
The MIDI is 4:42 long, and contains the opening sequence to both Outskirts and the 2003 E3 demo, as well as Earth City from the Halo 2 soundtrack. Also included are the Printmusic files of all the parts, as well as a score, and a PDF document that has all of the parts and the score, more than 45 pages of material all told in this .zip archive.
Spenser "Poop Scoop" Anunsen is continuing his Halo 2 soundtrack transcriptions; this time, he's done Earth City, which includes not only the Earth City piece from the Halo 2 soundtrack, but also the introduction from Outskirts and the piece from the E3 2003 demo. As always, downloads for registered users.
Dolbex has noted at MLG.com that due to certain issues, MLG online 4x4 league play is being delayed until May 30.
More than a year ago, before Halo 2 or Doom 3 were released, there was trash talking in the chat rooms about Id's attempt to add a real storyline to their game. Now that the Xbox version has been out for awhile, I had a chance to compare Doom 3 and Halo 2, as I promised I would last year.
Regional winners for most of the 24 countries competing in the Halo 2 Worldwide Xbox Live Tournament have been announced; the only countries without finalists so far are the United States and Japan. Read the full press release for the list of regional winners.