Have you been to your favorite stores and mapped out your routes for Black Friday? You must have a game plan. Don’t expect to just waltz in there and get the games and systems you’ve been pining for. You’ll end up leaving empty handed.

The two Black Friday ads that I’ve found thus far are for Best Buy and Toys “R” Us and the deals are pretty freakin’ hot. I’m sure Target ads will be leaked soon and when I find it, I’ll do a new post with those deals.

Here’s what looks good from Best Buy:

• Xbox 360 Elite 120GB system that includes Pure and Lego Batman in box PLUS Sonic the Hedgehog, Spiderman Web of Shadows, Wall-E and Ghost Recon 2 for $299.99
• 120 GB PS3 with Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time and Little Big Planet Game of the Year Edition for $299.99
• Madden 10, FIFA Soccer 10, NBA Live 10, NHL 10, Need for Speed Shift, Dragon Age: Origins, Brutal Legend, and Left 4 Dead 2 for Xbox 360 or PS3 for $34.99 each

Here’s the deals for Toys “R” Us:

• Spore Hero and Dead space for the Wii for $24.99
• Wii Fit Accessories between $9.99 and $19.99
• Need for Speed shift, Halo 3: ODST and Forza Motorsport 3 for $34.99 each
• Hannah Montana Guitar video game for $24.99
• Tons of Wii and DS games for $9.99 each
• FREE EVA Sleave Kit and DSi Car Adapter when you buy any DSi Holiday Bundle
• Xbox 360 Arcade System, Xbox 360 Carry Case and 3 games for $229.95

More deals will be posted as I find them since I’m sure more will be coming in the next few days.

Images|Black Friday 2009

Post from: EveryJoe

Black Friday Gaming Deals

Some have described the surroundings as being a combination of Lord of the Rings and Spinal Tap but there’s definitely some humor included since the demons are imitation cover bands who want to turn humans into slaves and they want to rock out to heavy metal tunes all day.

Jack Black is featured as roadie Eddie Riggs along with a host of celebrities including Ozzy Osbourne and The Runaways’ Lita Ford.

Did I mention the kick-ass soundtrack?  This game has so many songs that I couldn’t name them all here but I can tell you that it features 108 heavy metal tracks from 75 different bands.

Here’s a great trailer with some celebrities talking about the game.  I wasn’t really interested in it but now I think I’m going to have to give it a try.

Post from: EveryJoe

“Brütal Legend” Now on Xbox 360 and PS3

Tim Schafer’s rock opus Brutal Legend is finally seeing the light of day soon, and here’s a look at what the game will bring to the table.

Images: Copyright 2009 ©EA Games.

Post from: EveryJoe

E3 ‘09: Brutal Legend

On Monday, EA Games hosted its own press conference here at E3 2009. Here are a few highlights from the event.

EA Sports announces Fight Night Round 4, for the first time allowing you to pit Ali against Tyson, with spectacular-looking results. Check out the big-screen demo:

EA Sports announces and demos Grand Slam Tennis for Wii, complete with a surprise appearance by tennis superstar Pete Sampras.

Brutal Legend designer Tim Schafer takes the stage to unveil several new characters and show off new video featuring star Jack Black. Note: this video is NSFW.

A full level demo for Pandemic’s The Saboteur, which features creative use of color and black & white, and finds you working with the resistance in Nazi-occupied France during WWII.

Last but by far not least, a progress report on the highly-anticipated MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, featuring on-stage Jedi and the world premiere of the game’s cinematic trailer. (If only the prequel trilogy had been more like what the trailer shows!)

Post from: EveryJoe

E3 ‘09: EA press conference highlights

We’re less than two days away from the official start of E3 here in sunny L.A., which begins on Tuesday (though a trio of major press conferences take place Monday). I got into town today and took a long walk around the Los Angeles Convention Center, where signs of E3 are popping up all over. If there was any doubt about this year’s event being a return to the truly big E3s of yesteryear, those thoughts were washed away by these larger-than-life sights around the convention center!

Click through to see all 27 photos for yourself:

The outer entrance to West Hall, where Sony and Nintendo will be exhibiting. That’s Kratos’ arm from the God of War games, holding a PS3 controller. A sure hint that God of War III is going to be shown.

This Jack Black-voiced titled is finally seeing the light of day. (Hey, I made a funny.)

Three banners showing off what is without a doubt, one of the most highly anticipated games of E3 2009: Modern Warfare 2, the sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

After many long delays (and what looks like a makeover for protagonist Sam Fisher), it looks like Splinter Cell: Conviction might be ready to drop.

Can’t wait to see more of this one… I loved the first game!

An appropriate centerpiece for the main lobby at the massive South Hall.

The Sims 3 adorns a building directly across the street from the Convention Center.

Without a doubt, the biggest banner on display at E3 — inside or out. It’s advertising Assassin’s Creed II, the sequel to my favorite game of all time.

I’m admitting nothing, but it’s possible I might have peed a tiny little bit when I saw this.

Another ginormous ad for Modern Warfare 2.

Had to stop by the historical Los Angeles Theatre this afternoon to pick up my press badge. The event takes place tomorrow evening.

Get ready… get set…

Here we go.

Complete coverage of E3 2009 begins tomorrow with the press conferences for Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft. Stay tuned!

Post from: EveryJoe

L.A. Convention Center readies for E3

The good people over at Gamers With Jobs were lucky enough to bag a conference call interview with Mr. Tim Schafer of Double Fine. And not only do they interview Tim Schafer, they also talk about the new online game, Warhammer Online, playing World of Warcraft on a Mac Airbook. Another interesting point they talk about with WoW is some crazy new thing that Blizzard is doing with some type of short download streaming client thing a user can use to play WoW without actually downloading all of the like 4 gig worth of game from the internet. It actually sounds pretty cool and the guys at Gamers With Jobs explain it way better than I do!

But, if you don’t want to hear anything but the guys talking to Tim, you might want to forward the podcast to about 44:10 where they actually start talking to Tim. If you just want to hear him talk about Brütal Legend, go ahead and forward to about 45:55.

For the first few minutes, Tim talks about how to be funny and how hard it is to actually BE funny. If you’re trying to be funny and come off as not being funny, it’s horribly bad. Especially in the gaming world. Good thing for Tim, that man’s got a lot of funny in him and we can definitely see it in some of his earlier games: Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. You know, all of his works at LucasArts.

When he gets to the the part where he talks about Brütal Legend he starts making some comparisons of this game to other games he’s been involved with. Tim really compares a lot of the game to Full Throttle and says that the main charater, Eddie, is kind of dark and serioues like Ben from Full Throttle. But that doesn’t mean the game won’t have Schafer’s humor in it.

We’ll also get to hear about a little bit of the development of the game is going and how Tim puts together an epic game like Brütal Legend. Specifically, what was interesting about him talking about Brütal Legend is when he talks about how they put together dialog for characters and how much they don’t actually know the character until the voice actor comes in and makes the character their own. For example, Tim didn’t even have most of the lines for Eddie scripted until he heard Eddie’s voice actor, Jack Black in action.

Now, where are they at with Brütal Legend? About 3/4 of the way done. Tim doesn’t have all the dialog written, but he’s getting there. The game definitely won’t be ready this year, though, which kind of sucks. But hey, at least they’re going to be making an awesome game.

And of course there is a ton more stuff I couldn’t possibly write here, so the best thing to do is to listen to it here.

[Image courtesy of Double Fine.]

Post from: EveryJoe

Tim Schafer is interviewed!