Anyways, the program I use, FL Studio, made by Image-Line, is having a sale on all of their plugins. Now I’ll give you a brief rundown of what this means. Plugins are essentially external sounds, players, editors, etc. for the default program. If you have never produced music before, I highly recommend that you download the free demo of FL Studio 9. If you like it, purchase it and add some plugins!

Not only do I use this program, but I’ve convinced Elite Effect to use it as well, even though he’s still running the demo version. So if you’re looking for some good plugins, here are the ones I recommend:

• Sytrus
• Edison WAV editor
• Soundfont Player

You can check out the full list here. This promotion runs until the end of August 2010!

Maulkiller Pack Pre-Order from Gamestop:

Exclusive Character: Maulkiller – In the cloning facilities of Kamino, Darth Vader created a warrior of unparalleled strength and power by combining the genetic material of Darth Maul, former apprentice of Sith Lord Darth Sidious, with his own apprentice, Starkiller. The resulting aberrant clone possessed traits from both warriors, but the crude fusion of two disparate Force users quickly produced physical and mental instabilities that led to the unfortunate clone’s destruction. For a brief time he struck fear into the hearts of all who faced him, even Lord Vader himself.

Two Challenge Levels Pre-Order from Amazon.com:

Exclusive Challenge: The Mystical Swamps of Dagobah – Explore the mystical swamps of Dagobah in this exclusive challenge. The setting for this challenge is an abstract version of the Dagobah level in the game. Yoda is testing your skills with this dreamlike space. Use Force Grip to lift objects out of the swampy depths of the surface of Dagobah and use them to navigate to your goal. The faster you can do this the more your rewards will be. Beware! Danger lurks just below the smoky surface of the water. The stone pillars you Force Grip and lift out of the murky waters aren’t stable and can collapse at any time, the water is toxic too – wait too long on a platform and suffer the consequences.

First off, take a look at the unboxing of both the Limited Edition and Legendary Edition of Halo: Reach…followed by the unveiling of a Reach themed Xbox 360! Available September 14th for $399, the Xbox 360 Limited Edition Reach Bundle includes:

• All features of the New Xbox 360 (250 GB HDD, built-in Wi-fi, etc.)
• Limited Edition Reach themed wireless controllers
• Standard Edition of Halo: Reach

If you want to check out some hi-res images of the Reach console, head over to Major Nelsons’s flickr account and check them out. Hawtness, for sure!

Now, me introduce to you Forge World. Remember when Bungie revealed Blood Gulch and “outside the canyon”? Well, you probably weren’t expecting to go this far out of the canyon. Forge 2.0 is without a doubt, the most badass feature that any developer has come up with for the 360.

And lastly, thirty-eight new screenshots of Firefight Versus and Forge World are hot off the press for you drool over. Take a look!

/Halogasm

 Yesterday, the first game of the Xbox LIVE Summer of Arcade was released. You can purchase this game for 1200 Microsoft points ($15). I’m about 30% through and here are my thoughts.

  After reading about this game on Xbox.com, I bought this thinking it would be some cute platformer where you ran around trying to find your sister. Man was i wrong! When I started the game, under the logo it said you can turn the gore filter on in the setting menu. When  read that I was confused, I mean gore? In a game where the point is to rescue you sister?

 When the game started all I saw was black and gray, and a dark figure with white eyes rise off the ground. There were no directions, nothing. All I knew was the only way was forward. I continued through the game, swinging on ropes. Then as I was running all of a sudden a trap snapped shut squashing my player. All I could do was watch the life drain from the kid as his eyes slowly shut.

 I continued on, figuring out challenging puzzles while moving along. Then after slowly making it out alive after a spider tryed to stab me to death I saw and older man, just sitting there. I walked over hoping I would finally find another human to talk to or something. as I got closer the floor drop out from under him, and he was hung by his neck. On the corner of the screen I saw some guy running away, so I tried to catch him. Then after he tried killing me multiple times with traps, it became clear he didn’t want me to make it out alive.

20x XP in Gears of War 2 from July 22nd 12:30 EDT – July 25th  8:00 EDT

Ok, here’s my bribe. The SDCC XP event will be # of my followers divided by 500. So 4000 followers means 8x XP.

Tell your friends, family, neighbors, your boss, anyone, to follow @GearsViking!

• 49 total achievements are broken down into five groups:
  - Campaign (23)
  - Firefight (7)
  - Multiplayer (4)
  - Training (6)
  - Player Experience (9)
• Six achievements and descriptions released:
  - A Monument to All Your Sins – Complete each Campaign Mission on Legendary – alone
  - Banshees, Fast and Low – Hijack a Banshee during the Reach Campaign
  - Yes, Sensei – Earn a First Strike Medal in a Matchmaking game
  - A New Challenger – Complete all of the Daily Challenges in a given day
  - Make It Rain – Purchase an item from the Armory that requires the rank of Lt. Colonel
  - If They Came to Hear Me Beg – Perform an Assassination against an Elite to survive a fall that would’ve been fatal
• And lastly, all 49 achievement medal images:
  

Deja View

Now since you’ve had your dose of awesomeness, hop into Halo 3 today and receive the usually only Bungie-exclusive Flaming Armor. Slap on the chest piece for today only and get fire!

Have fun everyone and show your love for Bungie!

07.07.10

That’s the most important date this week since technically, in my book, July 4th was last week. Wondering why July 7th is so important…it’s Bungie Day! That’s right, Bungie, the creator of all things awesome has their own day. If it’s anything like the previous Bungie Days, keep an eye out on http://www.bungie.net/ and the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for exclusive content.

<3 ya Bungie!