Thanks to wizlonUK for letting me know that the link to download XNAButtonPack2 was broken (it linked to the first button pack). I just wanted to write a quick not to let you coders know that I’ve repaired it. 

We don’t often talk about those XNA buttons here on the blog but they’re my most popular download so let’s take a moment to expand on that.  First off, I’m happy to report that you can now find my buttons in such games as:

• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
• Pirates vs Ninja Dodgeball
• Lord of the Rings: Conquest
• High School Musical 3: DANCE
• Watchmen: The End is Nigh
• and many, many community games

What I’m *unhappy* to report is that most of those games still seem to have a problem with violating my creative commons license. I’m not asking for much guys, if you want to use my buttons all you have to do is list my name and URL in the credits of your game. It helps out a lot with my portfolio.  Okay, enough with the bad stuff.

The second thing I wanted to let everyone know, is that there are currently three more button packs in development.  Not only are they more diverse, but they also contain buttons for other platforms.  Interest piqued? Well, I’ll let you know more about that soon.

One of my favourite sites on the Internet is WhatTheyPlay.com  – I’m a big fan of John Davison and the work he’s been doing to educate non-gamer parents on the pitfalls (pun totally intended) of raising gaming children.

Look, personally I don’t have any problems with someone who’s 15 or 16 playing a round of Halo 3 or Gears of War but I don’t think a nine year old should be playing something along the lines of GTA4.  What kills me is when I see young children walk into EB games with their Mom, the Mom asks for GTA4, the clerk outlines in explicit detail why the game is rated M, the Mom gets all embarrassed because she realizes that her child lied to her and even worse they’re in public AND THEN CAVES AND BUYS THE GAME WHEN SHE DOESN’T WANT TO!

Fellow parents!! Don’t get suckered!  Read WhatTheyPlay!

Anyway, we’re getting off topic.  The particularily cool thing about WhatTheyPlay right now is that my better half has contributed to one of their new feature articles called “Real Moms“.  Am I excited to see Maranda’s name along with such famous names as Perrin Kaplan?  Hell YES! You go girl

42. Ottawa Export

So, now that you’ve all been using the NXE for a few days what do you think?  Is it the massive change that you’d thought it would be? Anything else you wish would have been done?  I can tell you that there are still a few things I’d change, but they’re all relatively minor.

On the gaming front, I’ve recently finished the campaigns of both Gears of War 2 and Tom Clancy’s EndWar.  The former I probably don’t need to talk about since you’ve all already played it, but the second game is a little more rare.  In fact, aside from Maranda, I’m the only one on my friends list who’s been playing it.  I find this troubling not because I think it’s an amazing game that you’re all missing out on, but because I really want them to make a sequel and iron out all the issues I have with the game.

Yes, EndWar is one of those games where the first in the series feels more like a proof of concept then a full game.  It has some solid mechanics with some decent gameplay but it feels like too little content spread out over too much time.  Every mission plays out almost exactly the same: Capture the points, defend them until you win.  In order to mix things up a little, Ubisoft implemented ‘DEFCON’.  Essentially, when you’ve captured enough points to start the victory countdown-timer, the other side gets immediate access to their faction’s WMD.  This is a game-changer as your entire force can be wiped out if you’re not careful and have spread them out all over the map.  The trick is, however, to NOT trigger DEFCON and wipe out all your opponent’s units instead (each side has a finite amount of reinforcements that  can be called in).  This way WMDs can never be triggered and all you have to do is stop the enemy from capturing the majority of points.  Trust me, it’s a lot easier.

Of all the RTS games I’ve played on console (and I’ve played quite a few) I certainly enjoyed this one the most.  The addition of the voice controls make this the first really playable RTS on the console and it will make you wish that more games had competent voice commands.  But, like I said, the sequel is the game that we should be looking forward to.  Seems like there are a lot of those out this year…