I made a recent Woot.com purchase of this headset simply for the fact that it was a Xbox 360  accessory and it was very, very inexpensive.  It was so cheap, at a price of $3.99, that I felt the need to buy two just to justify the $5.00 shipping.  I don’t think I even stopped to really read the description or even the picture.

I eventually received both headsets, or this article obviously would not exist and you would not be reading it.  Upon opening the box I became like a kid at the candy store at Christmas time in Disney Land/World.  I lifted the hefty packages out of the box, I do mean hefty as these seem to be very durable, and proceeded to parade my goodies around the house whenever a room-mate arrived home.

Note: If I had actually researched the product before buying, I would have discovered that these are made to replicate the feel of being on the sidelines of an official NFL Football game.  Do I care though?  No!  Although I do enjoy watching football, I do enjoy playing the official NFL video game also known as Madden.   I am in fact liable to de-brand the headset of its NFL and EA Sports stickers because I certainly don’t want to be in THAT game.

So the headset itself is durable feeling as it is very well built.  The earpiece cups the ear providing an exceptional feel.  The top and side padding are also very comfortable.  I myself did not feel like the headset was too tight, but I have now seen Amazon reviews of those who did.

The big question, How well does it work?  Exceptionally Well, Thank you for asking.  The headset seems to be powered, seeing that it plugs into the 360 controller via a blade connectors, and had a quick switch for the mute and nice volume control.  This does make the headset have a wide range of volume and to be honest, I did not have to crank mine to max what-so-ever.  The cupping of the headset provides less audio leakage and provides more of it directly into my ear which also may attribute to the excellent volume control.

The audio cable that plugs into the blade dongle may occasionally start to come loose, as I have also found on regular headsets, and may crackle when rotate as lots of other things do.  An additional item to note is that during my research (admittedly after my purchase) I found that the mic seems to be noise canceling.  Needless to say, BONUS!

This was a great headset purchase and can still be found for cheap around the ‘net if you’d like one yourself.  My final words are “A+++ Purchase, Would buy again!”

“Ho!”, you snark at me saying “I already know about the Halo: Reach release date”!  “Yo Ho”, I snark back, “but what else is coming out?”

Bwah, Who would dare place their games release date head to head with Bungie’s last master piece of Halo?

More importantly, who would adjust their release date just to do so?

Square Enix Would

FRONT MISSION EVOVLED breaks the mold of the franchise, delivering the action-packed experience of a third-person shooter within the distinct aesthetic of the FRONT MISSION® universe. Set in a world full of destruction, conspiracy and crumbling alliances, players will take on the role of Dylan Ramsey to face enemy armies while in control of a giant, customizable, bipedal tank known as a wanzer. Every wanzer is outfitted with extreme firepower, and players must fight through critical battles across a world on the brink of total war. As they make their way through metropolises such as New York City over 150 years in the future, FRONT MISSION EVOLVED will embed players in heart-pounding, large-scale action unlike anything they’ve ever seen before.

I don’t know what to say about this game.  I know very little myself at this moment.   The question in my head remains: Will this title fair well, or will it succumb to the riptide that is Halo?
Check out www.frontmissionevolved.com for more info on Front Mission Evolved.

If  you bought the Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Maps on Day 1, you may have been affected by an outage.  Modern Warfare 2 was not yet updated in order to allow the maps to be played.  In the end, you may have received a message on Xbox Live from Microsoft themselves stating the following:

“To thank you for your loyalty to Xbox LIVE and for buying the Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package on day 1, we will extend your Gold membership for 7 days of adrenaline-pumping action with your friends on LIVE. Your account will be updated on May 1.”

Well thanks Microsoft!  Wait, what are you actually kicking me back?  A standard year of Xbox Live Gold costs around $50.  Seven days is only worth around 95 cents.  However, many time people will find cheaper cards on Amazon and those run about $35.    So  for me, I just got 67 cents back.   I think I should just mail MS a dollar and say “Thanks, but no thanks.”  I mean, whatever happened to free arcade game day for their screw ups?

That’s right, the Blur beta I was telling  you about a few weeks ago is now open to all!  Simply head over to the Xbox Live Marketplace listing and click to get it queued up to download to your own 360.  The other news is that recently the Blur Beta expanded itself from a level 10 cap to a level 15 cap allowing an expanded look at cars and other power-ups.

Why not take a look for yourself?  Blur is being described not only by it’s creators, but also by the people playing it as Mario Cart meets Project Gotham Racing.  Of course, it could be they say this because the developer MADE PGR!  See for yourself!

This is the grill prop that everyone who did the Xbox Live Block Party received.  However, the code is pretty universal so why don’t you download it  yourself?

9XBX9-9RCD9-9BCK9-9PRTY-9RCKZ

-UPDATE- This wouldn’t work for me last night and I suspect it won’t work for many of you either.  The code entered just find but when it was downloading it stopped and gave me an error message saying “Couldn’t download grill prop”.  I had plenty of room left for it, so I am just assuming MS had something in place to prevent this.  Sorry Folks!