I got used to the controller fairly quick but the first issue that arose from the controller: Serious feedback from any mic being used with it. I tried it out with a pair of Astro A40s, Tritton AX 720s and then just the official Xbox 360 headset. Two of the three had severe feedback--it was bad enough that the feedback would output to people in my XBL party. The Xbox 360 feedback was only audible [to myself] when people were talking. It would pop/crackle when someone started talking and hiss/pop once they stopped talking. It was passive enough that I just did my best to ignore it. It sucked having to stop using headsets I dropped insane money on because of feedback.

That issue started the minute I used the controller unfortunately. If that was the only problem with it, I'd be content and deal with it. But it wasn't. Two weeks ago both of the analog sticks started to have response issues. I should note that I had absolutely no slowturn issues at all. I ran the test and it passed 100 across the board. The issue I had was that the analog stick would just stop sending out a signal that it was still in use. While I was playing Modern Warfare 2 MP, a perk I often run with is marathon pro. That gives me endless sprint. So all I need to do is push/use the left analog stick and I'm running non-stop. Well, that definitely didn't happen. I would constantly stop as if some invisible wall was spawned in front of me.

Then when I'd try to sprint again I would only be able to move what can be construed as 2-3 steps before I'd have to let go of the analog stick and then push it forward. This is frustrating because despite unplugging the controller (and eventually restarting my 360 Slim) the issue was still present. So not even 20 minutes later, I started to have issues with the right analog stick. It had the seem lack of response--it would stop accepting that I was moving the analog around and stick to the last position it was in.

Knowing all of the frustration I went through with my Razer Lycosa, I knew that I was not going to live with it and deal with it. I want a controller that works! I love the Onza TE, especially being able to map the buttons AND change the tension for the analog sticks is a GODSEND! The controller is slick, light-weight and response time with the buttons is amazing. I just am not going to use it with the analog stick issues. Whether or not it's a bad controller or the entire batch, I'm hoping I can get an exchange for the Onza TE as soon as possible.

Going from the Onza TE to my old Xbox wireless controller is brutal!

If you're into logic/puzzle games, then you should definitely get into ilomilo, an upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game developed by SouthEnd. Want to try it out but don't see it available in the XBLA Marketplace? That's because they made a super secret site that will generate a code for you so you can redeem it to gain access to the trial version. And if you enjoy the game enough that you want to buy it then you can do so right from the IloMilo trial itself! The game will run you a very meager 800.

Haven't heard of ilomilo before? Check out the ilomilo trailer to get a glimpse of the (awesome!) game. The marketplace also has an ilomilo theme you can grab.

Earlier today all achievements for Black Ops were leaked. In total there are 50 achievements (or PS3 Trophies) to obtain that are worth 1000 . Of those 50 achievements, 1 is worth 100 (or a ) that you will receive upon completing the game in hardened or veteran mode. There are currently 3 secret achievements that are worth 45 (or 3 .)

Black Ops Achievements

This level is fairly easy in terms of the puzzles you need to solve but as you progress in the 'story,' they will become a little more difficult and require you to put a little more thought into solving the puzzles as well as mapping out your gameplay throughout.

You will also receive three achievements during your playthrough:

Banshees, Fast and Low 25
Hijacked a Banshee during the Reach Campaign.

The fastest (and easiest) way to get this achievement is to load up "The Package" mission and select "Rally Point Bravo" on Normal. Go ahead and walk to the base you'd normally defend but instead grab a jetpack. Then you'll use it to get on top of the base's roof. Sit around and wait until one of the banshees gets closest enough, then use your jetpack to get above it. Wait for the prompt to hijack, hit x and voila--there's your achievement!

My idea for GameGirl is to be both a place for gaming content (reviews, walkthroughs/achievements, game updates) and a social network. Right now I've been slamming away on the keyboard getting the GameGirl forums tidied up. I debated on whether or not I wanted to hold off on allowing a community to start but I figured what's stopping me? So the community is up and running already while I'm now focusing all my time and effort on getting the main site designed and coded.

That being said this post is actually me looking for some serious to casual gamers. You don't necessarily have to be female although it's my priority/preference for the time being. Essentially I am looking for people that will remain dedicated to this project while we're in our baby phase. I'm looking for gamers that enjoy writing reviews about games they've played (single player, co-op or multiplayer), writing about the latest news for video game publishers and developers, or perhaps enjoy creating video walkthroughs and/or achievement guides.

This will be an unpaid position within GameGirl but over the next few months I do plan on providing to those that are contributing to GameGirl on a consistent basis. How you'll be rewarded will be discussed privately as I don't want to give away all of my trade secrets! If you are interested in contributing your writing skills to GameGirl then please send an email to me at jordan @riane.org.

If you're not interested in writing for GameGirl but would like to be a part of the community then please register at the forums! It's not active at the moment as we have only just finished the skin (and are still working on making it cross browser and/or fixing bugs) but I'd love to have any of my readers join even if you're not a gamer.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to snag a Halo: Reach beta code to get into the beta a few days early versus waiting until May 3rd. Needless to say I spent a few hours playing the Reach multiplayer beta and had somewhat of a blast. Prior to yesterday I had an almost year and a half hiatus from Halo 3 as I made the switch over to Call of Duty. My elite skills that were once there were no longer and I might as well have been a noob.

Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta

First thoughts jumping into the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta was wow, the UI is seamless, transitions are gorgeous and everything is fluid and smooth. I also love that the menus all appear to be at a slight angle giving it a bit of a 3D look without being too obnoxious and pixelated. I jumped straight into the settings to customize my super awesome Spartan. Rather than unlock armor based on your campaign and/or achievement completion, armor unlocks are now based on the credits you earn from the game whether it's multiplayer or campaign (I believe campaign is included but I will find a source later.) You also unlock them based on your current ranking (eg: "You are missing some of the prerequisites needed to purchase this item: You need to be at least Warrant Officer.")

Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta - The Armory

One thing I liked the most was that your service tag isn't just the standard Number/Letter/Letter. You can now have four characters in your service tag, in any order you please. I went with my current Modern Warfare 2 clan tag, which is just #23, an ode to Michael Jordan. It's definitely a step up from my old Halo 2/3 service tag which was "H03." Emblems are pretty standard, a lot from the other games and some new ones mixed into it. The scrolling for emblems definitely improved a lot as you go up and down for your background and left and right for your foreground. Definitely easier to sort through the plethora there. I opted for my Halo 3 emblem of a ducky.

Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta - Matchmaking Menu

The matchmaking menu received a nice face lift. I'm now able to see what friends of mine are currently in the game and what they're doing. No need to go to the Xbox menu and scroll through friends to see who is on right now. That is definitely an awesome feature that I'm glad they integrated with it. Again you can see how awesome the slight angle looks for it and the background image for it gives a sneak peak into what to expect for Halo: Reach itself.

As far as what is currently available you have two different playlists you can sort through, Arena and Standard with Standard being the only one available at this time as well as only two maps being available (next week two more will be available.) You can either opt to play in 4x4 Team games or go straight into 8 player FFA. Right now there are only a few gametypes available with some new ones being "Stock Pile" where you have an allotted amount of time to collect 10 flags to win; There are flags strategically placed throughout the maps available to either team to pick up and run it back to their flag spot. There are 60 second wait periods for flag capturing so while you might grab 5 flags within 30 seconds, you have 30 seconds left to defend until they are calculated to your score.

One of the biggest differences with matchmaking is that you now have the chance to vote between four different options--three are gametypes and the fourth is "none of the above. Now I'm not sure whether or not this is specific to the multiplayer beta or if we'll see it in Reach come the fall but this definitely allows for you to really play what you want to instead of being stuck with a gametype you don't enjoy. Right now people aren't used to it so I've seen a lot of games stuck on the default checkmark versus users picking their own. Once everyone gets more acquainted with it, I'm sure we'll be playing better gametypes. I was stuck with a lot of Stock Pile games, 1 CTF and VERY few Team Slayer or Team Swat games.

Halo: Reach Beta - Match Found Menu

Phew this is a lot already and I haven't even gotten into the gameplay itself! A lot has changed for multiplayer itself with changes to weapon (bye-bye BR, hello DMR!), health/shields and of course the addition of some new weapons and the already infamous weapon load outs. Very similar to the style of Call of Duty's "classes," you have load outs that you are able to choose right when a game starts and before you respawn after a death.

Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta - Weapon Loadouts

Right now the load outs are very basic. All start off with an assault rifle as your primary, a pistol as your secondary and 2 frag grenades. Now the main difference between the four weapon loadouts are your special ability (although I think they're actually called "equipment" as the button layout states it as such.) On the default button layout, you'd be using your LB (Left Bumper) to activate it. You can check your usage progress on the lower left hand side of the screen. You'll see an icon of your class and around it is a circle progression bar. When you start using the equipment, you take away from the current power you have. Once you use it all up you have to wait for it to regenerate itself. Which is an awesome feature which will definitely not make the game too unbalanced.

The following are available as loadouts:

• Scout - You have the ability to sprint.
• Guard - You are "invisible" with your shield.
• Stalker - You are wearing camo and are invisible.
• Airborne - You have a sweet ass jetpack to fly.

If you'd like to read more about the loadouts and what to expect from the game itself, Bungie has up an awesome guide for the Loadouts to see what else they'll be bringing into the game. I pretty much rotated between Scout and Airborne. Airborne is hella awesome. I was a bit skeptical at first when I had read about this new addition a few months ago but.. actually trying it out. It's ridiculously different but it really adds a whole new playing field to the game. Rather than crouching behind a wall or object when you're in a battle with someone, just boost yourself into the air to headshot them from above. No need to play the "Who's gonna poke their head out first" game! Scout was what I initially started off with. I play a lot of Modern Warfare 2 [multiplayer] which means I am ALWAYS sprinting and/or utilizing the Marathon perk to run without breaks. Going from MW2 (or even COD4) to Halo 3 (again) was too difficult for me because I felt like the gameplay was SO much slower and I was unable to get used to it again.

In Slayer gametypes I don't see this impacting it too much, most people are either aggressive or passive so I don't see this changing anything.. but when it comes to objective based games, this will definitely help to "organize" your team on who does what. If you have someone that prefers to stay back from the pack and take long ways to flank, then they will definitely love the Stalker class. For someone that is overly aggressive and prefers to go for more defense then offense, the Guard loadout will be perfect as they'll have that extra time to "protect" themselves and even use themselves as bait to allow teammates to flank. Scout will be perfect for the person that loves to immediately go straight for the objective--with that sprint you can just try rushing immediately. But beware, you can't use your loadout with your objective, so don't try to sprint away with the flag in your hand--You'll end up dropping it. And last but not least for the person that likes to be the middle man between offense and defense, Airborne might be perfect for you. You'll be able to rise high into the air to pop a few shots into people near your team mates or even rush to the person with objective to give them cover fast. On the first floor but they're on the third and need help? No problem, just boost your jetpack to get your butt up there!

Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta - Loadouts

There's still so much more to go over with the beta thus far but I'm going to put them into another post over the weekend. I originally intended to just hash over a few things but eventually inspired myself to actually write about the beta thus far. Which to be frank, this isn't a beta. This feels more like a pre-release/sneak preview to entice years and increase the hype even more. I've yet to find any glitches and/or bugs while playing.. compared to the Halo 3 beta this is entirely different.

Win a Halo: Reach Multiplayer beta code

That being said if you've read this far then.. congratulations because you've got a chance to win the one and only extra Halo: Reach Multiplayer beta invite that I have so you can hop in on the fun over the weekend instead of waiting until Monday. You'll get to be the cool cat everyone will want to be ;).

Using your real name and email, post a comment on this post letting me what your most anticipated new feature for Halo: Reach is. Yup. that's it.

Please make sure that you use your REAL email as this is how I will be giving you the code that you will need to redeem on Xbox so you can download the beta. I will pick a random commentator by 9PM CST tonight. So get your comments posted, now! :)

I've already finished up the redesign for my portfolio (and created a PDF resume), so I've got that knocked out of the way. Hopefully I can get the design for atourworst.org done tomorrow, so I can get back to working on a redesign for Holdfire.

Other than that life has been quite peachy. I'm still on the lookout for a full time job, but I've managed to tide myself over with some gigs here and there. Things with my boyfriend Armando are going quite well, and I'm happy with that.

Some websites, applications, and anything else that I've been into lately:

• Jing Project - "...instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere."
• Tiny Twitter - mobile twitter app I use for Windows Mobile 5.X
• InType - Switched from Notepad++ to InType as my main code editor
• FeedDemon - Armando showed me FeedDemon, and it was enough to get me to retire browser based RSS readers.
• Wefunction.com
• Designsadvice.com
• Designreviver.com
• Sixrevisions.com

What applications or websites have you recently found?

I turned off the console, and decided to boot it back up only to get a red ring, with the error code E 74.

Needless to say that I've tried the troubleshooting for it, and it's still unresolved. My warranty expired apparently, so the Xbox repairs would be out of my pocket. I'm not sure what I plan on doing, but I'll probably end up dropping out some cash for a new system on Tuesday.

Hopefully I can get my sister's friend to let me borrow his system for the time being. And oddly enough, I'm surprisingly calm about it right now.

I work, I go to school, and I play Halo 3. If anything, I should be blogging about Halo 3, considering that's the one thing I do the most in my life right now. I admit that I am ridiculously addicted to the game, more specifically the XLIVE part of it. For almost four weeks, I've watched cable television maybe 2 of the 24 days. The other 22 days I've been on Halo. And it definitely shows. And on that note, the rest of this blog is going to be about Halo 3.

My character is a UNSC Spartan which basically means that in multi-player (Xbox Live), I've won 20 or more ranked games. Bungie has this ridiculously intricate ranking set up for XBox Live. Currently I'm a Lieutenant Grade 3. I haven't received too many achievements from playing campaign as I've only done two missions thus far, but I play more online matchmaking than anything else. But online matchmaking has a lot of medals that you win throughout matches, regardless of it being social and ranked. Some of them are achievements but not all of them.

So far I've played about 805 matchmade games, most of those being Team Slayer. I'm just not big on playing Social matches simply because I hate dealing with parties larger then 4-per-team and the arrogant people that tend to stick to social. There are times when I'll have really bad games (usually Shotty Snipers) and there are times when I'll have really amazing games, like this gem right here. I had 50% of the games kills (25/50), and ended up getting some uber sweet medals I haven't gotten before like Overkill (Kill 4 opponents within 4 seconds of the previous kill.), Extermination (Get an overkill on an opposing team that results in all of the team being dead.) Needless to say I was pretty stoked about that, but I think I intimidated the other guys on my time, because noone partied up with me.

I'm really a huge sucker for Halo 3 though. I honestly can't get enough of it, so much that I've put off buying Call of Duty 4 and The Orange Box because I don't feel like stopping with H3 just yet. Though when you couple that with not wanting to spend money, it's a perfect reason to stick with Halo! Though since I don't want to really buy a game I won't like, I ended up caving in and subscribing to Gamefly.

The first three games on my queue are:

• CSI: Hard Evidence - Shut up! I just love CSI and wanted to see if the game was any fun.
• Half-Life 2: The Orange Box - This will be the deciding factor in whether I'll buy it or not.
• Gears of War - I've been told that the campaign is ridiculously sweet, but that the online multi-player sucks donkey doo.

So there. Now you know what I've been up to and currently obsessing with. Oh, and for those of you that have Xbox Live, feel free to share your gamertag. I'd be willing to hit you guys up for some matches on Halo 3 (cos you know, that's the only game I ever play!)