War of Ages Return to Life Releases Tomorrow April 24, 2012

Pre-order Return to Life to get some awesome stuff!

War of Ages has an all-new album releasing tomorrow on Facedown records called “Return to Life”! Go and pre-order Return to Life from War of Ages today while you still can if you haven’t already!

If you haven’t heard of War of Ages yet, they are titans of the Christian metal world and have released some extraordinary albums full of amazing guitar work. The band started out small but consistently put out great releases and has built a HUGE fanbase… growing ever bigger thanks to constant during and huge headlining shows with bands like Demon Hunter, As I Lay Dying and many, many others. In fact Tim Lambesis from As I Lay Dying produced War of Ages last album, “Eternal”, highly regarded as their best album yet.

Here is a lyric video for War of Ages song “Redeemer” from Return to Life!

 

Xenoblade Chronicles is OUT NOW. I Got My Copy, Did You Get Yours?

Xenoblade Chronicles offers great visuals for a Wii game, and offers an epic world to explore.

Xenoblade Chronicles has finally been released exclusively for Wii (On April 6th, my younger brother’s 25th bday actually), hopefully you went out to your local GameStop or ordered the game at Nintendo’s official online store to get your copy today! If not, then definitely watch a few trailers of the game or whatever it takes to convince you that Xenoblade Chronicles is a must-own title. Then go out and BUY IT!

This is one of those amazing games that was developed with love and care by Monolith Soft (makers of Xenogears and Xenosaga series), and needs sales to be high in order to convince Nintendo to bring the third, last and only outstanding Operation Rainfall title left, Pandora’s Tower, to America! So please go out and support Xenoblade Chronicles!

Awesome Operation Rainfall artwork showing all three games in the campaign to convince Nintendo to release these Wii RPGs stateside!

I reserved my copy in order to help bump up pre-orders of this game, as well as to ensure that I got the GameStop Xenoblade Chronicles free artbook pre-order incentive that was being offered for people who put down their $5 to reserve the highly anticipated Wii-exclusive RPG. Xenoblade Chronicles is co-published by GameStop, so it is exclusively sold there except for online, where you can get Xenoblade Chronicles at the Nintendo.com Store, including an exclusive bundle for an extra $15 that includes the game alongside a black Classic Controller Pro.

Sadly the artbook is more like a brochure, and is not the hardcover bound tome that I was hoping it would be. I guess you can never expect to much with GameStop, you definitely gotta check your expectations at the door. However a bonus is better than NO BONUS, so I can’t complain too much. And the “skinny artbook” is actually quite thick (printed on thick paper), so in a way it’s a lot more than a brochure or pamphlet in size and weight, and does feature some beautiful images. It’s mostly artwork on the right side and stretching about half into the left page, with text on the left side on a black background. The book is a bit longer about the width or a bit more of a Wii game case. It’s nothing much, but like I said, it’s better than nothing. Sadly we didn’t get the hardcover French-exclusive Xenoblade Chronicles Art Book that was offered overseas. FOR SHAME!

The Xenoblade Chronicles Artbook alongside my copy of the game. The artbook may look big here, but it's not much bigger than the game case.

GameStop early on actually met the threshold for how many pre-order bonus Xenoblade Chronicles Art Books were actually given to them (around March 30th, although the news hit on the 27th). So if you reserved the game after March 30th ahead of the release date on April 6th (like I did, pre-ordering the game on April 4th), the company would no longer guarantee that you would get an artbook. This thankfully bodes well for the game’s sales; because it means that enough people pre-ordered that they RAN OUT of their pre-order incentives. Hopefully demand for the game has been very high for this Wii-exclusive RPG! Which is so deserving of it it will be criminal if sales aren’t high! Do what you can to let your friends know about the game and spread the word!

I’m also very thankful that I was able to get my hands on the Xenoblade Chronicles artbook at all, because my local GameStop also couldn’t guarentee that I’d get the book. I went in early though and they gave me one, so I’m a happy camper!

Xenoblade Chronicles will cost you $50 or $65 if you went the Nintendo Store route and got the Classic Controller Pro bundle. Personally I had no money, so I had to trade in games to get my copy. I ended up trading in New Super Mario Bros. DS, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (PS2, I own two copies), Super Mario Galaxy 1 (Wii) and Punch-Out Wii. It always stings to trade games in, but that was the only way for me since I’m a poor man. I wanted to do my part to put my money where my mouth is and pre-order the game, so it was the only way. At the end I NEARLY traded my copy of Epic Mickey…. I deliberated for a long time, but decided to keep it since the sequel is coming out soon and I haven’t played it. And it looks like such an awesome game. Plus I own the Collector’s Edition with the awesome figurine. So in the end I choose to trade NSMB DS instead.

Once I’ve played through some of Xenoblade Chronicles, I will let you know what I think of the game. And the same for Kid Icarus: Uprising, which I desperately need to get back to playing. So keep your eyes peeled for a review soon!

Here, once again, is the Xenoblade Chronicles Epic Trailer!