Again, it's a long time coming, but with exams wrapping up for the week, I'll have a monkey off my back in a couple of days (well, at least until the next semester piles more work onto me) and I'll be able to be a little bit more serious about updating the content here.

After picking up a handful of games for the Xbox 360 thanks to a buy two, get one sale, I've been going to town on DJ Hero and my latest review work has me plugging away at the Xbox LIVE Arcade title Gyromancer.  With the lineup of newer games to play in what little time I have, I was thankfully able to meet up with my achievement goal for the years' end as I finally ran my tally past 50,000.  I haven't had much time to play games lately and coupled with the near year I was without a functional 360, it's kind of sad to think I should really be somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000-70,000 points right now.  That can't be changed, however, and it's not like I'll lose sleep over that fact - I have things like work and school to do that for me.

DJ Hero has been an interesting experiment so far.  I still prefer playing games such as Crackin' DJ or beatmania, but, obviously, DJ Hero is much more accessible (and recently relavent) than those two titles in their purest form.  I'm a bit mixed on some of the music choices - most of them are alright and mixed with satisfying effort, but, there are other mixes that have no business being paired and just sound downright awful when the mix artist just fades between chorus lines just to sneak them in.  But you have some fantastic mixes such as "Insane in the Membrane" vs. "Spooky" that are quite memorable.  Outside of the music itself, I'm wondering just how accurate the controller is.  Even though I can rack up 95 or so percent on the hardest of songs, the weird timing windows on the sracthing and other various mishaps such as with the way too loose crossfader and turntable spins (I activated rewind just by scratching not even a quarter turn in some cases) constantly destroy my combos.  Playing just for fun, though, DJ Hero has been a great experience that I plan on tackling further.

With how busy I've been recently, it's really taken a toll on how much I've been able to contribute to other sites as well.  I've had a few blurbs on Arcade Heroes and a few reviews here and there on Diehard GameFAN, but I've been working with Eddie at Bemanistyle.com for the most part on extending our coverage of music games.  In a very surprising event, Naoki Maeda himself assisted us with a piece written in regard to the spread of the Playstation 2 into Central America and we've had an increase in the number of reviews published (some originating from my early work you can see on GemuBaka) along with a game contest in correlation with Aksys Games.  On Diehard GameFAN, though, I've had a number of high traffic pieces including an interview on the upcoming independent release of Hypertension along with news on the first DSi-only game System Flaw and it turns out my piece on Vanguard Princess stands as the 50th most-read article ever published on the site.  Once I have more time, though, I'll be able to contibute as normal and you'll definitely see more activity make its way over to GemuBaka.

For now, I'm almost about to call it week so I can charge my battery - between multiple jobs, I've been working all seven days for most of the weeks from November through this month, but I'm catching a break after my final exam on Thursday.  As such, I'll be catching up on things a little in the next few days, so, hopefully, we might even see that brand new Happy Hour along with MixMasterLar!

-nestlekwik

Man, I've been getting caught up in the scheme of ignoring the site, haven't I?  It's really a shame but by no means has it been intentional.  I've stepped up to more responsible positions on both Diehard GameFAN and Bemanistyle.com, which has really had me going and it has also pulled in a lot of fruits from my labor.  On top of that, you have to factor in work, school (which has amped up considerably due to the fact we are nearing the end of the semester) and having a personal life and it's been understandable that I haven't been able to keep regular tabs on poor, ol' GemuBaka.  The spirit is still alive, however, if you check out the sites I regularly contribute to, as, recently, I've dug up some really cool features that have garnered a lot of attention online.

Perhaps the one odd aspect I find with this very site is it seems the less I update here, the higher and faster the Alexa rank and hits per week improves.  Maybe I should just sit back and enjoy the progress, but, then again, eventually we'll just hit that brick wall where it becomes hard to improve and the figures sit in a back-and-forth limbo, which, admitedly, we've already kind of had troubles breaking through with the 300,000 mark on Alexa.  I just feel too bad that the last site exclusive we've had until now was printed back in September, but, at least everything is still standing here and our figures have remained relatively constant.  Again, thanks to anyone who makes the effort in clicking on anything we feature on the site.  It makes the effort worthwhile.

Recently, there has been a number of great items we've been able to feature on affiliated sites and those will be making their way here in due time.  I really do wish I had more interesting topics to speak of, but with all of the above going on, I just haven't had any time, really, to even play video games, which is a further bummer considering I have purchases such as Tekken 6, LEGO Rock Band and more sitting around at home.  Every busy time period eventually has to hit a downtime, though, so expect to see more goods in the near future including our trademark, honest reviews, more interviews, more features and, if I can ever get around to it, a new Happy Hour complete with MixMasterLar!

-nestlekwik

"Another week, another recap... and you love me for it: If your Xbox is depressed, try playing seven days in a row like nestlekwik did last week. It has a way of making you a bit giddy... We added 300 points of gamerscore. Points are good! Those 34 achievements were worth it I guess!

Out of all the possible new games we could have tried this last week, nestlekwik and I only tried one of them: Golden Axe. Pretty fun I guess... Also, I think nestlekwik's favorite game last week was STREET FIGHTER IV. He played it on 7 of the days.

So there you have it... Check back next week for another report from yours truly."

Again, if you'd like your Xbox 360 to write its own blog, head over to 360Voice.com and while you're there, join our 360Voice group.

I've been having quite a laid back couple of weeks, but, I would have to say it's about due.  Only some of it was relaxation, though, as work is picking up a bit and my college is giving me a bunch of crap about a course substitution.  Mix that in with other things I have going on and doing last-minute preparations for a trip this upcoming weekend, and my brain has been a little scattered.  The only new titles I've been able to hit recently was Beautiful Katamari, even though my 360 Voice recap says otherwise.  I almost got to enjoy a little BlazBlue, but the disc I borrowed was scratched up and wouldn't advance past the initial loading screen.  Speaking of Golden Axe, though, is there someone willing to jump online with me so I can finally get the last achievement in it?

That being said, my month as fill-in for Diehard GameFAN's PR has come to an end and it's reminded me of how fun, yet frustrating the work can be.  Seemingly, most people believe that upon starting up a video games function, companies just throw review copies at your doorstep, but that couldn't be further from the truth.  The process isn't something I will go into here (maybe if I ever write that book I want to), but you quickly learn that the field of video games PR is a fickle beast.  However, with everyone and their mother popping up Geocities sites just to eat up the pieces of the pie, it's no wonder these companies are as shielded as ever from the people that have more integrity in their intentions.  Never in my dreams did I ever imagine I would receive review copies of games - I got into the writing because it combined two of the things I treasure most: Writing and video games.  My real reward was just knowing that someone would read my work, all of the perks I've received since then have been mere icing on a very delicious cake.  Of course, the PR aspect runs further than swapping games for reviews.  As the head of the department, you're also the person people depend on to get review copies for the site as a whole, nab exclusive interviews and keep tabs on release dates and promotional media for upcoming games on top of the communications you establish in order to work on featuring contests and forwarding coverage of games to publishers and PR.  Interestingly enough, I was able to bump into a few contacts I had spoken to in some time and even though the work took an hour or two of my time daily, it was extremely enjoyable and going back to it almost makes me want to take more PR classes at college.

All things considered, though, I've still been plugging away at work online.  In the near future, I'll be pushing over some of the reviews and features I've been up to recently and the next week or two could be really interesting for me if I have my plans pan out as planned.  That just really never seems to happen, though.  I'll stay optimistic and look forward to these really great possibilities.  We'll see what happens, but for the weekend, I'm going to entrust the site over to Lar from Friday through Sunday, maybe one or two days before and after.  If he's up to it, he'll be the one that has to stop by and feed the site daily and let it outside to potty.

"I didn't think I would see him yesterday, but nestlekwik was back and ready for action. Total gamer score is 35,153 points. That is a gain of 205 points over last time! We have now entered the 35,000 GS club! He played Boom Boom Rocket, Transformers 2 finishing an amazing 9 achievements, GAROU MOW, Droplitz finishing 1 achievement, and then he tried to watch TV, but I killed the power... If I can't have him, no one can."

Again, if you'd like your Xbox 360 to write its own blog, head over to 360Voice.com and while you're there, join our 360Voice group.

I apologize for the updates not being as timely this past week.  JAFAX took more out of me than I had anticipated and when you couple that with me trying to situate myself at a new job and the Fourth of July holiday, I just had little time and motivation to produce material.  I've also taken a temp position to fill in as Diehard GameFAN's public relations for the month of July, so don't be afraid to check out the site.

In the past week, I've found a little bit of free time to burn through both Fight Night Round 4 and Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen.

Fight Night was an enjoyable playthrough for the most part, but I do have to insist a lot of outlets are overrating the game just a tad.  The legacy mode is about as tedious as a career mode can get - especially after the first 25 fights where your fighter has all three title belts at the heavyweight division and your goal is to then trudge through enough fights to land 51 career wins so you can retire as the greatest of all time (from hereon out referred to by its ludicrously awesome anagram GOAT).  Furthermore, the training mini games that build up your boxer's stats are just as uninspired as ever and throw up more needless loading times for short bursts of action and I would dare say Don King's Prizefighter had much more enjoyable mini games.  There's just nothing that makes the legacy mode more than just a string of fights and that falls as a huge burden on how much a single person can enjoy the game.  Also, there is still just absolutely no CPU challenge to the game - I received all of the GOAT difficulty achievements, fighting Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali on the hardest difficulty, with first-round knockouts.  Once you discover the ins and outs and know what to do in the game, it's nearly unbarable to play against the CPU unless you just really want to hammer on someone.

Lastly, the final of my minor gripes, while it mostly stems from personal standpoint, the title just doesn't seem as fun as Round 2 or 3.  I would say this personal assessment comes due to the new physics engine of the game, which I don't believe works quite as well as some outlets would lead you to believe.  I really enjoyed the overexaggeration of the blows in Round 2 or 3 and a lot of this is lost in the translation of making Fight Night Round 4 the most technically sound boxing game ever.  I would say Round 4 is the most realistic endeavor so far, but it also removes some of the simplicity and absurdity I enjoyed in the previous entries.  The replays often look weak unless you hit an opponent's sweet spot, often times it appears that your glove completely misses the opponent resulting in other body parts hitting the fighter with unspectacular results and I've seen some very questionable hits where a soft graze completely floors an opponent with nearly full health and stanima.  I'm also not a fan of the new corner system, which, while it speeds matches up, I feel brings the player out of the game.  Am I supposed to believe that because I had a bad round, the cutman is going to refuse to treat my wounds?  It doesn't make sense and I miss the feeling of being right in the boxer's face with my coach barking at me as I use my controller dexterity to heal my boxer.

There are a few other minor gripes, but, don't get me wrong, truth be told, Fight Night Round 4 is a solid game overall.  Fighting a friend never gets old and with a more robust online offering, the game should really see some mileage.

I'm still finishing the tail end of Transformers, but I'm really not impressed by the game.  It manages to be a movie-based game that doesn't royally suck, but nearly everything about it is mediocre and it gets pretty boring real fast.  I might revisit the game in a future journal, but I'll reserve my full judgment for when I can complete both scenarios and perhaps give the online multiplayer a spin.

Getting back to business, though, keep checking back for more content this week as I anticipate a new Happy Hour, more reviews and another feature or two.  As always, thanks for supporting us as we near even closer to dropping below the 1 million Alexa rank mark.

"Do you know what time of the week it is? Time to talk about what happened these last seven days: If nestlekwik plays 4 days every week, I guess I can call this a good deal. Many Xboxes have it a lot worse. The gamerscore increase was just insane. I didn't think it would be possible to get 615 points in such a short span of time but we did. Who knew 16 achievements could be worth that much? Ok I knew that...

NEW GAMES! NEW GAMES! NEW GAMES! 3 of them to be exact! Rock Band Classic Rock, Sacred 2 Fallen Angel, and UFC 2009 Undisputed. I want more! I want more! Also, I think we can all agree that nestlekwik's favorite game last week was Sacred 2 Fallen Angel. He played it on 2 of the days.

So there you have it... Check back next week for another report from yours truly."

Again, if you'd like your Xbox 360 to write its own blog, head over to 360Voice.com.

So, yeah, it's been a while - almost a full spread of six months.  I started filing tax returns for people this year and that instantly killed two to three months of my time - seriously, between that and school, I was never home.  Then that put me uber behind in my online classes, making the April to May stretch a stress fest.  I mean, really, have you ever tried to teach yourself accounting?

All things considered, the summer looks great for news and I didn't give up on writing for other sites as you may have noticed with the retrodated archive materials.  At the end of March, I somehow squeaked in some time to join the staff of Diehard GameFAN under a new pen name - D.J. Tatsujin.  I've already had a few reviews and features printed over on the site and everyone has been great to work with thus far, so, hopefully, things will continue to look bright for the quickly-growing site.

With my new pen name, you might also be interested in knowing, I am setting up new social accounts under the name, which you can use to follow our updates.  If you have a Twitter account or a Facebook page, don't be afraid to add us under the name djtatsujin.  I tend to Tweet in real time, so you'll know immediately when we've published something either here or on another site.  We're going to look at expanding our Youtube videos a little more as well, where our top 10 videos have been viewed more than a combined 100,000 times.  In fact, our number one video is responsible for nearly half that as it closes in on the 50,000 views mark.  It's a far cry from the million views of popular vids, but just thinking about it, I never imagined we would surpass 1,000.

We hope you're enjoying the catch-up content for now, but you can expect even more to flow throughout the summer and, of course, the big daddy E3 starts next week.  Our Alexa rating right now is a staggering 2,694,566, but considering there has to be millions more sites online, we'll take what we can get.  We thank anyone who has supported us up to this point and look forward to growing more in the future.

Until next time ...