UPDATE:  Winner of Blue Dragon for the 360 is BIG DEZ.  Send your address to preacher(at)christian-gaming.com.

It’s been a crazy week here at HCG Central. Most of the presents have been unwrapped, the turkey and ham have been eaten and Grandpa is still passed out on the couch from his food coma.
So as you play your games, listen to your iPods or workout on your Wii Fit we just want to remind you of a few things.

-HCG Community Playdate. 28 December (Sunday) at 8pm Eastern time. If you have COD:WAW just be online and we will send you an invite. Look for one from someone with SOG in their name.

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The whole crew is together again. We discuss NPPL Paintball 2009, Secret Service, Sonic Unleashed, PS Home and more. Also a special guest joins us for a short time.

Visit our sponsors, www.playswitch.com and www.gamehqonline.com.

Or if you want the .Mp3 file click here.

As an avid non-paintball-er I wasn’t sure where to begin with NPPL Paintball for the Xbox 360. On one hand I was excited to try out something new, on the other I was nervous because I was unsure how a game (simulation) that is about simulating war would pan out.

Right from the jump I could feel that this game was developed by some guys and gals that may not have had the largest budget for creating a game. The facial graphics are terrible (thankfully your guys wear masks) and the soundtrack including the voice clips get really repetitive really fast. This doesn’t seem to completely affect the game though and you can turn the music down.

The premise of the game is to play the speed-ball version of paintball. It’s fast paced, the rounds only last about 8 minutes and there aren’t more than 14 players out on the field at any given time. The primary objective in most of the tournaments is to capture the other teams flag and bring it back to your headquarters. If you eliminate a player he is out and if you eliminate all the opposing players then it’s a walk in the park to take the flag and place it at your base. You can plan before each match and route your team mates to different parts on the playing field.

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This article is from HCG User de Hollywood.
We did a bad thing, us internet folk. With the constant minute to minute play by play of the video game nation on blogs, we’ve made life for video game magazines very difficult indeed. They fight tooth and nail to change to stay up to date, but it’s an upstream battle to say the least. If it wasn’t for the exclusive information they seem to be able to keep a lid on for so long, would they even still be around? It’s doubtful. How long does it take to create, publish and ship magazines? It takes a century in comparison of how fast a blog can get a tip and post it on the front page. Do I think that print is dead? No, not necessarily, but it sure isn’t healthy in this case. “Nrevolution”, a Nintendo based magazine recently closed its doors and the Spanish version of Electronic Gaming Monthly ended, citing a lack of confidence in the English magazine ability to stay afloat as the main reason. We watched as GFW magazine fell apart at the seams and moved to the online world. Can video game magazines survive in the current generation of consumers that are use to more content at a much faster rate? I’m going to offer both sides of the argument, and you can make up your own dang minds.
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This post comes from HCG User SaulbecomesPaul

So, I select Prince of Persia for my Gamefly Q. I’m pretty sure that I picked it for my 360. Apparently that was not the case. Reading my e-mails that day I found that whether I wanted it or not, I was getting the new Ubisoft delivery to play on my bluray player, i.e. PS3. As upset as that made me, I figured I would make the best of it and just enjoy the graphics that the Sony system touts and hopefully make it through the game without thinking of the achievement points I just missed out on.

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Microsoft has given us at HCG an awesome opportunity to get our name and mission out there to the rest of the Xbox Live community.  We are hosting a Community Playdate sponsored by Xbox Live.  Other Live members who are looking for community involvement can go into the dashboard or can visit the community calendar on Xbox.com to see which events are coming up which we are now a part of.

The Playdate starts December 28th from 8pm to 11pm EST.  If you would like to be part of our Community Playdate visit the website here to find out more information.

This user blog comes from HCG Member Coaster Rider89

So I just used some of my MyCokeRewards points to “buy” a 2 game at a time, 1 month trial to GameFly. I have Netflix, so I understand how the whole renting by mail system works. The first thing I did was add some of the games that I have been wanting to play, including some of the fairly new games. At first I thought I should use the month to boost my gamer score, but I have enough games that I own that I haven’t finished yet. So I’m getting the games that I really want to play. My strategy was that I would get whatever games were available and then try for the newer games later. Surprisingly I am getting Far Cry 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company. I played in the Bad Company beta, so I kind of know what to expect there. What I’m really excited for is Far Cry 2, because I really want to mess around with the map editor. The games should be getting here on Wednesday!

What are your impressions on GameFly? Do you think it is a good deal or is it too expensive?

UPDATE:  Contest is closed.  Winners will be announced shortly.

Here at HCG we are thankful for all of our members.  Our community is only as strong as our members and we have some stellar members here.  As a special thanks to everyone who has been active here on the site and forums we are having an HCG Thanksgiving-back.  Our prize locker has been filled with some awesome game SWAG (Stuff We All Get) and we are going to be giving it away.

Some of the prizes you can win are Rock Band T-shirts, Guitar Hero shirts, Alone in the Dark Shirts, HCG Shirts, a GTA 4 lisence plate with “NIKO” on it, Halo 2 for PC, Super Mario Galaxy (Wii), Hellboy Keychain, Guitar Hero on Tour Headphones, Unreal Tournament 3 faceplate and our grand prize (1) game of your choice.

To win, leave us a comment throughout the day telling us what you are thankful and you are automatically entered.  Winners will be selected at random and notified via email (so make sure your email is up to date).  Contest ends Sunday night Nov 30 at 8pm Central time.

After being bombarded with a barrage of games these past few weeks we finally get a week off unless all you have been looking forward to is Sonic Unleashed.  In short, the following games have been taking up most of our time and yours too.

Call of Duty: World at War

Left4Dead

Fallout 3

Fable II

Socom Confrontation

Dead Space

Gears of War 2

Guitar Hero World Tour

Rock Band 2

…and that’s just a few of the games that have been released.  That is a total of $511.00 in just a couple weeks.  If you were smart you would have traded some of those games towards the new games, in case this were to happen again some other options for you would be Playswitch where you can sell your games towards other games.  Or take advantage of deals like Game HQ’s Black Friday sale taking place the day after Thanksgiving.  If you use the code “HCFriday” you get an additional 10% off on that day on some extremely discounted price games.

This user blog is from Tank.

If you would like your voice to be heard, sign up on the forums and add “UB” to the beginning of your blog post.

Where in the world am I going to find the time to play all of the games I have now? I was stupid, I went out and bought all of the new ones. Gears 2, CoD: WaW, Left 4 Dead, and Quantum of Solace. Can you tell that I’m a shooter kind of guy?

I had had Gears 2 and CoD preordered for a long time. So those games I was definitely getting, and I won’t have any trouble finding people online to play with in those. Then Quantum came out a week before the movie. Being the James Bond freak that I am, I had to have this game. It turns out that it is really good. I was disappointed that the game kind of spoiled the movie for me, but I’m happy with the game. The only problem is, like Dan stated on the podcast, it will get lost in the shuffle. I fear that after another couple of weeks the MP will be devoid of players online.

Then everyone kept asking me if I was getting L4D. I guess I just fell into the peer pressure, and went out and got it. The game is fun, but now what do I do with my time? My only hope is that everyone else in the world continues to love these games the way that I do. That way there will always be plenty of people playing all four games.

So, if you ever want to play sometime, feel free to send me an invite. You know that I have all the games, and I’m always up for a game.