I hadn't turned on my Xbox 360 in probably six months, and that means I've missed many a tremendous new game release (including Gears of War).  However, I haven't missed my Xbox too much and after all I have Twilight Princess waiting for me on the Wii if I ever want to sit down and play a real video game.

The release of Worms for Xbox Live demanded my attention, however.  I used to be a huge Worms fan my freshman year of college.  We would push the Worms Armageddon game to its limits as it would frequently crash when we would play on the LAN with upwards of six people.

 

 

My connection to Xbox Live hasn't worked in quite awhile due to the router in my living room being uncooperative.  So last night I installed Tomato, a new open source firmware, on my two Linksys routers.  I admit to being somewhat of a neophyte when it comes to wireless bridges and WDS, but I got it working solidly after not too much tinkering.  I can't imagine your average computer user getting two wireless routers working using WDS, though.

Anyway, I now have my wireless router in the living room extending the range of the router from my office.  Furthermore, I can plug the 360 and other devices directly into the living room router.

So how is Worms?  Phenomous.  I had whet my appetite by playing a match or two over at Thad's house on Saturday.   Last night I got linked up with Reed on Xbox Live and had a tremendous time.  Worms is a damn near perfect game, and looks gorgeous in HD.  I think it may be time for me to pick up a new microphone...  and Gears of War.

The New York Times has an interesting article about a former executive of Electronic Arts who is now acquiring interests in game developers to check the power of the publishing behemoths. John Riccitiello and his venture capital firm Elevation Partners have bought controlling stakes in Bioware and Pandemic Studios. Their goal is to create a video game company whose creative divisions operate individually but also share some business operations and use their combined strength to gain leverage against the publishers.