Prestige pain and gaming links

From my Feb. 6th blog:

  Well, I did it. I prestiged. Right before bedtime, I booted up Modern Warfare 2 and did it. I played for about an hour with Reibo and got to level 6. I hope with today and tomorrow's game-a-thons, I can get back the Cold-blooded and Ninja perks. Cold-blooded is especially important on hardcore, since as soon as the UAV comes on, I get lit up like a Christmas tree from every corner of the map. On one game I was 6/2, got fragged, and got spawn killed 4 times in about 2 minutes to finish 6/6. In a couple of games, I was totally Predator bait. I couldn't take a step without getting shot in most games. In one particularly memorable death-a-thon, I got killed by an enemy and then had insult added to my considerable injury by spawning directly in front of the same enemy's claymore. I miss my favorite guns a lot, but I'm sure I'll enjoy the unlocked prestige-level challenges and the extra slot. On to the links:

YouTube: Sick Throwing Knife Kill on Afghan; Top 5 Plays, Ep. 7 by GameplayUnited.

• Den Kirson's Modern Warfare 2 totally awesome weapon stats page has been updated: "Update: Feb 05, added the reload times, Raise/Drop times and ADS times for all weapons. Note: Shotguns replace "Empty" with "Next". The first reload time is followed by the "next" time for each shell added."
• Xboxic: Prestige Cheaters being suspended on Xbox Live. The Pro is on the case, as he warns in this Support Forum post.
• Consumerist: Microsoft won't let me transfer my Xbox hard drive data (to my MW2 Elite) because of registration error.
• News Tribune: In a war zone, taking a virtual shot at the CO helps to ease the stress.

• Best headline about Xbox Live dropping Xbox 1 games comes from GameSpy: The Original Xbox Live: Halo Teabagging Comes to an End. It's wrong tho. It's just the sack is moving on to newer targets.
• Edge Online: Bungie "saddened" by virtual death of Halo 2 Xbox Live support.
• Kotaku: Bungie planning "special send-off" for Halo 2 on 14 April 2010.
• Joystiq: Aliens vs. Predator gameplay trailer (with bonus 3d holo pole dancer).
• Joystiq: Left 4 Dead 2 gets bots and SDK fixes in update, 360 patch coming soon.
• IGN: Microsoft's Frank O'Connor talks Halo Movie, Halo: Reach.
• 1Up: Halo: Reach: What we know so far.
• GamesRadar: Why Ellis from Left 4 Dead 2 is Valve's favorite character.
• Destructoid: Ruin a career by choosing the Madden NFL 2011 cover athlete. Ah, the annual "Madden Curse" round of features.
• GamerCrave: Spawn Labs’ HD-720 Game Slinger Now Shipping. Any Good?
• Xbox Live Engineering blog: Code gap removal improves "Play from Hard Drive" storage on the Xbox 360.
• Kotaku feature: Why there's never been a good Star Trek game.
• IGN: Daily Fix for 04 February 2010 with the luscious Jessica Chobot. (And, no, I'm not going to stop referring to her as luscious.)
• Kotaku: The Games You Won't Sell, The Games You Can't Sell.
• Caveat Emptor: GameStop among retailers accused by new York State of deceptive advertising practices on online sales.
• GamaSutra feature: The art history of games. Related story from Kotaku: John Romero bows before gaming masters. Daikatana still unforgiven.
• So what? Department: 80% of US teens have access to a videogame console.

    Non-Gaming Links:

• IGN: Google Developing an iPad Killer?
• Wired thru Slashdot: DARPA aims for synthetic organism with built-in "kill switch". What could possibly go wrong?