Gridplane, a completely unknown design studio until now, recently released presumed mock-ups of previous designs of the NXE. All I can say is...it's really open. It's like a virtual plain in the 360.

Thanks, [Xbox] Joystiq.

NXE UI

Awesome time to pick up some Street Fighter IV fighting sticks if you want them, FREE SHIPPING included, because they are 10% off on the Capcom online store! First, you should make sure that you turn off any pop-up blockers you have, then visit the website, add any item you want into your cart, then click the CAPCOM Store icon, which should trigger a survey pop-up. Complete it, then it will automatically get you 10% off your next purchase.

Sadly, all the fighting sticks are sold out so....get something else! :)

UPDATE: Just a reminder, it seems that you only get free shipping with a purchase of $75 or higher.

Excited for the new Friday the 13th movie? Me neither, BUT! There's a new reason to get excited for the little promotional campaign Epic and Microsoft has been using to entice some new Gears 2 players. On the first 13 days of February, Microsoft is planning to give away $25,000 worth of prizes to Gears of War 2 players! Prizes include:

A Samsung 40" 1080p LCD HDTV
An Xbox 360 Limited Edition Red Wireless Controller
A Marcus Fenix bronze statue from Mindzeye Studios
A life-size Locust drone maquette from TriForce Sales
The "Gears of War 2" video game soundtrack from Sumthing Else
The Gears of War Aspho Fields novel from Random House imprint, Del Rey
Codes to download the golden Hammerburst and Lancer(lol)
A "Gears of War 2" poster signed by members of the development team
Five first prize packages every day, which includes the soundtrack, novel, in-game golden weapons(heh, lol) and a signed poster

Sunday, Feb. 1 -- Annex
Monday, Feb. 2 -- Submission
Tuesday, Feb. 3 -- Execution
Wednesday, Feb. 4 -- Horde
Thursday, Feb. 5 -- King of the Hill
Friday, Feb. 6 -- Guardian
Saturday, Feb. 7 -- Warzone
Sunday, Feb. 8 -- Wingman
Monday, Feb. 9 -- King of the Hill
Tuesday, Feb. 10 -- Wingman
Wednesday, Feb. 11 -- Wingman
Thursday, Feb. 12 -- Horde
Friday, Feb. 13 -- Horde

The two met each other while playing Halo 2. They are both gamers. They want to marry each other. The bride-yes, that's right. The BRIDE-comes up with the great idea of making the wedding Halo themed; her avatar was embroidered into her wedding dress, favors that look like plasma grenades contained in a little box that says,"Happily stuck together",organized a violin quartet to play "Unforgotten", the music that plays in the Halo 3 main menu, and has someone dress up as Master Chief to preside the marriage.

I now present to you, "A match made in Halo".

That's right! Until today, Golden Lancers were only available by purchasing the limited edition copy of Gears of War 2. Now, every new copy of the game contains a voucher for the Golden Lancer and is also available for free on XBLM. For the time being, it's free. Download it now so you don't have to think about whether or not it will stay that way.

Click here to download the Golden Lancer onto your Xbox.

P.S. If you are wondering about these links, Xbox.com has released a feature that allows you to download content right off of Xbox.com onto your Xbox 360 from your internet browser! Yay!

Thanks Xbox 360 Fanboy(now currently known as Joystiq [Xbox]).

UPDATE: This only seems to work on Xbox.com's marketplace, not Xbox Live's Marketplace.

The long awaited Resident Evil 5 demo has finally come out on Xbox Live Marketplace! Sadly, the PS3 will not be getting this demo for a while. The demo features 3 levels on two stages(if they are as long as RE4's chapters, that should equal to about 2 hours of gameplay, but it doesn't.); Assembly Place and Shanty Town(which was featured in E3 08', as shown in the video below), and allows for 2 PLAYER CO-OP with AI, local, or OVER XBOX LIVE. You can tell by the caps lock that it is very exciting news(although I already played the Japanese version-OOPS! Should I be saying that?)

Best Buy is having a pretty decent sale during January 25th thru the 31st.

Left 4 Dead (PC) is going for $39.99.

Halo 3 is going for $39.99.

Xbox 360 Wireless Controllers going for $39.99!

And get a free 3-Month Xbox Live Gold card with a purchase of Gears of War 2($59.99)!

The F.E.A.R. 2 Demo is available on both the PS3 and Xbox 360. No noticeable differences, really. Here are the impressions.


The demo opens up what seems to be the opening cut-scene for the game which pretty much gives you a small hint as to the back-story of the original F.E.A.R.. The demo then puts you into the perspective of Michael Becket who is supposed to arrest president of Armacham Genevieve Aristide. The start of the demo takes place a few seconds after the original game ends(almost the exact same time because the game starts after the explosion).

Just to give you a little head-start this is how the demo begins:

You start out getting up from a helicopter crash in a hallucination. You see the young version of Alma standing a few feet away. After you get up and start moving forward she appears a couple of more times before slowly morphing into the older version of herself and disappearing.

This demo can only be fully experienced completely alone, with the brightness levels they want, and your surround sound turned up very close to the max(or at least before you start pissing neighbors off). Playing the demo it seems that for FPS novices it might be a little challenging considering there is no noticeable amount of auto-aim. And we all know that sound design is what makes a horror game, with the perfect example of being BioShock. This game perfects the sound of what your player should be experiencing and will have you turning around a numerous amount of times just to see what's behind you.

Controls are a little confuzzling. If anyone has played a Splinter Cell game you will know that you must hold a button down to open up a menu to change weapons or other things in your inventory. Unlike Splinter Cell, only ONE button switches weapons; Right on the directional pad; ->, which means that if you accidentally skip the weapon you want, your going to have to cycle through all your weapons until you get back to it, which can get a little annoying in a hectic battle. Thankfully, Slow-Mo is back from the first game which gives you a small amount of time to either switch your weapons or see your foes die in a very bloody bath. The gameplay seems to be very generic and very old-school as I haven't seen a first person shooter bring back med-packs in a LOOOOOOONG time. And although there is a flashlight, expect very little from it as it will only help you look in completely pitch-black corners as it isn't that bright.

Graphics are great. Nothing Gears of War or Crysis, but definitely better than a Halo or Call of Duty.

One thing that I HAVE to bring up is the scripted events. Some of the greatest in-game cutscenes to freak the hell out of you, but the greatest ones are the ones outside of the cutscenes. There are some great in-game scenes in the demo such as a falling bus about to crush you completely, or when you turn around in a tight hallway and see nothing, but once you turn around again to continue you see that crazy b**** for a millisecond and completely disappears, only leaving you with a slight evil snicker.

Before the demo ends you are treated with one of the games new features, which is a vehicle. A heavily-armed, mech warrior style, robot which I haven't died using yet. It's armed with a Gatling gun which can overheat and four missles that shoot all at once that take a few seconds to reload. Of course, you would use that Gatling guns to rip normal foes to shreds, while using the missles with the guns to fight the other armored warriors of death which are at least half the size of you. At the end of the demo, you encounter pretty much a clone of the mech that you are using, and after a few seconds of engaging a battle with this thing, the demo cuts off.

The demo is out now and the full game is coming out the 10th of February in North America and the 13th of February in Europe.

In a 4-freakin'-page interview with Gamasutra, Braid developer Jonathan Blow has awnsered questions about his feelings for the future. But one part of the interview shows that he has been working on an RPG.....and other things as well.

[Gamasutra] So aside from the other versions of Braid, presumably you're working on another game?

JB: I am. I don't really want to give much detail about it, though. And the reason is that I've had three or four different games that I was convinced was the next game I was working on, and I'd work on it for a little bit and decide I could maybe do something better.

My newest game I started is looking very promising. I'm very excited to do it. But if the patterns of history continue, then I may not be working on it a month from now, so I don't want to start telling people about it.

JB: Yeah. It's an RPG right now, a 2D RPG that I'm working on. You never know. Next month, it could be a Pac-Man clone or something.

NOTE: This catch-up is full of SPOILER!s. and takes into account that you already know everybody and everything's names.

The game starts out with a cutscene that shows Alma presumably taking control of Paxton Fettel and a group of telepathically controlled cloned supersoldiers. He then procedes to kill every single person in Armacham Technology Corp. (ATC) Headquarters. You then proceed to hear a phone call between ATC president Aristide and an unknown senator, stating the "Origin" has had an uprising, informing the player that "Fettel has taken over the prototypes."

The game then gives you control of the "point man", who is described to have "reflexes off of the charts" both in-game and in the manual, and set in the briefing room for F.E.A.R. being attented by Commissioner Betters, and the F.E.A.R. team Jankowski and Jin Sun-Kwon. Your mission objective is to eliminate Fettel, who, as the info states, is a psychopathic commander. After the cutscene ends, you will have a hallucination showing Fettel asking you, "What's the first thing you remember?". and someone saying, "You will be a god among man."

As you progress through the game, you will have MANY more hallucinations that focus around the creepiness of Alma and how she seems to be able to kill people with her mind, messages going through your mind hinting of that "you were born here". Throughout the game Fettel himself gives you many cryptic messages, and you also find many laptops throughout the mission, learning many details describing "Project Origin"; how Fettel is the son of Alma, how he is a powerful psychic, and that there is another child, born before Alma. There are also a few very cinematic in-game cutscenes of Alma appearing herself, such as trying to escape and exploding hallway with her walking towards you, and when you encounter a small child in the sewers that always seems to escape your view.

All the hints in the game and quotes from Betters lead you to believe that Alma has taken control of Fettel, who was securely kept in the Origin facility when ATC closed the project because of the believed danger the woman posed. You also start to encounter ATC soldiers, who have appeared because of orders to cover the Project. Later in the game, once you encounter Fettel himself, you learn that YOU are the first son of Alma, and you are given control to kill Fettel. You learn that the father of Alma, Harlan Wade, leader of project Origin, freed Alma himself because he felt guilty giving his 8-year-old daughter to the project. After sabotaging the whole facility to blow, you escape on a helicopter, but not right before the game ends do you seem Alma over side the helicopter about to-

Remember F.E.A.R.? Remember Alma, that creepy-@$$ B#%&$*? Well, get excited! You finally get to play a little part of all the crazy $hi-|- ALL over again in the new the sequel F.E.A.R. 2! Guess what? She's back!

And from friends, I heard that it's has some creepy @$$ $hi-|-. Can't wait to play it and (maybe) post some impressions later!

A very nice paint-job of Sonic on a 360 done by deviantart user ricepuppet. If you want to see his other 360 paint jobs, click here.

The Xbox Live community games seems to be a very largely ignored part of the new Xbox dashboard update. This game seems to show how creative these games could possibly be. Groov is a new addition to the Xbox Community Games that has a very interesting concept. As quoted from the description of the game given, "Every action in Groov has a musical interaction", this game integrates the omni-directional shooter features very similar to games like in the Geometry Wars series with music makes for a very worthwhile play.

The gameplay is very simple and very similar. Left thumbstick controls moving, Right thumbstick points and fires your weapons, with the right thumbstick featuring the special weapon. Sounds similar, right?

The concept is very interesting, though. Every time you fire your weapon, it makes a different sound that syncs with the music in the background. Every time a bullet hits an enemy, the enemy lights up and explodes also making a unique sounds which also syncs with the background music. You are almost creating music while playing a very Geometry Wars-like game.

The music will basically decide whether or not you like the game. If you like the sound of an intergalactic jazz orchestra or something similar to the Geometry Wars soundtrack(I bring it up a lot because it's very similar!), you will like it. Every enemy mocks the sound of a different instrument. For example, every time you hit the "guitar" enemy, it will make a deep guitar strum.

These are the list of the things that make this game, overall, great.

*Every playthrough is guaranteed to be unique.
*Gameplay is very simple.
*It's $2.50. How can you complain?

But there are some downsides:

*There are only three gameplay modes, one of which I am unable to play because the challenge level seems to be a little too high for me to beat the second mode.
*Although every playthrough will be unique, a little over a straight hour of playing, they will seem to become very similar. This is not a long playthrough game. This is a play-in-short-spurts game.
*No options. There is an in-game how to play guide but there is no way to adjust the volume settings or change some of the controls.


All in all, this game is worth your $3. And once you play this game, you just can't help but to smile at the creativity of this game. You can go to the Xbox Live Marketplace and download a free trial of this game, or just click on this link and the next time you start up your 360, it will start downloading!

I'm STILL! Trying to get Mile High Club on Veteran....with an astonishing disappointment. I reach the end of the level, I reach the ONE SHOT TO RULE THEM ALL!!!!...
and I accidentally cap the VIP in the face.
A minute of grieving, 15 more minutes of trying, then I stop.

In PS3 Trophy related news, I got my first two gold trophies; Packrat (Find all 30 bags, EASY!), and Pro Runner (Beat the Game on Hard...I'd say it's Easy to Medium, a few annoying parts, but all in all, very easy Gold Trophies). I spend at least 3 hours on Time Trials, I get two Speedrun trophies, I only have 1 Three Star Time Trial rating, and I got the silver trophy Test of Faith(Go through the game without shooting a single guy. Medium, I think this achievement is harder than Pro Runner).

Remember Halo? Specifically Halo 3? Good times, right? We all understand that the game has already lost it's sparkle, and games that have come out more recently have been shining like the sun. What can give old games their sparkle back? With a little bit of integration....

Ladies and Gents, I present to you, V.A.T.S.(Vault-Tec Automated Targeting System), in Halo 3.

and I came with the conclusion that this is the only good one because it's pretty close to clean while allowing for some features. I'm going to look at other website servers and see if I can get some better layouts.

I AM SO HONORED RIGHT NOW!

CANT WAIT TO LISTEN TO EPISODE 100!

Very coincidental that I got exactly 2 hours with both games. And now, here are my thoughts:

Mirror's Edge(PS3):

I'm liking it so far. It's getting a little obvious that they made runner-vision to make people look at things they would've never looked at before(in a bad way though). Unlike Portal which gave subtle hints as what you were supposed to do, Mirror's Edge seems to outright point it out. The only reason I have ever really only gotten pissed off was the enemies, but probably because I'm trying to beat it without shooting a single person. I'm up to chapter four and I'll let you guys know what I think after that.

Left 4 Dead(X360):

When I first read about this game, I was soooo damn excited. When I first SAW the game, I was a little dissapointed. Graphics are sub-par, and the gameplay also looked the same. When I heard someone's impressions about the game, I was like,"How does that happen in a game that looks like THAT???". Then, when I first played the game, I understand now.

It's F'ing amazing.

I might have played the game on a small 15" TV that might be 6 or 7 years old on 480 with audio that is kinda lacking and my inability to hear what other people were saying without a headset and not being able to hear the warnings of special zombies may have affected how I played, and the fact that I was playing split-screen pretty much meant I could not read a single thing on the TV.

If I loved it when I played like that, I wonder how much I'm going to love it when I play it on my TV.......I haven't had as much fun with a game as Left 4 Dead in a LONGGGGGG...LONGGGGGG time.

Just to let you know, I had to color on loose leaf. You know, the one with the blue lines running through it? Yeah, that was fun.

Kaillif finds it wierd that for a game company that puts so much design to their weapons (Squeenix) that it's not a FPS? Go here to see why I say that.