Gamertell

Microsoft is set to unveil its “New Xbox Experience” to eager 360 owners on November 19, 2008. This update is set to revamp the 360’s entire dashboard and introduce “avatars,” which are characters that players can customize to suit their own whims.

This “new experience” will come at a cost of 128 MB of hard drive space; while this may not be a problem for 360 owners who have purchased sufficient memory sources, there remains a large amount of individuals who have not. For these people, Microsoft has promised to come to their aid…

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In the wake of changes for the other consoles, Microsoft announced at E3 2008 the new Xbox experiences that will be available to the owners of the console. Changes will bring stuff that the other consoles have to the 360 and will also maximize the console’s personalization possibilities.

One of the things that is going to be available is instant access to more than…

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On Wednesday, February 6, 2008, one gamer will have an opportunity to win the Buick “Enclave” Model CXL Tiger Woods drove during the December 2007 Target World Challenge.

The competition, called the Xbox 360 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, takes place over the next three months with the Buick being the first prize to be given away during Tiger Woods Buick Invitational Golf Tournament held in La Jolla, Calif. This is the first time Buick has…

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The Xbox 360’s latest backwards compatibility update (which commenced in November, 2007) may have been its last. According to a post in GameDaily, group marketing manager Albert Penello told Kotaku that while the Xbox originals (popular Xbox games available for download on Xbox Live) are still going strong, the backwards compatibility updates will be “winding down”. Citing relatively low numbers of downloads and “hitting the point of diminishing returns” as the chief reasons for the change in policy, Penello made the point that most of the popular titles are now available (with a few notable exceptions).

With all the supposed issues plaguing the Xbox originals line, one would think that MS should step up and deliver on the promise of a near-complete backwards compatibility. Well, in this case, Xbox 1 owners should keep their old consoles handy and dust-free.

Read [GameDaily]

Microsoft is once again it is apologizing. No, not for consoles bursting into flames, again (at least, not that we know of). This time, Microsoft has the unfortunate problem of too many Xbox Live users glogging the network. I know - so much money coming in for a paid service and still connections are failing.

In an effort to make amends, Microsoft is going to allow every Xbox Live subscriber to download one XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) game for free. The details are still a bit sketchy as to whether or not it will be any game, one from a list of games or a single, predetermined game.

Click through for the official note from Xbox Live’s General Manager, Marc Whitten…

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It always is both humorous and enlightening to visit a major retailer and discover what games they decide are appropriate for girls. In the case of Toys R Us the selection can be viewed from the comfort of your home. This takes away some of the fun of mocking the titles with friends, but also provides a better chance to display the sad truth of what retailers sort into the girl’s categories.

To begin with, nearly all of the games Toys R Us has listed in the section feature some combination of horrible graphics, lackluster soundtracks and uninspired stories. There are few original properties here with challenging gameplay. Instead shoppers enter the land of Barbie and Disney, with titles like Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour, Zoey 101, Barbie Island Princess, Bratz the Movie, Dora the Explorer: Animal Adventure and Disney Princess: Magical Jewels. I had the misfortune of trying a Disney Princess game once, and I still have recurring nightmares of being trapped and surrounded by talking chipmunks, frantically holding the ‘B’ button down while moving in an attempt to run.

Also, the section suggests that girls only own, or have access to, a DS, Wii, PS2 or PC. There is only one Xbox title in the entire section - DDR Ultramix 2. Apparently PS3s and Xbox 360s are too complicated for young girls, or at least the offerings displayed hint at that. While there are few PS3 titles available, there certainly have to be at least one or two appropriate Xbox 360 titles.

The idea of a separate section of video games for girls isn’t a bad idea, but perhaps a major retailer like Toys R Us should take a closer look at what they’re recommending. Rather than just herding the latest Disney or Barbie games into one section, they should make an attempt to look at recent releases and have a wider selection of games. Perhaps include some girl power titles like Super Princess Peach, Touch Detective 2 1/2 and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl tossed in to balance things out a bit.

Read [girl_gamers] Site [Toys R Us]

In the Xbox 360’s most recent update (December 4, 2007), Microsoft included the Family Timer. As its name implies, it is a virtual timer you can set to limit the amount of time the console is used.

Certainly meant to make the system even more family friendly, Microsoft conducted its own survey. According to the completely biased, corporate sponsored surveys, 62 percent of the 800 US parents surveyed said they would use a timer and 75 percent “welcome built-in technology or software to monitor the time their children spend playing video games.” Of course, The Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii all have some parental controls in place.

The Family Timer is all on screen through the Xbox 360’s Xbox Live menu. After the timer has been set, on-screen warnings pop up (yay, more popups) to warn gamers that the system will soon shut down. It is supposed to give them enough time to save the game but, as all gamers know, that is not always immediately available. ("Just a few more minutes, I need to get to a save spot, mom/dad/automated babysitter.") Once the timer runs out, the system shuts down.

To get to the timer you go to the Xbox Dashboard, to System, select Family Settings and then select Console Controls. It’s the sixth item down (labelled “Famiyl Timer,” of course). You can set the limits to Daily, Weekly or Off. You then select an amount of time in 15 minute increments from 15 minutes to 24 hours (for the Daily option) and hour increments from 1 to 168 hours (Weekly option).

The Xbox 360’s other settings include limits for Game Ratings, Video Ratings, Access to Xbox Live, Xbox Live Membership Creation and Marketplace and Inside Xbox. These are all part of Microsoft’s “Safety is no game. Is your family set?” campaign which also includes involvement from Best Buy and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

No matter how many of these nice features companies include, please remember that the best parenting is educated and involved parenting. Try all (and I mean all) the games your kids are playing and see how well they play with others. Though the timer will help limit excessive gaming, simply setting a hardcore time limit might not be the best solution for every family.

UPDATE: The timer gives a popup warning at 5 minutes prior to shutdown. Also, the time left is displayed in the Xbox Dashboard, so you can press the Xbox logo button on the controller to see it. When set, it appears at the top of the dashboard in the upper right corner next to a mini family logo. When your time expires, the Dashboard pops up and three options are available: Add More Time, Suspend Time or Shut Down Console. The first two require the parental pass code (a four-button sequence). If you shut down and simply restart the system, you get 2 minutes on the clock.

Read [Loot Ninja] Site [Is Your family Set?] Site [Microsoft]

There’s a thought that lurks deep inside all of us and keeps on asking, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could just sit around and play games all day and on top of that make a living out of it?” Well, actually there are some people that already have an answer to that question and as most of us already suspected, the answer is a big fat, “Yes!”

Michael Cavanaugh (aka Strongside) is a 19-year-old gamer from Edgewood, KY (USA), that has just signed a very lucrative and fun contract, one that will make his wallet $250,000 fatter for playing Halo.

Since he was five, Michael has played video games almost every day of his life, getting the latest consoles and pulling all-nighters perfecting his techniques at every game he could get his hands on. This past June 2007, Major League Gaming gave him a three-year contract worth a quarter million dollars. His newest sponsor is NBA Basketball Player Gilbert Arenas. Yeah, that’s Gilbert “I Cheat So What” Arenas.

Michael’s mom, Francis Cavanaugh, remembers how it all started: “It wasn’t until he went to Kings Island one summer, summer of his junior year and he beat one of the guys there, that’s when it really started.”

From there, Michael got through the ranks and started going to tournaments, eventually realizing he could make a living out of it. Now, as part of team Carbon, he is one of the best at Halo and, besides his contract money, he has already won $100,000. Now he and his team are training for a tournament in Dallas, TX, where they could win $250,000 on the spot.

I’m sure that as with every other activity, you need some serious natural skills and years of practice but making money by gaming sure sounds like a sweet deal. Competitive gaming is now considered an alternative sport and gaming leagues are sure to keep on getting bigger. With the amounts of money they are giving out, names like Michael Cavanaugh will get more famous and maybe in a not so distant future we will see gamers among the David Beckhams and the Tom Bradys of their time.

Read [Local 12] Site [MLG]

Product: Metal of Honor: Airborne
System(s): Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Rating: 7/10
Publisher (Developer): EA (EA LA)
ESRB Rating: Teen
Pros: Great graphic, total freedom, large level design
Cons: Poor AI, short game play, unoriginal, dull game play
Overall: Airborne does some things right but in the end, this game is just a poor man’s Call of Duty

It is hard to believe that before 1999, World War II video game were still a unique and relatively unexplored genre. To an entire generation back then, WWII was little more then old war stories told by either your grandfather, or aging veterans at VA centers. That would forever change after the box office release of the Steven Spielberg’s Oscar nominated masterpiece, Saving Private Ryan. Soon after, it wouldn’t take too long before the game industry opened its doors to the Second World War for source material.

EA, in development with DreamWorks Interactive (makers of Saving Private Ryan) teamed together in to try and bring the same thrilling on-screen experience to the home consoles of millions of eager Playstation gamers who, up until 1999, hadn’t had many true first-person shooters to call their own. The end result would ultimately be Medal of Honor.

The original MoH was considered by many publications - and fans - to be one of the 25 best games that graced the PS1. Fast-forward eight years and ten more games, and the MoH franchise has certainly follow far from grace. After numerous failed titles, some counted as the worst games of the last generation of gaming systems, EA is looking to revive the ailing franchise with Medal of Honor: Airborne.

Unfortunately, EA has not managed to capture that same old magic of the original series.

One of the strongest aspects about Medal of Honor: Airborne is its wonderful design and graphics. Using the Unreal Engine 3, Airborne is simply one of many titles to be released in 2007 that has the power of UE3 under its hood. Visually, this game is nearly even with the Call of Duty series in terms of graphics, but not quite. Environment details are rich too, varied and truly has a sense of destruction to it. General level design is quite good, even though there are only six total levels in Airborne. However, each of the six levels is quite large, taking anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour to complete.

You also get all your usual suspects of WWII items and weapons in Airborne, but really nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times already. At this point I would kill to have a laser pistol to use against Nazi scum...just to change things up a bit.

When everything is laid out, Medal of Honor: Airborne doesn’t do anything visually different that we haven’t seen already done in the past two, to three years.

Features: 7/10

One thing you will read throughout this review is the mentioning of Call of Duty. Even though it was Medal of Honor that played a large part in the creation of the World War II gaming craze, it was Call of Duty that has defined the genre. Unfortunately, even though Airborne takes a lot from the Call of Duty’s play book, EA doesn’t come close to capturing that same intense adrenalin filled thrill ride that Call of Duty somehow manages to deliver time and time again.

Airborne, like most FPSes, has adopted the duck-and-cover system to its gun play. This system is easy to use as one only has to move near a wall or some piece of debris, then press and hold the left trigger, and the player automatically takes cover. The only real problem with this system is, even when you hold the left trigger, which you have to do in order to aim down your sights, your character will automatically freeze in place and only able to lean to the left or right, even though there is no cover present. This is very annoying and will more then likely get you killed more then a couple of times during the course of the game.

Like Call of Duty or Brother’s in Arms, the player has to aim down their weapon’s sights in order to fire. You can fire from the hip, but unless you are fighting at close range it isn’t likely that you are going to hit anything. The only problem is, even when aiming down the sights it isn’t likely you are going to hit anything anyways. Far too often, even when you have a Nazi soldier lined perfectly, for some reason once you pull the trigger your shot most of the time misses horribly. With the frantic nature of Airborne, this fault becomes a very serious matter, especially later in the game.

Weapons are also able to be upgraded. At first, this system seems interesting. The more the player uses any one weapon, the more it is upgraded with new features and attachments. The main problem with this system is, it is far to easy to upgrade all or most of your weapons in a single level or two. And once they are maxed out, three being the highest per rifle, machine gun or submachine gun, the enhancements or attachments don’t really seem to add any value to the weapon. Some in fact make the weapon worse as you can’t unequip certain attachments that actually hamper your game play.

The AI is pretty poor too. Allies AI is non-existent as your teammates will either rush continuously into enemy lines, or abandon you all together, leaving the player to storm the Nazi positions alone. Enemy AI is just as bad. While the German soldiers aren’t stupid enough to stand still and be shot, or rush you head-on, (most of the time) EA’s idea of good enemy AI is to have the Germans constantly change from one position to the next, even when they aren’t being fired at. Combined this with a horrible aiming system, just getting your sights locked on a Nazi soldier is a pain in the ass, no less killing them. Even German tanks just drive around in circles seemly awaiting for you to destroy them.

Airborne’s biggest game feature is as its namesake suggests. You play as a member of the 82nd Airborne, which means that you will have to make the leap of faith in order to reach you final objective. Although I would say that the character the player controls is either the luckiest bastard alive, or the unluckiest as five out six of the levels, your transport plane is hit by German anti-aircraft fire, resulting in the deaths of your expendable teammates. This does get real old really quick and seems to be a poor attempt by EA to make this game seem more exciting and intense then it really is.

In the beginning of each level, and after each respawn, you are dropped from a plane over the battlefield where you have the option and freedom to either land at the designated safe zone, marked by green smoke, or anywhere else within the game barrier. You are totally free to do just as the developers have said, whether it is running along the roof tops, fighting alongside you allies, or taking the fight to the Germans head on, the only problem is that if you don’t land at the safe drop, then it is more then likely you will land in the middle of a horde of Nazi soldiers with no backup from your buddies. This usually means certain death in a matter of seconds. Although, the option does allow you to bypass some of the more difficult Nazi defenses as you can attack them from behind.

Performance: 7/10

Ultimately the overall game performance is pretty okay. There isn’t any major bugs or issues with the actually game mechanics. But, there is nothing in Medal of Honor: Airborne that hasn’t been done already, and done better. The sound design is okay, sometimes. Most of it has already been used from previous titles in the series including the game’s music and theme.

While Airborne tries hard to give the player that same sensory overload that Call of Duty does, in the end, there is just no real excitement or heart to the overall performance of the game. Everything just simply works the way it is suppose to work, and nothing more.

Overall: 7/10

While Medal of Honor: Airborne isn’t a horribly bad game and does have its moments, in the end, this game has no passion. There is nothing in this title that we haven’t seen or played a hundred times already in better games of this genre. Worse still, it is pretty clear that in this game, which the once seemly endless source material that is World War II, is starting to run dry… or has.

Most of the real life operations in Airborne are going to be completely unknown to gamers. Unlike previous games in this series, players won’t learn anything either about the operations they are taking part in, nor will they learn anything at all about the 82nd Airborne and their great deeds that have made them legendary. There are no cut scenes at all, no central characters, hell, you don’t even get to see or hear your own character speak…a feature in games I am really starting to get tired of seeing. With only six levels players will probably feel cheated. In the end you really won’t care to play any further.

When everything is all said and done, Airborne is not the saving title for the Medal of Honor series. It can’t even be counted as one of the best. I would say at this point, as EA seemly can do little more then copy what Activision’s Call of Duty series has already done, they should just put the nail in the coffin and end this series once and for all.

Site [EA Games] Site [Metal of Honor: Airborne}

Robert Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, recently dismissed Sony’s Playstation Network in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. The Playstation Network, Sony’s online service that seeks to emulate the success of Microsoft’s Xbox Live and provide a place for PS3 users to interact, is still in its infancy and has yet to make a noticeable splash in the online console gaming community.

Bach believes that the Playstation Network offers no threat to the success of Xbox Live and that Microsoft’s online service, now celebrating its fifth year, has absolutely no competition in the industry. Bach also noted Xbox Live’s massive, dedicated userbase of more than 8 million gamers and indicated that Microsoft intends to nurture this community with utmost care.

Microsoft will continue to press its online service by releasing original Xbox titles through the Xbox Live Marketplace. Among the list of planned releases are Xbox bestsellers Halo: Combat Evolved and Fable, which will be available for 1,200 Microsoft points each.

The Playstation Network is not without merits, however. Unlike Xbox Live, which requires a paid member account to access online matchmaking, the Playstation Network offers online play without charge. While Xbox Live currently commands the majority of the online console gaming population with exclusives such as Halo 3, the future may see sales of multiplatform releases orienting towards the PS3, as casual gamers with only mild interest in the online aspect may opt for Sony’s free services over Microsoft’s monthly subscriptions.

Xbox Live may have over 8 million subscribers, but the idea of complimentary online play may be too good to pass up.

Read [Los Angeles Times] Via [GameIndustry Biz]