• Option to display media outside of My SingStar Online (including opting in to have your media used for promotional purposes).
• Increased number of members in a club to 1000.
• Player can join up to 5 clubs.
• Improved search for clubs.
• Link to player videos from the SingStore.
• Link from a song to a song pack.
• Online news panel improvements.
• Save data no longer copy protected.

The SingStar Viewer has also been updated to version 4.4 with the updated Community aspects in place.  Sadly the DLC update has been slim pickins as usual lately.

When you first load up Destination Arcade you will see your Avatar run into an area with the latest releases on XBLA.  He is staring at the latest release (at the time of this writing it was Limbo since it is the first game released for this year’s Summer of Arcade) and you have the option to download the game by pressing A, find similar games by pressing Y, or to recommend the game to friends by pressing X.  All of this is displayed well with a window that scrolls through the official screen shots for the game.  The rest of the games are displayed reverse chronological order in something that looks very similar to how NetFlix Instant displays movie covers but this time with the gold and green color scheme for Summer of Arcade and the date the games were released below them.  When you flip to another game the screen with the screen shots crumbles to sand on the ground and will reform with the screens of the game you are currently highlighting.  In my time using it I have found that the time it takes to “refresh” can vary widely.  There were times that it would load quickly, and other times that I had to sit and wait a few seconds for it to load up.  Another nice touch is that if the game is already downloaded on your system when you press A it will actually load up the game for you to play.

From there you have more options to what you would like to do.  You can press the triggers to cycle from the default “New Arrivals” view to “Find Games” or you can press the Start button to go to your own personal Game Library.  Under Find Games you can look at Friend Recommendations, Deals of the Week, Recently Released, and All Games.  These are rather self explanatory and a nice change of pace from the usual sorting options when looking for games.  I especially like the idea of friend recommended games since it seems more personalized than just the general star rating from all Xbox Live users.  What I didn’t like what that either you recommend a game or you don’t there are no degrees to how much you recommend a game and also you can’t specify who you recommend to.  While I may love a game like The Secret of Monkey Island 2: Special Edition and therefore want to recommend it, I know I have a bunch of friends on my list that would hate it and therefore would not care if I recommend it or not.

When you get to Show All Games” there are plenty of further sorting options you can use.  By pressing the left and right bumper buttons you can change the sorting from Game Name, Microsoft Points, Community Rating, Multiplayer, and ESRB Rating.  Again these are rather self explanatory and once you select how you want to do it there are lots of subdivisions so you can show things more specifically such as show all the 4 star rated games, or only games rated Everyone.  The games that fall under that category will then be shown as tiny pictures below and you can scroll through the other categories or press X to “pick one” and highlight specific covers.  Just as with the initial screen once you have a particular game highlighted you can recommend to friends, find similar games, and see screenshots although with a different layout.  I’m not quite sure what it uses as the basis for finding similar games as there were many times that I had a hard time finding out what at all made them similar but I guess it is better than nothing and it can help you find something you may have missed before.  This can be helpful for those that aren’t like me and have been watching every release week since the system laughed.

Once you go to your own game library it then just loads up a list that is very similar to your achievement list from your guide button.  You just get the icon of the game, the name, how many achievements you unlocked, if you recommended the game, and how many Gamerscore points you have unlocked.  With the exception of the recommendation icon this is almost identical to the achievement and quick launch menu and rather disappointing compared to the effort given to finding games.  It seems that MS wanted you to be able to find new games easier and buy them, but didn’t care for you to have that same luxury to play the games you’ve already purchased.  Of course you can always launch from the “find games” option, but then you’re also going through all the games you do not own.  Sometimes it would be nice when having friends over if you could just browse the games that are multiplayer games and have the single player games filtered out or maybe a certain rating if a younger family member is over.  You can still recommend and find similar games from here, but again it was obvious that the main focus of this browser was to get people to spend money, which I can’t totally blame MS for, but seems a bit lazy.

This program also has 3 Avatar Awards that can be unlocked, 2 of which you get automatically just for booting it up.  The 3rd has a vague description and I unlocked it but have no idea how.  For those with OCD it is like the Lips, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band stores (As well as Xbox Originals) where it will show up in your Achievement list but as 0 points and with 0 out of 0 achievements earned.  It can be removed as with those games/apps previously mentioned and most won’t care but I figured I would mention it.  The other final gripe I have with this is that you still have to wait for your games list to load on your hard drive and you have to load this up from “Xbox 360 Games” which semi defeats the purpose of making something that is easier to use and find stuff.  For someone like me with a hard drive full of stuff my games list can take upwards of 30 seconds to load and I could definitely get to the Dashboard Marketplace listing faster than that.

In the end this is still a nice way to look through things and maybe even launch your own games, but seems like it could use a bit of work.  Sadly I doubt it will get any of that work since it is only scheduled to be available for download during the Summer of Arcade and then it will be gone (although can still be used if you already have it).  Click here to download it while you still can and try for yourself.

Side Note: This would be REALLY nice for Xbox Live Indie Games.

If you are not old enough to remember those games then you are both lucky and unlucky.  You see, people were so amazed by a game having realistic video vs. cartoony hand drawn sprites that they would play these “games” that were barely interactive.  I know I was included in this group, I loved them, but I really couldn’t tell you why.  Bloody Death reminded me of why I did.  While it may not be very interactive, the acting is so piss poor it’s like getting a choose your own adventure made-for-SyFy movie.  If you enjoy watching crappy movies and laughing at them you owe it to yourself to check this out, but don’t expect a good game.

So the story is that of a killer on the loose that is going after a particular girl after she escaped from him 3 years prior (you will get that “backstory” in the game’s first chapter which acts as the tutorial).  Why was she chased 3 years ago?  Who knows.  What you will get is a killer trying to kill this girl and her friends and it is your job as the “player” to try and do a series of QTEs to stop him.  There are three kinds of QTEs in this game: hit the correct button in time (it shows on screen), mash the on screen button repeatedly until it says “Success,” and hit the series of buttons that show up on screen.  Do them correctly and you move the story ahead as you survive a bit longer until you hopefully get through until the end.   Fail and you die.  That is as far as the game goes to be interactive and there are definitely times where you could be sitting for 5 minutes just watching without ever having to press a single button.

Ok, I can’t take it anymore, I have to tell you why this game is even more awesome to sit back and watch and laugh at with friends.  English is clearly not the first language of those “Acting” in this movie.  You will end up having to replay the game a few times to hear the dialogue as you will be laughing too hard to hear most of it.  If you are like my friends and I, you will be quoting it for days as well.  You can even see that they provide really poor screen shots (Seen in this review) to try and promote this game.  At the bottom watch the trailer and you will sort of see what the game is like in motion but you owe it to yourself to try the trial version and hear the dialogue.

The screen is setup with a smaller “window” that is the video footage with the chapter number up top and then who is alive and who is dead on the right hand side.  I have found that there is one guy who you cannot save no matter what, but there are other times that someone can die and you can still go on.  Oh, sorry, did I just post a semi-spoiler?  Yeah, i don’t think it will matter since you aren’t really playing/watching this game for the story.  The game also has a “Warning” of gore and nudity.  Just so you know, you will see blood, but there is no nudity so I’m sure that was just to get more people to try and download it.

So with FMV games the issue was always replay value – or lack thereof, and this game continues that “tradition.”  You could obviously try to fail at the various points to see what the death scenes are, and try to see what will happen if you let one person die and then continue through the rest of the game, but that is about it.  The game is finished in about 20 minutes and really you will only play through again to laugh with your friends, but don’t expect branching paths and multiple endings outside of the “good” ending and then the “Game Over” ending.

4/5 Stars – Yes this is a very high score, but that is because I was literally in tears laughing so hard at this game making it well worth the $3 that was asked for it.  This is horrible game and would make a horrible movie, but damn if my friends and I were not entertained while we played it.  If you are like minded I cannot stress enough how you need to see this, but if you cannot find the humor in it then I say to stay FAR FAR AWAY.  Click here for the official Xbox.com listing and to add it to your download queue.

Alien Swarm was released on Steam a couple days ago and what they gave us is quite a great game for fans of co-op gameplay.  While borrowing quite liberally from various sources, it makes up for its lack of originality with pure fun.  What you are getting is a 3rd person “twin stick” shooter, but with the usual PC mouse/keyboard controls instead (aka, more control).  Move with the typical WASD and aim with your mouse and kill aliens.  There is one campaign comprised of a handful of levels that has you complete various objectives like killing all the swarm eggs or bringing power back to make your escape.  To complete these objectives you need to work together well as a team with your 4 person squad each with their own class (officer, special weapons, medic, and tech). Each have their own roles and things they can and cannot do.  To mix things up a bit more there are two characters to pick for each class that may be better at one stat or have a different ability.  You have your main weapon, a secondary weapon, and an offhand weapon that can also be armor or boosts and some weapons are exclusive to certain classes.

So why did I mention Left 4 Dead?  Well, besides the objectives you’re still just running around a level and killing lots of enemies and also like our favorite co-op zombie game if you wait around too long or are moving too slowly the game will throw a nice big swarm at you (think a horde in L4D).  I mentioned Killing Floor too because it takes the L4D formula but added classes and abilities plus leveling up and Alien Swarm has this as well.  Unlike Killing Floor it is not per class/character but instead an overall level you have as a player.  The more you play (and the better you do) the more XP you get and each level brings you closer to more weapons, items, and armor.  While you may start with your basic machine guns and pistols you will quickly be getting tesla rifles, stronger armor, flamethrowers and lots more.  Your XP is carried over so it’s not just for that session and it is all saved to the Steam Cloud so if you want to play on multiple PCs you are all set and do not have to copy saves over.

I myself have put in over 5 hours into this game having finished the campaign already but there is high replay value.  If leveling up and earning all the weapons wasn’t enough, nor the massive amounts of achievements, there is also the fact that there are multiple difficulty levels to play and obviously you can always switch up what class you are playing.  This also came with the newly updated Source SDK and they are encouraging others to make mods, levels, and other add ons so I look forward to seeing what the community brings us.

This being a Source game you can pretty much know what to expect.  This is a game that will look and run great on most modern systems and has a bit of that grain filter as seen in Left 4 Dead.  On my laptop running a Radeon HD 2600 it ran around 30 fps at medium settings @ 1280×800 and on my desktop running a GeForce 9800 GT it ran at 45-50 fps at max settings @ 1920×1080.  Expect lots of bloom and some other nice lighting and weather effects.  I did not really experience any kind of slowdown except a couple of minor lag hits and the game’s slow motion segments.

So how much would you expect to pay for all this?  I mean, this is certainly a fully featured game that will keep you busy for hours and hours, you’d expect this to be a decent amount of money.  Maybe a bit less since it started off as a UT2004 mod like Killing Mod.  So is it a full price $50? A UT2004 mod turned Source price of $20?  Indie game price of $10?  How about FREE?  That’s right, all of this was released at no cost to us the gamers.  Sure, I could have started my review off by saying this was a free game but then as you read everything you would probably say “Well, he’s only saying that because it’s free” or “yeah, it’s good… for free” but I assure you this is not the case.  With all the various people that I played with they all agreed that they would have gladly paid for this game and are shocked that Valve would leave that kind of money sitting on the table.  The game being free ensures that this game has a very large community that will only grow as word gets out and as more is developed for it.  I had no problems finding people to play with and while the matchmaking could use a bit of work [UPDATED 7-23-2010: The game has been updated to now show if a game is "in progress" or if it is waiting in lobby which was a major issue with the matchmaking]if you want to play with randoms, playing with friends is extremely easy as it is with all Valve/Source games.  In my time playing I saw very few bugs and glitches and any shortcomings were definitely forgiven with it’s free price, but they were still very few and far between.  People keep mumbling that maybe they will charge for the add ons and were grumbling in the process but I say that I would gladly pay for any add ons to show my support for such a project.

In the end I still could go on about how it has unlockables for TF2, references to various other games and movies, but the bottom line is that you need to load Steam up right now and download this game!  I will gladly play with anyone who is ready and willing and expect me to update this review as the game is updated and added onto (if such a thing happens).  One last final word…  After decades of playing shooting games, FINALLY someone makes a game where you lose whatever ammo was left in the clip if you reload before spending all your ammo.  Kudos on this game Valve, keep up the good work.

4.5/5 – A solid game free or not, but the price makes it that much more appealing.  I may have finished the campaign already but I will be playing this for a long time to come and my friends are still talking about what we can do differently, what we’ll do next time, etc.  Click here to download the game and enjoy this 3rd person “Twin stick” shooter.

Avatar Rockets

[UPDATE 7-22 @ 2:36 AM] So I have been checking the last few days and whenever I load the game up it does not say anything about an update so I am curious if I had bad information or if the update process is not working.  Anyone out there have any info?