Xbox 360 Features

Gift Buyer’s Guide: Xbox 360 RPGs

If there is a person on your shopping list that knows what you mean when you say “+90 damage points,” then this buyer’s guide is for you. RPGs are the type of soul-sucking games that trap players for hours, or days at a time. With that in mind, it’s probably the ideal gift to give to a gamer, as they won’t have time to play anything else. Why buy multiple games when you can save money and buy one large RPG? Here is a list of the top Xbox 360 RPG games you can buy this holiday season:

Holiday Shopping in the Arcade Marketplace Part 2

Many games have been released this year onto the Xbox Live Marketplace and last week some of the best were showcased. This week, three more have made the cut as the best of the year and are worth more than the small amount of points you should shell out for them. Section 8: Prejudice, Torchlight, and Iron Brigade (formerly known as Trenched) are must buys for all gamers and here is a snippet of why.

Gift Buyers Guide: Classic XBLA Games

There are now over four hundred XBLA games available for download, and with such a variety of downloadable games to choose from, it’s best to think carefully and check what’s best for your cash before you splash out those Microsoft points. As well as XBLA exclusives, some of the best titles available from the marketplace are re-releases of older games, allowing gamers to replay past classics or to hit up a masterpiece they never got the chance to play.

Let’s start with one of the best of those classics: Perfect Dark. Originally released on the N64, Perfect Darkfeatures secret agent Joanna Dark, thrown in the middle of a war between two different races of alien. As well as a very lengthy campaign, Perfect Dark boasts a brilliant multiplayer mode, a “combat simulator” which sees you completing a variety of different tasks in beautiful gameplay, similar to Rare’s previous FPS, Goldeneye. For the bargain price of just 800 points, Perfect Dark is one of the great pioneers in the world of FPS, and a must-have for anyone who’s an avid player of the shooters that are around now.

Holiday Shopping: Arcade Style Part 1

All of the major releases have come and gone this year and many of us are making plans for what we will be getting for the holidays or picking up for others. There is a branch of the gaming market that is easy to overlook when it comes to holiday shopping, but it should no longer be ignored.  The Xbox Live Arcade titles that have been released this year are some of the best thus far. Followed here is a list of some of the best that were released over the year and why a Points Card might just be one of the best stocking stuffers you could hope to get as a gamer:

Achievement Unlocked – Bottom of the Barrel

As we come to another release week, the blockbuster season has ended and as the holiday season starts full swing, the releases begin to dwindle down to near nothing. This week is headlined by WWE ’12 and The King of Fighters XIII with a few other minor releases that leave something to be desired when it comes to the achievement side of things. WWE ’12 has an interesting reminder to everyone who follows wrestling in any fashion with the achievement ‘Thank You Edge‘ which involves winning with him 37 times in a single session. Sadly, from an achievement standpoint, that is one of the only unique achievements that will not come from normal progression and is just grinding through the games.

The Best Black Friday Sales for Xbox 360

Are you looking to buy a new Xbox at one of the big sales this weekend? What about a recent AAA game at half price, or maybe an old hit that you never got around to.  We looked through all of the retailers and online sales to find the best Xbox deals for Black Friday and are here with our recommendations on how you should spend your Xbucks this week.

Why All Games Shouldn’t Be $60

The games industry has faced more change in the last five years than it
has had in probably the combined 20 years before that. We’ve seen the
rise of downloadable games, indie games and DLC, which expands a game’s
longevity. We’ve seen components of games getting locked off for used
buyers unless they spend an extra $10. DRM has become more intrusive
than ever, and then it kind of-sort of went away. The cost of developing
games has skyrocketed, and so too have the marketing budgets. After
all, if a game has cost millions of dollars to make, you want to make
sure it sells millions of copies, right? These are the so-called
Triple-A games: games coming out at $60 that the publisher has clearly
put a lot of marketing and development muscle behind. In all these
changing economic conditions, though, one thing hasn’t changed too much:
most console games still cost $60 at retail, regardless of the amount
of cash spent developing or marketing the title. Surely all games aren’t
created equal, so why the uniform approach to pricing in the retail
space, especially compared to the changes the downloadable marketplace
has brought with it?

Achievement Unlocked – End of the Season

This week offered no achievements for just starting a game, pausing it, or any of that nonsense. Each achievement at least requires you to play the game, and hopefully enjoy it.  Unsurprisingly the strongest, and by far most bizarre, of this week is Saint’s Row: The Third. When the trailers first showed up the game showed how very little seriousness was going to be involved and the achievement list seems to echo that. Once Bitten…Braaaaaaains is for completing ‘Zombie Attack’, Your Backseat Smells Funny can be obtained for completing all Escort missions, and Ow my Balls! is for getting your first nutshot or testicle assault.

Was Saints Row: The Third Released Too Soon?

Saints Row: The Third is releasing today, and many are arguing that the publisher, THQ, is doing the game a disservice by trying to squeeze it in amidst a plethora of big releases like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.  

Halo Anniversary: Hands-On Preview

Ten years ago it was widely believed that it was impossible to have a truly great First Person Shooter on a gaming consol. Halo was the game that proved it could be done.  With a control scheme and design choices that became industry standards, Halo Combat Evolved indisputably earned its place as a classic. Now, ten years to the day of the first game’s launch, 343Industries is releasing an enhanced edition.  Our correspondent got some hands-on with it at the New York Comic Con and here’s what we’ve gleaned about Master Chief’s rebirth.