After a couple of warm up 2 vs 2 games, we decided to draw the top teams from a hat and then play a tournament, having drawn Argentina I was quietly (actually loudly) confident.

I managed to win my first game 2-0, even though I was distracted by the pizza guy turning up and seeing everyone else eating , luckily I managed to grab a a couple of slices at the end of the game. The next few games went by and I was knocked out of my second game by Randip, who to be fair has spent far more time playing FIFA than anyone else, and who eventually went on to win the tournament playing as Italy.

All in all a great night, I can highly recommend the World Cup Edition of FIFA, they’ve made some great improvements as well as building in live updates and scenarios from the actual World Cup as it happens.

The next day I had a quieter evening just watching a Blu Ray with my girlfriend, awesome deal from T-Mobile!

Please note this competition is only open to UK residents. Entrants must be over 16.

Check back often for more competitions, good luck!

I’ve only had 5 mins to play with this update, and of the two i’d say the Facebook one is probably the most useful, even though it’s the social network i use the least. The ability to be able to look at photos is somewhat useful. Whereas with twitter you’re unable to follow any links that are tweeted, so sometimes it’s useless.

Anyway, take a look at some bad quality photos I took of the screen below,

I’m a fairly patient person, actually that’s a lie. I hate queuing, waiting and anything else that prevents me from getting to where i want or doing what I want to do. What made this lack of Xbox worse was that my pre-order of Guitar Hero 5 turned up just as the broken Xbox 360 was going back. In fact I had shiny Guitar 5 on one side of me and busted broken Xbox 360 on the other awating collection by UPS.

That day i walked back from work, straight into my local Tesco and bought an Xbox Elite. In my head the justification was that I’d have a larger hard drive etc. The fact that it had HDMI didn’t really register as much of an advantage, except for maybe some tidier cabling.

The Xbox Elite has some obivous advantages straight away, for a start it’s definitely a lot quieter, although i’ve heard some of the newer permium and arcade consoles are also equipped with quieter DVD drives these days. The power brick is actually a little bit smaller, not loads, but it all helps when you live in a 1 bedroom flat.

The biggest advantage however is the picture quality through HDMI. Now, I’ve read quite a few technical comparisons of component and HDMI xbox connections and people have said there’s little difference. This didn’t seem to be the case for me, and from comments I’ve read on various forums people’s opinions seem to differ. I’ve come to the conclusion that the level of improvement might depend on the TV you’re using. I’m using a relatively new mid-range 40in Sony Bravia, the picture quality on component wasn’t bad, but i always detected a slight ghosting, which initialy annoyed me but i got used to it. Through the HDMI connection the picture is incredibly sharp and the colours seem a lot deeper, black is a lot, well..  blacker. Which isn’t bad for an LCD TV.

If you’re not tempted yet, check out the video below and you’ll be £10.20 poorer by tomorrow evening.

The add-on features 9 new cars, and various new races, smashes and road rules. You can queue it up for download through Xbox.com by clicking here

See the video below if you’re still not convinced.

From what I’ve read, the main difference is you collect Lego Studs (no that kind!) and these can be used to purchase various things, new costumes, clothes, Lego life insuance etc. According to Harmonix the reasoning behind Lego Rock Band is that it’s a more family friendly affair.

The game will be releasesed with some “Lego” songs apparently, I find that statement confusing in itself, but hey we’ll have to wait and see I suppose. I presume it’ll be songs and artists with bad Lego related puns.

Oh before I forget, the game doesn’t come with Lego intruments, boooooo!