The clever guys at 337pwn.com have created an ipHone app that lets you browse your Xbox Live Friends in exactly the same way as you do through the NXE dashboard. The app is also free as well and available through the app store here.
I’ve used some of the 1337pwn Xbox Live apps before, and whilst they look really nice and they work fine, I don’t liek the way they require you to eneter all the gamertags you want to monitor, it would be far more useful if they were able to feed off of your own friends list through live. I guess the login to Xbox Live makes this all a bit difficult though.
I don’t have an iPhone myself, but if any iPhone owners want to try it out and then leave some comments on what it’s actually like that would be great.
For all those disapointed that the last Call of Duty went back to WW2, it’s just been announced that a sequel to Call of Duty : Modern Warfare is in the works with a release date sometime in Fall 2009. It’s certainly something I’m pleased about, I loved COD4. It was refreshing change after COD2 and COD3, which I did enjoy as well.
I’m always suspicious of any game/movie conversions in either direction. A Ghostbusters game may seem like it’s 20 odd years late, however the trailer released today actually looks pretty fucking awesome. They’ve really captured the characters and humour well (from the small amount you see). I’ll try not to get excited but June 2009 could be a very good month indeed.
I was just updating a list of work colleagues gamercards and I noticed there’s a direct path to any Avatar’s 2D image, you simply just need to insert the gamertag and escape the URL appropriatly where needed.
For Example, my gamertag is “DannyG UK” so a link to my avatar would be:
The %20 simply replaces any spaces, also being a Microsoft system it’s no case sensitive, also you can get away without using the %20, that is a bit sloppy though
This means you can embed your avatar if various other places throught the web: for example:
It’s been almost 5 days since I excitedly watched the update bar progress and the latest and biggest xbox 360 dashboard update appear on my TV. The flashy intro video was great, and although I found the new dashboard a little baffling at first, I think all round it is a huge improvement, and not just a flashy gimmick.
Avatar Fun
It’s easy to look at the Avatar feature and just dismiss it as a Mii rip-off, but I think all round it adds a bit more personalisation to Xbox Live. I enjoyed making an Avatar of myself, and had to resist making something rediculous just for the sake of it. I think the general look of the avatars is just on the right side of realism. You can pretty much make something that looks just like you but without it being too creepy. Every day i’ve been looking through my friends avatars and having a good laugh at how similar they look in real life, or in some cases just looking at them to get an idea of what they might look like in real life if they’re friends I’ve never actually met. At the moment these avatars just simply sit in the Xbox Live Friends channel and various other locations on the dashboard as well as in a 2D form on xbox.com. They will gradually start to become an identify you can choose to use in certain types on game, much in the same way as the Wii.
Speed
One of the most practical improvements has to be the increase in speed as you navigate around. This makes the whole messaging friends experience a lot more pleasant. There are supposeldy improvements in the speed of marketplace, and whilst i can see that in some areas scrolling through long lists has improved, some parts of marketplace were very slow this week. However the Live team have noted this and are apparently working to improve it.
Overall I like the New Xbox Experience (NXE) a lot, it’s like you’re getting somethign tangible for free (if you ignore the annual Live Gold cost).
On the eve of the biggest Xbox dashboard update ever, i.e the New Xbox Experience , I thought i’d have a go at trying to put through some non-standard looking characters to see if you can customise your Xbox Live Motto etc. This isn’t that difficult as you modify your profile through the browser using www.xbox.com and therefore you can cut and paste all variety of odd characters you find.
I tried out quite a few, basically there’s no real pattern to it, some characters work and others don’t, below is a selection of characters that definitly work, however there’s loads more that probabley will as well.
Note: I haven’t tried to view my mottor through an Xbox console since making these changes, so I have no idea how or if they can be viewed correctly through the dashboard, however I can’t see why they couldn’t be.
I almost forgot about Left 4 Dead, i’m not sure why either, it’s right up my street, I love zombies and I love shooting the shit out of stuff. I’ve seen various videos and screen shots over the months but for some reason it wasn’t one of those games that I stuck in my calandar for a pre-order.
However, looking at recent videos, reading previews and hearing from peopel who’ve actually played it, it sounds pretty damn good. So I stuck a preorder in and hopefully it’ll arrive on the 21st November (please amazon). Anyway today the demo is supposedly released on Xbox Live, so all you zombie loving mothers can get some good zombie mashing fun in today.
If you want to read some spoilers on the third Lfet 4 Dead campaign you can check it out on Rock Paper Shotgun
I was one of the people that bought the first Saints Row, it was the first sandbox game I’d played on the 360 and possibly the first of that genre on the platform. GTA IV was a long way off at the time and so it seemed like a good decision, and i think for the most part it was. Saints Row 1 was nothing special but it was entertaining enough.
So now GTA 4 has come and mostly gone (roll on the DLC) and it was pretty awesome, it looked good, it played well and I found it very hard to put down. I even took the launch day afternoon off work so i didn’t have to stare at it on my desk until 17.30.
So along comes Saints Row 2, from the screen shots and videos it looked very similar to the first outing, the graphics weren’t up to the GTA IV standard but apparently it’s not all about graphics anyway Last week i actually purchased Saints Row 2 (it was my birthday after all). There’s loads of differences between it and GTA and I don’t think there’s much point is comparing the two, however the one thing I wold say is that Saints Row 2 is 100% fun, whereas GTA had certain elements that were incrediliby boring and pointless (dates, pool and bowling). Saints Row 2 has loads of activities and I’m sure they’ll not all be to everyone’s taste they’re all fun and that’s what gamning is about at the end of the day isn’t it?
Someone, somewhere is lucky and has managed to get hold of Gears of War 2 already. They’ve uploaded footage of one of the boss fights (which they lose). There’s been some negative comments regarding the footage, some of it around the “bland” water effects, however I don’t think you can really criticise the graphics based on some cam footage of the game. The game play however, does look slightly boring and uninspired. The tentacle just seems to flop down and allow itself to be chain sawed, it’s very old school style boss in that it follows a repetitive set of actions.
Check it out for your self below. At the end it really reminds me of the kraken from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Thanks to a friend I managed to get hold of a Call of Duty : World at War Beta Key. I loved Call of Duty 4, it was the first game in a long while that lured me back into playing online. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the previous Call of Duty Games, especially COD2. However there was so much more atmosphere to Call of Duty 4 in both the single player and multiplayer experiences.
So I was excited to be playing Call of Duty World at War, a lot of the interface will seem very familiar to players of COD2, 3 & 4. However for me that was where a lot of the similarities ended. To be fair it’s not that there’s anything wrong with the game, it’s more that it seems like a step backwards instead of forwards, which in terms of time period it is. I loved the hi-tech weapondary of COD4 and going back to using a M1A1 Thompson isn’t all that great at all.
The graphics are fairly good, although they appeared somewhat cartoonish to me, however that could just be me Overall it’s not bad, and I think only being able to play the multiplayer means that it’s difficult get get a good feel for the entire game. I know i’ll probably end up buying it anyway as I’ve enjoyed the single player campaigns on all the Call of Duty games.
It’s easy to look at the Avatar feature and just dismiss it as a Mii rip-off, but I think all round it adds a bit more personalisation to Xbox Live. I enjoyed making an Avatar of myself, and had to resist making something rediculous just for the sake of it. I think the general look of the avatars is just on the right side of realism. You can pretty much make something that looks just like you but without it being too creepy. Every day i’ve been looking through my friends avatars and having a good laugh at how similar they look in real life, or in some cases just looking at them to get an idea of what they might look like in real life if they’re friends I’ve never actually met. At the moment these avatars just simply sit in the Xbox Live Friends channel and various other locations on the dashboard as well as in a 2D form on xbox.com. They will gradually start to become an identify you can choose to use in certain types on game, much in the same way as the Wii.
