I’d been waiting for a sale on Soulja Boy’s favorite Xbox Live Arcade game, Braid, for some time. Fortunately, it finally went on sale for Gold Members in the final week of my Gold membership (gasp!). The game was well worth it at $15, but at $10 I can’t resist. Anyone else jumping on this? Anyone that has the game already want to share their thoughts on it?

Ray has posted his reviews of BOTH Sonic Unleashed versions in one MEGA-REVIEW!!! It’s a must-read, so read it!

That’s right folks, our very own Ray Hargreaves of 2P START! fame has taken the plunge and impulse-bought an Xbox 360 along with Sonic Unleashed (big surprise). Who knew that the horrible Wii version of Sonic Unleashed could drive him to such madness? Regardless, let’s welcome him with open arms to the ‘light side’ (as DJ puts it)! Ray’s gamertag is “Ray 2P START”, so go ahead and send him a friend request, and while you’re at it, send me one too if you haven’t done so (gamertag: wilef).

Your second task is to suggest some 360 games for Ray as I doubt Sonic Unleashed, Lego Indiana Jones, and Kung-Fu Panda will hold his attention for too long. Let’s focus on fun online multi-player titles (retail or arcade) to get him used to a REAL online gaming experience!

I promised first impressions, and as a man of my word, here they are! I got the New Xbox Experience (NXE) two days early, so I’ve had at least a couple days to check things out. I’ll probably have a better feel for this ‘experience’ in a month or so and might post something then too, but for now…

Dashboard
The ‘coverflow’ style layout of everything is nice enough, despite not utilizing screen real estate very well. My big problem here is that most of the information seen isn’t useful to me and I have no way to customize what’s there. A lot of the ‘channels’ are either advertising or not something I care about, so the ability to turn them off would make navigation easier for me. Everything does look much sharper than before though, so I’m sure once I get the navigation down I’ll like it even better.

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Woohoo! I’m getting the NXE 2 days early! I’m actually pretty excited to make my avatar, and to try out the game installations. Impressions will be posted tomorrow!

I was excited to hear Microsoft announce this week that user-created XNA games would get a chance to be played over Xbox Live. The small studios and talented individual programmers are sure to have some unique ideas for games and now Xbox 360 owners will get a chance to see some of them through this ‘YouTube for videogames’. With the announcement, 7 games were made immediately available to demo for a limited time. I decided to give each a shot and report back my findings. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a mixed bag, but I do see some potential with a few of these titles. Keep reading for my mini-reviews, ranked from worst to first. (more…)

Ray and I got to talking about the new Gears of War 2 trailer and realized two things. First, they used the chainsaw almost exactly how Ray said they should use it in our latest podcast (strange coincidence). Second, I told him it would be awesome to put the Mad World song to the new trailer, half jokingly, half seriously. He was up to the task and put this video together and I think it’s great. His point is that the song is emotional, not the game. I think he’s right.

If you haven’t heard yet, now’s your chance to get Halo 3 for free. All you have to do is buy an Xbox 360 by Dec. 21 and register an Xbox Live account and they’ll send you a copy of Halo 3 for free (doesn’t arrive until Jan 18, but still). Hear that Nintendo? How about YOU start including a free game with the purchase of a Wii? Wait, you already do? Oh yeah…

[Update]: Seems they took down the offer and replaced it with a much more restrictive one. Lame!