2 Free XBLA Games Now Out - Harm's Way & Crash Course

Ah, free stuff. How we do love our free stuff, I mean who wouldn't! It's something for nothing, and now XBLA has got 2 new games that are free. As part of Unlock Xbox competition by Doritos, 2 games have been released on the marketplace - Harm's Way (a racing, shooter game) and Crash Course (a Takeshi's Castle-esque platformer). Hopefully, more free stuff will follow suit...

Black Ops Update:

Please Note That The Following Post Is From The Point Of View Of An Xbox-360 Gamer With No Help To PS3 Gamers :(.

On the 14th of December, 2010 (duh) , Call Of Duty: Black Ops saw a mere 10mb update.

For any of you that are wondering what said update did; basically , the update patched the golden gun glitch and removed K.V.P.

Now, In more detail, the golden gun glitch was availible by having a friend with a J-Tag who made combat training kills 50,000 xp per kill, then with a friend the lobby, prestige you. You'd get to 15th Prestige and the J-Tag could transfer the rank unlockables to your player match folder so, for 50,000 cod points, you could buy a golden camo, regardless of rank.

Now, K.V.P, means Killer Viewing Perks, basically for any of you Search and Destroy enthusiasts, you will have found that when spectating another player , you'd see the perks of YOUR killer in the place of where, in previoius call of duty's you'd see the perks of the player you're viewing currently. This update has cancelled that, however ,we're yet to see any perks of the playe. Despite Treyarch's Call Of Duty: World At War this was not an issue.

Hope that helped 360JoyPad viewers :).

Stay tuned, or whatever you call it when involving a website, for more posts on black ops updates or Message me at:

See you later :)

Quake Arena Arcade Finally Coming To XBLA

Quake Arena Arcade has been in development for quite some time now, and was announced in 2007, but now finally; it's coming to XBLA December 15th. Based on Quake III multiplayer, QAA will have 45 maps, 15 of which are exclusive XBLA, 6 game-types with 15 player online. All sprayed with abit of HD magic. No price yet, but Bethesda and iD say they will announce it soon. So hopefully, soon, we will all be able to frag our friends...

Halo Reach Limited Edition For Only £25

Despite being a 'limited' edition, Halo Reach's still seems to be in stock, if Amazon's price cut is anything to go by. Amazon.co.uk have dropped the price down from it's launch price of £50 to £25, £5 cheaper than the normal edition of Halo Reach. So if you haven't experienced Bungie's curtin call to Halo, it seems now is a better time than any. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Halo-Reach-Limited-Collectors-Xbox/dp/B003INF2EK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1291915390&sr=8-2

RDR Multiplayer Gets Double XP This Weekend

So, you're saving up you're money for christmas, and don't know what to play.

"I know! I'll play some Red Dead Redemption multiplayer, so I can get to level 50!" It seems Rockstar read your mind, because this weekend you get twice as much XP than usual, just to help you out.

Trials HD & Splosion Man Reduced For A Short Time Only

2 of the best XBLA games EVER are going on sale - Trials HD tommorrow and Splosion Man in the very near future. Trials HD will be reduced from 1200 msp to 400 msp; which is a great deal if you havn't played it yet, and Splosion Man for 160 msp, which is down from 800 msp. Now that is a steal.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Achievements Announced

Over on x360a, the achievement list for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood have been announced, with alot of them in the 20's with a few different here and there, but on paper (or should i say screen) it looks like a fun set of achievements, but does have SOME SPOILERS. Check them out here.

Gears of War 2 'All Fronts Collection' Half Price This Week

Gears of War 2 may have came out ages ago, but it seems Epic doesn't want you to forget about it. Originally, the All Fronts Collection was 1600 Microsoft points, but got permanently slashed to 800 - but this week it is slashed again in half to 400 Microsoft points. The 'All Fronts Collection' includes 19 multiplayer and horde maps & a deleted scene from the campaign; so well worth the money.

Tekken 6. The best Tekken yet?

Namco's Tekken 6 has been around for a while now, only just picking it up within the last week I was transported to my Playstation 1 days on tekken 2 spamming the square button with Yoshimitsu ( Metaphorically, the campaign doesn't involve being transported to a PS1 ) .

Trying not reveal to much about the story, there are two types of story mode. The first , Scernario mode, takes us to a labrotory where rebel leader, Lars Alexanderson is infiltrating said Lab only to be ambushed by G corporations JACK 6 robot. Lars' squad defeats the JACK's only for one to get back up and self-destruct causing the explosion to give Lars' amnesia...

The other story mode is the basic Tekken arcade mode, with the 9 stages of 1 on 1 fights, 1 bonus round against a fighter I can't/ won't reveal in case of spoiling too much, but I will say the mysterious fighter is worth a 30 G achievment if you defeat her you Xbox- 360 fans. With at teh end of the 9 rounds you face a giant beast named Azazel which is ancient Hebrew meaning mythical beast, but no achievment. While he is hard, it may require you to sacrifice your fighting pride and resort endless spamming of the X button regardless of which console you play.

The Characters List consists of 43 characters:

New Characters include:

Bob - An obese yet suprisingly agile blonde fighter.

Jack 6 - Obviously an upgraded Jack 5, nothing special but every Tekken has gotta have a Jack.

Leo - A counterpart to Lei Wulong, very agile and fast yet lacking strength.

Miguel Rojo - One of the most agile fighters yet one of the weakest. A trade-off.

Zafina - An ex- western assassin, apparently her moves resemble a spider.

Lars Alexanderson - Fast, strong and carries a mean punch. Basically, not an easy target.

Alisa Bosconavitch - Alisa was a the daughter of Dr. Bosconavitch, after she dies , he revives with some slight robotic modifications including rocket thrusters, chainsaw arms and a detachable head.

All in all, one of, if not the best tekken game to date, ask for my gamertag if your up to the challenge ;)

Alan Wake Review - The Pun Says It All

There's something about puns, there funny and ironic, and always make you smile and go 'Oh yeeeeaaahh!'. Other news sites have probably used this but... Alan Wake is keeping me A.Wake. This is a pun. Not only is it a pun, it's a descripition. Because you'll try to stay A.Wake to play it.

If you played Alone In The Dark, you'll be familiar with how Alan Wake works, where each segment is split up into 6 episodes, with each episode starting with 'Previously on Alan Wake' along with a quick recap, just like a T.V series. But unlike a T.V series you interact with it, because y'know it's a game... but Alan Wake mixes presentation with gameplay, a good example would be where you fight the Taken (people possessed by the darkness), and just before the hit you with an axe press the left bumper. This creates a short Slo-mo bullet time-esque sequence, which looks really cool yet fits the gameplay & the story very well.

Now I wont spoil the story, as it will ruin your experience with the game, but just introduce you to it. The game follows Alan Wake, a famous writer that has been experiencing writers block for 2 years. His wife, Alice, convinces him to go Bright Falls for a vacation, but things soon go outta control.

But this is where it gets ironic - Remedy (the developer behind Alan Wake) hired a company to do the voice acting for the game, but they had finished the voice acting before the game was finished - so they had to implement it in. Unfortunately, this doesn't do well for Alan Wake.Now you may think I'm exaggerating but, the voice acting in Alan Wake is THE worst I have ever seen in a video game. Sometimes it looks like a ventreloquist puppet - its that bad. Another Downer is the collectables: I enjoy collectables, but collectables are a sort of love/hate relationship - some people like them (me), some people dont, and for the people that dont like collectables - there are 206 collectables.

Which, quite conveniently brings me to my next point. Alan Wake was originally planned as a free-roam, sandbox game; But Remedy then decided to change it to make the story better, yet when you play the levels it feels alot like a free-roam game, with multiple paths and triple-digit collectables. Yet you do treat it like a free-roam as Bright Falls looks so beautiful and gorgeous when your fighting the darkness, it really heightens the tension.

Despite Alan Wake's faults, when you finish Alan Wake, and watch the final cut scene, you'll sit back and replay it again in your head and go "Oh yeeeeaaahh!", "Man that was cool!" or even just silence as you put The Signal DLC in your download queue and wait until it's downloaded. Because you'll want to go back to Bright Falls for your vacation honeymoon - 'cus you'll want to marry it afterwards.

Now seen as this is 360joypad's first review
I have divised a clever scoring system for our reviews. Each game will get a mark out of 7 for how many days a week you should play this. Simple.

7/7

Amazing