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It isn’t everyday that you can turn on your Xbox 360, and within a minute it can transform into what initially feels like a whole new console. Microsoft have been preaching so much about the ‘New Xbox Experience and how it will change your life’ that they’re starting to sound like Scientologists. But how much of a revolution is this software reinvention?

After a very colourful, pretty and irrelevant intro video, the first thing you’ll be forced to do when powering up the NXE is to create an avatar. Created by Microsoft’s darling developers, Rare Studios, the Avatar Creator will inevitably suffer from comparisons to Nintendo’s Mii system. The avatar is clearly supposed to be representative of your actual appearance, but although there are many more facial options in some parts than Nintendo’s equivalents, the fact that once-selected you are unable to adjust the positioning or size of these parts actually makes Avatars more restrictive and less varied than their Mii counterparts.

Even the bodily options for height and weight are disappointingly limited, even the fattest or tallest Avatar still looks pretty average. The smorgasbord of freaks that is my Mii Plaza puts Avatars to shame. This results in the fact that looking down your friendlist you realise that other than differing clothing, accessories and hairstyles, most Avatars look annoyingly similar.

Unfortunately another use of Avatars is so that you can quickly and easily determine who is online, or which of your friends are in a party. Sadly, as the Avatars are not easily distinguishable, compounded with the fact that you may never have actually seen the real faces of many of your Xbox Live friends, that fail at this purpose. Until you’re able to build up a mental list linking your friends Avatars to their gamertags, you’d be better off using the old-style friendlist accessed by using the guide button.

You can save different outfits that you’ve created for your Avatar, but there is no option to save several different Avatars or appearance settings, so unfortunately there is no easy way to quick-switch yourself to being Mr. T for a day.

But what about the main difference of this new dashboard, the actual interface? Although the new ‘Coverflow’ style navigation looks flashy, ironically it can be more difficult for Xbox 360 veterans to find what their looking for at first. Once you’ve been using the now-classic dashboard for almost three years, the muscle-memory of your fingers knows exactly how to find what you’re looking for without you even thinking about it, and it takes time to realise that the NXE actually does make things quicker and easier.

The blades of old are now vertical selections on a looping list, with the different options within those sections now being spread out horizontally. This makes it easier to go through lists of items without having to click on each one to view more information about it.

The default ‘channel’ on which the dashboard begins is the Spotlight channel, which makes it easier for Microsoft to target you with specific products. All cynicism regarding data collection and shady marketing techniques aside, this does actually help to highlight things that may interest you that you may never have come across otherwise. Even more useful is the fact that this is dynamic and personalised advertising, so if you’ve been downloading lots of movies or arcade games recently then the suggestions will change accordingly.

The new Marketplace makes it easier to find a specific game or movie by allowing you to search by a particular letter of the alphabet, and of course still has the options for just looking at new additions, most popular downloads etc. You can easily and quickly view screenshots of any game, which often gives you a good idea of the gameplay without having to download a trial. Although Microsoft have said that the NXE should load things faster and smoother, at the moment the contrary seems to be true with some items taking a minute or more to load, and some even returning an error message. We can only assume that this is due to the large number of concurrent online users and the strain that the NXE rollout is taking on the Xbox Live servers. Lets hope this will be rectified shortly.

Possibly the best new addition that NXE has to offer is the advent of Microsoft’s Community Games that have been created with the software giant’s XNA platform. Thirty-two games have been made available at this point, and although these titles are not subject to the Microsoft approval process, they seem to be of a generally high standard. The pricing is evenly split with fifteen games costing 400 points (£3.40), fifteen costing 200 points (£1.70) and two bold games trying for 800 points (£6.80). Standout titles so far include the experimental audio-only ‘In The Pit’, great twin-stick shooter ‘Biology Battle’, and wonderfully presented side-scrolling shooter ‘Weapon of Choice’.

This could be something of a renaissance for small-budget games, although these initial offerings may be seen as a litmus test for the potential viability of the user-created downloadable business model. Gamerscore junkies beware that Community games will not include Achievements, but are no less enjoyable for that fact.

Complimenting this extension of the Xbox Live Marketplace is the ability for gamers to now access the Marketplace from Xbox.com. You can now buy Microsoft points, purchase games and movies, and simply browse the marketplace from any PC with internet access. If your Xbox 360 is turned on back at home these items will instantly download. If not, then they’ll automatically begin to download the next time you access Xbox Live.

Another excellent addition is the new Party system. Up to eight gamers can get together to easily move from game to game. Party Chat means that all eight people could be playing different games, watching movies, listening to music etc. whilst still keeping in contact with the others. Parties can be open to all friends, or invite-only affairs and it’s simple to leave and join different parties. As long as one person on your friendlist is a member of a party then you’ll be able to view the status and gamertags of the rest of the party.

A surprising announcement when NXE was revealed was that 360 owners would be able to install almost every Xbox 360 game past and present to their console’s Hard Drive. Although this does decrease load times a minimal amount, the main benefit is a quieter 360 and less wear and tear on the Box’s disc drive. I’ve never been one to moan about the loudness of the Xbox 360’s fan and disc drive as I usually have the volume loud enough not to notice. But this is a sound that is certainly noticeable in its absence, so if you have enough space on your HDD then it’s certainly something worth considering for the game that you play most often. As an example, Gears of War 2 took up 6.7GB of space and took 10 minutes to install.

Gamerpics are still as much use as they ever were, although the option for a mini-photoshoot with your Avatar for create a new pic is available. Many old themes actually look better on NXE without the old dashboard blurring the visuals, but others can be somewhat obscured by the new layout. ‘Premium’ themes are the Next Big Thing. As well as being optimised to look good on NXE they also change the random Xbox objects that friends Avatars pose in front of to more appropriate ones. For example the Gears premium theme sees your happy buddies hanging around crashed choppers and burning buildings. As a nice bonus the Night and Day themes that come free with the 360 have been given an automatic upgrade to premium stylings.

Pressing the Guide button now brings up a miniaturised version of the old blades, and gives access to pretty much everything that the old dashboard did. Disappointingly, you’ll still have to leave your game if you wish to access most of the options such as system settings and the Marketplace, but it certainly speeds up the process. Quick-launching Arcade games is a personal favourite feature, as is the ability to delete any games in which you have no achievements from your gaming history.

In summation, much of the NXE takes time to grow on you before you learn to love it, but it seems that although several useful features have been added, this is more of a natural evolution for the service rather than a revolution. Still, appears that Microsoft may well have been successful in their goal of making Sony’s online offerings look rather meagre by comparison.

This is not much of a blog post. It is not going to shout at the Daily Mail, or ask what’s the deal with review scores these days. It is not going to wonder about innovation, and it is not shout at Microsoft. It is not going to examine the casual games market, nor is it going discuss storytelling in great detail.

This blog post it only here for one reason, and that is to inform you the music of Noby Noby Boy is insanely catchy, and is probably the best song in a game ever… even better than Jet Set Radio. Yes, that good!

I can’t get it out of my head. It’s like the FedEx arrow.. I now cannot unhear it!

The good people at Sony have graciously allowed me to download and play the demo for Motorstorm Pacific Rift a bit ahead of schedule and I’m going to pass my experience on to you, the reader, in the form of an informal blog-type thing.

It starts off quite well, with a video showcasing some of the fun and exciting times you might have while playing the game, for examples a monster truck spinning through the air whilst also being in flames and falling to pieces into a chasm. All this to a pretty cool song (note: need to find out who it was by). After about five minutes of waiting for the menu to show up, it never did and I realised I’d been watching the same video and music loop for a long time.

When I decided to press X and saw the menu I was a bit disappointed that there is only one track (Rain God Spires) on offer, in both single and two player modes, and then a choice of three vehicles. You can try out the Bike, the Racing Truck or the behemoth Monster Truck in single player. Oh well, after all it is only a demo and the soundtrack is quite good, with rocky songs and also some drum-and-bass type stuff if that’s your cup of tea. Loading times are excruciatingly long, even as it’s a demo and loading from the hard drive anyway, something which I hope will be sorted for the final release. I couldn’t seem to do anything with the sixaxis either even though in the instructions it says clearly ‘tilt left’ and ‘tilt right’, maybe I’m just being stupid.

On my first few goes around the track I didn’t think it was anything special, the scenery wasn’t remarkable and the track fairly straightforward. As soon as I started taking the alternative paths and got really used to the controls, the game opened up a fair bit. The Monster Truck is not as all-powerful as it was claimed, dammit, I wanted to be able to crush other cars with my mighty wheels. I found it slow and skiddy and it can’t even make it through the spindliest of trees. Although none of the scenery in the demo level seems to be destructible, I’m not sure if this is just a one-off for the level or if that’s not going to be a major feature (in the video it clearly shows a wooden structure collapsing…)

On the other hand the cars are happily very destructible, sometimes if a race isn’t going your way it’s even worth driving off a cliff just to see what happens to all the pieces that fall off the car on the way down or when it hits a wall. For the ultimate finale, I find holding the boost as much as possible just before the finish line can be timed to allow you to cross the line as a flying petrol-fuelled inferno.

The two-player multiplayer option is where I truly had some great fun with the demo with the funky Buggy and groovy Rally Car available to race in which are much more enjoyable than the offerings of the single-player mode. Also the sense of speed seems much greater in split-screen, probably just because of the smaller screen size or something.

So, to sum up. A more interesting level could have been chosen to show off the game, multiplayer is great fun, monster truck is not as fun as it could have been, loading is a problem and destruction is brilliantly done. A mixed verdict that will only be resolved by seeing the complete version if the pictures are anything to go by.

Innovation, Innovation, Innovation.

It’s the buzzword of this gaming generation, but are things really changing for the better?

This year marks the 37th anniversary of commercial videogames, and gaming has undeniably evolved faster than any other artistic medium. But is this down to intellectual or just technological innovations?

For example, the Wii remote is an excellent technical innovation, but removed from its control method, Wii Sports in an uninspired game. Just picture Wii Sports on the GameCube…

Of course, gaming is an interactive medium, so the input method is key to the experience. Unfortunately, few developers have used the Wii’s unique player/software interaction to create an experience that would not be conceivable on another platform. Whilst Mario, Zelda and Metroid are fantastic games, they could have worked with few compromises on the GameCube. Thus while Nintendo continue to innovate in the hardware stakes, their software is lacking the fresh originality of previous generations.

Being a much more open-ended, variable and interactive medium than cinema, means that gaming has the potential to offer a much greater range of experiences to the player and so can allow us to view the world in many new ways.

Sadly, most gaming experiences are still shackled by cinematic tradition, instead of embracing those things that are unique to gaming.

Cut-scenes and textual exposition still seem to be the preferred ways for game creators to tell a story, instead of trying to integrate storytelling and gameplay (which can be a vastly more powerful narrative tool.)

Less than 15 years ago, developers were still regularly creating new genres and revolutionising the existing gameplay experiences, which isn’t something we often see nowadays. Looking at the gaming line-ups of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, we mostly see ‘next-gen’ versions of the same old games that we’ve played before.

Has gaming then reached a plateau of sorts? Will all future games simply be refinements rather than revolutions?

Much of the problem lies with publishers, as apparently only three-in-ten games are making a profit, this has forced publishers to be more conservative and to stick to tried-and-tested formulae. Sadly, it’s been the case that original concepts tend to lack commercial success, and whilst gaming is more of a business than an art-form, then money is king.

The hope for innovation may lie with the smaller enterprise, the indie studios more concerned with realising a creative vision than ensuring profit margins. Here we look towards Xbox Live Arcade, Wiiware, XNA and Playstation Network as bastions of un-stifled talent.

Unrestricted by the hardware limitations of yesteryear, the sky is potentially the limit for these determined visionaries. Sure texture-mapping, dynamic lighting, Hi-Def visuals, anti-aliasing and stupendous polygon counts are nice, but lack of these elements needn’t be a barrier to creating an excellent game.

These opinions may seem a tad pessimistic, but of course there are always exceptions to any rule. Boom Blox shows how a game can be built around motion-control. Braid shows how a mature and thought-provoking narrative can be integrated with the game-world, and forthcoming titles like Mirror’s Edge continue to create new sub-genres.

Anyone who has had cause to contact a ‘Customer Service Representative’ from any company will be well aware that this is one experience to be dreaded. It’s akin to battling a hideous troll, only your weapons are your words, and their armour is their lack of understanding.

Although Microsoft are the newcomers of the ‘big three’ console manufacturers, they have been in the business of computing for over 20 years, in which time they have dealt with more than their fair share of consumer issues.

In light of this, you might think that Microsoft would have the experience and technical knowhow to provide an excellent standard of products and service to their valued customers. You might think that they would be well aware that providing an excellent product or service is only one factor of success, and that a company needs to provide support for the people who pay their bills when the inevitable happens.

Hardware reliability issues aside, the Xbox 360 is great product and Xbox Live is a great service. Now that Microsoft have taken the decision to ‘bite the bullet’ on Red Ring of Death issues and spend £500 million on extended warranties, they have bandaged their deepest wound and essentially removed the greatest source of negative criticism that has been directed towards the 360. Both the media and gamers in general have one less thing to moan about.

As someone who is on their third Xbox 360, I have had no choice but to call Microsoft on a few occasions. Although the lack of Xbox 360 consoles for a short time was a minor annoyance, I do own other games consoles which can satisfy my interactive entertainment needs. Coupling this with the fact that my faulty 360 was replaced relatively swiftly, painlessly and at no cost to myself, my opinion of Microsoft did not suffer because of this. Microsoft have a clear focus on rectifying their most prominent failing, but it’s a shame they don’t seem to share the same concern for other issues that their customers may face.

My first indication that Microsoft staff may not have been given sufficient training came when contacting them about a Digital Rights Management (DRM) issue. Microsoft’s problems with DRM have become much more well-known as of late, and they have finally done something to resolve people’s complaints on this matter once and for all, but a year-and-a-half ago the two Microsoft employees I spoke to about being unable to access Xbox Live Arcade games that were purchased on a different profile had no idea what I was talking about. In frustration, I gave up trying to get a solution from the people who should have been best poised to help me, and found the answer I needed on a random internet forum.

More recently, my wife’s Xbox Live subscription was due to be renewed and on my recommendation she bought a pre-paid Xbox Live Gold card from an online retailer, as this is cheaper than buying it directly from Microsoft by credit card. Nevertheless, Microsoft continued to try and take the money from an expired credit card (even after being advised of the situation), and when they were unable to take payment they cancelled her Xbox Live subscription that she had paid for herself through someone other than Microsoft.

The fact that they should be able to cancel a service that was not even purchased from them is absurd. The fact that it took several calls and broken promises ( “a manager will call you back in 48 hours”) for Microsoft to admit they’d made a mistake and that she was entitled to another 12 months of Xbox Live is ludicrous. At this point we tumbled down the rabbit hole and truly entered the fictional Wonderland…

Microsoft said they would give her a code, which she could use on the Xbox Marketplace to redeem 12 months of Xbox Live Gold membership. The only problem was that they had run out of codes… Lets think about that for a moment. Microsoft, the company who provides the Xbox Live service and generates the Xbox Live codes (which can be found in thousands of shops and websites) had Run. Out. Of. Codes.

Microsoft sorely need to realise that incidents like this can destroy faith in a company. It’s a well known fact that bad press spreads faster and farther than good press, so if Microsoft truly want to succeed in this generation they can’t try to dilute the nasty stuff with sweet stuff. Maybe rather than making some new gaming announcements at next week’s E3, Microsoft should pull a renewed commitment to customer satisfaction out of their collectives arses…