When I got wind of the BioShock Demo being available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace I started the download before I went to work this morning. But at 1.3 gigs in size I could not wait around and get a little game play in before work. If only I had picked the right six numbers for the Powerball last Saturday, my gaming would not be bothered by this pesky work stuff and I could have sat in my underwear playing BioShock all morning. Sitting at my desk this morning was the longest five hours of my life. As soon as noon rolled around, I was heading back home to play a little BioShock, and I have to say it was worth it.

I will try not to give away to many specifics of the story, but keep my comments mainly to game play and environment. The controls are your basic First Person Shooter controls, so not really anything new there and besides developers are kind of locking into a formula that seems to work with the controls. The visuals are amazing there is not another Xbox 360 game out there that looks this good. There is a scene where you are floating underwater trying to get to the surface. Between the visuals combined with the sound effects really evoke the sensation of terror. You almost feel like you are truly struggling to get to the surface for air. When you fight enemies they have certain presence that seems to make them really scary. You will notice as you finish them off they all seem to look a little different. One enemy that attacks you while being on fire is truely amazing, he is covered in flames as he lunges at you doing his best to send you to the same demise as he is certainly headed for. When you are finally finished beating him to a plup, you will notice his body is covered in burns. Like I said the visuals really REALLY good. The game seems to have this formula of crazy heart pounding action, then calm, then the suspense leading up to another super intense action scene.

I did notice a couple of visuals that seemed kind of off. First when you are swimming on the top of the ocean, I kind of got the feeling that I was floating over the water. Think of Shadow Run and floating up the ladders and you sort of have the idea. Since this is a first person perspective I kind of expected to see my arms reaching out in front of me as I swim. Second some of the clouds seemed kind of a strange color and texture as I was swimming, for those of you who have ever run Microsoft Windows in 256 colors instead of True 32 will understand what I am talking about. It just did not seem quite right. But honestly these two small instances do not even compare to the great eye candy that is the rest of the game. Seeing fish flopping on the ground or the flames that are consuming an enemy as he attacks you are incredible.

Before I played the Demo I was thinking about picking up this game when it got its first price drop. But now I am going to go out and pick this game up day One! My suggestion is try out the Demo. I think you are going to be like me and start racing to get through whatever game you are playing right now so you can be ready to start this game the day it comes out. I just finished Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Sunday, and I am planning on working twice as hard to finish up Call of Duty 3 before August 21st so I can dedicate myself to this game. If you are someone who believes in try before you buy then you definitely need to bump BioShock to the top of your Game Q.

Updated: To check out Ryan’s thoughts of BioShock, click here.

Are you claustrophobic?  Care to see some more of the world from the windshield of your favorite tiny vehicle?  Well wait no more, a new expansion pack Mad Tracks Bravo is now available on XBox LIVE.  This little purchase is packed with a huge amount of content.  Eight new mini games that you can use to drive and slide around in Antarctica, a German Dance Hall, and play Hide & Seek in a French Museum.  These new game types and maps are going to only set up back about 350 points.

Also there are new XBox LIVE themes available for 150 points.

Wind up and take off!

Via Press Release

For those of you who are still working on your “Seriously” Achievement here is some news to help bring some new life and new excitement to the world of Gears of War.

Eight new Achievements for the “Annex” game type and the “Hidden Fronts” Multiplayer Map Pack on Xbox LIVE.  In addition to adding new Achievements, worth a total of 250 points, “Gears of War” developer Epic has improved the Roadie Run controls so players have greater control of their movement and can better annihilate their pestilent enemies. The title update will also help squash multiplayer exploits and provide general housekeeping.

For more details visit the Gears of War Website.

 Via Press Release

I am not sure when something was considered cool by the fact that old people are using it in some way, but Nintendo sure is milking this Public Relations cow to death.  It seems like every other Blog post about the Nintendo Wii is about somebody’s grandma or grandpa bowling with Wii Sports.  Well Microsoft finally took notice of this and decided they want some of this Geriatric love also.  But without any motion controls what is a console maker to do?  Well create a game that the Grannies and Graps of the world already love, bring on Solitaire!  For the price of an entire Social Security check you can play solitaire, but it will be worth if is the only way to get those pesky grandkids to come and visit.

If you want an idea of  the game play in Soltrio Solitaire go to any Best Buy, Wall mart, or any Big Box store head on over to the computer section and find a Microsoft Windows computer.  And play the version of Solitaire that comes free with Windows, but the trick is this.  To get the real Soltrio Solitaire experience you need to not use the mouse, only the keyboard.  Using only the keyboard will give you the same sticky clumsy interface that has been programmed for the game controller.  Like a teenage boy fumbling with his first bra snaps (or hooks), you to will fight and wiggle and curse trying to unlock the wonders that are being kept from you.  The focus or sparkle highlight seems to jump rather unpredictably around the screen.  While the game does offer a little more then just the basic game of Solitaire that has come with every copy of Microsoft Windows since the early 1990’s, I just can not recommend spending $10.00 in Microsoft Points to buy this game.  Even at $5.00 this game would be really hard to recommend, most of you probably have it on a computer in your house or you could pick it up in some card game compilation pack for about the same price.  Not to mention they are already trying to get more money out of you for more skins and different decks of cards in the form of extra downloadable content available at 150 Microsoft Points each.

I got a free code to download the full game to test it out, if you can get a free code also I highly recommend you use it.  Otherwise I would have to say let this one sit on the Microsoft LIVE server, download the demo if you really need to get a Solitaire fix but keep your cash!

So it looks like Alex over at GamingTalkHQ must have himself a neat little video game predicting crystal ball.  Last week he broke the story that Mad Tracks was going to be next weeks XBox LIVE Arcade and what do you know, today Major Nelson confirmed it.  I wonder if that thing works with Power Ball Numbers?

Players can race through 15 challenges consisting of nine mini-games and six different races behind the wheel of one of 12 sleek compact cars. “Mad Tracks,” from Load Inc., features 12 power-ups to keep engines revved up and players in the fast lane ahead of the competition.

Enjoy the robust, full game features of “Mad Tracks” this Wednesday, and also be on the lookout for new tracks coming soon. You can double and even triple the challenges in “Mad Tracks” with the Bravo and Encore expansion packs, arriving in the near future. For about half the price of the full game, players will be able to add additional races and mini-games to “Mad Tracks” by downloading the Bravo and/or Encore expansion packs. Each expansion pack includes an additional 15 nail-biting races and action-filled mini games for 350 Microsoft Points each, extending the fun and offering a great value.

Game Features

• 15 distinct challenges (6 races & 9 mini-games) provide a full-fledged racing game experience
• 12 stackable power-ups (rockets, freezer, oil drop, EMP and more!)
• 12 sleek looking cars to choose from
• 4 player multiplayer over Xbox LIVE and 4 player local multiplayer via split screen mode
• Championship mode & Arcade mode
• 2 free gamer pictures
• Earn up to 12 Achievements and 200 Gamerscore points

“Mad Tracks,” will be available for download on Xbox LIVE Arcade for Xbox 360 beginning Wednesday, May 30, at 9:00 a.m. GMT (2:00 a.m. Pacific Time).   Have 800 Microsoft Points in your account because that is what this little racing game is going to set you back.

Check out the GamerScoreBlog Flicker Photos of Mad Tracks

Via Major Nelson

Just in case you did not know this, September 19th is official talk like a pirate day.  So that would be the ideal day to try out this demo.  But I am guessing most of you are going to try this baby out right away.  And why not, its FREE!  The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End DEMO finally sailed across the sea from Europe and has landed here in North America.  Live by the sword and keep your edge.  Captain Jack is back hat and all in this new action adventure game from Disney Interactive Studios.  Get on XBox LIVE and download the demo for free.  It includes the first level tutorial of the game.  This game contains environments and story lines from both the second and the third movies.  Gamers can play as Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and Elizabeth Swann and try to keep Jack’s dark past from catching up with him.

From rumors floating around the internet and other blogs you may want to try this demo out before you buy the game.  Hmmmm, a game based on a movie.  Those are always the top notch quality games, going back as far as ET for the Atari 2600.  Just make sure you have 972.3 MB free on your 360’s hard drive.

Source: GamerScoreBlog

Well it looks like the crew over at Joystiq are trying to out do the Cheap Ass Gamer guys.  Ludwig is letting all know about a free XBox LIVE Arcade title coming to XBox LIVe and with free Achievement Points!  Oh what a sweet feeling it is getting those Gamer Score points knowing that you did not have to pay to get them, and especially if you do not feel as stiff and sore as a 90 year old man after playing a free game like Totem Ball.

Head over to Joystiq and get the low down, but this offer ends soon and with that series of tubes looking to get clogged up with Halo 3 Beta goodness tomorrow a cheap ass gamer might want to hurry up and get it downloaded as soon as possible.

Source

Garnet Lee may have let slip a little secret title coming to XBox LIVE Arcade.  In the Podcast 4/27/2008 around twenty six minutes into the Podcast Garnet Lee says that Darwinia is coming to XBox LIVE Arcade.  When he asks if anyone else knows anything about the status there was a long pause and the whole 1UP round table agreed that was news to all of them.

Hmmmmmmmm, this could be a neat little title to add to the growing XBox LIVE Arcade collection.

Source

Major Nelson has finally spilled the good news of when we can expect to see the Dash Board Update.  May 9th around 2:00 AM Pacific Standard Time.

Are you going to be an early adaptor, or wait and see if it bricks any XBox 360s?

Source

Major Nelson may have played with our emotions last night on Twitter, holding out the possibility of a Dash Board for today and then quickly dashing our hopes and telling we were going to have to wait at least – at the Very least 24 more hours.

But Major eased our anxiety by letting us know that Double Dragon is going to be coming to XBox LIVE tomorrow.  Rumors were flying around last week that Double Dragon might show this week, but now we are getting right from the Man that knows the inside world of XBox. 

Double Dragon is going to set you back 400 Microsoft Points

Check out the screen shorts

Source

Major Nelson has posted over at his blog that “I just heard from the Dashboard team that we’ll have to wait at least another day for the Dashboard update to be released. The update is not being released in the next 24-hours.”

So there you have it, I need to go and explain to my daughter why we can not watch her Baby Einstein video that are in MPEG 4 format on the XBox 360, and that we have to keep watching them on the PS3 for now.  This watching videos on my PS3 really cuts into my folding at home work!

Source

If you are looking for crazy folic shaped graphics for my grieving you will be a little disappointed, but this is a rant of mine.  So my friend Charlie went out this weekend and bought the PS3 version of Oblivion.  Now he barrages me with IM questions or comments telling me about all the crazy things he is doing in the world of Oblivion on the PS3.  When we got to talking he said that the version of Oblivion that released last week for the PS3 included the side mission Knight of the Nine.  So I went on XBox LIVE Marketplace to see if this side mission was now a free download for XBox 360 owners, but it is still 800 Microsoft Points.

Now a few months back on the Major Nelson Podcast show number 218, Major Nelson stated that they would be against charging for content that would be included in other platforms or available at no extra charge to other platforms.  So I am curious why this extra content is still being charged for?

I have emailed Major Nelson and asked him to look into this but right now he has probably had some other things to worry about such as XBox LIVE maintenance, announcement of XBox 360 Elite, and then his own site having some slow down issues.  But if he responses to me I will be sure to update this post.