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October 31 Live Account Sharing and Gamesave Glitching: Just Say No!I think it's fair to say that we're mostly GamerScore fiends on this site, and the AceyBongos GamerScore Challenge deinfitely showed the lengths we'll go to so we can boost our scores. But you can go over the line, unfairly boosting by sharing your Xbox Live account, glitching Achievements or using game saves. While these things generally just aren't cool, they could also land your Xbox Live account in trouble, as Major Nelson explains:
"I strongly urge you not to tamper with your Gamerscore and Achievements. If you decide to employ some nefarious techniques to artificially increase your Gamerscore or obtain achievements by manipulating the Xbox software without playing the game, bad things will happen. What type of bad things? For one thing we may remove the entire Gamerscore for an account that contains manipulated gamerscore. Let me be more clear: If you use tampered gamesaves to boost your Achievements and Gamerscore, you may sign in to Xbox LIVE one day and discover that we have removed your Gamerscore. Once we do that, you will never be able to re-earn those achievements on that account. Even worse, you might have your account and/or console banned from Xbox Live."
Read the full post from Major Nelson here, and take heed. Having a big GamerScore is great, but getting it from glitching and cheating definitely is not. Plus, where's the fun in that...? Marketplace Update - 31/10BOO! Happy Halloween! Suitably, Mutant Storm Empire is today's XBLA game, available for 800 MS Points. Noticed that there's also a list of upcoming XBLA games over on Major Nelson.
Today's content:
October 30 Mutant Storm: Empire On XBLA TomorrowJust in time for Halloween, tomorrow's XBLA game is Mutant Storm: Empire, the third game in the blast-happy series. It'll be 800 MS Points, but for that you get more aliens to shoot than you've ever dreamt of.
Details on GamerScore Blog. Took me while to get into the last Mutant Storm because I was so hooked on Geometry Wars (which, contrary to popular opinion, is a very different game), but once I was hooked I was HOOKED. Looking forward to this... UPDATED: Xbox Live, Xbox.com BackYou may or may not have noticed, but Xbox Live and Xbox.com are down at the moment. The clever people who deal with this type of thing are aware of this and are working like furious beavers to get it fixed. Will update when I know more, and thanks for your patience!
UPDATE: Xbox.com and Xbox Live are back. Thanks for your patience! Marketplace Update - 30/10Lots of themes and GamerPics today - reminds me that I need to update my GTA IV Theme.
October 29 Marketplace Update - 29/10Happy new week! This is your round-up of new content from the weekend, and there's some really cool stuff in here.
How was your weekend? I played a lot of PES2008 Master League (although not as much as I would have liked). October 26 Marketplace Update - 26/10Clocks go back this weekend - that means I get an extra hour of playing games. Or is that an extra hour in bed? Or both?
Now, to be totally honest I'm away from a console so I can't check these all out, and I'm a little confused about what a couple of them are (particularly the Halo thing). If anyone's at their console could you let us know in the comments? Interaction!
Bad news for Aberdeen in the UEFA Cup last night - humped 3-0 in Greece. Boo! However, in PES2008 they are doing much better - top of the Master League, and new signing Park Ji-Sung is having the season of his life. Aren't games great? October 25 Marketplace Update - 25/10I'm having one of those weeks where all I want to do is play games. I've got Puzzle Quest, PES2008, Portal, Half-Life 2, Sega Rally, PGR4 and Speedball 2 all whispering in my ear, and no time to give them the care and attention they deserve. Roll on Friday night!
Fairly quiet today:
Oh, and don't forget that EXIT and Battlestar Galactica are up on XBLA now too. Both 800 MS Points. October 23 Need for Speed ProStreet Demo Available NowHello! Quick one to let you know that a demo fro Need for Speed ProStreet has just screeched onto Xbox Live Marketplace. Not literally screeched, but that's the kind of thing people always say when a racing game has turned up.
It's the more serious, more grittier take on the NFS series, so powerslide onto Live and give it a shot. Battlestar Galactica and Exit On XBLA This WeekQuick heads-up to let you know that this Wednesday's XBLA games are Battlestar Galactica and Exit. Both are 800 MS Points and will be available from 10am UK time tomorrow.
Xbox 360 Arcade Console Announced (Officially)Guess what! There's a new version of the Xbox 360 coming out! I bet this is a total surprise to you...
 For £199.99 (or 279.99 Euro ERP) you'll get the console with built-in HDMI and 256MB of memory, a wireless controller and five XBLA games - PAC-MAN Championship Edition, UNO, Luxor 2, Boom Boom Rocket and Feeding Frenzy.
Here's the official word on the spanky new Xbox 360 Arcade console:
"Just in time for the festive season, Microsoft today released a new Xbox 360 console that delivers games and content to everyone in the family for an estimated retail price of £199.99. Available in stores in the United Kingdom from Friday 26th October 2007, Xbox 360 ‘Arcade’ is the first Xbox 360 console to include five family-friendly games. Xbox 360 Arcade also includes a wireless controller, an HDMI connection to enable high-definition output if desired and 256MB of memory--useful for storing games and other entertainment content. At an estimated retail price of just £199.99, the Xbox 360 Arcade console will include the full versions of the five best-selling games from the Xbox LIVE® Arcade including “PAC-MAN Championship Edition,” (NAMCO BANDAI Games), “Uno,” “Luxor 2,” “Boom Boom Rocket™” (Electronic Arts), and “Feeding Frenzy."
Pretty sweet deal if you're thinking about picking up an Xbox 360 for the family this Christmas. Go on. You know you want to.
Marketplace Update - 23/10Couple of quality demos up today, and if you're a VF5 fan you can customise your Dash to within an inch of its life. The GH3 demo contains five songs from Tenacious D, Pat Benetar, The Scorpions, Pearl Jam and Priestess.
Played more PES2008 last night - absolutely LOVING IT. Just to be clear, in this version you can save replays and edit teams and players. Part of me thinks 'well, all this good stuff shold have been in last year's version', and part of me thinks 'WHO CARES THIS IS ACE!' There are lots of nice new graphical and animation touches too, like the goalkeeper jumping up and hanging on the bar when a shot goes just over - and some nice new turns that really good players can do. Plus it plays well too - faster than last year and a little more free-flowing. Can't wait to get some online games going this weekend once everyone's on Live with it. October 22 Marketplace Update - 22/10Morning! Loads of content to catch up on, and in case you're wondering what Blind Ferret PvP is you should click on this here link.
Played a bit of Portal and Half-Life 2 at the weekend - that is, when I could drag myself away from Puzzle Quest. Also manged to get my first few games of Pro Evo 2008, and the good news is that the Edit mode is back with a vengeance! Aberdeen FC for the Master League! October 19 Out Now - 19/10The release schedule's really starting to fill up so I thought I'd do a round-up of what you can buy in the shops from today, each one with a spectacular pun which you can write down and use to impress friends, family and potential lovers.
Since I'm in the mood, I bought a calculator the other day (true story). It's so powerful it can even divide opinions. Bye! Marketplace Update - 19/10Did you hear the news that British intelligence agencies are turning their recruitment efforts towards gamers? You can read the Times Online's article here. Turns out the skills honed by gaming - quick decision making, keen hand-eye coordination, technical know-how and the ability to eat a pipe of Pringles without letting go of the controller - transfer well into the real world of espionage. Swish!
MI5 actually got in touch with me about a mission. Apparently a group of agents recently went missing as they were investigating an outbreak of cannibalism. They want me to go in and find out who ate all the spies.
Who ate all the spies... LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL October 18 Marketplace Update - 18/10Don't mention the football...
October 17 Marketplace Update - 17/10Speedball II and Every Extend Extra Extreme are your XBLA games today - both ace, and both 800 MS Points. More details here.
Scotland versus Georgia tonight - a win means we're only 1 point away from qualification. Pity we would need to get it off Italy next month... But I'm definitely feeling good about it. Hopefully I'll be playing Speedball II later tonight after a convincing win. October 16 Marketplace Update - 16/10How do you like these grapples, and assorted other wrestling jokes that have been done loads before...
What kind of house does a wrestler like to live in? A suplex. Like duplex. Forget it. October 15 Every GamerTag Cloud Has a Silver Lining...Wanted to tell you about a really cool web application that some of my pals in France created recently (perhaps they should have been practicing their rugby, but hey ho
). It's called the GamerTag Cloud Generator, and basically it takes all the GamerTags you enter and ranks them next to each other depending on the size of the GamerScore. It's like one of those link clouds you sometimes see on video sharing sites etc - you know, if you have a bigger GamerScore than your mates then your GamerTag will be bigger and bolder than theirs.It's really cool, and the best bit is that you can copy the source code from the cloud you create and paste it into your website. Then you can mouse over the GamerTags and see more info about your friends. I can't do it on Spaces unfortunately, but here's a screengrab of the Cloud I generated from the top competitors in the AceyBongos GamerScore Challenge:
 Makes me look a bit small and insignificant, don't it?
Give the GamerTag Cloud Generator a shot and let me know what you think of it. Ubisoft Invite Xbox.com Forum Member To See Assassin's Creed (And Jade Raymond!) in Montreal!Have you ever had to make a phonecall that you know is going to make someone extremely, ridiculously, stupidly happy? I got to do it on Friday, and it made my week. See, Ubisoft had got in touch with me on Thursday to tell me that they were taking some key community members out to see Assassin's Creed in Montreal this week, and that they'd like to take someone from the Xbox.com forums. I had a look around and, with the help of the Xbox.com moderating team (especially TR1GG3R MAN - thanks TR1G!) we chose GrandHolyKing. Lucky, lucky man.
He's flying out to Montreal this week (all expenses paid for by Ubi, natch) to see the game, get hands-on, speak to the development team, and spend some quality time with Jade Raymond. Zoiks!
It's all thanks to Ubisoft, who do a brilliant job of reaching out to the community and rewarding it for its interest and support of its games. It's not a new thing - the communities behind Ubi games like GRAW and Rainbow Six are legendary - but one look at the Assassin's Creed community site tells you all you need to know about how important real gamers are to Ubi. Taking guys like GrandHolyKing out to see the game in the flesh is their way of giving something back, and I think that's something every games developer and publisher should be thinking about. Good work Ubisoft!
And I guess some of you are thinking, why him and not me? Well, not only does GrandHolyKing have a forum user rank of 7 (which means A LOT of posts), he's also well liked and respected on the Xbox.com forums. Just goes to show that if you're keen about games and eager to be a friendly face in the community that good things can come your way!
Have a great time GrandHolyKing, and remember to send me some photos so everyone can see what your trip was like!
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