Filed under: Xbox Live Arcade, X3F TV, X3F Features

After a week with no XBLA games, we were ready to sink our teeth into something new. This week, we not only get A Kingdom for Keflings, but it also happens to be the first Xbox 360 game that lets players use their Avatar as a playable character. We take the game and our Avatar for a spin in the latest episode of XBLA in Brief. Check it out in the video above.

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X3F TV — XBLA in Brief: A Kingdom for Keflings originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

 

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Bungie:The “New Xbox Experience” was released today and one of the new features allows you to “install” your games to the HDD. While you still have to keep the original disc in the tray, installing to the HDD can make some games perform a little better while also putting a little less wear-and-tear on your DVD drive. However, this isn’t to say that ALL games will see optimizations from being installed. In fact, in the case of Halo 3, the game will actually see increased loading times.

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Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc., announced today that Castlevania Judgment for the Nintendo Wii has shipped to retail outlets nationwide. Produced by legendary Castlevania producer Koji "Iga" Igarashi, Castlevania Judgment marks the franchise’s entry into the 3-D versus-action genre with a host of characters that span the franchise’s 22-year history.

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You may as well settle in. Just like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, it looks like LittleBigPlanet will be bringing us enough DLC to justify multiple posts a week on the subject. Today’s comes courtesy of Sony Japan, who - bless them - love to announce their DLC ahead of time. Next week, two new LBP costumes will be made available in Japan; a turkey head, and a Resistance 2 outfit. Given the timing, we’ll assume that the turkey head is to symbolise thanksgiving, and given the particularly American nature of that holiday, we’ll assume it’ll be available in the US next week too. Can’t see why it wouldn’t bring the Chimera head along with it.

LittleBigPlanet [SCEJ, via Siliconera]

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You might not think much of the video editor that Rockstar Games is including in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV, but this video, titled “Gutterballs,” might just change your mind. It’s just one of many that the developer has released to promote the Windows only feature and its groin-heavy focus may just make it the best. Kudos for keeping it highbrow, Rockstar.

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Prince of Persia is set in a land rooted in ancient Persian mythology, with the Prince finding himself caught in an epic battle between the primal forces of light and darkness—the god of Light, Ormazd versus his brother Ahriman, the destructive god of Darkness. The Prince arrives just in time to witness the destruction of the legendary Tree of Life, an act which threatens to plunge the entire world into eternal darkness. Manifested in the form of “the Corruption,” a dark substance that physically contaminates the land and the skies, the Prince must partner with his new deadly companion Elika to heal the world from the evil Corruption.

• A New Hero Emerges—Master the acrobatics, strategy and fighting tactics of the most agile warrior of all time. Grip fall down the face of a building, perform perfectly timed acrobatic combinations, and swing over canyons, buildings and anything that is reachable. This new rogue warrior must utilize all of his new skills, along with a whole new combat system, to battle Ahriman’s corrupted lieutenants to heal the land from the dark Corruption and restore the light.
• A New Epic Journey Begins—Escape to experience the new fantasy world of ancient Persia. Masterful storytelling and sprawling environments will deliver to action-adventure fans an experience that rivals even the best Hollywood movies.
• A New Open World Structure—A first for the Prince of Persia franchise—now you have the freedom to determine how the game evolves in this non-linear adventure. Players will decide how they unfold the storyline by choosing their path in the open-ended world.
• Emergence of a Deadly New Ally—History’s greatest ally is revealed in the form of Elika, a dynamic AI companion who joins the Prince in his fight to save the world. Gifted with magical powers, she interacts with the player in combat, acrobatics and puzzle-solving enabling the Prince to reach new heights of deadly high-flying artistry through special duo acrobatic moves or devastating fighting combo attacks.
• All New For Next-Gen—The franchise’s debut on next-generation consoles utilizes Ubisoft’s proprietary Anvil engine, the same engine used to develop Assassins Creed.

Release Date:Tue, 02 Dec 2008

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From majornelson.com (http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/11/19/top-10-things-to-do-when-you-get-the-new-xbox-experience.aspx ):[QUOTE]The New Xbox Experience is in the process of being deployed to all Xbox LIVE members, but it will take a few hours for everyone to get the prompt to update to NXE….be patient! In the meantime I thought I would give my Top 10 list of things to do with NXE when you get it later today:1) Create (or Customize) your Avatar - You can spend as much (or as little) time as you want in the Avatar Editor to personalize your little guy/girlBonus: When you are done with #1, be sure to take a Gamer Picture of your Avatar. In the Avatar editor, choose Gamer Picture. You can use the controls to move your avatar around, zoom in and out or even change the background color (press Y)2) Explore the all new dashboard. (hint: use the trigger and bumpers to quickly scroll up and down or left and right)3) PAR-TAY! Check out Xbox LIVE Parties and chat with up to seven of your friends. Go to the Friends channel…choose a friend who is online and press Y to get the party started. You can also hit the Xbox 360 Guide button > Party >Start a Party. Once you do that, send off invites to your party (since one does not make a very good party…does it?)4) Themes. While any themes you work will NXE, check out some of the new themes via My Xbox and select your profile (second slot) and then change theme. Xbox 360, Spectrum, Day and Night are new themes that available as part of your NXE upgrade…check them out.5) Marketplace on Xbox.com. This new feature lets you search, browse, and purchase games and videos while you are away from your console. You can also perform account management functions like changing your billing information, viewing your purchase history, and downloading items you already own.6) Netflix - Xbox LIVE Gold Member and you have Netflix? If you are in the US you can stream thousands of videos (some in HD) directly from Netflix to your Xbox 360. Not a member? Sign up for a free trial at Xbox.com/netflix7) Install to / Play from Hard Drive. With the game in the tray, return to your dashboard. (pressing the guide button then Y works as always) then go to My Xbox. From here press Y, which will bring up a new menu which will allow, among other things the ability to install a game to your hard drive.Hint: You can still use the Xbox 360 guide while installing a game to keep in touch with your friends or start a Party.Bonus: Before you do #7, be sure to set up what happens when you turn on your Xbox 360. My Xbox->System Settings>Console settings. Then choose Start up to to choose Disc, Xbox Dashboard or Windows Media Center. Once you are done there…check the option right below it: Autostart. This tell your Xbox 360 what to do when you insert a game. The choices are enable or disable. I have mine set to disable so I can easily use install to hard drive.8) Delete Zero Gamerscore games. You can remove any games from your games played list that you have earned no achievements or gamerscore. Press the Xbox 360- guide button, navigate left to the games section and choose Achievements. From here choose the game with zero gamerscore you want to remove and press X (Delete Game History.)9) Press the Xbox 360 button on your controller to see the all new Guide. The team has added more functionality than the old guide, while making it more responsive. It’s a quick way to check your messages, see who is online or start a party. 10) Take a look at Community Games in the Games Marketplace. For the first time in the history of console gaming, thousands of games developed by the creative community will be available to the public. [/QUOTE]

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While the NXE’s ability to let you install 360 games to your HDD is mostly a good thing (no more disc read errors at my house), it’s been revealed that there’s a few hiccups. You’d think that copying a game to your 360’s hard drive would speed things up. Faster load times, that kind of thing. But in some cases it doesn’t. Especially when it comes to Halo 3. Tests have already shown the game runs faster on disc than it does on HDD, and today Bungie have come out and confirmed this. Confirmed it, and explained it.

Basically, the game was programmed to copy map files from the disc to the HDD to speed up load times. If you install the game to the HDD, it copies the files from your HDD to…another part of your HDD, which is a lot slower than a disc-to-HDD transfer.

Why does Halo 3 do this and other games don’t? Bungie’s Mat Noguchi says “we shipped Halo 3 before Microsoft finalized this particular feature. As a result, we were not able to take advantage of it (or any other potential optimizations we discovered after shipping Halo 3)”.

While refusing to rule out the possibility of a patch fixing this issue, Noguchi says “it would be a significant undertaking to try and retroactively patch/update Halo 3 to be optimized to take advantage of the HDD install features of NXE”. Especially when, you know. You can still play Halo 3 just fine off the disc. Like you always have.

Halo 3 & NXE [Bungie]

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Sony\’s head of PR has revealed the company is pleased with the initial reaction to LittleBigPlanet as it has been their highest scoring game ever. The PR added that in order time of the year, it would be a clear number so the chart which says otherwise must be put into context.

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Filed under: News, Halo 3

You may recall that a recent Eurogamer article profiled the performance of several popular Xbox 360 when installing them to the hard drive (one of the new features of the NXE). While some games received improved performance and shorter load times and others saw little to no improvement, it turned out that Halo 3 actually fared worse when installed to the hard drive. Apparently Eurogamer wasn’t the only outlet to notice the difference, as Bungie has officially commented on the issue and explained why the load times are actually longer when Halo 3 is installed.

The answer lies in how Halo 3 loads map data. Each map is cached onto a certain part of the HDD that is reserved for game use. Once the game is installed on the HDD, it has to read the data on one part of the drive and write it to the reserved section. While data can be read from the DVD at the same time the HDD is writing data, the HDD can’t read and write at the same time. As such, loading from the HDD takes significantly longer. Bungie advises gamers not to install the game, especially if you play online, as all other players will have to wait the extra time it takes to load and cache each map.

[Via Evil Avatar]

Bungie addresses Halo 3 NXE install performance originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

 

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