I have been playing the multiplayer beta of the upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company on the Xbox 360 for a few weeks, and I wanted to give my initial impressions.

Likes:

• Wide open maps which are very open as compared to the smaller, close quartered oriented maps in COD4. They allow more freedom for classes like sniper, but seem to be already well balanced to where they can’t dominate.
• Nice selection of weapons kits, unlocks, and vehicle weapons so far.
• New “Gold Rush” multiplayer mode is fun, and a nice change from typical MP modes.
• Destructible environments are just plan cool, although they need much tweaking before final release.

Dislikes:

• Helicopter controls are just confusing. They were fine in Battlefield: Modern Combat. Should have left it alone.
• Team killing is out of control. It was bad in other editions of BF, and just in this limited beta it is already rampant. TK’ing for the artillery strike and others is just frustrating. Follow in the steps of COD4 and just eliminate team kills all together.
• No customizable weapon kits.
• Weapons are way unbalanced. Machine gun hits barely register at close range.

Yes, I know this is still a beta, but I hope the dev team takes things like this into suggestion. I really like the beta so far, and will definitely purchase, but these few annoyances will likely turn people off eventually.

Latest patch for Sins of a Solar Empire is out!

Use THIS LINK to update to the latest version. If you are in the Impulse Beta, use the link provided here to update, don’t use Impulse to update as we’re in the process of updating the backend to support fast transfers of lots of little files which hasn’t been perfected yet.

View: Change Log

Download: Sins of a Solar Empire v1.04

If you are a fan of the Xbox 360 like myself, I often find myself at stores like GameStop picking up some original Xbox games for a value price.  The big downside is not all original games are compatible, and the list on Xbox.com isn’t the easiest to navigate to.

If you have an iPhone, I developed this web app that displays the list of original Xbox games in an easy to navigate and read format.

Point your iPhone to: Link 

More information can be found here.

The launch day for the highly anticipated 4x strategy space game, Sins of a Solar Empire, is finally here. Sins is available in both retail stores and through the digital distribution system, Stardock Central.

A gameplay example was written that gives an awesome overview of what some of the gameplay entails. You can check out that article here.

Screenshots, videos, and more info can be found at the official Sins of a Solar Empire Web site.

If you received a new Xbox 360 or 360 game at Christmas, then you were probably disappointed at all the trouble you had connecting to Xbox Live during that time.  Over the holiday period Xbox Live had widespread issues reportedly due to the heavy increase in traffic.

In an effort to make gamers happy, Xbox Live GM, Marc Whitten wrote a letter that was posted on Xbox.com and Major Nelson’s blog.

“At the same time we would like to offer a token of our appreciation to all of you in celebration of record success for the service.  And as a thank you for your loyalty during this holiday period, we will be offering all of our Xbox LIVE members around the world access to a full Xbox LIVE Arcade game that will be available to download free of charge.  In the coming weeks we will be sharing the specific details of this offer with you. ”

Hopefully users of Xbox Live will be able to choose their game of choice, and not be handed something at XBL’s choosing.  We will have to wait for more details to see what will happen.