New Call of Duty 4 Maps LIVE

Fire up Call of Duty 4, and you’ll see an update ready for you. Download it and go to Multiplayer, Download Maps, and buy it (on the 360) for 800 Microsoft Points. There are four new maps: Creek, Broadcast, Killhouse, and Chinatown, the last of which is a remake of Carentan from Call of Duty 2.

New Halo 3 Map Pack out on April 15th

Bungie announced more details on the Legendary Map Pack’s second map today, as well as giving it a date of release, April 15th.

The first map takes elements from the first campaign level in Halo 3, based on the area near the building Johnson is held in.

This is Ghost Town, which is an abandoned warehouse covered in foliage located somewhere in the jungle. This is a favorite of the development team, which reminds them of the old Counter-Strike days. They might also like it because there’s only one sniper rifle, and it’s placed in a great area for sniping (providing an “unfair” advantage [cries of unfairness will probably follow]).

The other map, called Avalanche, is obviously based on the Ark and the level Halo. Yet the development team states the inspiration was Sidewinder. The team that worked on Avalanche stated that this map is really good with One/Multi Flag CTF games. Included with this map are custom versions of the vehicles available in Halo 3. The vehicles themselves are snow terrain styled.

UPDATE: And one more map has been added, it’s called Moonlight Sonata (a codename it seems), and no details have been revealed about it.

Besides the two three new maps and new vehicle schemes, Bungie gladly fixed the Hornet “problem” by completely weakening it, removing it’s ability to shoot rockets as well as diminishing the firepower of the machine guns.

The Legendary Map Pack releases on April 15th for 800 Microsoft points. The Heroic Map Pack will be provided for free on March 25th.

Mass Effect Brings Down the Sky

BioWare has released “Bring Down the Sky”, the new Downloadable Content for the Xbox 360. The content adds a new achievement that’s worth 50 Gamerscore points and includes new gameplay that is estimated to take about 90 minutes of your life. It is the first in a series of planned downloadable content.

“Bring Down the Sky” focuses on a new uncharted world that is home to a new alien race called the Batarians, who are apparently very hostile. In summary, you have to stop a hijacked mobile asteroid station in the Asgard system from crashing into the world of Terra Nova.

The new content is currently available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 400 MS Points.

Harmonix fixes DLC bugs

Some Rock Band songs that were available to download were plagued by bugs. The problems have been patched up on the 360 (when you fire up the game, you will be notified) and the patch will appear for the PS3 on the 28th.

The following songs will have to be deleted and re-downloaded:

• Can’t Stand Losing You
• Roxanne
• Synchronicity II
• Police Pack 01
• Brass in Pocket
• Limelight

The songs have been reassigned to the right categories and the bug concerning vocal volumes being set all the way down yet still audible has been fixed.

For instructions on how to redownload view this forum post on the Rock Band website.

Rock Band to have “Still Alive” sometime in the future

According to Jonathan Coulton, a future download for Rock Band will allow you to play “Still Alive”, that awesome credits songs from Portal.

No word on how much it will cost or when it will appear, but apparently, Coulton earned a 95% accuracy on the Vocals for the song. Good for you.

Play (not so free) XNA games on the Xbox 360

We were right. They aren’t free. The 7 games that Major Nelson stated would be free using the XNA system, aren’t. They are all 17-day trials (what a rip) and you have to have an active subscription to continue playing after awhile (this is an XNA subscription [$60 for about 4 months]).

To play XNA games you need to download the XNA Creators Club Game Launcher. To access the games you need to go to My Games and move the the XNA Creators Club. Then press Y to download, play and stuff. Supposedly to download you need an active XNA monthly subscription.

How lame.

This November, gear up for war

Another wonderful announcement at GDC (never get tired of them), Gears of War 2 has been confirmed for a November release. Of course, knowing Microsoft, they never release any kind of press kit with awesome screenshots. Noooooo. You have to download the trailer on Xbox Live.

Also on Xbox Live is a free Gears of War 2 theme.

Community games appearing on Xbox Live

Another announcement at GDC, Microsoft’s Xbox division announced they are creating an open distribution service for games created by the community (they really stressed community). Games that have been created using the XNA framework can be downloaded from Xbox Live.

According to Major Nelson, seven games that were “created by the community” will appear on Xbox Live for free (17 day trials [this was not mentioned until later, sneaky Microsoft]). He didn’t mention if this is a limited time trial or not (NOTE: THESE ARE TRIAL GAMES. NOT FREE). I would guess that you will need the XNA framework tool (that’s been available for download off of Xbox Live since XNA started). Nelson states that he’ll put up a video on how to download these games on the Inside Xbox section of the dashboard.

Is this a sign that Microsoft is going to allow homebrews on the Xbox? Who knows…

Burnout Paradise released

EA announces the newest title in the Burnout series that I am not so thrilled about, Burnout Paradise. From playing the demo, I was not amused (BAD SIGN!). While I have yet to play the full retail game, I think that it’s too late now and the game might already have been ruined.

But I’ll keep my hopes up, and play the game soon. Though if it’s anything like the demo, it will…fail.

Already have Undertow? Get your MS Points back.

If you already have Undertow you can contact Xbox Support and they will refund your account with 800MS Points. This offer is only valid with the retribution. See here.

Xbox Live Arcade Retribution Game Announced

Microsoft has finally announced the game they are giving away for free because of the outages. The game? Undertow, which is a game I previously reviewed here. Like I said in my post talking about what Microsoft is going to do, I predicted it was going to be a game that is already out yet and that some people might already own. Well guess what. I already own Undertow. So I pretty much predicted my future. Hooray for me.

The game is free for Silver and Gold Xbox Live Members. The freeness will happen on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 2:00am to Sunday, January 27, 2008.