Just wanted to make a quick post updating everyone on Duologue's status, as well as explain why I fail at this whole web-logging thing.

First of all, Duologue is still in peer review. If you're an XNA community member then please come on over and help us out. We seemed to be stalled at around 85%, and need something to push us over the limit :-)

Second of all, damn this XNA review process is opaque. Apparently what's holding us up is the fact that we released a bunch of alternate language descriptions of the game. That triggered some extended review being needed from non-English speakers, which is to be expected. What was un-expected (to me, at least) was that there's just not that many non-English reviewers out there and, apparently, some languages are spotty at best in terms of reviewers. Unfortunately, because all I have on the project page is a tiny progress meter I have no clue what's causing our hang-up and thus can't address it specifically. All I can do is beg and plead for more people to drop by and test, hoping that one or more of them will count toward whatever missing ingredient the murky soup that is the XNA review process is needing. Very frustrating.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU.... just got a RRoD. What is this.... number 5 for me? (numbers 4 and 3).

At least I got Duologue done before it happened. Well, in peer review at least- it's currently at ~30% and no one has reported any blocking issues, so here's hoping it's fine and we can just release it since development is going to be stalled on everything until I get my 360 back.

It's been a long and hard process, but I'm pleased to announce that Duologue has just entered the Xbox LIVE Indie Games peer review process! If you are a part of the XNA Community, then you can join in this peer review at Duologue's game page.

As an aside, I've finally sat down and found some Indie games to buy on Xbox Marketplace. I've been so busy working on my stuff that I haven't been able to give some love to my Indie brothers. Anyway, I'm going to be making a post one of these days with some gems that I've found that everyone else needs to try. Stay tuned...

Yahoo, wahoo, yahee! Duologue is officially done! I've been spending time getting the site up (http://funavision.com/Duologue) which includes many new screenshots.

I also have a teaser trailer online for it. Check it out.

We had some discussion last night with a couple of ClanAM people as to which 360 achievements everyone was most proud of getting. It got me thinking a little bit about the question and I decided I'd like to share my top ten.

The ground rules are simple: these have to be achievements which you feel particularly proud of. This means that they have to have been ones that challenged you or somehow required more skill, practice, or even luck than other achievements. They also need to be individual achievements, they can't be general blanket statements including all the achievements for one game.

So, with those ground rules in mind, read on for my list of the top ten 360 achievements I'm most proud of.

I know in my Sam's Video Game Awards '07 I gave the 360 props for a solid year in 2007. While I'm not about to recant that, I am about to revise that...

See, the 360's solid year in 2007 apparently got Microsoft a lot of success. So much in fact that they apparently sold more 360s and Live accounts this last holiday season than their Live service can handle. The end result is that connection issues have plagued Live for the last two weeks or so, and it's become nigh impossible to actually enjoy an online game on the 360.

Marc Whitten, Xbox Live general manager, acknowledged the issue here, saying:

As a result of this massive increase in usage we know that some of you experienced intermittent Xbox LIVE issues over the holiday break. While the service was not completely offline at any given time, we are disappointed in our performance.

"Some" of us are experiencing problems? Not as near as I can tell. Of the twenty or so people on my friend list and the thirty or so people I know who aren't every last one has experienced major problems in the last two weeks. From the complaints I've seen online, I'd wager that there hasn't been a single Live user in the last two weeks who hasn't had problems. Long story short, Marc, me thinks you're downplaying how big of a problem this is....

2007 was a great year to be a gamer. In fact, it may have been the greatest year ever as we've managed to have hit after hit after hit.

But, in this sea of stellar titles, what games stand out from the rest? Well, I have the answers to that question as well as many others in this year's Sam's Video Game Awards.

Read on for the full poop...