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.

There's something I've heard a lot over the years. It's a common complaint that Win32 developers express when they first come to an Open Source development environment (such as Linux with its myriad of Free Software/Open Source development tools). This common complaint is that the development documentation is somehow lacking compared to the Win32 development documentation. Generally, they point to MSDN as the gold standard and bemoan Linux's lack of something similar. This complaint is even one of the motivating factors for the LSB project (which, I used to be a part of).

Whenever I have heard this complaint in the past, it has always made me laugh. I've laughed because the development documentation for Linux and its Free Software/Open Source ilk tends to be very good... you just have to know where to look for it. You have to be comfortable reading man pages, browsing info documents, snooping through /usr/doc, etcetera, etcetera. True, it's not all available in one web site, but more often than not it's more convenient to get at in the end (much of it can be accessed quickly from the command line).

Well, after an ordeal I've had today trying to solve a simple, and common, problem with my XNA-based video game using MSDN, I will laugh even harder when I encounter Win32-weenies with this complaint in the future...

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've been playing a lot of Far Cry 2 lately on my 360 (in case you can't tell from my gamercard) and I've been struggling with a very simple dilemma: Do I actually like this game?

On the one hand, it is an absolutely gorgeous game. The engine renders incredibly believable jungles, wind swept savannas, and dune-filled deserts. It produces the most realistic fire I've ever seen in video games which can race across grasslands and leap from tree-top to tree-top. And explosions shake, shatter, and shred the flora in spectacularly devastating ways.

But on the other hand, this game is one of the most repetitive pieces of shit I've ever encountered. Every mission contains 90% driving and 10% action- and that 10% action feels like the same 10% action for every other mission. Also, the story shares nothing with the first Far Cry game. Unlike Final Fantasy games which have different stories but similar settings and accouterments, Far Cry 2 is militantly Alzheimeric with regard to what has come before. Mutants and Dinosaur suggestions? That never happened! We've been in this unnamed African country the whole time!

So, do I like this game, or really, really hate it?

So I've been replaying the F.E.A.R. games lately, and I've been musing as to why I like them as much as I do. I mean, in my Video Game Awards for 2007 I had F.E.A.R. Files in the honorable mentions page. But really, they have a lot of flaws, so why do I like them so much?

For those who don't know, F.E.A.R. was developed by Monolith, whose pedigree includes such classics as Condemned, Tron 2.0 and the legendary No One Lives Forever. F.E.A.R. has two expansions: Extraction Point, which takes place immediately after the first game ends and has the same characters, and Perseus Mandate, which follows a new team in events parallel to the original game as well as Extraction Point.

F.E.A.R. is a very by-the-book FPS with a survival horror theme to it. The levels tend to be rather linear, very rarely do you really have much freedom in how you can accomplish any goal. The series' gameplay can accurately be described as "Go from point A to point B killing all the enemies in your path, rinse, repeat". Furthermore, the graphic engine (Lithtech) hasn't aged as well as many of its contemporaries. This means that, graphically, the games tend to be rather blasé with boxy environments filled with hard-edged objects. This is made worse by the fact that most of the series (F.E.A.R. and Perseus Mandate) takes place in office buildings and warehouses.

The series has one major gimmick to it, the ability to slow time, but this isn't wholly original (we've seen it in games since Max Payne). Otherwise, the gunplay tends to be pedestrian and there's little in terms of modern FPS elements to be found in the games.

So what makes them so damned compelling?

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...

Having just finished Mass Effect, BioWare's epic new action-RPG for the Xbox 360, I felt I really had to get on my site and rave about it. This is one spectacular RPG, easily one of the greatest RPGs ever and definitely tied with Oblivion for best RPG on the 360. If you own a 360 and have even a passing interest in RPGs, you should get this title without delay.

For those who don't know, Mass Effect is a galaxy-sprawling action-RPG from the creators of the legendary Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series for the original Xbox. In it you will find a rather sizable universe, replete with entire worlds to explore and aliens to meet. You'll have a mountain of content in the form of side-quests, exploration and resource location (such as finding mineable metals on planets or identifying gas giants with harvestable fuels). And you'll see gorgeous graphics rendering intricate and beautiful alien worlds.

The bottom line is this game is great. However, it's not perfect, and does have some problems. Read on for all the great things this game has to offer as well as some of the nitpicky problems it does have.

Everything else that was great this year

Presented in no particular order...

• Call of Duty 4

  Xbox 360

  The COD franchise is a popular one, and COD4 was the grand return to fan-favorite developer "Infinity Ward". The problem with the COD series previously was that it was stuck in the now cliched World War II shooter genre, and thus, moderately predictable. COD4 shook things up by fast-fowarding the action to more of a modern setting, thus breathing new life in what had become a somewhat stale series.