Game Downloads

EvilAvatar noticed that after a bit of downtime today, Xbox.com has two new revisions in preparation for the New Xbox Experience. First, the Xbox Avatars that many users have already been making now appear in user Profiles on the site. The news that is more likely to excite players is the new online Marketplace. Right now it's blank, but it promises users the ability to browse games and movies from their PC and place orders sometime in the near future. Items ordered from the store will then be auto-downloaded the next time the user logs onto Xbox Live.

Two key things will undoubtedly run through your mind as you play Valve's first-person survivors-versus-zombies shooter Left 4 Dead: the phrase "oh, s***!" repeated ad nauseam in response to a stressful turn of events, and the phrase "goddamn sadistic Director system" after either surviving or failing that stressful turn.

Top 5 Things Videogames Have Taught Me
Never to Do
And people wonder why we're afraid to go outside. By Scott Sharkey

Away: Shuffle Dungeon might be the most taxing game I've ever played. The exhaustion isn't a matter of reflexes, however; like most top-down action-role-playing games, it doesn't require thumb dexterity so much as cautious play. That's the rub, though: Caution only goes so far when the dungeon's rearranging itself every few seconds.

It's no secret that World of Warcraft has been a tremendous global blockbuster, even in the hard-to-crack Asian markets. But if Lord of the Rings Online's lead developer Jeff Steefel has his way, the Middle-Earth MMO could be the second western success story when it launches on that side of the Pacific next year.