I’ve forgotten how painful Xbox LIVE can be when it completely refuses to behave - a memory that was more than brought to the front again the last couple of weeks, after my Halo 3 experience sank down the drain because LIVE thought it would be really hilarious to drop me from the match when I least expected it. But to make up for all those lost days on LIVE, and to coincide with the first Xbox LIVE Arcade community awards, Microsoft had announced a couple of days back that the award-winning Aquanox-meets-Unreal Tournament Domination underwater shooter Undertow would be made available to all Gold and Silver members from Wednesday through Sunday. As announced, the game, regularly priced at 800 MS Points, is now available for free download to everyone on Xbox LIVE until Monday, 28 January, 2008 1:30 PM IST.

Now, while I appreciate the gesture, I just can’t condone the fact that this game is taking the place of a regular Xbox LIVE Arcade release every Wednesday, not to mention that the LIVE service isn’t working right even now, after a whole damn month of problems. And what’s worse is that the game, apparently an appeasement for a service that wasn’t working the way it was supposed to (10 million new subscribers notwithstanding) has a small download window on it, after which it reverts to selling for its usual 800 points. Why not run the promotion for at least a week? Wouldn’t it have been better to have users register themselves at the Xbox.com page and get 800 Points instead of having a game thrust onto them that they may already have or not really want?

And what about the Indian Xbox LIVE users who might have already bought the game? We called up Xbox Support today morning and when we got through to a rep, we dropped the bomb and asked Microsoft about what happens to people who have already paid for Undertow. After acting completely clueless about the whole thing at first, and after reintroducing us to the annoying hold music for some time, they came back and said that they would indeed credit the 800 points into our account once they verified our Download History to make sure we had bought the game before yesterday. So, if you’ve already bought the arcade game, then all you have to do is call the Xbox support lines listed here, give them your gamertags and get your 800 points to spend as you please. You lucky dogs you!

Before we start, lets get this one thing out of the way – Call of Duty 4 (COD4) is woefully short as far as the single player campaign is concerned. Agreed, there’s tons of fun to be had with the superbly well done multiplayer aspect of the game, but still, once you see the end credits roll, you have this feeling that the game could have gone for a little more.

Now that we have that out of the way, we come down to what we have on hand, which is nothing short of amazing. This is a game that will grab you by your throat and never let you go till the very end, such is the quality of it. Right when you thought that war games were passé, Infinity Ward came out with COD4, completely revamping the series, taking it light years beyond Treyarch’s Call of Duty 3. While it is still essentially Call of Duty as far as the gameplay is concerned, the wise choice of shifting the setting from the much used World War II theater to a grittier, modern day setting comes as a breath of much needed fresh air, even as announcements start to go out that Treyarch will be taking the series back to boring World War II with the next game in the series.

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Are you sick of being penalized even by your games for banging into other cars, or not sticking to the driving line? Are you fueled by a mad rage to empty that nitrous boost and go fast that you seem to be caught in a time warp? Do you have an insatiable need to crash your ride mercilessly into someone else’s and turn the most sophisticated speed machine into ten cents worth of scrap metal in 1.8 seconds? Is your middle name “Speed” or “Crash”? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, then, Burnout is the game for you, my friend.

For years we’ve been driving like the crazed, dosed-up maniacs that we are in EA’s and Criterion’s flagship mega-destructive racer and starting today, we’ll finally be able to take the latest Burnout game, cheekily titled Paradise, out for a test drive. And no, we definitely won’t be bringing it back in one piece.

The demo is now available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace and the PlayStation Store and weighs in at lesser than 900 MB, allowing us hours of fun pulling off hairbrained stunts and the most spectacular crashes possible in both single as well as multiplayer modes. Showing off the new EasyDrive matchmaking service and the Burnout Mugshots with the PlayStation Eye / Xbox LIVE Vision cameras, the demo allows up to four maniacal speed demons to trade paint and other assorted car parts online in a sadistic orgy of screeching, rending metal across three FreeBurn challenges, before the full game crash-lands into our lap come January 22, 2008.

Stay tuned for our impressions on the demo tomorrow, provided we can actually take some time to put the controller down and spend some time typing them out.

When the Xbox 360 Fall 2007 update was revealed, the feature that caught everyone’s eye was the support for DivX. This feature had been on everyone’s wishlist for quite a while now, including ours, just so we could turn the console into a media hub and not have to resort to transcoding and streaming via the Media Center. Naturally, we were pretty excited about the update and were prompt in updating the console as soon as the update was rolled out.

However, all of us updating through our Indian gamertags were a bit perplexed when we came across this strange bug that would not let us get the Optional Media Update which will actually enable us to play our DivX files on the Xbox 360. After having installed the main update successfully, when we tried to pop in a DVD, it would prompt us to go for the Optional Media Update. However, there was no download option to be seen anywhere except for a “More Information” link. A quick workaround was to use a spoofed US gamertag to get the update. Still, it seemed pretty odd that Indian Xbox LIVE users had to suffer this hassle.

Finally, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. While browsing through the Dashboard last night, we stumbled upon the Optional Media Update buried deep inside Game Add Ons. A quick install and it confirmed the fact that we had hit pay dirt. Here is a quick look at where you have to navigate to once you login using your Indian gamertag:

Marketplace >> Game Store >> More >> Game Add On >> All Game Add On >> Optional Media Update ( At #33 )

Now that we have a way of getting the update through our Indian gamertags, the process has become much more simpler, atleast when compared to the earlier process of getting it by signing up for a spoofed US gamertag. So much for running the extra mile just to be able to watch our 50 TB of porn on the XXXbox 360.

You gotta admit, the Xbox Originals deal is a really cool idea, especially if you live in a country which never had the Xbox, completely obliterating your chances of getting an original Xbox disc anywhere within a 10,000 mile radius. Never mind the fact that we still don’t have the 120GB HDD here officially and we’d have to juggle our Xbox Original games via our Download History!

But for those that are planning to download them anyway, like us, there’s nothing better than giving us a chance at winning some cool stuff just for doing it. Announcing the new “Play & Win” sweepstakes on the official Xbox website, Microsoft is now giving those that download Xbox Originals a chance at winning great goodies including an Xbox 360 VIP Accessory Kit that includes a wireless controller, two Play & Charge kits, an Xbox LIVE Vision camera, a Quick Charge kit, the Universal Media Remote, a Wireless Network Adapter, a Wireless Headset, a 64 MB Memory Unit - all housed in a neat Limited Edition Xbox 360 Aluminium carrying case. If you’re not among the five lucky winners that’s going to be getting this killer kit, you can hope to be among the other 50 lucky SOBs that can walk away with a 12-month Xbox LIVE Gold subscription or 1600 Microsoft Points gratis.

All you gotta do is register your GamerTag on the official registration form before December 5th, make sure you got an Xbox LIVE Gold membership in good standing and then download an Xbox Original game off Marketplace with the same GamerTag. Then its off to waiting until December 16 to see if you won anything. And oh, you gotta be a US resident to be eligible to enter said sweepstakes. Damn, we knew there was a catch somewhere. Now we’re off to contact Microsoft India and beg them to do something like that here as well, since it’d be even more of an incentive for us to get our Fahrenheit and Psychonauts goodness come December 4th.

We have official confirmation! In a press release that was sent to us just now, Microsoft India says that the Xbox Originals service will indeed be available in the country on December 4, along with expectations that Xbox LIVE will cross the 10-million user mark by June 2008.

Each Xbox Original will retail for 1200 Microsoft Points (or approximately INR 590 a pop) and will range from 2GB to 7GB in size, which should take us about, oh, 2 days to download on our crappy 256k lines. (Sorry, Microsoft, that 4 - 8 hour download timeframe is for the lucky people in the rest of the world who have access to great 2Mbps lines!) And yes, we too will get the chance to download Carcassonne (or Hexic 2, we’re not sure) within a 48 hour period as we had previously reported. Also.. wait, what?! That’s not what we reported! We thought it was a 24 hour period, unless my Math is that phenomenally bad. But the press release claims we should be able to download “a free Xbox LIVE Arcade game*, within a 48 hour period starting 15 November 1:30 PM.” Oh well, this one’s better anyway.

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Microsoft is on a roll these days, bringing Xbox games to the Xbox 360, organizing local gaming events and trying to make sure at least first party titles are available here on Day 0. With Xbox LIVE turning five, they’re getting even more generous. According to an official press release, Microsoft will celebrate the five year milestone and the 2-year anniversary of Xbox LIVE Arcade by giving away free downloads of Carcassonne to to all 8 million members, in addition to showing their gratitude to those that have been supporting them since 2002 with 500 Microsoft Points.

Carcassonne will be available for download via Xbox LIVE Arcade from 12:01 a.m. PST on Nov. 15 through 11:59 p.m. PST on Nov. 16. Or, if you want that in local time, between 10:31 a.m. IST on Nov. 15 and 10:20 a.m. IST on Nov. 16. And oh, it looks like our prayers have indeed been answered and the most awesome Psychonauts will indeed be available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. What did we tell you, huh? Now to just sit back and wait for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to join its friends on the Xbox 360!

Hit the jump for the official press release.

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