What Has BXB Given You?

A very interesting post appeared on BXB's forum recently by "Noir" called "What has BXB given you? Have a read here.

Here's a few snippets from it: "Throughout my years here BXB has shown me that it is not only difficult to get away with being a complete twat in real life, but it is also pretty difficult to get away with it on an online forum."

"BXB has also provided me with many great gaming friends (and one genuine real friend; he knows he is!) and introduced me to several people with similar interests to moi."

"So I'd like to say thankyou in particular to Janus and Phlash for running a fantastic community and increasingly impressively successful website! I also think their team of moderators deserves a mention too, as the general tidiness of the forum is not just due to Phlash and Janus."

What an awesome Christmas present! These comments, of course, spawned many other positive comments from other users on the forum and generally a whole lot of priase for the team behind BXB. It makes me very proud and happy to see this kind of outpouring from our community.

I've visited plenty of forums in my time and I've never really encountered anything like the community on BXB. Our forum's community is the best in the UK despite claims to the contrary by our competitors. It's established, closely knit, loyal, fun and accepting which are all very positive aspects of a forum.

Some more kind words that recently made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside were from Microsoft's EMEA Community Manager Graeme Boyd (aka Aceybongos) who said that as far as he's concerned 'Britxbox is one of our best XCN sites'.

So, this'll be my last entry into BXB DNA until the New Year as we'll all be taking a break from working on the site for a few days (mainly because everyone else in the industry seems to be). But there's one thing left to do and that's to get the voting going for the BXB 2006 Awards!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Family 360

Rather oddly, my Mum and Dad decided they wanted an Xbox 360 for their front room and not for the reason I'd expect them i.e. to take advantage of the cheap HD-DVD player!

My Mum wanted one after playing Viva Pinata on my 360 and really enjoying it, so she's been enjoying playing the game but hasn't quite grasped the fact it's not Settlers III on easy and that you have to pay attention.

My Dad wanted it to play Gears of War. Yep, my 55 year old father wants to play on Gears of War. It'll no doubt be hilarious at first, but what it shows is the importance of next-gen graphics.

My Dad says he wants to play Gears because "it's like watching a movie". Now, that's an interesting thing to say because he's not intimidated by the controller and drawn into the game because it looks real.

This is the opposite to what Nintendo are saying about the Wii. The WiiMote is meant to be familiar and easy to use and having a powerful graphics machine isn't the most important thing. But my Dad hasn't been out a bought a Wii...

I think it's a testament to Microsoft Game Studio's promise to produce less but higher quality titles that they've sold another Premium Pack to two very mainstream customers when Nintendo are directly targetting the Wii at that audience.

And a firmly slap on the back for Allards vision of getting families back in of the console!

This gives me an idea.

Unorganised Media Playlists...

Ah I hate them. They're up there on the list of things you really should sort out when you've got a spare hour or two (rarely I might add) but you just never want to and instead spend your time writing blog entries about it.

Since Window's Media Player 11 shares everything on your PC with your 360 my playlist has gone just mental. I've got album names like 'Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks' or 'Dukes of Hazard'!?

I have three different guilty pleasure Madonn's Confession on the Dancefloor albums and useful album names like 'New Title' or 'Unknown' (which, it turns out, is where all my music actually is).

Now, I'm not very good at all this new media stuff as I kind of grew up putting a CD in a CD player and that's how I God damn like it but everything is going in the direction of digital distribution and I really need to get "with it" before I get left behind and find myself struggling with the concept of not having material entertaiment storage.

Thankfully, the 360 makes all that quite easy and I was having a nosey around Microsoft's new digital distribution service that launched in the states a few weeks ago and was impressed to see there's some really good stuff on there (that we can't officially access yet).

You could donwload every single episode of Jack Ass or the HD remakes of Star Trek: The Original Series. As well as HD movies like the great V for Vendetta and the not so great Mission Impossible 3.

So, until that launches in Europe, I'll have to stick to putting CDs into drives and playing DVDs in the normal manner.

And I've managed to successfully avoid organising my Media Library for another five minutes. Right, what can I do next?

The Addicition Goes On...

So, I've finally unlocked all 50 achievements on Viva Pinata!

Perhaps the scariest thing is that I just got the Master Longevity Award meaning I've been playing over 50 hours. I've heaped priase on Rare for this game on BXB, in my game review and on my blog but I just cannot get over how brilliant it really is.

So, with the 50 achievements under my belt, I've got a few more things I want to do...

- Get a Chippopotamus
- Get a Galagoogoo
- Get a Dragonache
- And breed the above plus Roario and Elephanilla!

Also, you've got to love the cliquey Leicestershire people joke around "Costalot" Stores...

BXB Community Day?

A couple of guys from BXB are looking to organise a new Community Day in the new year for BXB's Community and I'm totally behind it.

Our combined LAN/Paintball session with Ubisoft earlier in the year proved to be very successful and frankly I just don't think LAN events have the popularity they once had and have never had the support they deserved.

With an increasingly large pick up of Xbox Live and reduction in support for LAN based games in recently released titles I really don't see any future for pure LAN based events in the style that BXB has successfully organised in the past.

Community Days are definately a route I'd like to explore more and make them more about making friends with your fellow gamers to help strengthen the community and grab the headlines.

LAN Parties are still happening now, but are increasingly old news and big mags aren't really interested in publishing articles about them.

Community Days are something new and different. And new and different makes for good news.

Want to find out more? Click here then!

A Rare Achievement

So, up until recently I'd not really played any games that really made me want to work hard and get all their achievements.

I've been enjoying playing lots of Gears but some of the achievements are gained with online prowess, something I neither have the natural talent or time to achieve and hence I'm rather limited to just the offline stuff.

However, Viva Pinata is a different story. Thanks to the rewarding and addicitive game play I really want to get all 50 achievements and I'm doing pretty well!

I've just unlocked the Taffly Fertiliser Achievement and the Maccaracoon bringing you a love sweet achievement as well which means I'm pretty close to unlocking all the achievements on a game for the first time.

I've got to admit that my opinion of Rare really has turned around recently. While many people respect and love them for titles like Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Golden Eye and I really missed all that due to be PC gaming.

Until Viva Pinata, Rare's games didn't really impress me that much as I felt PDZ was an average FPS and while Kameo did some interesting things, it didn't really capture my imagination.

So, I'm now working on getting a Roario which is going to be tough because I need Zumbugs!

BXB 2006 Awards!

Yep, they're back again and this is a blog entry about it because I feel it's a kind of duty to replicate stuff on BXB on here when the same people will read it.

Click here to get involved in the BXB 2006 Awards.

Viva Pinata FTW!

1519

So, the count keeps increasing and I'm finding waiting five minutes for my e-mails to finish receiving pretty boring now (but still worth a blog entry).

I've got to laugh at some of the comments on BXB about this Halo 3 Beta Competition as the thread has turned into select groups of people moaning insessantly about how BXB is running the competition despite the fact they have no idea how we're running it!

It's the usual crew kicking a storm up about it being unfair because we should reward the forum regulars. I'm not sure why these regular trollers think they deserve a Beta access code more than the people that routinely contribute positively to BXB!

Or, infact, anyone that decided to visit BXB over the six other sites that were listed as XCN sites taking part in the competition! The most important thing is that the competition will be run fairly and everyone has equal chance to win one of the places.

Mind-Boggling Stuff!

If you haven't already heard then BXB is the place yo be if you want to get onto the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta in spring! It's not me saying this, it's sites like Xbox.com and IGNuk!

Once again, BXB has stolen the headlines and gone totally global with our 360 antics thanks to a mind-knunbingly good competition from the XCN. The guys behind the Xbox Community Network really have pulled out all the stops for this one and I'm proud to say that I've backed them all the way.

You can enter the competition for your chance to get into the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta by clicking this link!

Of course, all this excitement has been added to with the awesome new trailer for Halo 3 which features all sorts of madness like John and Kelly as kids on Reach and an awesome new shield grenade! It's breath-takingly good to watch!

We've got screens and wallpapers up on BXB right now and plenty of places to talk about just how damn exciting Halo 3 is going to be.

Perhaps the most amaing thing is that we've had over 400 entries to the Halo 3 Beta Tester competition since it went up at 2:15am this morning making it another European Exclusive for BXB!

I'm a bit tired now.

5000 Members

Pretty chuffed to say that BXB's forum has reached the 5000 members mark!

Obviously, it's not a great indicator of how many people really use the forums or the site due to annoying bots and duplicate accounts but I still think it's a nice achievement to be celebrating.

Some people didn't share the same view, however, and the ugly green eyed monster made an appearance on the front page until we removed the nasty, hypocritical comments. Shame on that person!

Also, we've launched BXB's Most Awesomest Viva Pinata Competition today with a chance for our users to win themselves a whole Pinata Party Pack plus a copy of this amazing game!

Click Here to find out more and enter the competition!