Touch Wood...

For a 360 site Editor and blogger, this entry has been a long time coming and probably features the millionth word written on the subject. Is my 360 about to die?

My 360 was built on the 19th of October 2005 and delivered to me on December the 2nd thanks to Microsoft's old PR company "Red" and it survives to this day without a single ROD incident.

In the last month it's been acting funny, I've had a few crashes, one disc-read error, some crashing during HD-DVD playback and my DVD drive seems to think it's open 50% of the time and reads "Close Tray" on the dash a lot of the time.

Of course, the fact I've got a perfectly fine launch console that's worked consistently for almost two years really does stick two fingers up in the face of the whole 'ROD' scandal and I've enjoyed posting this many times on BXB.

I might start a sweepstake on when it'll ROD on BXB and then congratulate Microsoft on sending me a peice of hardware, that by all records, should have melted itself about 12 months ago.

Rewards and Frustrations

We've secured more preview code now as well, this time in the form of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

I see a pattern emerging, both games we've had code for have been from Lucas Arts via Activision and if you remember back to Leipzig we gave Activision and Lucas Arts loads of cover on BXB. Force Unleashed, Call of Duty 4 and Guitar Hero 3 got shining previews and video coverage. I was pleased to show what we could achieve on BXB given the time and the money to do so.

This has been duly rewarded with code, and while I'll admit to being a little slow with the Thrillville: Off The Rails review (due to personal problems), I'll be putting lots of effort into getting the Lego Star Wars review up on the day the review embargo is lifted.

Again and again the same problem keeps coming back. We simply don't have the time or the man power to make BXB the site it could be. The lack of consistency and comprehensiveness holds us back.

As you can see, our Editorial team is currently churning out reviews and we've even had to draw on voluntary freelancers to pick the slack up on that as well. News updates have been almost non-existant. It's frustrating.

On the plus side, I've just seen the results of Phase 1 of the development process on the new BXB and it's looking fantastic. It looks a lot more professional than the current front page and able to deliver larger amounts of content as well.

Thrillville: Off the Rails

Well, we finally got our first peice of preview code which I can now take advantage of being as I'm on the EMEA reviewer's kit list.

Lucas Arts very kindly sent over Thrillville: Off the Rails and I've been playing it all afternoon. I'm quite enjoying some aspects of the game, for example of the min-games are really fun and simple to play.

On the other hand, it's not like good old Theme Park where you have to literally place all the paths and the rides to create your own park. I miss that freedom. I'll be writing up a full review on BXB soon so keep your eyes on the front page.

It's good that I've finally got some preview code. While it's not exactly for a huge game and not massively before release, hence allowing us to get some great exclusive content up, it's a step in the right direction and that's what it's all about when you're running a fansite like BXB.

You have to wait a long time to take a small step forward, but it's worth it.

Independence...

Wow, I've not written on my blog for ages, probably because I've not felt like saying anything or having a good bitch. So, I'm going to have a good bitch as I feel confrontational today.

So, this blew me away. Microsoft allowing Bungie to return to being independent, allowing them the freedom to do what they want and in return Bungie have promised to keep making Halo games and support the 360 as their main platform. You scratch my back...

I'm independent. I have my own mind, my own ideas and I speak them and, man, has that landed me in some shit. At the same time it's also been really rewarding.

Here's an example of where me speaking my mind is good.

At the same time, me speaking my mind got BXB removed from the XCN and damaged our relationship with the company that produces the product we're dedicated to covering. Not exactly a smart move.

So, I have a lot of respect for Microsoft for giving Bungie back their independence but it's not been easy, now, has it? Bungie have shouldered the success of the Xbox and the Xbox 360 with the Halo trilogy and made literally millions of dollars for the company since the original console launched.

Independence comes at a price. The question I ask myself time and time again, is it worth it?

The Great Halo 3 Review "Sitch"

So, my personal anticipation of the release of Halo 3 is about to hit breaking point. I literally cannot get any more excited about this game without breaking down in tears and sobbing like a baby for hours at the mere thought of playing it.

The question is. How am I going to get it? Right now I'm having a “sitch” with Halo 3 as I'm not entirely how sure how I'm going to get my hands on the game. You think I'd have planned this, don't you? So, here are my options:

1)The Review Code: Ok, so Microsoft haven't let me down in the past on this front and I got Halo 2 a few days before release which gave me enough time to write a review up but as usual their always busy PR types are being silent on the matter and it's driving me up the wall. Literally every morning now I get up as the postman knocks on the door and doesn't deliver Halo 3 to me but instead some other video game shaped parcels.

2)Tesco at Midnight: Working for a major retailer has some perks. I'll probably be able to hold and read the instruction manual of Halo 3 sometime this week but they still won't sell me it because they won't break street dates. The only option is to head back to work at midnight next Tuesday and pick it up then (with a lovely staff discount).

3)The Alamo: Gameplay pre-order, this is probably the most reliable but, for some reason, the one I expect to deliver least.

The big question is, is there any actual point BXB reviewing the game? Getting a review up on day of release wouldn't be much of a coup on the grounds that everyone will be too busy playing the game to give a damn. Plus, the big sites will have their reviews up very soon and hence everyone will have read the reviews.

Of course we'll write a review of the game, it'd be silly not to, but I'm going to take my time about it.

Is that the Postie?

Exciting Stuff Ahead!

As if Halo 3 wasn't enough to get you excited, BXB will be bringing our users some of our coolest opportunities yet in the next few days!

Firstly, we'll be making Call of Duty 4 Beta codes available on the site and we hope that you all sign up from BXB to show your support for this great site.

We're also going to be giving away 12 months worth of games from Codemasters when our Community Awards return with a bang this month!

More details will be posted on BXB in the next day or so.

BXB: We rock!

Flirting with my Future...

So, a few weeks ago I applied for a community focused role for a major publisher.

My cover letter and CV were sent over as usual and the other day I was invited for an interview. Shortly after I was told that my salary expectations were too high and that having the interview was a waste of time.

I'd asked for 30k and the job was paying 19k.

I have to ask myself, surely, 19k in the south of the UK means I can afford to rent a cardboard box at best!?

And that there ended my flirtation with my future as a community guy for a major publisher.

Oh, well.

A Wierd Weekend...

I've had a wierd weekend. Some of the stuff that's happened to me in the last 48 hours has been really quite confusing.

I'm really not too sure what to make of it all and I don't think going into any detail on here will help. I think that best thing is probably to just go to bed now and kind of leave it all behind.

My facebook account says I'm confused 13% of the time. It's been more like 130% of the time recently.

How do they make crisps taste like flame grilled burgers?

Traffic Figures for August 2007

Well, it just goes to show how putting the effort into going to Leipzig can pay off. August has been our second busiest month of 2007 thanks to the content we're uploading (and still uploading) from Leipzig.

Here's the Media Alert/Press Release/Media Release/Press Alert:

Britxbox.co.uk, Leicester, UK, 02 September 2007 – One of the UK's leading Xbox Community sites, www.britxbox.co.uk, today announced that traffic figures for the month of August 2007 increased in comparison to the previous month and has been one of the best performing months of the year.

Between August 1st and August 31st, Britxbox.co.uk recorded a total of 61,569 unique visits and 494,331 page views. That's an average of 1986 unique visits per day. That's an increase of 16 per cent compared to July.

Ashley Allen, Director of Britxbox.co.uk said: “Despite August being a traditionally quiet time for the games industry, we've recorded our second busiest month of the year with only May and it's Halo 3 Beta bettering August.

“Surprisingly, 8 per cent of these visitors came from the United States of America which sees a marked increase in the global audience of Britxbox.”

Michael Rossell, Editor and Events Manager for Britxbox.co.uk added: “A third of this traffic is a direct result of our coverage of the Leipzig Games Convention this year with video diaries, previews and news all being published from the event by four members of the Britxbox editorial team.

“27 per cent of the hits during Leipzig were new visits and our most popular piece of Leipzig content so far was our Virtua Fighter 5 Preview by Mark Lawson.”

Notes to Editors:

For more information on Britxbox.co.uk contact Editor and Events Manager on mike@britxbox.co.uk.

About Britxbox

www.britxbox.co.uk launched in 2002 and has since grown to be the largest and most active Xbox Community in the UK with an average 58,000 unique hits a month, 5674 registered forum users and over a million posts. A leader in the area of offline events, Britxbox hosted the first ever UK Xbox Exclusive LAN Event in 2003 and broke the Gaming LAN mould with their 2005 'Join the Ghosts' event in association Ubisoft. Britxbox.co.uk continues to be the home of the most vibrant community and has plans to re-launch the site with an even greater community focus in the near future.

w00t!

Triple Post - Battle of the Sexes, Call of Duty 4 Video Diary and IGNinsider Fame!

Linky

Press Release

XboxGameZone today announced its upcoming event The Battle of the Sexes – part 2. Part 1 took place in 2005 and saw Girls and Boys do battle against each other for 4 days on over 9 Xbox Live titles. The boys were the eventual winners of the inaugural event, so the girls are sure to want revenge this time around!

Due to the success of the original Battle of the Sexes, XGZ are proud to announce that they have gained the full support of game publishers including Microsoft, Ubisoft and Codemasters.

Editor and Event Manager for BXB Michael Rossell added: “Britxbox is pleased to be supporting our partner XboxGameZone with their latest tournament: The Battle of the Sexes. All too often female gamers are trivialised or pigeon holed into playing games like Animal Crossing, we know better, we know that there are some girls out there who love putting plate sized holes in their opponents…with shotguns.”

Chris Easton, Online Marketing Manager from Ubisoft UK said: “XboxGameZones previous Battle of the Sexes was a warmly received change from the normal tournaments we see online, and this was reflected in the strong reaction from the community taking part. We are eager to see their reaction again to this fantastic tournament and we hope that the community steps up to the challenge”

Samantha “Satine” Russell, Community Manager of Codemasters commented: "We are delighted to be able to support sites such as Xbox Game Zone who are fundamental in the growth and the support of our gaming community.”

Community partners PanicZoom, Britxbox, and the all girl team PZ Fallen Angels are also lending full support for what should be an exciting tournament.

Battle commences Friday 7th September and will last one week as the girls take on the boys once more across a range of Xbox™ & Xbox360™ titles promising players explosive fun from Bomberman Live to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2.

Codemaster’s Samantha Russell has already tried to light the fireworks adding “Its obvious that the girls will win :).” I would like to respond by telling her to save the smack talk for the battlefield!


Oh, and check this cool video out...



Finally, myself and Mark got featured in a video on IGNinsider playing Rock Band, I sucked.

Games Convention Aside

Amazingly, I did other things in Leipzig than just oogle Booth Babes, play video games and spend all day inside darkened rooms.

The weather was actually pretty good and we enjoyed sitting outside our hotel in the evening sun drinking and talking about the days action. I took a few pictures of places outside of the Leipzig Games Convention and here are a few!



This is my favourite, managed to take it with my phone camera (K800i) and it turned out pretty well. I like the sun coming through the clouds but also the silhoutte of the rose statue.



This one is of the glass bridges that connected the central glass building the the halls at the side. I think it was just the lighting that made me want to take this picture, the reflections off the floor are great.



I took a picture of the airport at Altenburg because it had the word 'Nob' in the sign. At this point I lost any credibility I had as a photographer.

*titters* Nob.

Content Overload...

Well, I've been creating videos and writing article for BXB for three days solid now and it's getting pretty exhausted. I still have four more articles to go.

In the meantime, I have finally been featured on www.ukresistance.co.uk which is one of my favourite sites and I feel like I've achieved something cool today.

So check it out, UKR is timelessly funny.

Leipzig Booth Babes...

So, booth babes returned to games conventions with a bang at the Leipzig Games Convention and, as usual, lots of top sites have picture stories about them.

We saw loads of very fit Booth Babes, I had a bit of a soft spot for a certain Activision one who didn't speak a word of English. Anyway, here's our Booth Babe story...



Here's a booth babe for the World in Conflict stand. She was very good looking but because I'm an internet geek I was actually too afraid to go and get my photo with her despite the fact that's why they are there.



There were literally Booth Babes everywhere at the show and for many publishers they were as much as part of the hard material for promoting games as banners, videos and trailers. So much so that we caught this Booth Babe being ferried around the Convention Centre on a pallet truck.



Also, while in the EA Business Lounge (with the rotating bar) I noticed that EA were obviously trying to muscle in on Ubisoft's Jade Raymond action with this lovely lady being interviewed by someone. (Asian babes, eh, EA? Good move!)



Here's two more. Trinity and Sexina, we remember them from a movie about mothers and daughters we saw on the internet once.

If you want to see more pictures of Booth Babes then head over to IGN or Kotaku, they have some pictures. In fact, strike that, just watch porn.

Leipzig Days 3 and 4

I didn't get a chance to blog last night because I was so exhausted from an awesome day of gaming. Yesterday felt like it really all ended with a massive bang for a bunch of reasons.

Firstly, I enjoyed a morning within the Halo universe with appointments to see Halo 3 and Halo Wars. I managed to contain my excitement for some time, appearing to be a professional journalist right up until the end of the Halo Wars demo where they nailed a Scarab with an orbital MAC gun and I exploded. It was awesome.

I was also proud to say that the guys from Ensemble Studios commented on how impressed they were with my Halo knowledge! I was geeking it up hardcore all morning and my previews will be up soon.

I also finally got to play Rock Band. It's great. I did vocals for The Stroke's Reptilia and got 100% on my first go on easy. Everyone tried to play down my awesome vocal talents, but they were all secretly jealous...!

Day 4 wasn't very exciting as we just did a whole lots of travelling around and I'm finally home and about to go to bed as I'm still on German time which means it's 10:42pm right now.

I did play on Elite Beat Agents on Slicker's DS though and that was awesome.

Leipzig Day 2

Well, today has been a little different. I did a few catch up appointments this morning with Fracture and the Command and Conquer Expansion pack and I've spent the rest of the day in the press centre working.

I'm pretty sick of hearing the collective sounds of journalists now so I've plugged my headphones in and have started listening to a little Trance. Tiesto's remix of Barber's Adagio for Strings is currently playing.

The visit to EA's fancy room was most successful with all four of us getting to see some of their forth coming games including Need for Speed Street Pro, Command and Conquer and The Simpsons. Even though the very slowly rotating bar made me think I was about to pass out.

Also ran into a few familiar faces today including Luke from play.tim and Nick and Steve from Hexus.net. I also ran into a couple of peoplo who clearly remembered me but having a terrible memory had no idea who they were!

I've still not quite recovered from the awesome Call of Duty 4 press event and I'm about to shoot off for a Fracture multiplayer event. Activision have really kicked ass this week.

After losing Mark all day, Andy and Ben stumbled across him and now the three lucky souls are heading off to a Ubisoft party.

Still having problems with the video uploading but I've published a Guitar Hero Hands on Preview on BXB!

We're recording the Podcast later, so that should be interesting...

Leipzig Day 1

My God I'm tired. This marks my twentieth hour awake today after making the most of the press day at Leipzig.

I've played Guitar Hero 3, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground and Call of Duty 4 among a few other games. Guitar Hero 3 is awesome, it's a great improvement on the second game and has some brilliant new features. The new guitar is also a must buy!

Spent most of the day touring various booths and attending appointments. The EA ones were all messed up so we're going back to re-do them tomorrow, the same with Lucas Art games like Force Unleashed and Fracture.

The evening was the highlight. Activisions amazing Call of Duty 4 event where myself and Andy enjoyed hands on experience with two single players levels and a go with the Multiplayer Beta. We've got loads of video which we'll post up later.

We have made a video diary of day one, but the wireless connection in the hotel is poor and hence Youtube times out before the upload is complete. I'll try again tomorrow in the Leipzig press centre.

Bed time methinks!

Happy Landings

I guess I was a little nervous coming to Leipzig, but it suddenly got a lot worse when I read in The Times on the flight (A little high brow for me, I know) that a National Socialist Party has gained increasing support in and around Leipzig and groups of Neo-Nazis have been reported attacking foreigners screaming racist taughts.

Add to that the fact that after a very relaxing flight over, the pilot decided to nose dive the plane and scare every single person on the flight - including a very large contingent of gaming journalists.

I presume the flight over over was a who's who of elite gaming press in the UK - not that I'd know...

So, I sit here blogging in the restaurant of our hotel, drinking a beer, which is rather spookily located in a strange industrial area and right next to a massive road that points the way to Berlin.

The highlight of the day so far was one of the taxi drivers at Leipzig Train Station had a badly printed out Halo 3 "Believe" banner which seems to be a cynical way of making games journalists give him our cash. I was attempting to take a picture when he drove off at great speed.

Oh, and if this Blog doesn't work right, it's because I can't make blogger.com speak to me in English - it's all in German!

Blogging from Leipzig

So, Leipzig is only two days away now. We'll be flying out around midday on Tuesday and we're pretty excited!

Naturally, I'll be blogging from Leipzig and I intend to publish plenty of photos from the event that don't normally get seen. Sort of, the wierd, funny, silly stuff that doesn't really get covered!

Also blogging is our Podcast Presenter Ben 'Hallben' Hall! You can check out his blog here: It's All IMO.

Ben is easily as loud mouthed and as opinionated as me and can inspire people with his enthusiasm just as much as rub them up the wrong way with his comments!

Most Excited Person Ever...

So, I'll admit that until yesterday afternoon, I was only thrilled to be going to Leipzig. I know it's kind of snobbish, but I've been to a fair few press events now and from our appointments, it wasn't really grabbing me.



Admittedly, I was excited to be playing Call of Duty 4 as that looks awesome, but the other games I'm booked in for, while great, weren't what I was looking forward to most.

So, yesterday I called *name drops* Kate at Microsoft's UK PR as she'd e-mailed me to arrange a couple of appointments. Non of the UK PR team are heading out there and it's all being organised by the German PR team. Kindly, Kate got in contact with them and arranged two appointments for the BXB team.

So, when I found out what they were, I went from thrilled to the most excited person in the country. She confirmed that Halo 3 Multiplayer, Halo Wars, PGR4 and Mass Effect will all be playable at the show and BXB have appointments to see Halo 3 (she couldn't confirm if it was multi or simgler player) and Project Gotham Racing 4.

I got off the phone and immedately started packing!

Leipzig Madness Begins!

It's less than a week away and I can assure you that the BXB team are working hard, researching into games, booking appointments and discussing which nights we can get away with heavy drinking.

We've just launched our first wave of exciting Leipzig coverage on the site which you can view by going to www.britxbox.co.uk!

There's also a few specific links you might want to checkout:

BXB's Podcast 17: Leipzig '07 Pre-show Special.

Our dedicated Leipzig forum

A thread with a list of games we'll be viewing and the opportunity to ask questions!

We'll have all the latest news and previews from the event as well as Video Dairies and a Podcast so keep your eyes on BXB next week!

Leipzig Preparations

Leipzig is less than two weeks away now and BXB is getting ready to launch our biggest team on a press event ever and we've got a temporary big banner so users can get all the latest Leipzig news.



There's a little preview of what it will look like and we're hoping to launch it in the middle of next week along with a special Leipzig Podcast!

Keep your eyes on BXB for more!

Britxbox Version 3.0

Well, it's been a long time coming but finally movement on version 3.0 of Britxbox is happening. It's odd really, it took an offer of someone helping to pay for the development of the site to make us realise we should just do it ourselves.

So, Phlash has dipped deep into his ocean of cash and decided to pay a web designer to create the new BXB. Who's doing it? Well, rest easy as it's BXB very own Apocalypse Cow who's done some work for us in the past on our now rather outdated Online Portfolio. (It still says we're in the XCN!)

He's already done some work on the new site but we've sat down and hammered out a series of new features for both the front page and the community side which, we hope, will give visitors a new and exciting BXB to play around with.

Some ideas from the sadly defunct BXB360 have been brought over, while others haven't and we've come up with a whole bunch of other ideas. I'm not going to go into much detail now and just let Cow do his thing.

I'm hoping he'll be up for writing a developers diary as he creates the new site which I'll post on here and on BXB, but web design isn't the most thrilling of things, so it'll quite intermittant!

Dear Midway

I recently downloaded the John Woo Presents Strangehold demo from the Xbox Live marketplace.



I wasn't very interested in the title, just semi-curious and downloaded it for something to do despite still being addicted to Guitar Hero 2.

I'd just like to say:

SOLD

*sides hurt*

So, what's been making me laugh uncontrollably today? Well, the news that Keith Chegwin is releasing a video game! God help us. Right, where to start?



First we have these hilariously cringe worthy renders of Cheggers with his fat, shiney face and stubbly little fingers. Thankfully, he's not naked.



Doesn't it make you wish he was an NPC in Manhunt 2? We also have probably one of the most entertaining press releases I've seen for a while:

"CHEGGERS – THE CHEEKY CHARMER!

Get up close and personal with the UK's favourite funster!

August 9th 2007: Northamptonshire, UK: Cheggers, Chegwin, Keith – call him what you will, there is no denying he’s one of Britain’s best loved TV personalities…and he’ll be ‘round your house this Christmas with Cheggers’ Party Quiz!

Keith Chegwin rose to fame back in the mid 1970s, when at the tender age of 17, he secured a role as a presenter on Multicoloured Swap Shop, which ran from 1976 to 1982, making a household name of the Merseyside lad we’ve all come to know and love.

With over 7,000 TV shows as a presenter under his belt – most famously, Cheggers Plays Pop - and a myriad guest appearances in the nation’s most popular television programmes, Keith Chegwin has also fronted his own radio shows, written regular newspaper columns and made several records! The fact that there are very few Britons that have never heard of him is testament not only to his popularity, which is due in no small part to his infectious charm, but also to the fact that he remains one of the UK’s hardest working stars.

Spanning more than three decades, Cheggers’ career has seen more than a few ups and downs but he has always bounced back with renewed vim, and maintained his position in the very hearts of the UK’s TV viewing public.

Now he adds another feather in his cap as the presenter of Oxygen Games’ new quiz title; Cheggers’ Party Quiz, enthusing;“This is such a fantastic project - I'm so excited by it! I have been very impressed by Oxygen Games, because of their enthusiasm for this project and I hope that everyone who plays the game thinks it is great fun.”

Party with Cheggers this Christmas, with the year’s most wonderfully wacky party Quiz! …Get it now, or he’ll be ‘round your house! Cheggers’ Party Quiz out on WiiT™, Playstation®2 and PC, November 2007."

The whole thing is highly entertaining, but reaches new levels of hilarity as the writer of the press release tries to come up with more than one nickname for "Cheggers" only to think of using other parts of his name.

Plus the use of the word 'vim' is brilliant.

I almost feel bad about emailing the publisher and feigning interest just to get a comment to stick on the piss take news story I wrote on BXB!

If this light hearted adventure really has offended anyone, I'm sorry.

BXB Brings Leipzig GC Home!

With E3 downsized, Leipzig Games Convention has some big shoes to fill, and being as it's not a 14 hour flight away, Britxbox is re-invading Germany to bring you all the latest gaming news, latest game previews and all sort of other madness we'll make up while hung over from German beer abuse.

But before we go, we're going to need some help coming up with clever things to ask all those important games industry types we'll be talking to games coming out over the next few months.

We'll be supplying you with a stream of news, exclusive hands on previews, a Podcast recorded at the show and BXB's Famous Video Diaries. We've already been invited to play a bunch of games that you'd kill you nan to get your hands on...(except Bee Movie).

But we want to know what you want to know about the following games:

Fallout 3
Alone in the Dark
Ace Combat 6
Eternal Sonata
Bee Movie
Quake Wars
Tony Hawks Proving Ground
Spiderman: Friend or Foe
Call of Duty 4
Assassins Creed
Far Cry 2
Haze
Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway
Naruto

We'll be updating that list as we secure more appointments but in the meantime, post any questions you have about these games In this thread!

We'll be playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat along with a limited amount of other British Journalists, meaning BXB is the place to get an honest opinion on this amazing game!

Leipzig kicks off on August 23rd for the public, but it's open on August 22nd for the press, so expect the news to come rolling in then. Leipzig expects over 200,000 people to attend making it bigger than this years E3.

Check out more by clicking here!

Also, if you're planning to attend Leipzig this year as a consumer, drop mike@britxbox.co.uk an e-mail and maybe we can meet up and drink head-spinningly large amounts of German ale, you might get the chance to appear on BXB or even on our Podcast!

Novel Attraction

So, I've barely even thought about working on my novel in the last few months, which is really frustrating because I think it's such a good idea.

Maybe it's like Brian from Spaced who can't paint when he's happy, they do say that contentment is the enemy of creation. I've been thinking about it more often recently, and I actually spent some time editing one of my earlier chapters on the way to Ubidays (which shows how long it is since I worked on it).

The last thing I wrote was really cool as well which was the short peice about Ilya Thaxton that I published a while ago. Maybe if I go and re-read eveything I write I'll be inspired to tell the story.

I had somewhat of a realisation the other day, an epiphanie if you will, that the reason I like writing and reading so much is because my Dad used to read to me all the time when I was a kid.

I had this while thinking about a new novel idea I've had which will probably never be written.

Media Alert!

Pinch and a punch, the first day of the month and you know what that means, new traffic stats. Wooo, this is my favourite type of blog entry!

Britxbox.co.uk, Leicester, UK, 01 June 2007 - One of the UK's leading Xbox Community sites, www.britxbox.co.uk, today announced that traffic figures for the month of July 2007 dropped in comparison to June 2007 to 52,818 unique hits.

A total of 446,135 page views were recorded in July, while this figure had decreased due to the summer lull, BXB recorded our busiest day of the year so far with 3,393 unique visitors on July 10th. BXB also saw an increase in traffic from America in July with 70 per cent of new visitors to BXB in July coming from America.

Ashley Allen, Director of Britxbox.co.uk said: “Our figures always slump slightly over the summer in line with the behaviour of the gaming industry as a whole.

“It comes as no surprise that our busiest day yet was during the run up to this years massive E3 and we expect similar traffic in August around Leipzig.”

Michael Rossell, Editor and Events Manager said: “We're looking forward to a better month of traffic in August as BXB are sending a four man team to cover the Leipzig Games Convention in Germany.

“With a whole range of appointments already booked and the promise of lots of unique content for the site, we're excited to see how this will affect our traffic in August.”

In all seriousness, it's not.

Paid for Demos

Oh man this idea sucks across the board. Not only is it really unfair, cynical and profiteering to make people pay for what they've always had for free, it's also really pointless.

So, if you've already paid the yearly subscription to OXM of £59.88 you'll then have to pay a futher £1.70 for every game demo you want to play.

The alternative is to not pay for an OXM subscription and get all of your demos for free, but a little later than everyone else. Which is what most people do with content that's initially available for points but comes later for free. People just wait.

There's also the fact that you might even end up having to pay for a demo of a game that's currently out.

Obviously, print media is suffering more at the hands of online than Future's big wigs are making out, hence this latest move. It's a sorry state of affairs.

Leipzig Looms...

Well, it's only a few weeks now until BXB launches a four man team of death upon Leipzig 2007!

We've already got some appointments lined up and our press passes are burning holes in our pockets, we simply cannot wait to get out there and play some games. The following BXB staff will be attending:

Myself!
Reviews Editor Andy Gardiner
Podcast Presenter Ben Hall
Podcast Producer Mark Lawson

We're planning to do written content (naturally) but a Podcast from the event and some awesome Video Diaries as well! Just got to get all the technology out to Germany to make all that happen.

Should be awesome.

Guitar Hero Antics...

So, with only three songs to 'Five Star' before I've completed medium, I'm beginning to wonder at what point do I become a "Guitar Hero"?

I've only got to do Carry Me Home, Madhouse and The Trooper and I know I can do Madhouse because I got 96% of notes while co-op playing with my brother yesterday.

GH2 has been my most played game on the 360 so far. Got to admit, it's brilliant. I just wish there was something similar with dance music, but it'd never work! Viva Pinata had a good whack at being my mosy played game but I really can't put Guitar Hero 2 down, it's just so damn addictive.

Anyway, I'll be putting the spare X-plorer controller up on Ebay today and we'l lsee how well it sells!

Least Surprising E-mail Ever...

So, if you'd read yesterdays blog entry then you'd know I found some of the spam I've been getting recently has been keeping me amused. Yesterdays Viagram spam was pretty funny.Well, not surpringly, I've had more...

One said this: "This drugs puts viagra to shame!" which made me wonder if viagra actually feels shame while: "Not a Dating Service, a SHAGGING Service!" Now that's just silly.



1) "Don't click, just type...", which just indicates that the immoral bastard sending this shit out isn't very good at some basic HTML!

2) There's the cliched allusion to the Matrix with the headline, but the text at the bottom seems to have been written by a Greek Matrix geek with very little sexual experience and even less with what viagra actually does.

3) Finally, I'd like to point out that if you do have ED then taking viagra will not turn you into a buff stud and land you a fit model girlfriend.

And finally, why do all these e-mail images look like they've been put through a ropey Photoshop filter?!

Anyway, here's another CONTROVERSIAL image I was sent...



A fake Project Gotham 4 on PS3. Which silly fucker spends their time doing this?!

Good old Spam...

My recent foray into "Social Networking" has created a whole new spam problem for me!

I'm getting loads of stupid friends requests on Myspace from people that are employing bots to spread the word of their Myspace. It's so annoying. I think I'm going to block e-mails from Myspace from now on.

Thankfully, I still get good old spam. One recent one about Viagra made me laugh!

Why should you try Viagra?

Why Viagra? ...because that look she gives is only meant for you... because an empty nest is the chance to fall in love all over again... because reading the Sunday paper doesn’t take all day.

If you have ED, you’ve already got plenty of reasons to choose Viagra, but here are some more that you should know about.

Oh, I've signed up to Facebook as well!

Community Day Cancellation

The unfortunate news today from BXB is that we've had to cancel our August Community Day in associaition with Warfighters.

Simple enough reasons really. Firstly, the responce was rubbish. Basically, we had a few enquiries but no-one purchased tickets. I took the decision this morning and it's all over and done with now.

Other factors which influenced the cancelling was the fact the new weapons at Warfighters failed their field test as well as the fact it was Leipzig the week before and I expect our work load to be heavy around that time being as were attending.

Shame really as Warfighters is great fun and great value for money.

Not sure what we're going to do about future events. Some forum goers have mentioned having a LAN but we simply haven't got the time to organise them anymore plus the environment for LANs has changed considerably since we held the last one and there are much better events available to people now with better organisation, backing and prizes.

Uncertain times ahead I guess!

Retail Geek...

So, it's been over 48 hours since I saw Transformers and I'm still massively excited about it.

I've spent all day telling people how amazing it is, which was kind of oddly received at the Tesco training course I was on today, but what the hell!

Anyway, as well being a Transformers geek, I'm also a retail geek and hence the following is amusing to me...



No shit...

Transformers *spoilers*

As Blackout pounded the American desert base with his arm mounted machine guns, blasted shock waves of death through the matchstick buildings and released a devastating EMP across the entire base, I lent over to Ash and said: "This is bad ass." Only a few minutes into the movie, Spielberg and Bay's Transformers was already blowing my mind - something that would continue for sometime.

Let's get this straight, this Transformers movie is not the good old 80's classic Transformers just in a movie. To be honest, that would be rubbish. This is a whole new re-imagining of the Transformers story. Much like the new Battlestar Galactica.

There's a lot of that going about at the minute and there's also a lot of franchises being set up as well and with the sequel already green-lit it's pretty obvious that this movie was written as an introduction to the characters and a set up for further movies.

Movies like Superman Returns and the first Spider-Man were also 're-imagined-franchise-starters' and hence got mixed reviews from critics and public a like. Something mirrored in Transformers reception. But not from me.

From the moment this movie started I was dumb-struck, with my mouth agape and perched on the end of my seat. The opening slaughter by Blackout, the US military's victory over Scorponock, the battle between Bumblebee and Barricade were all stunningly created, visual master pieces of movie history that hinted at the glory of the finale show down. Never before have I been so wholly convinced of the existence of something so utterly fictional. To the extent I really did think the cars parked in the cinema car park could be real Transformers.

Many critics have said that there were too many human characters and they were really only extras to the Tranformers. Something I agree with to an extent. I thought both Shia LeBeouf (Sam Witwicky) and Megan Fox (Mikaela Banes) gave solid performances throughout but many of the other characters scattered throughout were nothing but extras of requirement, like John Voight's Secretary of Defence and Josh Duhamel's Captain William Lennox, who were both forgettable.

Only Bernie Mac's Bobby Boliva as the dodgy second hard car dealer that sells Bumbleebee to Sam Witwicky is worth any further note. At best character development was hasty and as requirement more than anything genuinely believable. But that really does not matter.

As the movie is called Transformers, you'd except the alien transforming robots to be the stars of the movie and they are. Each Transformer looks stunning. The fact they've changed a few names and vehicle designs from the original really doesn't matter as they very kindly bothered to explain that the Transformer arrive on Earth in their humanoid form but quickly scan and mimic the shape of a nearby vehicle allowing them to 'hide in the open'.

The plot is a solid affair with the Autobots and Decepticons fighting on Earth over 'The Allspark' which is a cube shaped 'creator of life' which emits radiation capable of turning inanimate technology into a living machine. The fact it's cube shaped was a pleasant nod to 'energon' cubes from the original series.

The characters were there as well. Ironhide's tendency to be a bit violent, Bumbleebee's bravery and dedication to protecting Sam and Prime as the wise and proud moral pillar of leadership. Similarly, Megatron is the megalomaniac we all know and love and there were some slight allusions at the tempestuous relatioship between him and Starscream. One of my favourite lins was where Megatron berated Starscream for 'failing him again'. Just like the original cartoon.

The special effects were second to none. There were more special effects shots in Transformers than every single Pirates of the Carribean movies combined. The most striking thing was how consistent and believable they were. The quality never seemed to falter regardless of proximity, lighting or what they were interacting with at the time. Perhaps the only real moment I thought the quality dropped was when they used what looked like an animatronic model of Frenzy on Air Force One.

Finally, it's actually damn funny. Witty comments from the Autobots and a few amusing 'gross out American Pie' jokes made the finla genuine peice of comedy.

Transformers is a contemporary re-imaging of the original series to bring it bang up to date and make Hasbro/Bay/Spielberg plenty of cash while setting up a new franchise. On top of that, it's the best special effects movie I've ever seen with some solid characters and lots and lots to build on. The action is unrivalled by anything I've seen this year (except maybe 300) and there was enough allusions and nods to the original series to make me feel they haven't totally ignored the source material.

10/10

My Space...

So, I finally got a Myspace account. Great eh?

I got one so I could post a comment on Faces for Radio's space to show my support.

Basically, I filled it full of stuff and then just added links to the other Community services I use like BXB, Blogger and Youtube. So, if you visit here then there's no reason to visit there really.

In fact, it's almost totally pointless. Much like 90% of all "social networking" sites. Anyway, if you want to see how many friends I haven't got then go here!

And I'm going to see Transformers in about twenty minutes. I'm well stoked! I'll post my impressions tomorrow!

Moore or Less...

Well, we were all a bit shocked to hear that Peter Moore had left Microsoft and we all made various tatoo jokes at the same time.

We were recording our latest E3 Podcast when the news broke so you can hear our first reactions on there.



We've done a bit of a homage to Peter Moore on BXB today because he's a great chap and a shining example of Britishness being awesome. So, why not check out our High Praise for Moore news story and our spoofy Mattrick is Moore Clone story as well.

Personally, I find Peter Moore to be an inspiring Brit of which I find myself in continual awe of how well he's done despite being involved in the sad demise of the Dreamcast.

I'm sure we all have oceans of respect for him and he'll be sadly missed at Xbox!

We Love Animals at Tesco...

So, the bomb scares at 14 Tesco stores in the UK were all to do with people who love turtles and frogs so much that they're annoyed with how Tesco are treating them in China.

Apparently, letters were sent to several local radio stations and these then forwarded the threats onto the police who contacted each store and got them evacuated.

Anyway, I think this is silly, because Tesco do care about animals. Today, for example, I was off on the first of many training courses to get me ready to be a full blown Tesco manager (with the shirt and eveything) and we made this happy little chappy...



As an "Ice Breaker", and no doubt a scary hidden test of our team work abilities, we had to make animals from paper. We made a badger. With very long legs and a very long tail and ears in the wrong place.

Still, we looked after it all day and didn't mistreat it at all. Tesco clearly care about animals, but from the amount of paper we used to make that badger, they clearly hate rainforets!*

*Dear Angry Tree Rights Activisits. This comment is a joke. Tesco love Trees. We have to hug them at least 14 minutes a day.

Faces for Radio Rock Profile

Well, I'm a bit hung over and hence I've not felt like doing anything overly strenuous today. So what have I do?

This:



It's a "Rock Profile" for a band called Faces for Radio. I work with the Bassist Dave Woolcock and used to know his old brother Alex. I went to another of their gigs on Friday night and they did a really good set. My favourite song of thiers being Gary Lager!

Have a watch of the video and check out thier Myspace page which does really need updating! Faces for Radio Myspace!

Annoyingly, the text that goes along the bottom seems to have lost some quality as it was uploaded to Youtube!

"Planned Powercut"

Had an interesting day at work today. If you weren't aware, I'm a Team Leader for Tesco in Ashby as my full time job and today the store had to be evacuated in an emergency.

Why? Well, using my hardcore Journalistic skills I found out from a copper that there had been a bomb scare at my store. The store manager had amusingly called it a 'planned powercut' which a ludicrous concept at 1pm on a Saturday in a very busy Tesco store.

So, the management team lept into action thinking it was a power cut and I headed out to the store's car park entrance to turn customers away. About 20 minutes later five police cars turned up and set up a proper traffic control area with lots of flashing blue lights and Policemen.

I returned to the shop to find all the staff and managers outside in the car park and after asking if I could go back in and get my stuff, I wasn't allowed. So as I write this the following stuff is stuck in my locker at work:

1 Sony Ericsson K800i
1 Wallet with all important things in it
1 Set of car keys
1 really nice coat that I love
1 pair of shoes I really like

And hence all of this valuable stuff is sitting in a building which could blow up at any minute. Even though it's just a planned powercut.

What really annoys me about the whole thing is that if the store manager had trusted his management team to stay calm during a potentially life threatening crisis and told us the truth rather than fobbing us off with bullshit, then I'd probably have grabbed my stuff and gone to direct traffic.

Even more annoying, is that the store manager then told all the managers that they should move their cars away from the building. I couldn't move mine.

I mean, come on, "planned powercut" what a joke!

1) Why the hell would you plan a powercut during the busiest trading time.
2) Why the hell would you need five police cars if it is a power cut.
3) If it is a powercut, why weren't we let back in the building?
4) Why did we have to move our cars away from the powercut?

So, I skavved a mobile and called home and eventually got a lift back. I then grabbed my spare car key and went and picked my car up. Nothing was happening.

The only that was interesting was how willing to give information out to the public the copper was that I spoke to. It was one of those times I wished I was still at the paper.

Fucking Midland Mainline...

So, I was invited down to the Codemasters Press Day for Turning Point: Fall of Liberty and Clive Barkers Jericho. It took place at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms in Westminster.

It started at 11am meaning getting there on time put my train travel right in the commuter charges and hence tickets would cost me like £100 so I decided to go a little later and do a lot of running to get there a little late. But planned and informed late so not that bad.

So, driving over to Loughborough (because stupid Coalville is stuck in the dark ages and doesn't have a train station) I got stuck behind a tracktor meaning I missed my train. I grabbed a later one but that was delayed and I ended up over an hour late for the event.

This meant I missed the Turnin Point: Fall of Liberty completely and arrived half-way through the Jericho presentation. I'm proper pissed off. When I have to drive somewhere, I'm always on time, when I have to rely on public transport it all goes wrong.

I think next time I'm heading to the Old Smoke I'll drive down to the northern most Tube Station and tube it into the centre. It'll be cheaper and more reliable.

Now, off to write about Jericho.

Fresh Resolve

I've been involved with BXB for bloody ages now and it's not always easy to keep motivated and working on the site.

The last couple of weeks have been very busy for me with my sign on at work and it's not going to calm down any time soon as I'll be heading out on numerous training courses over the next few weeks to upskill myself around being a Manager for Tesco.

Hence the site has suffered somewhat. While Andy and the reviewing team have been legends for the last couple of weeks by publishing plenty of reviews, news wise we've really struggled and this has reflected in below average traffic figures so far for July. We've barely broken the 2000 uniques a day mark due to a lack of fresh news on the site.

Real life has to take priority for everyone on BXB and it's concerning that despite it being only a few weeks away from E3, that we're so behind with the news. On top of this, there has been some very interesting development behind the scences that have been taking up a lot of my time. These will become apparent in the near future, hopefully.

So, I'm half way through my late Overlord review and I've got fresh resolve to get more news up on BXB over the next few weeks myself and to try and drive my news team to work together and make the job easier for everyone involved!

Turns out Helene from Xboxliveaddicts also got awarded MVP status along with Lisa from XGZ. Both ladies do a hell of a lot for the UK Xbox Community and I'd like to congratulate them both once more!

...

Double Celebration...

Well, something has happened with blogging about so here we go!
BXB is soon to reach the impressive milestone of 1,000,000 posts! We're well chuffed and to celebrate we're holding a competition to guess when that 1,000,000th post will be made! Find Out More Here. (Also, I thought the Dr Evil reference was hilarious...)

Also, Lisa Bidder from XGZ has been made a Microsoft MVP. Basically, because she's brilliant! Well done to her and we've given her some appropriate credit on our front page. Read More Here.

So yeah, back to staring at torrential rain.

*goes back and removes the numerous exclamation marks*

200th Post!

Well, I've been so busy this week I've barely had chance to make my 200th post on my blog!

So, here it is. Woo. Go me. It's like a very low pools win. Well, what have I been doing over the last week? Honestly, diddly squat worth blogging about so here's just a press release abut June's traffic.

Britxbox.co.uk, Leicester, UK, 01 June 2007 - One of the UK's leading Xbox Community sites, www.britxbox.co.uk, today announced that traffic figures for the month of June 2007 dropped in comparison to May to 57,433 unique hits.

While down compared to May, the the figure is still in line with the results from the rest of the year, the 57,433 visitors to the site created a total of 518,161 page views.

Ashley Allen, Director for Britxbox.co.uk said: “May's figures were boosted due to our involvement in the Halo 3 Beta Competition and there's always a slight drop in traffic during the summer months so this comes as no surprise.”

Michael Rossell, Editor and Events Manager for Britxbox.co.uk added: “Our review coverage has been strong this month with our review of Colin McRae: DiRT being published before many of the larger sites including Eurogamer meaning BXB was the place to read about this awesome game.”

For more information on Britxbox.co.uk contact Editor and Events Manager on mike@britxbox.co.uk.

Review Overload!

Gah, hung over again. I need to stop going out, it's making me skint and just ill.

We've got a real review overload at the minute on BXB, it seems like every single member of staff is writing a review on everything from The Darkness to Armoured Core 4!

Just when we thought it couldn't get any busier, Project Sylpheed, Vampire Rain and Tenchu Z all arrived together and I had to do emergency phone calls and postal action to get them sent off to writers to get them back before release on Friday.

I've got Project Sylpheed to review and I've been playing it today. It's not bad but it's also not amazing. The controls feel like they were made for a Dual Shock Pad but there is a customisation option which makes it a little easier to play.

Visually the game is really good and the cut scenes are as dramatic, cinematic and as cool as you'd expect from any Square Enix title! So, really mixed feeling about the title at the minute.

We'll have our full review up before the week is out, along with loads of other games including The Darkness on Monday when the embargo gets lifted.

Keeley Karma Kalamity

See what I did with the headline? Clever eh? Still not as funny as The Sun's 'Con Heir' when Paris Hilton got locked up (Obviously).
Anyway, so I've just had a wireless network put in my house and my PC is running on it. There's been a few teething problems but it's all sorted now except for one thing...

It won't let me go to the galleries on www.keeleyhazell.com. Seriously, I can visit any website at any time and it works perfectly well, the moment I try and visit the Official Gallery for Keeley Hazell the network shuts off and causes my PC to crash.

How can the internet turn on me like this?! How can it stop me from looking at Keeley's boobs?! Just look at how awesome she is. Why oh why internet?! WHHYY?!



Is this some wierd karma thing telling me I need to get a girlfriend and stop looking at Keeley's boobs?

I hope not.

No Sh*t....

"Recent research by the BBFC showed that negative press surrounding controversial games actually encourages sales."

Feenix, want Chilli Sauce with that?

So, not a lot to blog about today. Had a crap day at work and posted a Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta Retrospective up on BXB.

So, to replace my normal blog enrty, I have this amusing picture I made...



Got the picture of the dude from CliffyB's Blog and slapped it over a picture of a kebab house. Made me laugh!

Gaming Frustrations...

Man, I'm slightly annoyed at all the games I'm playing at the minute and being not annoyed at them is going to take some effort.

Guitar Hero 2 - This is pissing me off because I'm stuck on a whole bunch of songs on medium. I'm trying to five star all the tracks but some are really tricky. I'm slowling getting my head around hammer on and pull offs what keeps messing me up is when you got a long string of the same note repeated over and over. I keep losing my rhythm with it randomly.

Halo 2 (PC) - It keeps signing me out of Live and I've already not been awarded the achievement for completing the 'Oracle' level and I'm going to have to replay it. I also got over half way through Delta Halo before it disconnected again. I tried to reconnect but when I reloaded the game it was right back at the beginning.

Commander and Conquer: Tiberium Wars - Just completed the GDI campaign by using the liquid tiberium bomb and I got the ending where you don't use it. What the frak?

See, individually, minor gripes, mix them all together and I'm just annoyed.

*Rant over*

Codemasters Love BXB!

So, we had our Colin McRae: DiRT review up yesterday, just as the embargo was lifted.

It did us good. We were the top viewed story on Newsnow and have also been featured on the Codemaster's website. Have a look-see here!

Codemasters have been great with the review code for DiRT as they got retail playable to us over two weeks before release meaning we had plenty of time to review the game and get it published.

So, kudos to Codemasters for sorting this out so well and I hope the same happens with Overlord as well. It's a shame that not all publishers can offer the same level of support with retail review code but different companies have different processes and I guess we just have to cope with them.

At the end of the day, Codemasters have secured bigger and better coverage from our site because of how much they've supported us and due to the fact DiRT is a wicked game.

We'll have a competition to win one of three copies up soon!

"Out of Office..."

When spamming publishers, developers and other industry types my e-mail account is usually rammed with "Out of Office" replies. None of them are ever funny.

Someone should do a funny "OoO" reply one day. It'd be great. Sometimes they tell me they have some blackberries and will be checking their e-mail on those, which sounds pretty impressive for fruit, but it's mostly pretty dull stuff like: "I'm Out of the Office until June 11th and will not be answering any calls".

On other occasions, it states that they'll be back in the office at the point I'm actually e-mailing them, which normally means they've left their Auto-Reply on, switched on their answer phone and may well be chatting up one of the many fit PR girls that inhabit the world or just playing Mine Sweeper.

I'm not that cool.

My "OoO" reply would read: I'm currently out of my bedroom and won't be answering my e-mails until I get back from work at Tesco and have had my dinner."

Slick Mike, slick.

Something You Don't Tell Your Clan

So, I was sitting and watching Xleague.tv the other night and they had some tournament on with eight gamers fighting it out in the Halo 3 Beta.

They played rumble slayer on all three maps and there were a few comedy moments including some hilarious grenade throwing and some of the worst commentary we've ever heard. At one point the commentator exclaimed: "What a great reload!"

At least we could laugh at the commentators, the presenters on the show were pretty stale including some dude from CVG who had fluff in his hair. I'm a famous telly-visual star now, get me on the show!

I actually got a rather pointless invite down to the Xleague.tv studios a few weeks ago but couldn't go because of UbiDays being more important.

What really made us laugh though was one of the gamers playing had a bit of a funny name that he really shouldn't be telling people about. His gamer tag is Ang3l (note the l33t 3 'and E' because he bought Xbox Live too late to get a decent tag) but his real name can be seen the photo we took of the TV when his "profile" was up.



That's right, his name is Da N00b! We laughed hard. Nice hat mate.

Gamecock. Seriously...

So, Gamecock Media Group. Now, I've got to say it's not what I'd say as a great name for a gaming company. I mean, use of the word "cock" is pretty silly in almost every single situation I can think of.

Including it as the name of your company, which has to go on top of formal things likes letter heads, business cards and press releases, will only lead to incongruious sniggers. So, when things couldn't get worse this hits Gamepress.

Cockpit, Austin, Texas – June 7, 2007 – Today Gamecock Media Group announced Firefly Studios’ Dungeon Hero will be releasing on the PC and Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. The first dungeon-based game to realistically depict underground life, Dungeon Hero promises all the danger, intrigue and daily routine of an actual subterranean community. Combining HD graphics with incredibly detailed environments completely immerses players in their newfound surroundings, complete with goblin cheese merchants, jailed troll miners and helpful imps just looking for peace.

“Dungeon Hero sets itself apart from every dungeon game that has come before it,” said Rick Stults, Console Chief for Gamecock Media Group. “We love the realism that the game portrays, the living breathing dungeon aspect is something unique that hasn’t been done anywhere before and that’s the key to the innovation we’re looking to promote.”

Dungeon Hero provides players with a fresh take on the classic dungeon based game. The in-game world is a totally functional, living, breathing community in every way. Eat, sleep, chat, socialize, trade and travel as you would in any civilized place – after all dungeon creatures are people too! Fierce adrenaline pumping close quarters combat against a multitude of enemies drives the player deep into their heroic role. The battle system is intense with savage encounters that will leave enemies wondering where they went wrong. Dark times call for one to stand against many, will you be the one strong enough to become the Hero of the Dungeon?

Ok, so all the sections I highlighted in BOLD are the bits I found amusing. To be honest, I only remember Dungeon Keeper and that was a pretty good games. So maybe I'm wrong to mock.

Gamercock. *sniggers* Goblin Cheese Merchants...*sniggers*

They are also based in Cockpit, Texas. *sniggers*

BXB Community Day 2007

Paintball. It's for pussies. If you want to find out what war is really like then you'll have to join Britxbox.co.uk's latest Community Day in association with Warfighters.

Warfighters is so damn realistic and exciting that we're not even bothering to get any Xbox 360s at the event because, frankly, it'd distract from driving around in hummers and tanks. BXB's Community Day 2007 is the chance to have a go at the latest war simulation as well as putting faces to the names of people in the Community you visit every day.

BXB's 2007 Community Day will be taking place on Friday August 31st at Willoughby near Rubgy in Warwickshire just a few miles away from J17 of the M1 and will begin at 9:30am and run until 4:30pm. Click here for maps and pictures of the events locaion.

The day will cost you £49.99, which includes a £10 discount on the full price and for your money you'll get a whole day of combat action without any of the hidden costs of paint ball or the bruises. For more information on what you get for your money, check out the Warfighters FAQ.

Michael Rossell, Editor and Events Manager said: “So, I bet you're asking why there aren't any Xbox 360s at this event? Well, to be honest, we got fed up of lugging massive TVs around and getting funny looks from attractive female sports students and decided to do something a bit more exciting than camping out in a darkened room for 11 hours.

“Warfighters is awesome. I was lucky enough to go to the recent Ubisoft GRAW 2 press day at Warfighters and was treated to a short taster of what it's like and I've got to say I really enjoyed it.

“The idea behind this Community Event is that it's like one of those annoying “Team Building” days you get sent on with your job except it's more exciting because you actually want to meet the people you'll be going with. It's a chance to put a face to the voice of your best Xbox Live buddy and secure ultimate bragging rights by shooting them in a very realistic combat scenario.”

Dave Thatcher, a slightly scary dude from Warfighters said: “Prepare for a challenging day of GRAW like missions and team objectives that will test your online gaming skills in the real world to the max!”

Click here to send an e-mail to mike@britxbox.co.uk and apply.

You'll then recieve an e-mail with a URL and login details to access the Warfighter website and book your places. Only two places are available per application, one and one guest, and receipt of the e-mail doesn't mean you'll get a spot on the day. You'll have to book as soon as possible to secure that.

Click here to check out our coverage of the GRAW 2 Community Day!

Head-Cam video footage from the Warfighters and Ubisoft Ghost Recon event taken by Clint from www.xboxgamezone.co.uk.

The Warfighters Official Website

Proper Famous Me!

So, after my awesome TV appearance yesterday (and on a repeat today) I've been bombarded with sexy fan mail from fitties from across the world!

Ok, so maybe that's a lie but I have had a surprising amount of people say to me that they saw me on the telly. People at work, friends and forum well wishers have all mentioned that they saw me.

Man, I love being on a proper TV show on a proper TV channel. It's cool.

Me on the Telly...Part 2

Reactions to my Gamer.tv appearance...

Well, it seems that my comments on Gamer.tv have struck a chord with someone as I've had a really quite amazing e-mail.

Hi Mike

I've just seen the episode of Gamer TV with you in it and I would just like to say well done its about time someone in the press has had the balls to truly say that they ever like or dislike a game, what makes it some what more cooler was the fact you were honest about the games at an event hosted by the publishers. It's been far too long that every thing has been hyper sterilised and processed in a way to dumb down what the consumer really want to know which is if it's really worth spending my hard earned cash on a game or not. I would just like to say again well done and I salute you for it.

Josh

Thanks for your very kind words Josh, I've always tried to tell the truth and be honest about things whether it's to my detriment or not.

I hope it's not those pesky "other Joypod" guys winding me up again!

Me on the Telly...

So, I woke up this morning nursing the increasingly common Sunday morning hang over, clambered out of bed and into my brothers room to watch Gamer.tv.

At the Ubidays event I was filmed giving some thoughts and opinions on the games featured by a Gamer.tv camera dude so I was looking out for their Ubidays Special in case they used my comments.

Well, they did. I checked the Sky Guide before it started and saw it was the Ubidays Special and set it to record and much to my surprise they used me quite a lot.

They've got me moaning about Brothers in Arms; being all cynical about Rayman Raving Rabbids 2; calling Jade Raymond a "fittie" and talking about how much we didn't get to play Assassins Creed.

To be honest, I was surprised they used anything I said because other than gushing about Naruto and End Wars, I was generally quite negative plus it was before I got into the games area and saw some of the titles so didn't have a great deal to say.

I'll see if I can sort out a video on Youtube!

Traffic for May 2007

I think the title says it all...

Britxbox.co.uk, Leicester, UK, 01 June 2007 - One of the UK's leading Xbox Community sites, www.britxbox.co.uk, today announced that traffic figures for the month of May 2007 have been the strongest results since resuming traffic tracking in January this year and have exceeded their expectations.

Britxbox.co.uk has recorded a total of 65,033 unique hits which have created 588,245 page views with an average daily unique hits sitting at 2097 with 20,889 visitors returning to BXB over 201 times over the last 31 days.

Ashley Allen, Director for Britxbox.co.uk commented: “We've been getting just under sixty thousand unique hits a month so far this year and with E3 downscaling and moving to June we were expecting similar results this month.

“However, our involvement with the Halo 3 Beta Competition as well as our coverage of the Ubidays event has helped pushed our number of unique visitors up by over 8 per cent.”

Michael Rossell, Editor and Events Manager said: “Our content continues to remain strong this month thanks to the Ubidays event and our coverage of the release of the Halo 3 Beta.

“Moving forward, we'll be announcing a new Community Day shortly as well as continuing to push our successful and exciting Monthly Community Contribution Awards which has now been supported by big name publishers like Capcom, Codemasters, Activision and Microsoft Game Studios.”

If you'd like any more information on www.britxbox.co.uk or would like to get involved with the Community Awards and forthcoming Community Day please drop an e-mail to mike@britxbox.co.uk.

Things seem to be on the up and up but with the summer months ahead, I expect they may fall off again.

Last Ever Joypod...

So, if you've been on BXB today then no doubt you've seen that Joypod 9 is our last ever Joypod. And if you've downloaded it then you'll know why.

Basically, there's another Joypod. It's about gaming and has someone called Michael in it. When we discovered this we get a little bit freaked out but some stuff suddenly started to make sence. I'd been getting these really odd e-mails which you can see below:

Hi Elmo,

Hope all is well. I can't believe the next show is going to be the last Joypod. I would just like to congratulate you on one of the finest gaming podcasts out there. Listening to the final show is going to be very hard for me and will be like watching the final episode of 'Keeping up appearances' in which IMO didn't feel like it was the right time to end such a timeless classic. The episode where a bee commits suicide during a recording will be a memory that will live on in my memory forever. Never will future encounters with bees be the same again, ever. You came from no where yet have achieved so much with this podcast and for that you must be so proud. So I wish you luck in the future and hope that you one day are lucky enough to get the break you deserve making a living from Joypod.

Will you ever return?

regards,

Adam Capone

And:

Hi guys,

Just listened to Joypod 4! Fantastic stuff, laugh out loud funny!! The best
gaming podcast around, without a doubt.

Elmo, see you online later (you slag)

love

sladie x

And finally:

Hey guys!

Just listened to the podcast today. What the hell was going on? Why did you put that version of my song on at the end? I really don't appreciate that at all!

Anyways, great guns from bath. Had a wicked time. Shame Michael couldn't make it due to being skint/shit at riding bikes, but ho hum.

The advert midway through for stan's t-shirts though. LOLLAGE! Michael. I always knew you were a massive geek too! 70% Geek!!! LOLED STICKS! Will be crashing your pods like mad when you come down to London for jolly ups.

Take it easy

CJ.

To be honest, I thought they were either coming to the wrong address, or just really elaborate spam and just decided to ignore them except for the one from Sladie which I thought was genuine and replied!

So, while preparing to do Podcast 9 the other night we were messing around on Google and happened to stumble across this page: Michael and Elmo's Podcast further investigation led us to another forum, where the "other joypod" people were discussing our Podcast.

The madness starts here on www.rllmukforum.com at post 469.

If you read the thread from then on you'll see myself, Spike, Slicker and Hallben all turn up and start talking to Michael and Elmo about their Joypod and inviting the guys onto our show.

So, that's why there's no more Joypods. Because we're going to rename our podcasts because someone else got their first and it featured a whole bunch of very weird coincidences. Also, check out episode 4 of their Joypod, as they talk about the 'other Joypod' about 23 minutes in. Great stuff.

So, moving forward we'll be having a new name for the Podcast and we'll be inviting Michael and Elmo to join us and talk about gaming. For the time being, you can enjoy our last Joypod featuring dedicated discussion about UbiDays 2007 as well as a Q&A featuring Jade Raymond, the sexy Producer on Assassins Creed.

Embargo My Ass...Part 2

As I stated in my previous post, I've now found out exactly what the crack was with the 5pm Embargo on UbiDays.

Chris Easton kindly explained that there was a slight communication mix up and that while the press conference stuff wasn't embargoed, hence Eurogamer publishing, the stuff from the second day was.

As I said to Chris, I appriciate that these things happen and that I'm grateful for being invited and for the effort Chris put in to get me there. Sadly, that doesn't change the fact that my preparations for getting the announcements out on BXB almost Live were totally screwed up and any chance of being first with the news had been lost.

Other than the fact I really shouldn't call people from Eurogamer "tossers" or risk becoming their office whipping boy, I'm not sure what other learnings I can take from this incident. Don't believe everything you're told? Knew that one already. Never presume anything? Knew that one too. Don't trust people? That's just harsh. Maybe it's double check everything...

So, to Tom and Ellie, I apologise and thanks for reading my blog!

So, swiftly moving on. We've just published our Splinter Cell:Conviction Preview. I thought it looked awesome!

Embargo My Ass...

Well, I've barely had chance to blog since my return from UbiDays as I've been really busy writing stuff about the event for BXB as well as making full use of the press pack!

We have a thread on BXB which is acting as a content link dump which you can view by clicking here. I also seriously recommend checking out our Naruto Preview here! We'll have more content coming from UbiDays soon and I'll be blogging in more detail tomorrow and Monday so stick around!

Ok, so these press events are always interesting learning curves for myself and this time I learnt something new. Eurogamer are tossers. It's pretty simple really. Myself and the selection of smaller fansites that were kindly invited to the event (thanks to the hard work for Ubi's Chris Easton) were told that everything we saw was embargoed until 5pm on Wednesday 23rd of May.

We all groaned a little but accepted it because everyone at the event was under the same embargo. Of course, it didn't stick. Look here, Eurogamer's sister site Gamesindustry.biz posted the Beowolf announcement literally minutes after it was revealed. Breaking the embargo.

None of us realised until Luke from Play TM came down from his hotel room on the second day of the event and told us Eurogamer had broken the embargo. Nexus.net's Nick Haywood was on the phone to his news reporter in the UK and told him to publish, I wasn't far behind.

Of course, we were over 12 hours late and on the internet, that might as well be a millenium. Apparently, Ubisoft were quite miffed at Eurogamer for doing so but thanks to the 1.2 million people that visit the site, they wouldn't dare do anything and risk losing Eurogamers coverage.

Me. If I'd have broken the embargo. I'd have probably never been supported again and for a site the size of BXB, that's very very bad news.

Perhaps in an ideal world, people will stick to rules and give us newbies a fighting chance. Then again, you could argue that Eurogamer breaking the embargo is what being a journalist is all about.

UbiDays Paris 2007

Well, I'm all set. I've packed my bags with interesting and useful things like shampoo, a toothbrush, at least two pens, some chewing gun and a spare video camera battery so I don't have another drama like Codemasters.

The plan is simple. Eat some fajitas in a minute. Go to bed after Heroes. Get up, drive to Loughborough Station, grab a train to St Pancras, tube to Waterloo and then the Eurostar to Paris. Should be good fun.

I'll be keeping in contact with the team back home to keep BXB's front page updated with fresh and exciting news as it breaks meaning you'll get all the news from the event as soon as it happens.

I hope to do a little sight seeing as well and want to go up the Eiffel as well as visit the Louvre and pretend to be in The Davinci Code for a while. Of course, I'll be getting hands on experience with games from Ubisoft including Assassin's Creed which I'm very excited about seeing.

So, my advice, get sat down in front of BXB for the next few days as we'll have so much exclusive content coming!

If I get a chance, I'll blog from Paris!

Perfect Night In...

Front and Pegg's Perfect Night In was on a week ago today. It was pretty funny and both myself and Ash remarked that it was stunningly similar to what we do when we "hang out" at his house in the evening.

(I seriously can't think of a better term than "hang out")

One thing that was very odd about Front and Pegg's show was that they didn't include anything on video games. They're clearly influenced by them, look at the episode of Spaced with the footage of Resident Evil and Tekken cut into it and used as part of the story.

I'd like to know why they didn't include video games. Channel 4 not thinking gaming is mainstream enough?

Anyway, the show has inspired myself and Ash to film our own 'Perfect Night In' which will cover our tastes and inspirations in movies, TV shows and video games.

We won't be filming for a while because I'm going to Paris on Tuesday for UbiDays but it should be a lot of fun producing something for the BXB Community.

Assault

Wow, what a rather dramatic end to an otherwise normal day at work. I feel like I'm living this weird parallel life to a certain someone who's name shall not be mentioned on my blog.

I'd just clocked out and headed to Provisions to see if a friend Nathan was going out in Ashby tonight. As I rounded the corner, I saw a guy I vaguley know attacking Nathan. He was going "chest to chest", Devvo style, before turning around and walking away. (and kicking over a pile of cardboard).

I was like: WTF?! I turned to ask Nathan what had happened when a customer asked for Hummous. I looked at Nathan and he asked me to help the customer so I took him to the hummous and walked back to ask Nathan what was wrong, and he said the guy had headbutted him.

Myself, Nathan's Manager and Nathan all went in persuit of the guy but lost him in the car park, he seemed to disappear into thin air!

Now, I've got to admit to feeling a bit stupid about taking the customer to the hummous when someone had just been assaulted in the store but Nathan hadn't told me because he was a bit stunned by it all. It was too late to go after the guy.

I've got to leave a statement in the incident book at work and the Police may want a statement as well. But seriously, who the hell thinks head butting someone in a busy supermarket is a good idea. Dickhead!

Sorry, I don't have any exciting pictures to illustrate this incident.