Genocide's Blogs

Avatars
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At first I thought the Avatars were absolutely stupid. They looked like a blatant rip off of Mii's or other online avatars etc. But then I thought about them as being a neat little novelty that adds a bit more personality to the Live service. Most people I've seen either try to create a 'cool guy' look, a recreation of themselves, or a really out there/weird avatar. I haven't seen a female avatar yet though.

Here's my one just for giggles:

GUI
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It goes without saying that the new user interface is alot better. The 3D backgrounds give it more depth compared to the flat blades in the old dash, and the new dark grey/bright green colour scheme fits nicely. Another good feature is how the dash displays the boxart of your last 3 games played as you hover over the "Game Library" option. It also displays the boxart while browsing through the marketplace, along with screenshots and additional game information like the developer, which is handy. Even the sound effects and loading logos have been sexified.

Installing
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So far I have only installed Mirrors Edge which was 5GB, although the loading times for campaign levels and time trials appeared to be cut down by around 50%. It's also a quick and easy process, you only need to press one button and in 5-10 minutes you can play. There are some negatives to this though, if you're trying to install Lost Odyssey (roughly 20GB) this will no doubt take up time and HDD space. Also Bungie recommends you don't install Halo3, as matchmaking is designed to load content off the game disc.

Marketplace
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In my opinion, the Marketplace appears to be more complicated than before. While previously you went straight to the Marketplace blade and had all the options right there in front of you (If you check it often you only ever had to check the new releases section) now you have to scroll for what seems like ages to get to the content you want. Also, at the moment I'm getting all kinds of weird "Could not retrieve information from Xbox Live" messages, or "This item is no longer available" popups, which happen while things load off to the side. This is quite an annoying interruption, but no doubt it will be fixed in the future.

Party
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The new party system is pretty neat, although I haven't tested it out very much. Mutli-user chats are a big improvement from having to switch to and from chats all the time, and the ability to launch games etc sounds neat. The "Photo Party" feature (that lets you share photos off any USB powered device) sounds cool, but will no doubt be abused...

I can only see this system getting better. No doubt Microsoft will tidy up the Marketplace, and when more content is available and more and more games make better use of the new features (Avatars, Installing) things will really start to kick off. Hopefully cool and cheap additions to the Avatars will be available soon, so I won't have to leave him with that "You know there's something wrong with that guy hat" - bonus points if you name where thats from.