It seemed like the Xbox Live cull last night largely affected the nicer people of the world, as I encountered a complete bunch of thwunts online last night. Particular praise must go to MAULEDUP, who after taking a 2-1 lead in the first half of a game of FIFA, decided to pass the ball around his back four for the rest of the game, before sending me a message informing me to ’sell your xbox mate’. Lovely.

After trying a bit of ten-on-ten and having to abide a group of laughing chimps who found it funny to play with the offside rule switched off, I was actually hoping for a Live disconnect around my parts. No such luck.

As Tim sits behind me in the 360 pod playing Battle Fantasia, it struck just how little its cartoon animals and hooker-looking femmes fatale appeal to me these days. Perhaps it’s just a case of my tastes changing with age, but I think it might run a little deeper than that. Where once I had considered Japan the mecca of gaming greatness, now I look a little closer to home.

Sometimes I like to put things into lists in my mind, to pass the time. This morning, I decided to list the games that I liked that had been released since September this year. I’m basically a man with the brain of a child, it would seem. Anyway, I started at FIFA, and then it’s Midnight Club, Gears Of War 2, Fable 2, Guitar Hero World Tour, Dead Space and quite possibly Left4Dead, which arrived with us yesterday. Not one from Japan. And while the DNA of some - GH4 in particular - might find its origins in the East, the shift of power in the industry is impossible to ignore.

It’s not a new topic, but one worth discussing nonetheless. It seems crazy to me that I no longer dote on Nintendo and Capcom as I did in my adolescence. I still like the same types of games, after all. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I only like shooting people in the head. Guess I’ll just have to wait for Resident Evil 5 to find out.

 So, we in our ever-competitive office, have taken it upon ourselves to prove our manliness with Gears Of War 2’s Horde mode. The premise is simple. Normal difficulty. Blood Drive as the map. Just you, no team-mates. How long can you last?

We cordially invite you to join us. As proof, you’ll need to take a snap shot of the results screen when you finally give up, showing the level, players and score multiplier (as proof of difficulty).  Highest level will get a mention in the mag, and will live forever as the temporary, but much-revered, King of Gears Of War 2.

Let the bloodlust begin!

Some things never change. Another dull British summer without a game to play or a barbecue to eat comes to an unceremonious end. Normally, it’s a sad time, as the year’s unstoppable crawl towards Christmas sucks the very sun from the sky. But when you’re a gamer, winter’s pretty exciting. Too exciting, perhaps.I’ve just compiled a preliminary reviews list for our end-of-October issue, and it’s ridiculous: Far Cry 2, Dead Space, Fable II, Midnight Club, PES, Gears 2, Saints Row 2, EndWar, SmackDown, and a shed load more. All in one month. It’s hard enough trying to find space in the mag to fit them all in, but how the hell are we supposed to play them? It’s hardly a new phenomenon - the summer drought’s been around for ever, but this year the contrast is almost completely impractical - and that’s if you’re just a 360 owner! So, in order to keep you lot in the loop, we’ll be publishing our early impressions of all the winter games on this very blog, as and when we get them. Keep it locked to the 360 blog, and I’ll promise to never say that again.

OK. I’m obsessed with Rock Band. I love it. I always knew I would. Drumming is in my genes. But I can’t, CANNOT, do Dead On Arrival by Fall Out Boy on Expert drums. It makes me hate the world. Especially as if I have to listen to that ugly opening refrain again, I’m going to hurl my drumsticks through my wall straight into central Bournemouth.

So if you find my drumsticks… keep em.

It’s a monumental day here at Imagine Publishing. The planet’s greatest two Xbox magazines, 360 and X360, have joined forces to unite the world with the power of Rock. Yes, today is the day that Climb Dog is formed. Rock Band will never be the same again.

Apologies for the lateness, but a mixture of Champions League madness and general absent mindedness has been occupying my time. So, joining in with the fun, here’s my top 5 Xbox heroes. Yeah!

1. Niko Bellic (Grand Theft Auto IV)

It’s been said a million times before, but Mr. Bellic is the most rounded, believable and supremely well-written videogame protagonist ever created. In a world of one-dimensional gung-ho chumps, Bellic stands tall: a man with a real moral compass, a believable backstory and an awesome accent. There’s so much that can be written about GTA IV and its hero, that it’ll be a whole blog entry on its own. Watch this space.

2. Master Chief

Yeah, ok, he’s not deep or subtle, but Master Chief is a brilliantly designed icon. Bungie knows what it’s doing - this isn’t the faceless nobody some suggest - the way NPCs react to your presence (both hostile and friendly), the flashes of the visor and armour, the weapon set, they all help to build the legend, the myth of the Master Chief.

3. Mitsurugi (Soul Calibur)

I always go with the standard all rounders in fighters for some reason. Probably because they are first choice and normally have slightly angry looks on their faces. Misturugi, or The Mits, has both of these important features, and awesome hair. And he destorys everything al all that he touches.

4. Kim (Gears Of War)

You know when you just like someone for no discernable reason. This is how Kim and I became friends. He was, and still is, my character of choice in Gears, and it’s upsetting to think he won’t be appearing in the sequel, due to an extreme case of terminal death. But that little bald genius just makes me smile

5. James Sunderland (Silent Hill 2)

Bit more sensible this one. Such a dark, troubled figure. His mixture of everyman and twisted, sexually psychotic schizophrenic was, at times, dazzling. The quality ofthe dialogue could never match up to the concept of the character, but nevertheless, I’ ve never felt so disgusted to be controlling a videogame protagonist.

For the first few months of 2008, I semi-retired from First Person Shooters. I’d just had my fill after the deluge at the back end of last year. And to be honest, I didn’t really miss ‘em. But I’ve been playing the Battlefield: Bad Company Beta for the magazine (more on this at another time) and it’s got me back in the hunt. I’m back baby, with a 12 gauge in my hand, humping your corpse. As it were.

Now, as everybody knows, the 360 plays host to two competing monoliths in the online shooter universe, Halo 3 and Call Of Duty 4. Both have new map packs coming out this month (the COD one may well be up by the time you read this), and after my three-or-so month hiatus, tonight seemed like a good time to resurrect my floundering military career.

With any gap like this away from an online game, there’s always a worry that the community will have passed you by. That your skill set will never be on a par with those that never left. So with that in mind, I took my first tentative steps back into the modern battlefield that is Call Of Duty 4. A couple of rounds in, though, and it was like I’d never left. I’ve always been the guy that supports the team rather than leads it. I’m the dude that comes in second, and I’m ok with that. And I was back in my comfort zone again within minutes.

Call Of Duty doesn’t demand that you learn every inch of its maps to be good. It doesn’t need you to have a PHD in its arsenal, or to have written a thesis on its every exploit and game-breaking glitch. It’s an exercise in instinct and awareness, of cover and accuracy. If you have a basic level of skill, you can do well. And that’s why it’s brilliant. The new maps can’t come soon enough.

What of Halo though?It’s the polar opposite. That’s a game that needs to be studied, for all four corners of every one of its maps to be commited to memory forever, right? Well, maybe not. The rebalancing of the weapon set after Halo 2 has done wonders, meaning the Assault Rifle can legitimately kill anyone, and the 1-2-3 or gun, grenade and melee has regained its purity. It’s less of a weapon whoring exercise, and more a bout of ability and bravado. You still need to be good at Halo, of course. You just don’t necessarily need to be good at Halo 3. And what about the ‘moments’ it throws up? The combination of physics, animation and an innate comic timing lets Halo just throw the most audacious ‘omgs’ at you every five minutes. And then you can watch them again, cut them up and upload them. Brilliant.

There are three new maps coming up later in the month, and you can check out the next issue of 360 for an EXCLUSIVE (in caps, no less) preview straight from the horse’s mouth, Frank O’ Connor, Bungie’s very own content editor and all around awesome guy. You don’t get that sort of thing anywhere else.

So, there you have it. I’m back in the battle, and I think I’m going to be enjoying it. See you in the barracks, soldier.

While we are an Xbox magazine, there’s little point pretending that we don’t play games on other systems. A gamer’s a gamer, after all. And as such, I attempted to justify the £425 I shelled out for my PS3 back on launch, and decided to invest in Gran Turismo 5 prologue this weekend past.

Now, I’m not usually a fan of realistic racers. I can’t drive in real life and I’m far too impatient to potter Fiat Puntos around a test track for 6 hours. But Gt5’s so pretty! So I stuck it on, and after an hour and a half of installing, updating and patching, I finally got it. And do you know what? It’s ok. It looks amazing. It drives like 1998. And there’s bugger all content. But I knew all that. What I didn’t know is that Polyphony had stripped out the very reason Gran Turismo holds any interest to me whatsoever - chavving out cars with new engines and such. Being that I know less about cars than I do about Ecuadorian politics, this basic ‘buy stuff get faster’ system appeals to my limited cerebellum. But I couldn’t do it!

I had the taste for blood by then, though, and GT wasn’t enough to satiate it. So I strolled to Gamestation and picked up Forza 2 for a cool tenner. I was excited. This was going to be the car chavving extravaganza I needed. Except it wasn’t. It was a weird mix of hideous graphics and soulless gameplay. It reminded me of why I don’t like the subgenre in the first place. A tenner wasted.

So I thought I’d try Colin McRae DIRT. And it’s awesome, but it didn’t fill the void. It looks great, but it was too arcadey. I’m a fussy bugger, it would seem.

And after all that, what do I do? Go back to GT5. For ten minutes. Then I played Skate. What a way to waste a Sunday.