Our latest masterpiece reached the shelves of all good newsagents and supermarkets this morning featuring an Exclusive Review of Lara Croft’s latest adventure and many other fine bits and bobs besides. You can see a fuller list of this month’s great features and interviews here. Hope you all enjoy it and please register on the forum or write in if you have any feedback you’d like to give on anything in the mag.

The latest Issue of 360 magazine should be winging its way to subscribers this week ahead of it taking up space on shelves on Thursday. (more…)

In an exclusive interview with 360 Magazine (Issue 39, on shelves now), Braid creator Jonathan Blow revealed that he might never bother making another Live Arcade game after the drawn out process of bringing his award winning platformer to Xbox 360. While positive sales of the game may well change his mind in the longer term he suggested that the 360 architecture and Live Arcade’s certification process could actually be hurting the quality of the games being offered rather than improving it.

When asked how he found development Blow said: “The Xbox 360 is an easy platform to develop for, although I wish they would have gone with a single out-of-order processor rather than three in-order processors - because of that decision I spent a lot of time optimizing things in Braid that I wouldn’t have had to optimize on a PC.” However, it was Microsoft’s control of the service more than the tech of the Xbox 360 that was the real barrier. “I don’t know that I would ever make another XBLA game, though,” Blow revealed. ” The certification process is annoying and, I think, counterproductive for XBLA-sized games: it actually lowers the quality of the games, instead of raising it. Furthermore, the new business deal that Microsoft is purportedly offering makes it very unappealing for anyone but large publishers to bring a game to XBLA.”

As anyone who has played Braid can attest, Live Arcade could do with more developers like Jonathan Blow, not less. Hopefully his critique of the service will be taken seriously and changes can be made to make the lives of smaller developers easier.

For the full interview and even more info on the background to Braid’s development check out Issue 39 of 360 on shelves now.

Garrett - Thief: Deadly Shadows

Garrett was highly unfortunate not to make the final 50 in our Heroes poll, but alas he simply didn’t get enough votes. What makes him a stand out character though is his contribution to stealth gameplay. This is perhaps both a blessing and a curse. While the gripping set pieces are terrifying to play in Thief’s first-person view, it has contributed to a number of stealth sections in contemporary FPS titles.

We don’t hold it against him though as much like in the game he never asked for trouble, it just came looking. There’s something infinitely appealing about characters such as Garrett who don’t want to get involved, but get dragged into the storm anyway. While clearly cold and ruthless he avoids killing as best he can and takes great pride in his work. That’s something that anyone can respect, regardless of how bloodthirsty you usually are in such games.

While Deadly Shadows seemed to close off the series rather nicely there has been talk that Garrett or perhaps just the Thief series with a new protagonist will return. We would certainly welcome him back with open arms (and one eye on his hands - sneaky pick-pocket).

As I’ve said before we were inundated with votes for our 360 Heroes poll and I’d like to thank you all for your support. The final results took a long time to work out and as began to see certain characters rise to the surface others had to fall by the wayside. In the run up to the final 50 characters you voted for (which will be revealed in Issue 39 out August 7) I will be posting up some of the also rans who didn’t quite make the cut, but deserved a mention.

Richard B. Riddick - The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay

To include a character who essentially belongs to another medium seems like cheating a little, but this prequel to Riddicks movie appearances is actually an incredibly strong example of good charaterisation and development. Starbreeze has since gone on to prove that this was no flash in the pan with its work on The Darkness, but Riddick was the beginning of those achievements. It was perhaps his association with the Riddick franchise that ultimately hurt this character’s chances of making the final cut, but some recognition seems only fair.

So we finally held the prize draw for the 360 Heroes competition. The winner will walk away with an Xbox 360 console and five of the top games associated with the winning characters. (more…)

It’s been a bit quiet on the campaign trail as you may have noticed since polls closed on May 30. Frankly your response to our poll was a little overwhelming and we found the process of counting the ballots far more time consuming than we had imagined. As a result the results of the poll have been delayed by one issue and will be appearing in Issue 39 out on August 7. Here’s an update on what’s happened so far though… (more…)

I’m seriously stretching with a headline like that, but I’ve committed myself to keeping Tim’s trend alive. Anyway, little bit of Bad Company hilarity from the guys at DICE who have put together this Solid Snake piss take for their upcoming (and pretty cool) Battlefield game.

If you haven’t noticed already our World First Review!!! of Battlefield Bad Company is on the shelves right now. It’s well worth a look. The game I mean. And the mag too actually. Why not get both?

I’ll get my coat…

The RPG Competition from Issue 33 closed recently and with the final entries collated and the prizes organised we held the draw to find out who would be winning these fabulous prizes…

The winner is to recieve copies of Oblivion: GOTY Edition, Blue Dragon, Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey and Kingdom Under Fire plus a brand new Xbox 360 Premium. Jon Denton took the duty of drawing the winner, which weighed heavily on him…

Note our fabulous Competition Draw Wicker Basket. Anyway, Tim was next up picking one of our two runners-up who will also recieve copies of the five games…

As cool as ever. You would think there was nothing riding on the outcome. I handled the final runner-up, but the pressure was so much I stayed behind the camera…

The names of the winners will be announced in Issue 36, but if you’re one of them you can expect to hear from us very soon. Thanks for all your entries and keep an eye out for some more amazing comps in the future.

I learned this week that I really can’t stand going to Chinese restaurants (or indeed Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Vietnamese) with people who don’t know how to use chopsticks. It’s infuriating! Their inability to use these ancient and historically proven implements of food manipulation becomes the primary source of conversation and winds me up no end. People have been using these things for thousands of years (1600 - 1100 BC some people believe). They try for five seconds and give up.

It’s thoroughly embarrassing to have to sit there while we’re served our food as these apes shoot sweet and sour pork across the table as it slips from their grasp. Worse still is when someone inevitably claims they don’t see the point of them, that they aren’t worth using and starts shovelling down egg-fried rice with a spoon. The whole point of chopsticks is that they are more civilised and refined. You have to eat in small bites (good for preventing indigestion). You’re invited to share your food and pick at different dishes. They just don’t get it.

It’s not entirely different to those people who choose to attack games based purely on the fact they dislike the genre. However, in this instance the criticism can sometimes be beneficial. Games often need some outside thinking in order to evolve. Would Mass Effect have enjoyed its combat system if not for heavy criticism of turn based combat from critics of that style of gameplay? We’ll always have the pure genre games for the hardcore and that’s great, but so long as criticism of these closed off titles is informed and constructive it can be really positive for future releases. The same goes for us too. 360 Magazine evolves because of your input, so keep it coming and we’ll keep striving to match your expectations.