Xbox 360 Features

This week's topics:

Top 7… E3 announcements you missed – the stories and games that slipped right past us.

Nintendo’s E3 press conference – was a lot like last year’s, and we’ve got the audio evidence.

Prototype Super Review – Mikel finally admits he accepts bribes from Microsoft. And Activision. Oh and Sony. Probably Nintendo too.

And more!

Ever since the Xbox 360 arrived three years ago, the so-called next-gen era of gaming has been depressingly devoid of beautiful games. We’re not talking graphics, mind, we’re talking colors.

Another holiday shopping season is here, bringing with it the grim realization that, once again, the game industry has failed to learn its damn lesson. Just like every other year, seemingly every game publisher on the planet has decided to shove its biggest releases onto store shelves for the holidays, confident that they won’t be buried under the avalanche of every other publisher doing the exact same thing.

Can you believe it? T-Dar is officially half a year old! Dan Amrich from OXM and Scott Butterworth of PTOM fame team up with Chris and Brett to make this a podcast for the ages... if ages were determined by discussions about videogame presidents, Gears of War 2 and how to get kicked off Xbox Live.

We're not gonna lie – this is a sparse month for games. The biggest publishers are saving their biggest products for September, October and November, leaving August with a very short list to choose from.

Fear not, however, because scattered across the barren wasteland of the next four weeks are some very promising oases of gaming goodness. Some of these titles will be just enough to last through the end of summer, while others have the potential to keep you occupied – and happy – right through the fall, distracting you completely from Call of Halo or Fallout Rising 2...

Looking for categories like Best PSP Driving Game? Greatest Achievement in Control Layout, Artistic? Eastern European Developer Most Worth Watching in 2011? Then our end-of-year awards might not be for you.

GamesRadar's Platinum Chalices are different. We're not interested in checking off a massively tedious list of genres, platforms and technical subdivisions… we'd much rather focus on the stuff that makes this hobby, you know, fun. And reward whichever games delivered the most of that stuff.

So if you're looking for the best fan service, most satisfying gore or greatest achievement in old-school kickassery in 2010, you've definitely come to the right celebration. Let's get it started…

Hide and seek is one of the oldest playground games in existence. It only makes sense to translate the thrill of escaping your friends’ clutches into a digital form. After all, “don’t get caught” is a parameter gamers can instantly recognize.

It’s a simple premise that has expanded from outwitting a single enemy unit into outthinking collective AI.

Nobody likes to see a Game-Over screen. As if knowing you suck isn’t bad enough, some games rub it in by torturing you with really annoying Game-Over screens. What could be worse than having to watch your demise from multiple angles, or sitting through the same long-ass cutscene of the world ending every time you fail? Tack one of these onto a tough boss fight, and you have a perfect formula for gamer rage. We’ve hand-picked this

Thanks to two films - Chinatown and Blade Runner - every action game is practically required to have a Chinatown level. It’s not the Chinatown you see in real-life - a thriving community and marketplace established over a unique hybrid of  Western and Chinese culture – no, it’s all neon signs and gangsters, dragon statues and tile roofs. A lot of tile roofs. And it's usually in the future or

The whole point of E3 is for publishers and developers to show off their new games under controlled conditions. You know, to let them show them in the way they want them to be seen without journos choosing to show the flaws.

AND YET. We still get sent screenshots that look like someone deliberately picked them to make the game look bad. Look at these amazing examples of fail from this year's show