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In the interests of being nice, it's time to show some support for some indie games. Obviously, only the good ones of course. A little more is needed than simply saying "Hey, I've just started programming Flash, can someone show me how to make an RPG?"

First up, Plain Sight, a Beatnik Games, XNA creation with a really nice style. Want to know how to play? You kill robots for points, but you only get them if you blow yourself up. The more points you have when you blow up, the more people you take out with your explosion, the bigger your points multiplier. Once you blow up, your points reset. Of course, you could just watch the Plain Sight trailer and see it explained in all it's technicolour glory.

Aether

I think that's the first time I've put up a literal title, but my brain's not coming up with anything witty for Aether.

stupid brain...

It's a slightly old (in web terms) link to a surprisingly delightful game. Swing through the stars as a young boy on the back of a monster as he discovers something or other about himself while stopping planets from killing themselves. That was my take on it from the 10 minute squeeze at lunchtime, but you can read more about Aether at Kotaku.com, or you could play the game, or you download a stand-alone version that's less likely to cripple your computer.

It's got nice music as well.

Good Xbox

There's some neat things that you can do with your Xbox that aren't exactly publicised to Johnny Public. Little tricks such as hooking it up to 2 screens at once, play online games for free, or support your iPod. Sound interesting? Read about the 10 Xbox 360 tricks Microsoft won't tell you.

Bad Xbox

A quite in-depth article entitled "Xbox 360 defects: an inside history of Microsoft's video game console woes", which pretty much describes what it's about. Not very concise, but it gets the message across. It's actually quite an interesting read, and brings up the face that Microsoft probably knew that their consoles were pretty defective before launch:

The defect rate for the machines was an abysmal 68 percent at that point, according to several sources. That meant for every 100 machines that Microsoft’s contract manufacturers, Flextronics and Wistron, made at their factories in China, 68 didn’t work.

And yes, I chose the pictures solely based on their contrast

Boo for you, Take-Two

I could almost make Poet Laureate someday... Without going into the details and having to post up about 500 links, the EA/Take-Two merger deal has collapsed, with EA walking away from it. As a result Take-Two's stock took a bit of a beating, falling something like 25%. EA got hit as well, but I guess their stockholders aren't money-grubbing chancers. Guess it sucks to be you Take-Two.

Make your own Sackboy!

Bloody hell this is a long post, but this last one's almost worth it's own. Make your own Sackboy! With pictures! Oh the possibilities...you just know there's going to be about a hundred of these at Halloween.