A reporter for the New Scientist was given a demonstration and some data regarding how Microsoft's hands-free sensor-based Xbox 360 control system, Project Natal, will work:

[Project Natal lead developer Alex Kipman] says Natal consumes just 10 to 15 per cent of the Xbox's computing resources and it can recognise any pose in just 10 milliseconds. It needs only 160 milliseconds to latch on to the body shape of a new user stepping in front of it.

The system locates body parts to within a 4-centimetre cube, says Kipman. That's far less precise than lab-based systems or the millimetre precision of Hollywood motion capture. But Douglas Lanman, who works on markerless 3D interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and is not involved with Natal, says that this will likely be accurate enough for gamers.

The system depends on a "50-megabyte software package that can recognise 31 different body parts in any video frame," and will know, according to Kipman, if you put your hand behind your back.

At E3 2009, Project Natal was announced as a device that would run off of its own processor and was shown to work with highly-detailed, blazingly-fast racing game Burnout: Paradise. Rumors that Natal no longer has its own processor coupled with this report that Natal needs 10-15% of the 360's juice, raise questions about where a game that was made to push the 360 to its limits without Natal would be able to support the Natal peripheral. That would seemingly diminish the ability to connect Natal to the highest-end games, though that's speculation we'd need professional game developers to weigh in on. Only they know how much Xbox 360 horsepower their games require.

The report makes no mention of the Natal using its own processor, an element it was recently rumored has been dropped and would explain why the Natal is now drawing on the 360's processor.

Supporting that theory of a removed processor are changes made to Microsoft's official Natal fact sheet since E3.

E3 2009:

"Project Natal" sensor. "Project Natal" is the world's first system to combine an RGB camera, depth sensor, multiarray microphone and custom processor running proprietary software that brings "Project Natal" experiences to every Xbox 360 console. The "Project Natal" sensor tracks full-body movement and individual voices, creating controller-free fun and social entertainment available only on Xbox 360.

CES 2010:

"Project Natal" sensor. "Project Natal" combines an RGB camera, depth sensor and multiarray microphone running proprietary software that brings "Project Natal" experiences to every Xbox 360 console. The "Project Natal" sensor tracks full-body movement and individual voices, turning you into the controller for social entertainment available only on Xbox 360.

Microsoft's body-sensing, button-busting controller [New Scientist via TechRadar]

How often do gamers commend the bravery of the people who make games for them to play? A gamer might respond: How often do the games they play give them reason to?

How often, though, do gamers, myself included, have trouble distinguishing bravery from stupidity, innovation from mistake?

Bravery is a value developers seldom promote. Bigger, we hear. Better, we're told. More badass, it's hyped.

Bravery? That commodity goes unsold. Yet last year I found bravery through another B-word: Banjo. I found it in a game that I mistook for stupid, for which I was stupidly mistaken. This was Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, a sequel from Microsoft-owned Rare studios, a game no one thought was slavishly copying its predecessors or other games, but a game that was possibly an evolutionary error. Again, my mistake.

The early Banjo Kazooie games, made in the 90s in the shadow of Super Mario 64, were character-based platforming games. You controlled Banjo the bear, who ran around in yellow shorts and a blue backpack that contained his bird-friend, Kazooie. You jumped. You squashed enemies. You collected shiny gold things. And while that all made the game a lot like Mario, it wasn't until Banjo's fourth game, the 2008 Nuts & Bolts, a game I played in 2009, that I realized how those early Banjos weren't just similar to Mario but similar to just about every other game. To put it another way, when I played Nuts & Bolts, I realized how different this new one was from just about every other game I'd ever played.

The difference between Banjo new and Banjo old wasn't what you'd think it was, had you tried the game early like I did or seen an ad or read a preview. The new game was bigger and — here's a nice b-word — beautiful, offering players some of the most vast and gorgeously designed cartoon 3D worlds ever rendered in a video game. Vast as the game world was, it wouldn't make sense to force the player to run through Banjo's world. While the game would require the player to squash enemies and collect shiny gold things, the player would be abetted in that adventure with vehicles: Cars, planes, tanks. Just as the railroad, the automobile and the passenger plane made our great Earth small enough so that we could traverse it like 17th-century settlers in a village, Banjo's vehicles would make his great world down to the scale of his earlier ones.

Nuts & Bolts would be a platformer with vehicles — that was the innovation, yes? Or, to some, that was the ruin. Change our games for sequels, gamers chant, but the backlash sometimes betrays them: Don't change them too much. Banjo needs a floating platform on which to jump to, right? Cars don't jump onto floating platforms, not well.

Rare pitched another innovation with the new Banjo, one that easily aroused suspicion. This new game, they showed, would let gamers create their own vehicles, opening access to a garage of collectible fenders and engines and wings and egg-shooting guns. Wheels, tired, fuel tanks, springs, armor, chairs, trays, rear-view mirrors and rocket engines. Plug them all together and don't think too much about how user manipulation of content might interfere with tight, careful level design. For those of us who liked being led through a Banjo Kazooie obstacle course of a level, it now seemed we'd have to do more of the work ourselves, not only going through the course, but constructing our means to do so.

Rare conceded one cheat: They'd make some vehicles for the player, make it easy. You don't need to build your own, they said. You don't need to customize your cars, trick out your rims, pretend you're playing LittleBigPlanet or do your own mash-ups. Just play with what we give you, if you must. That's how I decided to play.

So early last year, I put Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts in my Xbox 360 and started to play and started to get disappointed yet again. This was not the Banjo of old, the one I knew I liked and had recognized it wouldn't be. But it was also something that didn't feel like a good change. First impressions, thankfully, can be wrong.

I played with custom vehicles, driving my Banjo car or flying my Banjo plane across a field or through some giant innards of a computer, collecting shiny things and hauling stuff. I found some racing levels, and frowned. Rare had said that we shouldn't worry that Nuts & Bolts was a racing game, despite the addition of racing levels. But, oh, here was racing.

Then, a turn happened, both in the game and in my attitude. And it happened on a racing track. The old way you play games — the way I first attempted to play Nuts & Bolts for a few hours — is that you try a level or a mission and, if you fail, you try it again. Maybe you gain experience points, your character levels up and it gets easier. Maybe, more often, you just try it and try it and get better, learn the intricacies of the mission or level, and finally you get it. That's how it normally works. That's how I've approached Mario games. That's how I've approached Banjo games. That's how I've approached racing games.

In Nuts & Bolts, however, in one mission, I kept failing. I couldn't win a race. The other racers passed me every time. I messed up the same turns. And I probably could have overcome all that by trying and trying and trying again. But the lightbulb went on. I went into the Nuts & Bolts garage. I started rebuilding my vehicle. You construct these vehicles as if you're making Lego builds, bolting on cubes and cones, latching one part to the next. I was having trouble making a turn? I'd reshape the fender. A guy was passing me on the sides? I'd add a gun on the side to shoot him away. I was falling behind? I added an extra engine, some extra fuel and then lightened the chassis so I was still swift enough.

I didn't get better at the game. I made myself better at the game — by making something better for myself.

And I didn't only have to do it in racing levels. I could do it in collection levels. I did it in aerial dogfight levels. I made planes when I think they thought I'd make helicopters. I made an absurd transforming boat when I think they thought I'd use a car. I mad a vehicle that could bounce over my enemies instead of fighting them. I took glee and breaking things apart and solving problems my way.

That's how I discovered the bravery. This wasn't a game designed for me to sit back and play it, nor was it a game that allowed me to make some simple tweaks. This was a game that presented some problems and, in a manner of speaking, gave me the ability to break it, to hack it, to re-set the rules by re-setting what my character could do. It would be like allowing a player to give Mario a gun or offer Lara Croft a jetpack. Or, it would be like allowing Master Chief to suddenly be a foot shorter if there was a level in Halo where he needed to be harder to hit or if, in Madden, I could change the shape of the football to match my technique and get the bounce I wanted.

My Banjo discovery changed the way I played the game. It also changed my view of the kinds of problems we face in games and the ways with which we might be given the opportunity to address them.

What I thought was a mistake of design revealed itself to me as bravery, as a developer willing to concede control to its player, willing to let its player mess with its game. This wasn't classic Banjo. This wasn't classing anything. This was new. This was bold. This was brave and maybe the best thing about 2008 gaming I experienced in 2009 or any other year, a breakthrough I couldn't appreciate in an hour of playing time, but that I found at long last.

Back in late December, David Ellis and John Davison from the 4 Guys 1UP podcast mentioned that this is something Microsoft would do.

This decision, sources tell Games Industry, does not affect the existing 100ms system lag. However, the decision to go with a software solution will enable Microsoft to update in a regular and consistent fashion.

According to Games Industry, the majority of the processing chip work will be done by one of the three main Xenon processors. A percentage will be lost, but most games don't use a hundred percent of processing power.

"The full Natal hardware/sensor combo always looked like an expensive proposition in a market where Microsoft really needs to turn a profit," Digital Foundry editor Richard Leadbetter told the site. "The notion of offloading the processing to the 360 CPU in the name of lower costs and easier upgradability makes sense.

"Patching up older games to run with the new hardware now looks rather unlikely unless they have the CPU time to spare, but hopefully this will serve to focus developers on Natal-specific concepts as opposed to revisiting old classics."

GI points out that in support material Microsoft distributed for the recent keynote, the company hinted there was no longer a single chip solution, stating, "A proprietary software layer makes the magic of 'Project Natal' possible."

The decision to use a software solution will also ensure that Microsoft can release Natal at a competitive price point.

Microsoft drops internal Natal chip [GI]

Sure, most of it is fluff, but you'll catch glimpses of how the camera is able to "read" a three-dimensional space and follow your movements accordingly.

To date, around 39 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide, while there are 20 million people on Xbox Live (no disclosure was made on how many are Gold subscribers). Odd, you would have thought the ratio on that would be much higher considering Xbox Live is one of the console's main drawcards.

As for those Xbox Live users, 10 million have used non-gaming applications like Twitter, Facebook and Netflix. Only half? Again, would have expected it to be a little higher.

Rounding out the numbers was news that 500 million Xbox 360 games have been sold since the console's launch. That's nearly 13 per console. Not bad.

Microsoft's press release concerning the new Xbox Live service says the Game Room will be a "place to relive the glory days of arcade games", and over the next three years will see the release of "over 1000" retro titles. It'll also serve as a kind of "mini Home" for your 360 avatars, as each user will get their own arcade area that can be customised and, no doubt, upgraded (for the right price).

Interestingly, the Game Room will carry a two-tiered price structure. You can buy a game for between 240-400 Microsoft Points, or if you really want that old arcade feeling, you can pay 40 Microsoft Points and play the game once, like it was 1985 and you'd just dropped a quarter. Only, now it's two quarters.

It'll be out in the "Spring", and from here on we'll stop calling it "Xbox Game Room", as it'll be available for the PC as well.

Nothing more specific than that was offered, but we take "holiday season" to be "November". Guess the motion-sensing peripheral's other important aspects - namely its price, included games and final name (remember, "Project Natal" is just a working title) - will have to wait for E3.

In fact, we wouldn't be surprised to see some more firm dates applied to both Project Natal—maybe even getting a peek at some non-game related demonstrations—and Game Room, confirmation of which leaked earlier today. Read on for our up to the minute liveblog of Microsoft's CES keynote if you want to know what Steve Ballmer and crew will be doing for the next hour.

"In terms of Natal, there's a lot of creativity we're going to unleash," Bach said as part of anew, leaked Microsoft-produced video outlining the company's 2010 plans. "We're going to start it in the context of Xbox, but even in the context of Xbox it's not just going to be about games. It will be a much broader context for people. People will think about that as entertainment, not just about games. "

As president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, Bach oversees Microsoft's Xbox, Windows Mobile and Zune teams, among other groups. From that high level view, he grouped the Xbox's Project Natal, the hands-free gaming camera/sensor/microphone full-body control system that his company debuted at the last E3 gaming trade show, with other "natural user interface" projects and concepts underway at Microsoft.

"For us, interacting with technology in the most natural way possible that can be voice, it can be touch, it can be multi-touch, motion, there's all kinds of different ways for people to do that... the closer we can get our technology interface working that way, the better off we are."

Bach declared that 2010 has the potential to be one of the Xbox 360's "biggest years yet." He mentioned the forthcoming Halo: Reach and Natal as two reasons why. Of Natal, he added: "That has the potential to be magic. There's still a lot of work for us to do, but I think there's tremendous potential there."

Natal's magic will be transformative, he added: "I think [Project Natal] is going to revolutionize how people think about the gaming business and actually turn it into an interactive entertainment business. I think we're finally going to get there where people can break the mold of [makes airquotes] gaming and get to real entertainment."

We'll have more CES, Microsoft and Natal coverage as it breaks.

More specifically, that's from the quickly pulled video, originally posted on Microsoft's On10.net and Channel 9 video blogs. In that video, Bach is said to have discussed a "one stop shop for retro games," according to a tipster who saw the video before it was pulled.

If true, that sure sounds a lot like the Atari and Intellivision game-filled arcade populated with Xbox Live Avatars that leaked in a survey late last year. At the time, the names RetroCade, RetroGame, Game Preserve, Game Gallery, Tower of ROM, Tower of Game(s), Classics and Classics LIVE were all competing against what sounds like the final winner, Game Room.

Microsoft's CES keynote is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 PM PST. We'll be liveblogging the event from the show, so check back to see just how much of a rumor this really is.

Thanks to Ian for the heads up!

Update: Looks like the video interview wasn't fully removed. Bach does confirm the Game Room addition to Xbox 360.

"It's sort of a retro approach. It's interesting, there's a generation... who grew up with a set of games like Centipede," Bach says of Xbox Game Room. "They look almost like casual, fun games today, at the time, they were high-end, edgy games. So Game Room is the idea of bringing that back to the market."

He also describes the Xbox Game Room as "like my daughter going to watch Journey." Hopefully that actually means Journey the video game will be playable.

The Army of Two: The 40th Day trailers continue to come fast and furious as EA gets the most out of its CGI budget in placing fake Salem and Rios in various humorous situations. As a former GameStop employee, I can see the funny here. I'm just glad that they never let us show up for work armed, as many Atlanta-area teens would have found themselves orphaned as a result.

Today's Gold Box deals on Amazon seem to have some sort of fitness theme, with one exception. They've got the Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition FightStick at 40% off for the next hour. That's a $149.99 item for only $89.99, which in my book is a complete steal. So much so that I've finally caved in and purchased one myself. Having secured my own, I now open it up to the rest of you. Yes, I am a shopping bastard.

You might want to hurry, as that percentage meter is rising rather quickly.

Update: AS of 10:20 Kotaku time, they are gone. Hope you got one!

Amazon Gold Box Deals [Amazon.com - Thanks Skarecrow13]

Note: data covers the 2009 calendar year, and overall ranking covers from 2005 to 2009. Launch dates are noted when appropriate.

2009 Xbox LIVE Arcade Top Ten Titles
1. Virtual On Oratorio Tangram ver.5.66 (4/29/2009)
2. Battlefield 1943 (7/8/2009)
3. Castle Crashers (8/27/2008)
4. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (7/29/2009)
5. Trials HD (8/12/2009)
6. R-Type Dimensions (2/4/2009)
7. Shadow Complex (8/19/2009)
8. IKARUGA (4/9/2008)
9. THE KING OF FIGHTERS'98 ULTIMATE MATCH (7/1/2009)
10. Mega-Man 9 (6/24/2009)

Overall Top Ten
1. Castle Crashers
2. Virtual On Oratorio Tangram ver.5.66
3. IKARUGA
4. Bomberman LIVE
5. Battlefield 1943
6. Trigger Heart Exelica
7. UNO
8. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
9. FATAL FURY SPECIAL
10. Rez HD

2009 Top Ten Demo Downloads
1. BAYONETTA (10/15/2009)
2. Lost Planet 2 (8/19/2009)
3. Forza Motorsport 3 (9/24/2009)
4. Left 4 Dead 2 (11/3/2009)
5. NINJA BLADE (1/5/2009)
6. Resident Evil 5 (12/5/2008)
7. H.A.W.X (2/11/2009)
8. Magna Carta 2 (7/24/2009)
9. Halo Wars (2/5/2009)
10. Time Leap (6/18/2009)

Overall Top Ten Demo Downloads
1. Resident Evil 5
2. ACE COMBAT 6
3. Lost Planet
4. BAYONETTA
5. Tales of Vesperia
6. Eternal Sonata
7. NINJA BLADE
8. Tenchu Senran
9. ARMORED CORE 4
10. Rainbox Six: Las Vegas

Games on Demand (from 2009)
1. Earth Defense Force 3 (9/8/2009)
2. THE iDOL@STER (8/11/2009)
3. THE iDOLM@STER Live 4 You! (8/11/2009)
4. Bullet Witch (8/11/2009)
5. RAIDEN FIGHTERS ACES (11/17/2009)
6. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (10/6/2009)
7. Virtua Fighter 5 Live Arena (9/15/2009)
8. Armored Core for Answer (10/13/2009)
9. Tenchu Senran (9/22/2009)
10. Senko no Ronde Rev.X (9/8/2009)

2009 Top Ten DLC Downloads
1. THE iDOLM@STER Live 4 You!
2. Dream Club
3. THE iDOLM@STER
4. Fallout 3
5. Otomedius Gorgeous!
6. Ace Combat 6
7. Street Fighter IV
8. Tales of Vesperia
9. Record of Agarest War: Re-appearance.
10. Rumble Roses XX

Overall Top Ten DLC Downloads
1. THE iDOLM@STER
2. THE iDOLM@STER Live 4 You!
3. Ace Combat 6
4. Dream Club
5. Rumble Roses XX
6. Tales of Vesperia
7. Soulcalibur IV
8. Fallout 3
9. Otomedius Gorgeous!
10. Beautiful Katamari

2009 Top Ten Game Clip/Trailer Downloads
1. Dream Club Debut Trailer
2. Metal Gear Solid Rising E3-2009 Teaser
3. Dead Rising 2 Trailer
4. Dream Club "Yumemiru CagedBird" song (HD)
5. Gears of War 2 "Rendezvous" Trailer
6. Dream Club "Zettai Idol Sengen" song (HD)
7. Capcom Top Secret Announcement (Lost Planet 2 trailer)
8. X Blade Japanese language trailer
9. Magna Carta 2
10. Assassin's Creed II Japanese subtitled E3 trailer

Overall Top Ten Clip/Trailer Downloads
1. Dream Club Debut Trailer
2. Resident Evil 5 2007 Trailer
3. Metal Gear Solid Rising E3-2009 Teaser
4. Tales of Vesperia First Trailer
5. THE iDOLM@STER TGS 2006 Promotional Movie
6. Star Ocean 4 Trailer 2
7. Dead Rising 2 Trailer
8. Star Ocean 4 Trailer 1
9. GUNDAM OPERATION TROY (HD)
10. Last Remnant Trailer 2

Xbox LIVE マーケットプレース、2009年＆累計で一番ダウンロードされたタイトルは？ - ファミ通.com [Famitsu]

Yes, sometime today, Sega and Microsoft will pull the plug on one of the early cult favourites of the Xbox 360. It may seem hard to remember now, but back in 2006 - when the game was released - 360 releases were staggered, so there was always a "half decent" game to play every month or two.

Which meant Chromehounds, a game that really wasn't very good, nevertheless enjoyed some time in the sun, if only because there wasn't much else to play at the time. For that, it will have made fans, and today, our condolences go out to those fans.

The rumored expansion became official reality this morning, and now BioWare has posted this trailer along with some additional information at the expansion's website. The most exciting news for me is the five new companions who'll fight by your side, as exploring my companion's backgrounds was almost more exciting than the overall adventure in the main game. That, and the return of a certain jocular Warden who missed out on the tail end of my particular play through is quite welcome indeed. Maybe he'll bring back my damn Blood Dragon armor, the ass.

That means if you have the dough now, you can save yourself $15 later. I'd say this is a run-go-get it deal. No telling when it expires, or when they run out of stock at this price.

Xbox 360 Live Subscription Gold Card [Amazon, seen via Blast]

The action game directed by Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya offers a new alternative, but a familiar gameplay style for the fan of Capcom's shoot and slice 'em up series, something new for the Ninja Gaidens and God of Wars of the world to aim for. And it's not just Bayonetta's weapon arsenal, though she can wear a gun—or claw or ice skate or bazooka—on each hand and each foot, leading to a dizzying array of combos. She can also exact vengeance on her angelic foes with the magic of her hair, the black locks that act as both costume and, when needed, a giant, enemy shredding beast.

Is this action heroine a welcome addition to the Dantes, Ryus and Kratoses of the genre?

Loved
Witch Time & Quad Damage: The best aspect of Bayonetta? The deep, fluid, play-to-your-preference combat, made all the more interesting by a wealth of weapons, combinations and the delightfully fun Witch Time. That's the dodge at the last second mechanic that lets Bayonetta hack and slash and shoot in her own take on now-classic bullet time. Witch Time is meant to be used liberally, via a well-timed flick of the right trigger, and makes experimentation with Bayonetta's move set and weapon suite—whips, swords, shotguns, et al. applied to both hands and feet—tons of fun.

A Dull Moment? Why I'd Never! Action game fans will not hunger for over-over-the-top frenzied gameplay in Bayonetta. The game administers a constant drip of high octane fisticuffs, swordplay and gunplay that manages to regularly one-up itself over the course of the game's substantial length, throwing at the player more and more spectacular bosses and ridiculous circumstances for Bayonetta to effortlessly overcome. Not that these the player will find the gameplay effortless, necessarily—more on that later—but whether Bayonetta is battling Angels twenty times her size, riding on the back of a rocket, or surfing the lip of a mile-deep whirlpool, she does it with cat-like grace that juxtaposes beautifully with the chaos flooding the screen. Thanks to the game's ornately and cleverly designed part-angelic, part-demonic bosses, Bayonetta is (almost) never dull.

Visual Style: Bayonetta's gilded and glitzy aesthetic will likely have as many detractors as fans. But I'm a fan of the game's Vegas Strip visual intensity and costumes as subtle as Liberace's stage wear. It's gaudy, silly and full of impractical designs, but it's rarely if ever brown and boring. Bayonetta's personal appeal, as illustrated through her hip-thrusting and long-legged kicks, may wear thinner by the end of the game—as does the black witch hair offering titillating glances at her nether parts—but it is at least refreshing not to see a protagonist brooding and bulky.

Normal Is Normal, Hard Is Hard: At its default level Bayonetta offers a challenge. Certainly not an insurmountable one, but enough pushback from enemies and numerous bosses to make the game as hard as games like this should be. Platinum Games is generous with checkpoints and saving opportunities, offering two levels of difficulty above "normal." Having failed often in the next difficulty level up, I'm fairly confident that even gamers better than me will find an appropriate challenge in "hard."

Vs. Jeanne: Though they may be the least visually impressive of Bayonetta's many encounters, the battles with her white haired foil Jeanne are often the most interesting from a pure gameplay perspective. These hand-to-hand fights against Bayonetta's equal require some of the most demanding reflexes, offering the most intense battles. It was against Jeanne that I learned to appreciate Bayonetta's battle system and weapon switching. It's also against Jeanne where you'll use the wall-climbing Witch Walk mechanic most.

Heaven or Hell: Bayonetta is fortunate enough to have access to multiple realities, letting her access portals to Alfheim and to the Gates of Hell. The former lets players take part in mid-chapter battles of a puzzle-like nature, restricting them to a certain number of punches and kicks or to Bayonetta's Wicked Weave hair-based magical attacks. If you want to really play Bayonetta, unlocking everything, you'll find an impressive challenge in the hidden Alfheim portals. The Gates of Hell ensures that players will want to return to a "new game+" playthrough, purchasing and unlocking everything. In the Gates of Hell, all new weapons, techniques and accessories await the player. And given their price, it may be a long time before the Bayonetta fan has seen everything on display.

Devil May Cry Too: Look, if you like Devil May Cry, you're most likely going to love Bayonetta, the spiritual successor to the Capcom franchise that has varied in fan reception over the years. Hideki Kamiya, director of Bayonetta and the original Devil May Cry, also takes time to include nods to some of his other games, like Viewtiful Joe and Okami. But if you simply enjoy the Devil May Cry upgrade and combat systems, you're going to find much of Bayonetta fondly familiar.

Sega Throwback: And if you happen to be a Sega superfan, the publisher of Bayonetta's past is also well referenced. The gags aren't worth spoiling here, but a handful of Bayonetta's weaker, gameplay-switching chapters are made infinitely better by goofy nostalgia.

Hated
The Ugly Sister: As followers of the game are likely aware, the PlayStation 3 version falls well behind its Xbox 360 sister in a handful of technical aspects. There are frame rate and loading issues with the PS3 version, both of which detract from the fluidity of the experience, particularly if one spends time with the 360 version. The loading frustrations are not just limited to between-chapter breaks, either, as the game will pause to load when picking up items. The Xbox 360 version, while mostly consistent in its frame rate, suffers from some noticeable screen tearing. It's more obvious during the quieter periods, not as much when engaged in battle.

Lock Off, Featherface: Bayonetta's camera is a chore to deal with at times, sometimes pulling the view away from enemies at crucial moments. It's slow to catch up or control at others. The default setting for camera manipulation is painfully slow, something the user can tweak, but it's the reliance on locking-on to an enemy for reliable camera angles that can be frustrating.

It may be difficult to convey how much fun it is to play Bayonetta without touching on the thousand things that make the game memorable. Over the course of my first 16-hour play through of the game, Bayonetta showed me one ridiculous cinematic battle after another. The game's memorable, puzzling bosses may be the biggest draw for their visual spectacle, but it will be the deep, fluid combat that will keep action game fans hooked after the visual splendor wears off.

Now, Bayonetta does have a hitch or two. The story driving moments that interrupt all that action wears out its welcome quickly. A handful of verses that involve driving sequences and controlling mounted turret guns detract from the overall experience. Especially the turret gun nonsense. Fortunately, those cut scenes can be skipped. Turret gun sequences should be given the same courtesy.

For the gamer not put-off by the Devil May Cry school of design, there's much to like in Bayonetta. It's a ludicrous, oversexed romp that one shouldn't take too seriously, just as its creators seemed to have done. But Bayonetta should be enjoyed immensely.

Bayonetta was developed by Platinum Games and published by Sega for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on January 5. Retails for $59.99 USD. Two copies of the game were purchased for reviewing purposes. Played Xbox 360 version to completion on Normal difficulty, further testing Hard difficulty. Played first three chapters on PlayStation 3 version.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Pricing for me, in these here United States, is $19.99 USD and the downloadable version of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts necessitates 6 GB worth of bear and bird storage. Me? I already have a copy (or two) and don't feel the need for another, despite liking the game enough to not outright dislike it.

You? Are you on board with these Games on Demand releases? Or would you rather have a disc, a toxic green case and a manual to never read?

Games on Demand: Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts [Xbox Live Marketplace]

The demo, available tomorrow on Xbox Live and Thursday on PSN, features a teaser level that will see players participating in aerial dogfights, running and gunning, and taking advantage of the game's unique vertical cover system. It sounds a lot like what we've played at various industry functions in the past, so it should give gamers a good idea of what to expect when the game ships later this month.

I've not been too thrilled by what I've seen previously, but releasing a game demo in advance of the game's release is a good sign of Capcom's faith in the title. I'll likely give it another go tomorrow, to at least see how things have been shaping up.

I'm not sure how well I'll be able to handle multiplayer in EA's Army of Two sequel. I prefer online multiplayer shooters where no one realizes I am doing horribly until the score board comes up at the end of the round. You know, games like Resistance, where so many people are fighting there's a good chance they won't even have time to see your -1 kills at the end (stupid roofs.)

Being integral to another player's success should definitely give me a chance to showcase my skills. Unfortunately those skills are limited to dying and shouting creative obscenities like "cock doctor."