1 Minute Madness is a new initiative from Lazygamer.co.za that gives you, the reader, a no-bull****, straight to the point mini-review of a game that may not have been able to warrant a full review (or we are just too swamped). The idea is to create a review that explains every basic aspect of the game and give you a …

[WARNING: Excessive use of bad language and violence against common household items] Anyone who has had a taste of online gaming will know that there are some seriously strange people out there. Join any American game however and you will usually be treated to an absolute barrage of high-pitched, whiny, disrespectful little monsters who do nothing but scream and shout about how they are going to own you and how everytime you owned them was only because of lag, luck or a whatever else they can think of. I have posted a video after the jump that is not what I would call "office friendly" as it involves a young american kid who has possibly the worst anger management problem that I have ever seen and his language will not impress your boss, so you have been warned. It really got me wondering about these kids, at the risk of sounding like all of our parents I ask: What has happened to the kids of today? ...The guy above might seem a little familiar to you, it's because there was a previous video up a while back of him playing Halo 3.... Games are supposed to be about having fun but it seems that so many people have just gotten so obsessed with proving their amazing skills that the concept of gaming for fun seems to be lost altogether. It's a sad day to see a young person having such an incredibly bad time with a game when we all know that we should all be relaxing and enjoying it.... He spills coke, further breaks his headset, cracks his Halo 3 poster and in what must be the most amazing moment of self-pwnage, actually manages to get the microphone of his headset shoved halfway down his throat (See it to believe it - 5min 18 secs in).... I myself have been having some frustration problems with control schemes and online issues with some of the more recent games but to take it out like these guys do is utterly ridiculous.... This sort of play is getting out of hand to the point that there are a few games that I have at the moment that I am playing online with public international matches because I am so tired of the guys who want nothing but to win, that I would rather suffer with a second of lag and play with a bunch of Japanese folks who just want to have some fun. It really does make a statement that I would rather play with people that I don't understand, with a second of lag, rather than have to sit through round after round of players who only use cheap tactics, camping and assorted other methods so that they can top the scoreboards. Thanks to all of those people, I just stopped playing a lot of the games that I really enjoyed and have now resorted to only playing with close friends that I know I can relax with.... It means that if I want to play online with random people, I don't get to choose between the hardcore no-fun bunch or the relaxed games just trying to have some fun. So the next time you are playing a game and being a douche-bag, try to remember that it's all about having fun. If your concept of fun is sitting in a corner surrounded by trip mines, up a hill with a sniper rifle and every sort of cheap trick you can think of to get to the top of the scoreboards, then you need to have a slap sent your way because nobody likes it and no one will go to be thinking about how cool you are.

If you, like me were one of the people that forked out a bunch of Microsoft Points to get your hands on the beat-em-up title Castle Crashers on Xbox Live, only to find out that the best part (online co-op) was plagued with connectivity and lag issues, then this is a bit of good news. There was no doubt that the biggest reason for anyone connected to Xbox Live to get the game was to experience the great arcade action that the game had to offer together with some friends. We all downloaded the game, started playing and were then hit with a ton of issues. This lead me to the decision to pretty much leave the game alone until a patch came out to fix it so that I could properly enjoy the experience that I had been looking forward to for so long. Problem is, that the patch has now taken over 3 months to arrive, so where is it and why are we all waiting so long? The guys at Xbox360Fanboy seem to feel the same way and so they got ahold of Behemoth to try and get some sort of answer with regards to the progress of the patch. Behemoth were happy to respond and have said the following: "We're working with Microsoft to get the title update out as quickly as we can. Sadly, we can't get into details about the certification process, but we've resolved the game's issues with data loss and networking in addition to other bugs. We can't really comment on the release yet as we're not allowed to talk about it because of Microsoft, but the update's release is definitely reaching the end of the process. We've received great support from our fans on our forums in identifying issues. That feedback has helped out a lot and we're really honored to have such an awesome group of fans in the community." Hopefully this means that the patch will be available in not too long (If we are lucky it will be before everyone goes on holiday) and we can all finally kick some ass online with our buddies.

Earlier this week I was browsing through the NXE and happened to see an interesting little bit of news about this upcoming weekend (28 - 30 November). This weekend coming is going to have a Live promotion called "Xtival '08" running that will allow all Xbox Live Silver Members to play online. Not only that but it also looks as if there are going to be a few exclusive downloads available as well. So if you are one of those people who have not yet decided to get a gold account or maybe have a friend who is thinking about getting one, hook up the boxes this weekend and try it our for yourself. Free multiplayer and access to a whole bunch of downloads at no extra cost? Hell, they may as well just called it Feel-what-it's-like-to-use-PSN weekend.

Well, sort of. With the new Avatar system being integrated into the new Xbox 360 dashboard, some people have been hard at work (read: bored) creating avatar versions of some of their favorite characters and people including Super Mario, Kratos, Chuck Norris and more. Game characters, movie stars and political figures are in the line-up and heck even some really bad creations are in there too. I have posted a couple after the jump but you can check out the rest of them by following the link at the bottom of the article. source: Check out the whole bunch created by the guys at GamesRadar by clicking here.

With all of the community games now becoming available on Xbox live, we can get excited about playing some new and interesting titles, and at a reasonable price point of 400 or 200 MS points. But it seems not everyone is happy with the price point, in fact Nathan Fouts, ex-Insomniac employee and creator of Weapon of choice – by …

Very soon, the first set of Horse Armor, I mean... let me start again. As you all know, the NXE dashboard update has brought with it a whole lot of possibilities in terms of friends list backgrounds as well as avatar clothing options. Microsoft have now announced that they will be continually releasing theme packs that include avatar clothing over the next six months. Pretty soon, a Ninja Blade them is going to be released for Xbox Live that not only comes with a background image and friends list backdrops, but 5 pieces of themed clothing to wrap around your new Xbox Live Avatar. As much as I am enjoying the new dashboard, I am sorry to say that a new era has begun in terms of paid downloadable content. While I already thought it pretty ridiculous that so many people were spending tons of money on gamerpics and dashboard themes in the old dashboard, the new dashboard brings with it an entirely new way to draw gamers' money out of their wallets. The price has gone up as well. More after the jump. While the old dashboard themes had a price tag of 150 points, the new ones are coming in at 250 points and while they are significantly more interesting than before, I can see a whole lot of people throwing their money at Xbox Live just to get some interesting clothing and backdrops to look at. At the same time, I have to wonder... if one of you are on my friends list and you download and add new items to your avatar, doesn't that mean that I will have to download them automatically when I next see you in my friends list? I think so. So tell you what, do us all a favour. Save your money by not spending it on silly outfits because at the end of the day, you will be saving all of us a bunch of bandwidth as well.

A rep from Microsoft has complained that Microsoft has completely screwed a lot of them over by releasing the NXE update, which was rumoured to start causing RROD's, right after the time that a lot of customers warranties had ended.... Apparently the update has been causing a lot of issues for users and caused the MS service lines to explode with calls of complaint. The rep from Microsoft had the following to say: "I hate what the company did this year," "They released the New Xbox Experience a few days after the extended warranty period ended for most users and it's tough to explain that to raging callers. How do you say that MS just screwed them all?" Ouch, not afraid to tell it like it is I see. More of this whole mess, after the jump. The rep also went on to say that: "our bosses really fed us to the lions this time. We're getting everything from crying kids to death threats from angry adults. It's an orgy, I tell ya." Now while I don't want to move the focus away from how incredibly bad the NXE experience has been for many people, I really had to laugh at this next bit. The rep also said that some callers were blaming the update for some of the most ludicrous things.... Well, someone actually phoned in to complain that the his power went out after updating to the new dashboard. Well angry caller, look on the bright side, at least that way you were safe from having a RROD burn your house down, just like in those other reported cases. I can't see the release date of the NXE being a coincidence, so this whole deal of releasing just after a lot of peoples warranties had expired was a pretty mean trick to pull. Any South African users experienced a RROD after the update?