Crackle for Xbox 360 Review March 16, 2012

Crackle has just launched an app for the Xbox 360 for anyone with an Xbox Live Gold account and no additional fee.  I can’t begin to say how long I’ve waited for this to happen, so how did it turn out?

The program’s interface is almost identical to other similar programs I’ve seen currently on the Xbox 360, like EPIX.  When you launch the program it checks your gamertag to authorize you, and then immediately goes into a main menu where you can browse its extensive collection of movies, tv shows, and original content.

I was overjoyed when I saw that some of the very obscure tv shows I loved were made available through the service.  There’s also an enormously wide selection of anime which eclipses some of the american show back catalog.  I’m sure most people would be happy to find they offered shows like Seinfeld or Bewitched, but I was most excited to finally get to watch The Tick again after 10 years.

Its also got a fantastic selection of movies.  While it’s no longer offering Brainscan, which was a movie I reviewed some time ago, it was offering Real Genius, another one of my favorite movies which to this day has not seen a decent DVD or Blu-Ray release.  The Angry Video Game Nerd will probably be overjoyed that it had an enormous selection of classic Godzilla movies.

Audio and video quality was quite good and will probably be limited by quality of the original source content opposed to anything else.  Most of the TV shows I watched were only available in standard, but that was probably due to the fact they predated HD.  Audio was output in 5.1 Dolby Digital, showing the program’s support of surround sound.

As with the other similar programs, it does take advantage of the Xbox 360 Kinect.  Full menu browsing is available by either hand gestures or voice command, and both are quite responsive so long as your Kinect is properly calibrated to the room that you are in.  I make mention of this because I did move my 360 to another room and I noticed problems while issuing voice commands, whereas in the previous room I had it in (which is the room it was initially calibrated in) had no such problems and noticed a fantastic range.  I consider that more of a Kinect issue and do not blame Crackle at all for it.  If you do change the room your Kinect was in, I recommend running the Kinect Tuner and recalibrating it to the new room.

Now, there’s one other thing I’d like to make people aware of.  While the service is free for Gold Members, there will be advertisements during your broadcasts, and that goes for any TV shows you watch (they will pop up at the logical commercial breaks in the TV shows) and even the movies.  In fact if you do a very long fast forward in a movie (say, to watch your favorite scene in it or resume a spot you left off at) you could find yourself loading up a commercial immediately before the video playback starts.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with Crackle’s commercials at all.  The commercial breaks are much shorter (I would say about thirty seconds on average) than what you’d see had you watched the program on television, and while it is only for Gold Members, you’re not being charged a premium fee on top of the subscription to use the program.  That, to me, makes it acceptable.

In my philosophy, you can either be a paid premium program which does not have advertising (similar to HBO or Showtime) or you can be a free program which makes its money from advertising revenue.  It is completely immoral to try to be both.  That’s what Hulu Plus did when I reviewed it, and I still think its wrong.

In short, if you’re an Xbox Live Gold Member, you owe it to yourself to download this program and give it a whirl.  You can also find the Crackle app for the iPhone/iPad, and in some internet equipped Blu-Ray players.

Taco Bell Playstation Vita Unlock the Box Contest Review February 10, 2012

During CES earlier this year, Taco Bell made the announcement that they would be providing their customers the chance to win the new Sony Vita handheld early in a new promotion they were planning for this month. Well, the Unlock the Box promotion has started and I have plenty to say about it.

It seems that Sony is quite comfortable promoting their products through fast food chains, and I really don’t have a problem with this because it’s no different from what the motion picture industry does with major summer blockbusters.

By purchasing a Taco Bell 5-Buck Box (it doesn’t seem to matter which one) you will receive a box with a unique identification code printed on it, similar to a CD-Key. By visiting the Taco Bell mobile site on your cell phone while at the store (or if you need to, bring the box home with you and redeem the code at home) and giving it your e-mail address, you have the random chance to instantly win a Playstation Vita before the handheld gets an official release. The site itself is pretty easy to navigate and inputting the unlock code on the site is dirt simple.

However, this is not the only chance you have to win, Taco Bell has also released a mobile app for iOS and Android which contains a fun little Augmented Reality game. The problem is that the app is over 20MB in size, making downloading it over 3G at the Taco Bell impossible on an iPhone. UPDATE: Literally right after writing this review the program was patched to be under 20MB. If you decide to download it after getting back home, be aware you can’t use the app’s full functionality without having the actual five-buck box. Your best chance is to bring your food home with you take out. From the Taco Bell app you have another chance to enter the contest, but you’ll have to have better luck than me to get anything out of that. However, the Augmented Reality game is quite fun and quirky and makes good use of the mobile phone features, and features a whole range of awards once you start playing it.

Well, you really can’t rate a contest on the factors of if you win or not alone, because lets face it, you’re not going to win.   UPDATE:  What was a pessimistic joke has, if recent controversy over the promotion is true, taken on a new meaning.  However, unlike Uncharted’s promotion last year, you got a lot out of just participating in that event even if you weren’t a winner of the contest. Other than access to the AR game, there’s no benefits to entering, and the game cannot be played without a five-buck box in the phone’s camera field of view at all times.

It’s still a nice step towards gaming being treated as a legitimate medium on par with its entertainment brothers and sisters like movies or music. Still waiting to see any of Microsoft’s properties trying something like this. Give it a go, if you like Taco Bell you can’t have worse luck than I did.

Global Resistance Review January 3, 2012

I’ve been a fan of the Resistance series for the Playstation since the day I first bought a Playstation 3. With the release of Resistance 3, I now own every single game in the series (including Resistance: Retribution for the Playstation Portable). I’m also no stranger to the game’s official statistics site, myresistance.net, which, since the release of Resistance: Fall of Man, has been a site players could visit to view their multiplayer statistics, unlock exclusive game content (like the Cloven Skin in R1), and talk with other players on their official forums.

While playing through Resistance 3, I noticed a lot of unlockable game content was tied to the myresistance.net site and remembering how it was with unlocking the cloven multiplayer skin in Resistance: Fall of Man, figured I would have to dust off my old account and get some new unlock codes from the site.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered this trailer in the Resistance 3 game menu.

This was no longer a site for checking multiplayer statistics and posting on their forum, they now had their own full-fledged social game, and it was glorious. The site had been in the works for quite a while, but for some reason it had only been accessible to people with a Facebook account. Why Sony would only allow Facebook users into what was clearly a site that should be accessed by people with Playstation Network accounts was beyond my comprehension at the time, so I never looked further into its relaunch until now. Well, Playstation Network has been integrated at last, and I could now play the site’s crown jewel, the social game Global Resistance.

When you start playing, you immediately pick one side. Your objective is first to earn money, which you can do by taking on missions, deploying resources or having skirmishes. With money you can build and maintain your own base. With the base you can train soldiers and build items like bunkers or bombs. You can deploy these resources in the field in order to conquer territory from the other side. The objective is to take over the world (of course).

The game reminds me of a mix between Risk (having never played it), Rock, Paper, Scissors and Warcraft 3. It may sound like I’m simplifying it (trust me I am) but the game is actually a ton of fun to play, and quite addictive, which is exactly what you want in a social game. It’s easy enough to understand with just some minor playing of it.

Everything you do in it earns you experience, which will level you up. As you progress in level, you’ll be able to make use of new facilities, which will give you access to new resources or missions. In four days I was able to rank up to Level 17, which gave me access to build most of the important facilities for my base. I don’t know if there’s a level cap, (I was able to build the last level restricted facility at level 15) but I saw some missions that were only selectable from level 20, and that was the highest level requirement I saw in the game.

I cannot tell you what a blast it was going back and forth between playing levels in Resistance 3, and Global Resistance. I think that was probably the game’s greatest strength. Everything in Global Resistance takes time to prepare, time which is perfectly spent playing Resistance 3. I could issue some orders or start building something in Global Resistance, and then play a chapter of Resistance 3. When the chapter is completed I would notice some of my tasks completed in Global Resistance, and I could start some new ones. Because the games complemented each other perfectly and were played on two separate mediums, I felt as if I was getting a much more immersive gaming experience.

However, it would seem that the game’s greatest strength may also be its greatest weakness. This game is almost impossible to play during the day. I don’t know if it has to do with insufficient bandwidth, bad programming or reliance on the Playstation Network, but if you try to access this site during most hours of the day you will likely be greeted with an error page, because the site is usually so overloaded it can’t handle new requests. It doesn’t seem to make sense why this would be happening. The site could get wonky and drop connections while listing as few as 191 simultaneous players, which for a social game is outrageous. Imagine what would happen if the player base hit millions, like with so many other social games.

Also, the site statistics don’t sync up to the Playstation Network in real-time. I could earn an accolade in Global Resistance that would be worth a new piece of concept art, and then have to wait several hours before it could be unlockable in my game. I also noticed that Resistance 3 didn’t usually sync its stats up with myresistance.net (and vice versa) unless you access the multiplayer menu in Resistance 3 at some point. If you’re like me, and mostly play the Resistance series for the Single-Player campaign, you may not think to do this and may be surprised when your myresistance.net stats are blank, even for single-player, because you never accessed the multiplayer menu and accepted the game’s terms of use.

In short this is a great game that seems to not be able to keep up with its own greatness. There is just no excuse that a social game cannot be able to meet up with the simple demand of people wanting to play it. I recommend playing the game at late hours, as that seems to be when it is most stable and less of a chance of connection issue with the site. The game can be played with either a Facebook account or a Playstation Network account, both of which are free to obtain. You also don’t need a copy of Resistance 3 to play, and any game unlocks you earn for it can be placed on hold until such a time as you do get yourself a copy.

EPIX for Xbox 360 Review December 26, 2011

While I was at the New York Comic Con I was fortunate enough to sit in on a panel for the upcoming documentary A Liar’s Autobiography, about the life of the late Monty Python alumni Graham Chapman. The panel was moderated by Lloyd Kauffman, the guy in charge of Troma Studios and director of The Toxic Avenger (and a really nice guy to boot). It turns out that this documentary is going to be released exclusively through the channel and on-demand service EPIX, and this was how I first found out about the program. When I saw it was available on the Xbox 360 app marketplace, I decided to give it a download.

As per usual I must make this disclaimer. This is ONLY a review of the Xbox 360 EPIX program and not a review of the channel or any other platforms the EPIX program may be on. However the reason why this is that way is because I do not own any other devices EPIX support, like Android Phones and Google TV. Oddly, there’s no iPhone/iPad app (That is listed as coming soon on their website). Also, even though I am paying a small fortune for a full HDTV cable service in my house, my cable provider (*cough* Comcast) does not offer the EPIX Channel.

You can download the EPIX program in the apps section of the new Xbox 360 dashboard. In order to watch any EPIX content you will have to link your gamertag to an EPIX account, which you can do on their official website through your computer and phone device. Setting up an account is free, but if your cable or sat provider does not support EPIX (which Comcast still doesn’t, regardless of the small fortune I’m paying them a month for full HD service on many tvs) you will be restricted to a free 14 day access to the service. Like with Hulu, tell the site you want Xbox 360 access and it will give you a simple 6-digit code to redeem on your 360, and you’ll be immediately granted access.

First off, I was tremendously impressed by the unique content offered. Sure you can watch movies on it like Iron Man 2, Star Trek, and Jackass 3D, but what I found myself watching most was its unique featured content, like William Shatner’s documentary The Captains, and Lewis Black’s newest stand up. They also had Kevin Smith’s Too Fat for 40 show. People have been talking about all these features for quite a while and only now have I been able to see them for myself.

Full Xbox 360 Kinect support is in this program. As par to the course you can control the menus with a wave of your hand. Pause, stop and all the other voice commands can be given as well. It’s still faster than picking up a controller or 360 media remote. If I had one complaint about the interface it’s that in order to play the content, you have to select the picture of it in the movie statistics menu, there’s no option that clearly says PLAY MOVIE, and if you didn’t know clicking the picture starts the video you may be at a loss.

As per the course for most of the other video services the Xbox 360 provides, the content is completely uncensored, exactly as it should be. A nice difference between this and other services is there is no advertising at all in any of the content I watched, be it movies or exclusives. This is exactly as it should be, and it further begs the question as to what is Hulu’s excuse for advertising in what is clearly a paid premium program.

How do you know you have a good service? Well, my account access will expire soon and I don’t want to give it up!

Uncharted 3 Taste For Adventure Program Review October 6, 2011

The Subway stores in my area have finally started to support the Taste for Adventure program, and last night I picked up a special 30oz soda with the intention to use it to play Uncharted 3 a month early.

According to Subway’s official webpage, anyone who purchases a specially marked 30oz soda, sub, or bag of sun chips will receive a unique code (which may be in the form of an attached peel off sticker) that you can register on Subway’s official website or official mobile site. The site will ask you for your email, then ask for your unique code.

From there, you can choose what you would like to download. The site will give you a few options to download.  These range from special Playstation Home downloadable goods, a theme, special multiplayer skins, and of course the Uncharted 3 multiplayer client.

Interesting to note that the first code I registered on the site, which was from the sticker that was attached to my drink, did not have the option to download the multiplayer client, and I had to choose a different item to download. When I registered the code attached to my special 30oz drink, however, I could redeem the code for the multiplayer client. The reason I’m pointing this out is because if you absolutely want the multiplayer client, you may need a code stamped on a drink cup to have that option.

The site said it was going to email me the download codes I unlocked but a day after I registered those codes I still haven’t gotten emailed them, so make sure when you do register your code to redeem it immediately or you might lose it if you click away from the screen.

I would like to tell you what I think of the mp client, but PSN was swamped last night and download speeds of the 3.3gig client was abysmal, so I’m going to download it at a different time.

After getting your download code, you can click the next page for the chance to see if you instantly won a prize. I didn’t. Only three codes can be redeemed a day per email address.

It’s a nice thing that something so specifically gaming related could get so mainstream. You will have to have a PS3 and PSN account to be able to do anything with these download codes, but the instant win contest is open to anyone who redeems a subway sticker or drink code. I hope more companies do things like this.

Who else would like to see the Master Chief take over a fast food chain next? Heck I’d like to see that and I don’t even eat fast food as much as I used to!

Bloodrayne: Betrayal Review October 3, 2011

I’m happy to see that Majesco is getting back to taking up their major properties and making games with them again.  I had stated in the Psychonauts top five video that after the end of 2005, the company switched over to value software and stopped producing triple-a titles, which really upset me because I liked their properties a lot and hoped they would do more with them.

The first Bloodrayne game in over five years, Bloodrayne Betrayal has been released for download on the PS3 and the Xbox 360 and I got to play it on the Playstation 3.

I know what you’re thinking.  Awesome, a new Bloodrayne game.  That means we get to see things like this!

Well… no, not exactly.  The developers decided that the series would get a new gameplay style and a visual aesthetic to match that would be more in line with anime or a comic book.

I am not saying that this new style is a bad thing at all.  I liked this game’s art style a lot.  I am a huge comic book art fan and I didn’t mind the new style to go with the 2D gameplay.  The 2D combat perspective with a focus on fighting and platform navigation harkened back to earlier platforming games like Castlevania.  Now I’m sure every reviewer on the internet is going to make that comparison, as well as plenty of gamers, so let me just join in on that parade right now, but that’s only because it is a fair comparison.

When I first started the game I noticed the music is actually pretty good.  Sound on the PS3 is limited to stereo…for…some…reason.  For those of you who need a slight audio history lesson, the PS3 can do uncompressed 7.1 audio through HDMI.  Stereo sound has been in games since the days of the SNES.  You will find yourself closely listening to the stereo music through the game (which is not that bad) because there’s no voice over work.  The little dialog there is in the game is spoken only by text bubbles over characters.  This does fit with the comic book art style, and I can see what the developers were going for.

On the other hand when you look past the art and music to focus only on the gameplay, you get to the bad of the game.  This game can get downright sadistic.  There were some stretches of levels that made me want to throw my controller across the room.  Just when I’d think the game was getting good (or I was getting better at playing it) it would throw me a new sadistic stretch of a level or a boss fight.  I know a lot of independent bloggers found Catherine sadistic in this respect and the difficulty of some of that game’s levels lost them some points in their review of that game, I had no problem with Catherine’s difficulty because anyone could just look up a solution to Catherine’s puzzles online.  In Bloodrayne: Betrayal, no walkthrough or guide can help you, you have to beat the game out of your own sheer force of will.

It seemed to me early on there was a really fun game in there somewhere, if only the game showed me how to play it.  Since the game is downloadable, there’s no paper manual you can look up for gameplay tips while playing.  You’ll occasionally get a small tip sprinkled through the first few levels, but it would have helped a lot better to have a whole training level devoted to each of the new gameplay mechanics early on.  Major gameplay features, like the ability to corrupt enemies by biting them, and then using them to detonate other enemies around them are not explained early on, and when they are they are poorly explained as to how important the sequences are!  Corrupting enemies was a new feature that we’ve never seen Bloodrayne do in any previous incarnation, and it’s a major gameplay device in this game you’ll need to survive some of the more swamped fights!  The game doesn’t even show a tooltip as to how to do it until several chapters into the game, and by that point you’ll have referred to either the manual or an online FAQ and learned how to do it.

Never in my life have I had to refer to a game manual as much as I have for this game, and since the game is digital only, there is no paper manual for you to refer to.  You will find yourself constantly checking the in-game menu, breaking up the game’s flow, just to see the button combinations for doing the moves that are essential to progressing through the game.

Fighting enemies, espessially early on, can get very boring very fast.  The game will just keep throwing in the same enemies you’ve fought over and over again just to pad out a chapter and there are very few total enemy types in the game, with no diversity among them.  You can be in a section of the game and fight four enemies, then have to fight four more of the exact same enemies.  This kind of grinding can get VERY boring very quickly, and it even happens in the first level.  Later in the game, boss fights will include padded battles with respawning enemies that will get more difficult.  This just serves to soften you up before the boss battle, oh and there will be no checkpoints unless you can defeat all the enemies, and the boss in one life bar.  Even with the ability to take life from normal enemies, this can still be VERY difficult, since you can’t take life from the bosses.

As I mentioned earlier, there are some fun gameplay segments in the game.  In one chapter, you have to control a bird and navigate through a narrow section since Rayne cannot navigate through it herself.  While playing it, I thought “well this is a nice little segment, maybe the level design has improved from here on,” and then I would be forced to play the most sadistic, frustrating platform segments you can ever imagine with poorly placed checkpoints.  It will be in these segments I actually had thoughts that the people who gave me the code to review this game must’ve hated me!

The bosses can start off as boring at best with tedious ways to defeat them and scale up to outright overwhelmingly frustrating very quickly.  One boss fight starts off with a battle royale against many enemies all at once that spawn in, while random danger zones appear in the area which can hurt you very badly and kill the enemies.  After you’ve cleared out the enemies, you’re then given a boss fight with no checkpoint or heal opportunity in between, and some of those boss’s attacks are unavoidable.

Finally I want to talk about the game’s price.  After everything I’ve said about the game I completely understand that there are gamers out there that eagerly yearn for challenging 2D platform games harkening back to the original NES or Super NES game systems.  This is that game.  However, I remind you that this game is being sold for $15US in 2011, whereas you can already get games like Castlevania through the Wii Virtual Console for 5-8 dollars!  Even if I had
enjoyed the game more than I had, I could have an easier time recommending it to fans who enjoy challenging 2D platform games had it been priced at a much more reasonable $10.  At that price, I would say that it would be a fair value to people who sought a challenge.  Other retro-style titles already have come out for download for $10 on all the consoles, like Mega Man 9 and 10 from Capcom.  But for $15, you’re putting the game on par with modern downloadable games with a Triple-A budget, and modern gameplay, and this is not that kind of game.  Be it the price, the frustratingly hard platform segments, and the padded, repetitive fights, I cannot recommend this game to the vast majority of you.  If they ever drop the price to a more reasonable 10 dollars, I would recommend it only to people who craved an intense and frustrating challenge, and all the personal accomplishment you’ll get from completing it.

However, a nice thing that’s being included with people who purchase the PS3 version of the game is a Playstation 3 dynamic theme.  It’s automatically added to your download queue when you purchase the game (or redeem a prepaid code to download the game).  However, this was billed as a limited time offer, and by the time you read this review, I don’t know if the theme will be still offered for download with the game.

Part of the reason why this review took so long to write was because it took me so long to actually force myself to beat the game.  I had to force myself to play through the game’s very difficult, frustrating segments in order to continue in the game to conclusion, and I would not be able to look at myself with any respect if I were to review a game without first beating it.

However, I would like to applaud Majesco for bringing its franchises back from the dead, and hope that they will continue to produce games from their back catalog of properties.  I would love to see this momentum continue with a new Bloodrayne sequel, and many have requested a new Advent Rising game.  But if I had to choose one property Majecso should revive that I enjoyed the best, (and Psychonauts doesn’t count because they don’t own it anymore) it would be a new Infected game.

ESPN for Xbox 360 Review July 31, 2011

This weekend marks the 17th X Games and like so many people, my schedule did not permit me to watch every single second of the event as it aired.  But then I remembered my Xbox Live Gold Subscription (which I just renewed) did give me access to the ESPN program, and I hoped some of the X Games broadcasts would make their way onto the service.  Low and behold, every second of ESPN’s coverage of the X Games were online for me to watch at my leisure.  Since Thursday night, I’ve been using the ESPN app for the Xbox 360 and I have plenty to say about it that I wanted to share with all of you.

I just want you guys to know right now before I get into the technicals is that this only a review of the ESPN application for the Xbox 360 and not a review of ESPN (the channel) or the website ESPN3.com, which also has a lot of the same content which is provided by the Xbox 360 app.

I came into this review thinking that this program was kind of redundant, and not worth being one of the plugs to why Microsoft jacked up their yearly Xbox Live Gold subscription costs to $60US a year opposed to $50US.  The only people who will have access to the program are Xbox Live Gold customers who have an ISP which supports access to ESPN3.com.  As a cable internet subscriber, I figured that would make the program kind of unnecessary since in all likelihood anyone who would have access to the ESPN program through Xbox 360 would already have access to ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN3.com!  So why bother to use it?  Well, the X Games is on this weekend, and I found out the answer why.

After I pulled up the first day’s coverage of the X Games, I was disappointed to see the picture quality.  Thinking I might not be getting a full amount of bandwidth from my ISP (it’s been slow as of lately), I checked the transmission diagram in the pause menu and saw that I was indeed receiving the best quality HD transmission.  So, an occasionally blocky, sometimes distorted 720p image was as good as it was going to get.

So it’s not as good looking, even in a full HD transmission, in comparison to what you’d see on the dedicated ESPN HD or ESPN2 HD channels.  So for that loss of quality, what do you get as a benefit?  Actually, quite a lot.

In the ESPN program you’ll be able to sort through on-air live competitions and a pretty extensive on demand selection of competitions that already saw air.  What was sweet about this option is that they also had events in the program’s on demand option that never saw air.  This is a much better option to watch previously aired games because while ESPN has its own ON Demand through my cable provider, it is not in HD and does not air games, just ESPN exclusive content like independent movies.  They do not rebroadcast matches through my cable provider’s on demand, but on the ESPN app for Xbox 360, they do.

In contrast to the Hulu Plus program I reviewed some time ago, I noticed that these games on the ESPN app do transmit in 5.1 Dolby Digital just as they do through your cable or sat broadcasts (the X Games were sponsored by DTS), however I didn’t notice a good usage of the rear channels.  It’s nice to know that surround is something that is supported though, because the Xbox 360 can do it, and why Hulu doesn’t is beyond my comprehension.  Regardless, if you have your Xbox 360 hooked up to a 5.1 receiver, it will get some use when you run ESPN.

Kinect support for the application is pretty good too.  Just like with the Zune Marketplace and with Hulu, you will be able to control video playback with voice and hand gestures, making the Xbox 360 Remote Control even less of a good purchase idea.  Voice recognition is really good.  It is a lot faster to just say “Xbox, pause,” than to pick up a remote or your controller, and the control is quite responsive.  That said, you will need a controller to navigate the menu systems, although I have read on Major Nelson’s Blog that the next program update will expand Kinect functionality into the menu system, that probably won’t be coming until at least August.

The last thing I wanted to talk about with the program was the last thing I covered with the Hulu Plus application, the commercials.  ESPN’s app does show commercials, but unlike with Hulu Plus, I actually didn’t mind them one bit.  The reason why is because they are actually shorter than the commercial durations the ESPN channel has, and most of the commercials they show are simply just channel promos.  Also, since this is not a premium program which charges an extra fee on top of the Xbox Live Gold Subscription, simply watching a bumper for SportsCenter every commercial break and then getting back to the action doesn’t bother me one bit.  I wonder why the Hulu Plus program sees the need to require extra money from advertising revenue on top of what they’re already charging you for the ability to use the program in the first place if ESPN can make enough just showing channel promos and not charge any extra.  The only conclusion I can draw is the fact that since this is sports we’re talking about, there’s plenty of ad space you’re seeing when the match is on, as well as the sponsor promos for the event to cover the costs.

In conclusion I do not recommend using this application as an exclusive alternative to just simply watching ESPN or ESPN2 channel in HD through your cable or satellite provider.  You will undoubtably get a better picture on your TV watching the broadcast through the HD channel.  Heck, the X Games was broadcasting in 3D on the new ESPN3D channel, and if I had an HDTV (and that channel) that’s what I’d choose to watch a live broadcast on first.  However, if you missed a broadcast of something you wanted to see due to other commitments, this is without a doubt the BEST possible option to catch it again.  Totally worth a download, and since the X Games are on all weekend, there could not be a more perfect event to get people to download it.  Alone, it’s not a reason to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold, but when you add it up with all the other services Xbox Live Gold provide, it does justify it’s price.