A few days before Christmas my Xbox 360 decided to pack up. The blessed thing couldn’t have picked a worse time – I’d just bought Call of Duty 4 and have been looking forward to giving Mass Effect extensive play over the festive period. After hearing the horror stories of Microsoft taking up to five weeks to return faulty consoles I thought I’d have a look on the internet for a solution.

It turns out that the ‘red ring to death’ is caused by solder coming loose from the graphics chip and CPU – apparently Microsoft use lead free solder, which is more brittle than the older tin/lead solder. Rather than get my soldering iron out though, a few ingenious people have managed to find a cure that doesn’t even involve opening up the white beast. In fact, all you need is a couple of towels.

The most amazing thing is that this solution actually worked – the idea is to place the Xbox on its side then cover it with two towels and switch it on. After fifteen minutes or so it’ll become so hot inside that the solder will melt and, hopefully, restore a connection between the CPU/GPU and motherboard. Just remember to let it cool down for another fifteen minutes before switching it back on, so that the solder can set.

If this quick-fix fails, you could always try this more physical approach.

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword looks like a safe purchase already, but as an extra incentive to open their wallets US gamers are being offered a pre-order bonus.

Not only will they receive a Ninja Gaiden wrist-strap, but also a stylus shaped like a katana sword complete with a sheath. UK retailers don’t seem have the game available to pre-order yet, suggesting that a publisher for the European version has yet to be announced. Eidos published the recent PlayStation 3 iteration, so there’s a chance that they’ll step in again.

…Call of Duty 4. Which isn’t very festive at all, really. But since when has a Christmas #1 had anything remotely Christmassy about it? Probably never. Assassin’s Creed takes second place, followed by The Simpsons Game, FIFA 08 and Need for Speed Pro Street. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games – last week’s #1 – is now at #9.

The single format charts tell a different story – Assassin’s Creed takes top spot of the PlayStation 3 chart, Call of Duty 4 on 360, Mario & Sonic on Wii, Need for Speed on PlayStation 2, FIFA 08 on PSP and More Brain Training on DS. That’s quite an assortment, given that four of those are multiformat titles.

The last two weeks have been duller than dish water for new releases, so it shouldn’t surprise that there aren’t any new entries aside from Bee Movie at a rather poor #38. The Orange Box and Super Paper Mario are back in the lower end of the chart though, and Viva Pinata has been slowly creeping back up – currently at #29 – due to being bundled with 360 consoles. It’s faintly amusing that Cars is still in the top 40, but the recently released sequel – Cars Mater-National – is nowhere to be seen, with the emphasis there on the word faintly.

Just to reiterate what we mentioned last week, this week sees no new releases. Nadda.

Well, it’s to be expected with Christmas just a few days away. Some online stores have already started their Christmas/New Year sales, such as play.com and all the other usual suspects.

If you’re looking forward to January’s new releases, the main thing to look forward to is Burnout Paradise for the PS3 and 360. The demo is already available to download, so you should download that if you haven’t already – it looks like it’s going to be pretty great. That’s due for January 25th. There’s not much else on the horizon – most of the silly publishers have blown their load for Christmas, knocking each other over in the process. PlayStation 3 owners will get the delayed Haze to look forward to in January (or December 31st according to Amazon), which could be awesome – it’s from Free Radical, responsible for Time Splitters and a significant part of the ex-Rare team responsible for Goldeneye. It probably won’t have any of the fanfare of Halo, but may well shit all over it in terms of goodness. Assuming the release date doesn’t slip again.

So that’s your lot.

Adam had a relatively easy job compiling a collection of the best games on the PlayStation Network – the service has only been around for a year and new releases have been sporadic at best. Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade though has been around for nearly twice as long with new releases appearing every Wednesday like clockwork. The newest update includes a small selection of original Xbox games to download as well, so we’re going to start this rundown with a round-up of the first original Xbox titles available.

The price is a little bit of an issue – 1200 Points (£10.20) – which is steep considering that most of the games can be picked up second hand for around half that. Nevertheless, there are a few gems. Halo is the big one, and we stand by our reckoning that it’s better than the sequel. If you fancy some platforming goodness then go for Psychonauts – one of the most criminally ignored games of all time. The hero has to visit people’s minds and help them with their mental traumas, while unveiling a sinister plot at summer camp. There’s a twisted sense of humour throughout and each level offers something new. Another ignored game that has been given a second chance is Fahrenheit – a story driven adventure game, with puzzles requiring gentle manipulation of the analogue stick. It’s very atmospheric and cinematic, so give it a go. Also worth a mention is Fable, Peter Molyneux’s adventure game where your character grows older as the story unfolds. It didn’t quite reach its potential, mostly because Lionhead promised the moon on a stick, but it’s a solid romp and surprisingly funny too.

Now, the highlights of the recent Xbox Live releases.

 Undertow (£6.80) 

It uses the Unreal engine, but rather than being a first person shooter it’s more like an underwater Geometry Wars. The control system is the same at least – move with one stick and aim shots with the other – but here there are control points to fight for and you’re joined by other scuba guys that fight alongside. There are underwater caves to explore, most of which house power-ups, and the backdrops are quite nice – underwater London, complete with rusty London buses, for example. It isn’t as frantic as Geometry Wars though and when the camera zooms out it can be hard to see what’s going on, but as Xbox Live games go this is one of the more polished ones.

 Carcassonne (£6.80) 

Microsoft recently gave this away for free to celebrate five years of Xbox Live, so unsurprisingly it has found its way onto a lot of hard drives. It’s quite a simple game at heart and oddly addictive. The idea is to build a medieval city by placing tiles on a map. You take turns with the CPU placing randomly chosen titles – some have brown areas which will turn into buildings, others have roads that can be linked up. At the end of a game the points are added up as to who owns the most buildings, with the winner being the one with the most. The clever bit is trying to stop your opponent from making huge cities by placing useless tiles in his path to ruin his plans. But obviously he can do the same to you.

 Alien Hominid HD (£6.80) 

It’s a love it or hate it one, this. Some see it as a visionless clone of Metal Slug, others love its bright colours, explosive weaponry and cute hand-drawn looks. The level design is pretty standard and lacks the surprises and variation found in SNK’s shooters, but there are some nice ideas such as being able to hide in the ground and pull in enemies as they walk past. On a HD TV it looks really special, like a sketch book brought to life. The bosses are suitably wacky too, including a monster made out of butterscotch. Mmm!

 Assault Heroes (£6.80) 

Distinctly retro, but so good – simply scroll up the screen in a weapon-packed ATV taking out everything in sight. Weapons can be upgraded and there’s a handy throwing arc for grenades. You can get out of your vehicle too and run around on foot, which is essential for collecting power-ups stashed away in places the ATV can’t get to. The downside is that your little chap can’t take much damage and moves slower. There are some really nice things such as the way trees can be set on fire and pushed to the ground and a friend can join you online. The very definition of a nice tidy little game.

 Space Giraffe (£3.40) 

So many words have been said about this game already, and not just by us. Eurogamer published two reviews of it (one reviewer gave it a 6, the other an 8) just to show how much of a Marmite game it is. It’s basically a stupidly trippy version of Tempest, only the tactics you used there will end up getting you killed here. Probably. It’s a real head fuck at first but once you start realising why you died and for what reason it starts making more sense. To start getting decent scores you need to pay attention to the sound effects too, as each enemy makes their own re-spawning noise. That way you can always tell what’s on the grid and will soon be gunning for your precious giraffe. We’ve spent more time playing this than any other Xbox Live Arcade game, but you might see it as a steaming pile of psychedelic llama poo. Download the free demo and make your own mind up.

 Jetpac Refueled (£3.40) 

Rare’s first Xbox Live game came out of nowhere, and that’s where it has seemingly vanished – trying to find somebody to play online with can be a struggle. It’s a revamp of one of their first Spectrum games from back in the day when they were known as ‘Ultimate Play the Game’. It’s a single screen shooter where you collect the odd rocket part and fuel pods. The crudely drawn enemies look a bit out of place but there are lots of fancy special effects and it’s definitely a game you can get into the zone with. The 1983 original has been included too, which makes this package good value for money.

 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (£6.80) 

When this was released on the PSone back in 1997 many ignored it because of its 2D graphics. They were wrong to do so – it was easily the best 2D adventure game since Super Metroid, and because of a limited print run copies exchanged hands on eBay for silly money. Even though all and sundry can download it copies still sell for a decent amount. Backbone handled this Xbox Live conversion, which became the first XBLA game to break the previous 50Mb filesize limit. The FMV sequences have been cut, but the sprites have been smoothed over and the slowdown that appears in the original has been fixed.

 Bomberman Live (£6.80) 

The 16-bit Bomberman games were great, and the 10-player Saturn Bomberman was often referred to as one of the system’s best games. But as soon as Hudson’s hero sprouted polygons things went wrong, especially with Bomberman Act Zero – a complete gaming travesty and reportedly one the worst selling 360 games to date. This colourful romp sees the fella go back to his roots, with the focus purely on multiplayer – four can play local or up to eight online. Characters can be customised using body parts unlocked as rewards while matches can be completely customised. As well as laying bombs you can now hide mines in the ground and while the usual power-ups are present – including the ability to shove bombs out of the way – there are now items to avoid which hinder progress. Much like Worms – which also received an excellent XBLA outing – this is one game that’s best kept simple.

 Sonic the Hedgehog (£3.40) 

The sequel is available too, but we’ve gone for the original. We loved Sonic 2 back in the day but it wasn’t until replaying it on Sonic Mega Collect a few years ago that it became apparent that it was a rushed out mess, full of glitches and slowdown, and a tacked-on two-player mode. The music though is still awesome. The achievements are a bit disappointing – if you can’t unlock all of them on your first play then you’ve clearly never played Sonic before. Collect 100 rings? Clear Green Hill Zone? Where’s the creativity in that? If you’ve got a thing for the Mega Drive, then you might want to splash out on Streets of Rage 2 as well. Our Jake swears by it.

 E4: Every Extend Extra Extreme (£6.80) 

If Space Giraffe made your head hurt, then this will turn it to goo. It’s best described as a shooter in reverse, with the idea being to detonate a yellow cursor amidst as many ‘enemies’ as you can in order to create a huge chain reaction. Do well and you’ll get an extra life and some more time on the clock so you can continue committing virtual suicide and boost your score. That’s about it, really. Coming from the team behind Lumines – also available on XBLA, but a bit of a swizz as you need to download loads of extras to get the full package – it’s no surprise to find that the music and presentation are suitably funky. And Vernon Kay is nowhere in sight.

Next year should see Xbox Live Arcade hit full stride with Sega’s Rez HD, Ubisoft’s War World, ex-Dreamcast shooter Triggerheart Exelica and Treasure’s Ikaruga all due. Harvest Moon creators Natume are also joining the fray with another shooter named Omega Five. Well, five of the team are working on it, hence the name. Fact!

There are plenty of minigame collections for the Wii, but whether any are truly great is debatable. There’s good reason to have faith in Emergency Mayhem being the definitive party pleaser though – here the minigames are connected by Crazy Taxi-style arcade driving sections, which should give it a fair bit of depth.

The name Emergency Mayhem might ring a bell (or should that be siren?) – not just because we reported on the game coming out on Wii via Codemasters way back in January – but because it was originally a PlayStation 2 game due to be published by Acclaim. It’s now a Wii-exclusive, despite a PSP version being rumoured a while ago, and it looks like the developers are including some inventive ways of using the remote. A few examples: shaking it up and down to pump up a tyre, spinning it around to shut off a fire hydrant, and moving the remote and nunchuk simultaneously to walk like a penguin. Did I mention it doesn’t take itself too seriously?

It’s due in Q2 2008. If you require emergency assistance visit the official website.

When the usually reliable Ubisoft announced that they were going to start doing more movie licenses we first thought that this would be a good thing, and when the slick King Kong tie-in game arrived we thought that it was indeed a very good thing. Then came the distinctly average Open Season, followed by the distinctly average TMNT and the distinctly average Surf’s Up. Can you see a pattern forming?

The developers have included more than a few nice ideas here to try and make it more than a standard fantasy hack and slasher, but ultimately their effort is wasted – after the first hour you’re left doing the same things over and over again. There’s no doubting that the basics are in place though – there’s the usual special move upgrades, AI controlled cohorts (known here as Thanes), grizzly finishing moves and a large array of weapons. They break in battle surprisingly easily, which goes a long way to stopping it being a total button basher, and it also means that you’re often forced to roam the battlefield to find a foe carrying a nice sharp blade or pointy stick to steal.

As for the few less than predictable elements, the ‘legacy system’ is based around your actions in battle and will effect your reputation and eventually the game’s ending. Your Thanes can be ordered to move boulders and such, while words of encouragement can be yelled by pressing buttons in rhythm to get the job done quicker. You can also go berserk momentarily and use larger objects as weapons and pull off God of War style pre-scripted fatalities, but while in this mode – or mood, rather – it’s possible to “accidentally” kill your war buddies. Annoyingly, if they all kick the bucket then it’s game over.

It looks slick in places – most notably in the hub, where you can chat to locals and upgrade your weapons – and one of the earlier missions involves rallying the Thanes before a boss battle by singing a crude song about prostitutes. Unfortunately this is the most enjoyable mission in the whole game, with most being either teeth-grindingly dull or frustrating to the extreme due to your Thanes’ slow reactions. Ask them to open a door and they’ll do it no problem, but if even one of them gets attacked while doing so they’ll stop and stand around like Danish lemons.

It doesn’t take long to develop a dislike for Beowulf either – he’s incredibly hard to bond with and completely up his own arse. The frequent cries of “Fear me!” and “I am Beowulf!” soon offend the ears. Perhaps it’s for the best that everything can be done and dusted in well under five hours.

Mr Blue and Mr Red and Blue are at #1 for the second week running, but I’ve got a feeling that Call of Duty 4 might end up being the Christmas #1, as it’s half price (£24.99) at Gamestation this week. Speaking of which, Activision’s war wager is currently at #2, with three from EA – FIFA 08, Need for Speed and The Simpsons – making up the rest of the top five.

Super Mario Galaxy and The Golden Compass are on the rise – up from #14 to #11 and #16 to #12 respectively – while Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga has shot from #23 to #14. Uncharted is doing a little better in its second week, going up six places to #22. That’s still not very good though, seeing as it’s the PlayStation 3’s big Christmas game. It’s also worrying that Wipeout Pulse only manages to go in at #20 in the PSP chart, although Sony themselves are probably to blame for that – we didn’t even realise it was out.

After the undeserved success of Ninjabread Man and Billy the Wizard on Wii, Data Design have decided to convert the rest of their PlayStation 2 back catalogue to Wii for release on their Popcorn Arcade brand.

Have a little look at this promotional video – it’s meant to show the games in their best light, but whoever complied the footage had one hell of a task on their hands. Some of these games are knocking on four years old!

The clip of Action Girlz Racing makes me laugh – they couldn’t even be bothered to capture footage of somebody playing the game properly. The mini racer at the end of the video doesn’t look too shabby though – they’ve got the headlight effect nailed, at least.

It’s a brilliant week for new releases. Brilliant, if you’ve been waiting for Spyro: The Eternal Night on Wii, Beowulf and The Golden Compass on PSP, Mr. Bean on PlayStation 2 and The Orange Box on PlayStation 3. Because that’s all you get this week. It’s like the annual summer game drought all over again.

Bad things are being said about The Orange Box, mostly in relation to the loading times (though we’ve watched side-by-side comparisons and barely noticed a difference between the PS3 and 360 versions). So far the average review score on GameRankings is 78%, compared to a nice 96% on Xbox 360. Only three places have presently reviewed it, though.

Looks like there’s nothing out next week – Zack & Wiki on Wii has slipped until 18th January.

“You get what you pay for” is a saying that often rings true. Just look at McDonald’s faeces filled 59p hamburgers, or those rubbish £9.99 PlayStation 2 games. When Nintendo does a budget game though, they still apply the same polish as they would on a full price effort – see Endless Ocean for proof. Here, your nineteen pounds and ninety nine pence get you a decent slice of crossbow action and a piece of gun-shaped plastic to wave around. And some cardboard. Woo!

If you weren’t already aware, the Wii Zapper itself isn’t a standalone light-gun – it’s merely a holster for the Wii Remote and Nunchuk to clip into. Rather than using the B trigger on the reverse of the Wii Remote there’s a wider trigger built into the device, while underneath the arm-rest there’s a compartment to tie up and hide the nunchuk cable. It’s satisfying and light to hold but it does induce arm ache after a while.

Link’s Crossbow Training features 26 levels in total, split into nine missions each with three rounds. Some are on rails with Link either on the back of his horse Epona, sailing downstream in a canoe or with the camera whizzing around automatically. Others see our hero in green stuck on the spot with enemies attacking from all 360 degrees. The most involving of all though give you full control of Link via the analogue stick and play like a third-person shooter. These levels are small and linear and include a set number of enemies to find and kill before the time runs out. There are also a few boss battles, with the last boss being less predictable than you might originally think.

Things start off easy with a slow and simple target shoot in Link’s village, but quickly move on to a high speed chase through Hyrule castle on horse back, a battle with enemies that can dig underground and a shoot-out in a graveyard against hordes of hard-to-hit bats. Most of the environments from Twilight Princess have been used, along with their corresponding background music. There’s a really satisfying ‘thunk’ noise when an arrow hits its target too, and you can knotch up some impressive score multipliers by hitting consecutive targets in a row.

Our first play through was something of a breeze – 41 minutes according to the handy reminder on the Wii menu. It wasn’t until our second play through though that we started to pick up on some of the hidden nuances, such as receiving extra points for knocking off an innocuous scarecow’s head. It’s the little tricks like these that you need to learn and discover to gain the illusive gold medals – the main draw to return to the target range. It’s also doubtful that you’ll find all the enemies on the free-roaming levels on your first attempt and once you throw a four-player mode into the equation you get a game that’s a bit longer lasting than it initially seems.

Why does Link need crossbow training anyway? He’s managed to defeat Ganon and save Hyrule countless times in the past.

Patapon is from the minds behind LocoRoco. A February 2008 release has been announced for North America. It looks excellent.

There’s no UK release yet – so unlike LocoRoco it seems we won’t be getting it before our friends across the Atlantic – but those three facts are all I need to know to import it, and frankly you should look to do the same.