In 1991, one of SEGAâ??s most famous characters, Sonic the Hedgehog materialized onto our screens for the first time. A year later a sequel was made with Sonics new (but mutated) fox sidekick Tails. Now Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has made its way onto the Xbox Live Arcade and has been welcomed with open arms.

Like with most of the old SEGA games which have made a comeback on Xbox Live the new save feature is one of the more helpful of the new options added, allowing you to actually save the game instead of having to keep replaying the whole game when youâ??ve turned the console off. For people in the know about the coming of this game to the arcade the long awaited on-line co-op story mode was well anticipated. Unfortunately this new mode did not appear in the finally release. Though it does have a local co-op story play, this is still no substitute for what an on-line co-op mode would have been.

Sonic 2 (as it did in 1992) has still got its multiplayer race mode which can now be played both locally and online. With new achievements which can only be achieved via an online match this should prove to bring a large crowed to the online area. But due to their being only four levels to race the crowed will quickly disperse.

As with the games predecessor which appeared onto the Xbox Live Arcade the good old cheat menu is unreachable so you are forced to make your way through each zone and the trippy, drug abuse special stages. Since this game introduces the concept of Super Sonic, you are unable to level select back to a previous level the reek havoc. Though you maybe able to start the game again with the Super Sonic ability once youâ??ve completed the game, I donâ??t know I havenâ??t got that far yet so try it and find out.

Well now itâ??s time to wait till Microsoft hopefully releases Sonic 3 in the arcade. Until then, time for me to go and unlock some old school style Sonic 2 achievements.

This year gamers have been treated to arguably the best games line up ever and while fans of any genre will be drooling at this years fall line up, driving fans have already had a fair few quality games in the form of Forza Motorsport 2, Motorstorm, DiRT and recently in the likes of Stuntman Ignition and Flatout Ultimate Carnage. Despite these quality games there are still the likes of Project Gotham 4, Pro Street and Burnout Paradise still yet to come.

But with the big games being brought to us by Microsoft Game Studios what does this do to there own third party games. Take DiRT for example, a well refined game in every area boasting some of the most incredible graphics seen on the Xbox 360 but after Project and Forza will DiRT still be remembered. Is Microsoft overshadowing there own third party support.

With third party support meaning less and less, you can see why Microsoft take the focus away. So far Forza has been the stand out hit as far as racing games have gone. Really thats not a bad thing but when a game like DiRT doesn’t stand out, considering how much I enjoyed that game, it’s a bit worrying.

Is it a case of first partys putting more time into the final product and advertisement than a third party? or is it just that we have over-indulged in to many quality games? Either way as Peter Moore recently said its better to have a holiday period overcrowed than nothing coming out at all. Which is a fair point but its not nice to see brilliant games not get appreciated to the level they deserve

What do you guys think?

In 2003, Call Of Duty was a PC only World War 2 shoot ‘em up. In 2007, its console only modern shoot ‘em up. In just a short space of time they’ve released a lot of games and made a lot of buzz. But the most recent buzz from the franchise comes in the form of a closed Xbox 360 multiplayer beta.

The Beta offers a sneak peak at this years offering, while giving Infinity Ward priceless feedback before their game goes gold.

The 3 Maps on offer are Vacant, An empty building complex that offers face to face, close quarters action that also has a nice out doors bit that offers slightly less frantic battles. I tend to go inside in this level a lot more, especially with the airstrikes raining down. The 2nd map is called Overgrown, which reminds me of the previous call of dutys. Overgrown is a small village with a big trench in the middle of it. The final one is Crash, based around a black hawk crash in the middle of a city, the other maps I have found to be all over the place but on this one I already have a favorite point on the map.

The game provides a variety of modes but I always end up playing Team Deathmatch, which seems very fine tuned and incredibly additive.

The challenge and ranking system adds to that by setting each different class a set of challenges ranging from get x amount of kills with a weapon to shooting down an enemy helicopter.

This combined with the ranking system thats similar to that of a standard RPG by giving you experience points for every kill, assist, completed challenge and the overall outcome of a match. Once you have gotten a certain amount of points you rank up to the next level. Each rank up happens dynamically during a game. So if you have only 10 more points to rank up then when you score a frag, which incidentally happen to be worth 10 points, then a notice will pop up telling you your new rank. You’ll then get new challenges, weapons, upgrades and modes based on your new rank.

The game also rewards kill streaks in a new way. 3 kills without dying and you’ll be able to call in a UAV to help your radar Intel. 5 kills and you’ll be able to launch an air strike and finally 7 kills and you can call in a chopper to obliterate everything in its path. This requires some balancing on Infinity Ward’s part, but otherwise really rewards you for staying alive.

So far the Call Of Duty 4 Beta has impressed the hell out of me by offering some of the best multiplayer on xbox live since Gears of War. It’s nice to see the folks at IW and Activision are trying to improve on this already great formula. The game is set to ship to stores November 5th of this year.