EA just announced that a demo of Def Jam: Icon for the Xbox 360 will be available on the Xbox Live Marketplace tomorrow. This free demo will have one level, the Gas Station (I’m hoping it’s highly interactive… I wanna beat someone with the hose from a gas pump), and two playable characters, T.I. and Outkast’s Big Boi. Should be interesting. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Def Jam games. Having rappers beat the shit out of the each other just seems too much like real life to me.

It’s demo week on the Xbox Live Marketplace. We’re being flooded with some good demos for once. Today’s latest is NBA Street: Homecourt. The download weighs in at approximately 510MB, so go fire up that internet connection and download something legal for once

I’ve personally been looking forward to this game, and have been debating whether to get it for 360 or PS3. I’ve always played the NBA Street series on the PlayStation, so those controls are familiar to me. We’ll see how this demo goes.

The Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW2, for any normal human) demo is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. I’m very excited for this. I still haven’t played much of the first GRAW, but it’s high on my list to play, after Gears and Lost Planet. If only that damn Viva Pinata wouldn’t be so addictive… The demo weighs in at approximately 625MB, so it shouldn’t take too long for anyone to download. It’s only a single player demo, but go grab it and start shooting Mexican terrorists!

On the Xbox 360 marketplace Lumines Live has added some content, 2 add-on packs and a new skin.

• New skin called “Heavenly Star” - A pretty cool skin with a crazy video in the background, I wasn’t terribly impressed with the Japanese style techno music, Lumines 2 has better videos. At least its free for now.
• Player vs. CPU Pack - You play against the computer in a Tetris style battle where you add blocks to the CPU’s screen, pretty fun and you can unlock the skins after you beat each level, 100 MS points for a limited time.
• Puzzle/Mission Pack - This pack gives you a total of 50 missions and 100 puzzles to play through. You need to create boxes in certain shapes in order to solve the puzzles, very challenging, also 100 MS points for a limited time.

So for 200 MS points you can add some options to your Lumines Live, well worth the download time. Prices will change after February 21 to 300 MS points each so take advantage of the bargain.

The Crackdown demo, which was previously delayed on the 360 Live Marketplace, now has a date set. Members of the Crackdown team posted on the official forums that the demo is now expected at 2am PST on Tuesday January 23rd. There’s been a lot of hype around this game, mainly because of the Halo 3 beta codes. I’m interested to see how this game plays.

Kotaku is reporting that the newly released Call of Duty 3 Valor Map Pack for the Xbox 360 just plain doesn’t fucking work. There’s 5 new maps in the pack, costing 800 MS Points and weighing in at approximately 800MB. The problem is, users can’t select the maps in the game. Anywhere. Yeah.

Let’s break this down, shall we? Microsoft supposedly has huge certification processes for games and all forms of content. Hell, we’ve seen demos and stuff delayed because of it all the time (can anyone say Crackdown?). Now, to get content onto the Marketplace, it has to go through the developer’s QA (if that even fucking exists anymore) and Microsoft’s certification process. How the bloody fuck did no one test this? You would think selecting the map in the game would be the first place to start with testing. If you can’t load the map, you can’t test if something is broken in it. I seriously would LOVE to know how this passed any form of QA or certification.

There’s a huge uproar on the Xbox forums over this, and rightly so. The developers state they’ll have a fix out “as soon as we possibly can.” That means a few months. I would hope that Microsoft and the developers would make this right by the people who shelled out their hard earned money, but we all know that’s never going to happen.

So EA today announced (press release here) they’re “making” an XBLA game, called Boom Boom Rocket. The game is actually being created by Bizarre Creations, the people behind the widely successful Geometry Wars and Project Gotham Racing. The basics of the gameplay is that you fire off rockets in time with music as you travel through a 3D city.

Knowing EA, they’ll charge way too much for the base game, then you’ll have to buy the rockets on the Marketplace for 200 points each. Yay for EA ass-raping people with pricing! I would probably pass this up on principle because it’s EA, but Bizarre makes some great stuff. We’ll have to see how the gameplay goes and how much it costs

Microsoft and Epic announced that a patch for Gears of War is expected on Xbox Live tomorrow, January 9th. The patch will fix many of the nagging issues gamers have had. The list of fixes and additions is:

• Fixed aspect ratio distortion when using VGA cable with 4:3 displays at resolutions higher than 640×480
• Fixed voice issue with new players joining Player Match games in progress
• Players can now get the Achievement for “Dish Best Served Cold” when using Troika turret to kill RAAM
• Fixed rare situation where host could loop countdown and never start match
• Fixed rare situation where players could get stuck after chainsawing in multiplayer
• Reduced Grenade Tag melee distance
• Enabled “Strict” NAT check on host to prevent possible connection issues
• Optimized server browser queries to return results more quickly and prevent scroll bars from hiding quality of service icons
• Reduced number of possible revives in Execution to match Warzone
• Removed host name from Ranked match server browser
• Disabled security cameras in Ranked matches
• Ranked matches now require balanced teams (3v3 or 4v4)
• Increased penalty for quitting a Ranked match to -50 points
• Added additional cheat detection code
• Additional housekeeping updates

The new FREE maps (yes, I said FREE) are expected Wednesday January 10th. They’re being sponsored by Discovery Channel, which is why they’re free. There is also going to be a new video from the one and only Cliffy B to talk about the update and new maps. Here’s details of the new maps.

Raven Down: A Raven Helicopter has gone down in the middle of a large scale battle with the omnipresent Locust Horde. Gears have taken out the Seeder and gamers join Delta Forces moving into the crash site from all angles to search for survivors.

Old Bones: In an attempt to eradicate any traces of human history and culture, the Locust Horde has emerged under Sera’s Capitaline Museums and has begun to destroy them brick by brick. Each gamer’s mission is to help the Delta Force recapture the museums before all remnants of humankind’s existence are obliterated.

Pics of the new maps after the jump.
Hit the jump for more…