Available yesterday, Nov. 7, on Xbox LIVE Marketplace six new sports included in Challenge Pack #1 include:

• Baseball: Frantic Fielder – Oil up your mitt and get ready for action! “Frantic Fielder” for Baseball gives all new meaning to playing catch. Fielding an endless stream of balls from a lineup of mascots tests everything from hand-eye coordination to speed. The more you catch the harder it gets – three misses and you’re OUT!
• Darts: Smart Shot – Exercise the brain and throwing arm simultaneously with “Smart Shot” for Darts. If hitting the bulls-eye wasn’t challenge enough, try competing against the clock with mathematical puzzles that require a sharp mind and even sharper aim.
• Football: Crazy Kicker – As the star kicker in “Crazy Kicker” for Football, you’ll discover the challenge of making a 40-yard field goal with all eyes watching. Account for factors like distance and wind to line up your shot perfectly and score! The crowd and mascots will cheer you on with every amazing goal.
• Golf: Champion Chip – “Champion Chip” for Golf takes the short game to a new level. Chip shots become increasingly challenging from different surfaces, distances, and with natural obstacles like wind steering the course.
• Skiing: Cool Ringings – Swoosh down the slopes with a license for speed, dodging mascots and ringing the cowbells for extra points in “Cool Ringings” for Skiing. Five different courses help players build their ski legs just in time for ski season.
• Tennis: Rapid Returner – Breaking a sweat is easy with “Rapid Returner” for Tennis, where mascots serve up a variety of zingers at increasing speeds to the forehand, backhand, net and baseline. If you’re looking for the ultimate Tennis training game, grab your racquet for and get ready for action.

New game add-ons will be made available each and every month through Spring 2012, with each release including some kind of free content to keep you on the field and in the game.

Players will notice a quicker push to level 50, which was the maximum level in Forza 3 that’s gone now. In Forza 4 the maximum level is 150 to reward those die hard Forza fan’s. As I write this I’m already in the mid 40′s and the fact that I’m now given a choice of car’s as a reward time I level is fantastic. I really enjoy the fact that I get to choose my reward. After hitting level 50 the car rewards are gone and replaced with credit bonus’s ranging from 100k to 350k. Car manufacture affinity rewards you to being loyal to your favourite car manufacture. Love Ferrari? only drive Ferrari? levelling your car manufacturing affinity gives you bonuses like free parts, badges and titles for your player card.

You’ll notice in the early stages that the AI is quite different then in Forza 3. In Forza 3 they removed power from the AI to make slower on easier difficulties. This isn’t the case in Forza 4 what they do is reduce there confidence when there in corners. What this does it makes the AI brake earlier into corners which is where you as the player can out break them and slip in front of them. The moment the AI it’s the apex in the corner they will be flat out regardless of the difficulty level.

The key to beating them on the straight’s is to block them down the straights. What I’ve found so far is that this is producing closer, better wheel to wheel racing and I’ve actually lost a few races to the AI. This is a great improvement as generally there really isn’t much of a contest from the AI.

The team over at Turn 10 partnered with Pirelli tires with new data which mean’s the tires in Forza 4 behave exactly as they tests indicate on real tracks on the real cars. Hardcore racer’s will notice that car’s behave a bit different and that’s because Turn 10 made some changes to their steering model, let’s be real not all track’s are smooth and are there some bumps along the way, so expect to see a bit of track bumpiness as well. These changes truly impact the way the car’s handle very different from Forza 3 and for me make it a bit harder to handle with most of the assist’s turn offed.

One of my favourite little features to Forza that is completely separate from the overall in game experience is the ability to navigate the menu’s using my voice and the power of Kinect. When I first discovered this I played around about 5 minutes going Xbox, My Garage. Simple use of Kinect but so very convenient.

Turn 10 has also gone a head to implement the ability for racers to drive with there arms. Gas and Braking are controlled by the game for the gamer and all the racer need’s to do is steer using there arms. I’m not a huge fan of this to be honest and this is suppose to be a sim racer and well this portion of it isn’t but I understand that it’s trying to get the family together. I appreciate that but would rather they hadn’t.

Autovista is a new feature that integrates Kinect into the Forza experience. Imagine your own personal automotive showroom that allows you to fully explore supercars like the Ferrari 458 Italia, Lexus LF-A, 1993 McLaren F1, 2008 Lamborghini Reventon the 2006 Koenigsegg CCX. With Kinect this allows the player to walk around the car, open doors, sit in the car, turn the engine on and most importantly hear what gear head Jeremy Clark has to say about these cars. This is a really cool feature but it’s not available on all cars.

So should you buy Forza 4? that’s the question and since it’s notably the best in the franchise you should. The visual upgrade isn’t significant but the changes to the physics, AI and community are sure to make this game worth your dollars.

Today the team over at Epic announced that the fate of Clayton Carmine, the third brother, in the upcoming “Gears of War 3” title. Control Carmine’s future by purchasing avatar gear on Xbox LIVE Marketplace, fans and gaming communities around the globe will decide the destiny of the newest Carmine brother set to appear in “Gears of War 3,” with all the proceeds going to the Child’s Play Charity.

The Carmine family is an unfortunate bunch, Loosing a bother in each of the previous titles makes the family the proverbial ‘redshirt’ of the Gears world – see below for definition. Take Clayton’s life in your hands, and support a good cause while your at it, by purchasing one of these two shirt the first reads “Save Carmine” and the other reads “Carmine Must Die.” I saw on twitter you can get these shirts at the Xbox Booth at the San Diago Comic Com… If you get one – send us a pic!

I’m sorry Clayton, third time is not the Charm #CarmineMustDie.

P.S. Proceeds from Avatar t-shirt purchases go to Child’s Play.

According to the Wikipedia – Redshirt is a slang term for a minor stock character of an adventure drama who dies violently soon after being introduced in order to dramatize the dangerous situation experienced by the main characters. The term originated with fans of the science fiction television series Star Trek, from the red shirts worn by Starfleet security officers and engineers, who frequently meet their demise during the episodes. Sometimes, the character is a sacrificial lamb.

Prefer a popup window to participate: Click Here

Xbox: Natal, Cirque du Soleil, Halo: Reach, Fable 3, Gears of War 3 and Crackdown 2. Possibly mix in the Insomniac Games Partnership with their new game. Might just be the winner of the event.

PlayStation: So far tight lipped about the upcoming event – I’m looking forward to Move and Little Big Planet 2, KillZone 3 and a few other exclusives. Coming to a Screen near you on Tuesday June 15th, at 11:30 am at the Shrine Auditorium.

Nintendo: Really a wild card for me this year – I’m really not sure what to be expecting here… Catch Nintendo’s E3 Presentation at 9 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday, June 15. Just visit e3.nintendo.com to tune in to the show.

Ubisoft has already dropped a number of hints including a look at Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Shaun White Skateboarding, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Driver, and a number of other titles that have yet to be announced. Like last year, Ubisoft will be presenting the press conference, as well as other exclusive videos and interviews throughout the E3 at: ubi.com. Tune in on June 14, 2010 at 5 pm.

What are you looking forward to at E3?

Marc outlines these reasons for the upcoming changes:
Your Xbox LIVE community has grown to 23 million strong. And as we look down the road, we’ll continue to evolve the service with features and experiences that harness the full power of Xbox 360. To reach our aspiration, we need to make changes to the service that are incompatible with our original Xbox v1 games. We will contact the Xbox LIVE members directly impacted by this change and if this includes you, I encourage you to check your LIVE messages and associated e-mail account over the coming weeks for more details and opportunities. We view you as a partner in this process.

Hopefully we will see the XBL Friend cap disappear, or get raised, shortly after these changes.

Hat tip: Major Nelson

There are only 2 differences on the hardware that I’ve found so far one being the knobs on the Renegade edition are metal compared to plastic on the regular edition. Secondly the turntable is black and gold compared to black and silver. My only real complaint regarding the turn table is the cross fading mechanism. It is has 3 positions left, center and right. When sliding from right to center or vice versa there isn’t enough of a click to ensure that it is centered. I’ve often lost note streaks because of it. FreeStyleGames even thought of the lefties, you can detach the mixer and place it on the right.

One of the biggest complaints I have had with games Rock Band and Guitar Hero are the tracks. Being in my twenties the music in those games just didn’t appeal to me because I didn’t know 90 percent of the artists. This is one of the single most important reasons I love DJ Hero the set list is fantastic. You have music from Eminem, Jay-Z, N.E.R.D, 2-Pac And 50 Cent mixed by the likes of DJ AM, DJ Grandmaster Flash and DJ Jazzy Jeff. This game is loaded with star power.

Another Hero game means another controller, so half of it is the record platter that contains 3 buttons green, red and blue. The other half is the mixer that includes the cross fader, effects knob , euphoria button (star power) and system control buttons .As the familiar red and blue and as notes come down on the screen you press the button. Scratches involve holding either the green or blue button while moving the platter back or forth, but on harder difficulty you’ll have to follow onscreen arrows that indicate whether to push it forward or pull it back. When you get into the medium, hard and expert settings you add in the cross fader, which you’ll have to push left and right depending on what notes are being played during the song. Think of it this way, when the cross fader is in the middle position music from record 1 and record 2 are being blared through your speakers. Move it to the left and only record 1 is being played, move it to the right and it’s only record 2.

Beginner and easy mode are just like sound, lame and boring. For me this game started to take off once I switched to medium 5 starred all the songs and found my groove. Hard and expert is a challenge and some of the songs really do kick my ass but I’m ok with that since music in this game is incredible. You can hook up a USB microphone and throw shout out’s to your TV, it’s lame but it could be fun at a party. Next time they tried to integrate a co-op mode by having 10 songs that can also be played using a guitar. The guitar and Turntable mode sounds but I really thought it was tacked on instead of being carefully thought out. One small annoyance I have is that you cannot fail a song regardless of how bad you suck, the music will keep playing. This is great if you wanted to just kick it at a party and listen to some great tunes but it’s hard to focus on where you need to improve your skills.

You can go on line, pick a set list and battle other people, I personally didn’t enjoy this mode at all as I could never seem to win a set list.

I hope Activision takes a cue from the fine folks at Harmonix and releases weekly downloadable mash up tracks for us to play. This is only way to prolong the life of this game.

Dj Hero makes a very good debut onto console platforms but FreeStyleGames needs to make a few improvements to the hardware, co-op and potentially a lower price as some people may find the current price tag a little high. At the end of the day this is one of the best music genre games I’ve played.