My Bites and Bytes: Sonic doesn't do so well

It's been a pretty busy week in the world of Xbox live marketplace and if you haven't been keeping up, here's what has been happening.

The Raw vs. Smackdown 2007 demo has been released. Although there are only two wrestlers available, this whopping 1.2 gig demo brings all the excitement of a Triple H vs. Kane match right onto your TV set. The graphics are unbelievable and truly next generation. The sweat, movement and facial expressions are very lifelike. The demo also has a tutorial of the revamped control system which may be great once you're used to it. I've played the demo about six times and have yet to win a match. This really makes me anxious for the final product, which will not be appearing on the PS3 this fall.

The F.E.A.R. demo has also been released. This first person shoot has been available on the PC for over a year now and if you have a wicked graphics card, you should be able to play it in all its graphical glory for about $40.

If you don't have a good PC, this acclaimed shooter is coming to the 360 in November with lots of achievements, co-op and online play as well as some nice looking (even better than PC) graphics. The control set up is very halo-esque and it took me no time to get into the dark world that F.E.A.R. delivers. This one will definitely be an immediate rental for me.

Sonic the Hedgehog makes his 360 debut in the next month as well. This demo brings back all the speed that we old school Sonic fans enjoyed in his 16-bit Genesis days. The demo, however, shows that the bugs and problems of the 3-D Sonic games of the last five years STILL haven't been resolved. The unresponsive controls and cheap deaths made me try the demo a couple of times until I was so frustrated that I completely deleted it from my hard drive. I hope that Sonic Team gets it's act together and fixes these problems before the final shipment of the game. Sonic deserves it.

NHL 2K7 also makes itself available as a download this week. I tried it and it's as smooth as every other year before it with great looking graphics to boot. It seems like it's certainly a big step up from last year's “current gen game on a next gen system” release. The only thing that has me scratching my head is the music during the game play. Don't believe me? Try it for yourself and you'll see what I'm talking about.

If this abundance of game demos doesn't float your boat, there are many new demos of games available from X06. If you can't get online with a 360, go to www.gamevideos.com to see amazing footage of the new Halo RTS game coming from Peter Jackson's new game studio as well as new footage of Assassin's Creed running on the 360 and the unbelievable Bioshock.

If you still have time and money to boot, you can now download the original Doom (complete with some enhanced graphics) in its complete episodic form.

Man, this looks like the 360 is definitely ready for the next system war that will officially launch in November. I have to say that as a gamer, I'm totally stoked.