We spent the afternoon playing brand new games on the XBOX 360. Three brand new games. Cost to us? Not a bean. Because we have XBOX Live and a fairly fast broadband connection we were able to get hold of free downloads of Tomb Raider, Battlefield 2 and Burnout Revenge. Great fun was had, first impressions follow:

Tomb Raider: Very lush graphics. Very lithe Lara. The difficulty curve of the first two levels was just right, starting with learning the controls and then moving on to puzzle solving. Slightly more "action" stuff than I expected, with bad guys to shoot at very early on in the proceedings, but non the worse for that, giving the game a "Perfect Dark" feel that I wasn't expecting. However, you are given lots of time to solve the puzzles, which is just how it should be. Moved the game into a might buy (or ask for as a present) category, but the demo level is good of itself.

Battlefield 2: Number one son played this. Rather well. It is a very good realisation of the kind of thing that PC games have had for years. Enormous draw distance, big levels, smooth network play. Kept being shot by our own team, which didn't help. But it was great fun. Probably too good as a demo, in that I think I'd enjoy playing this so much that I won't buy the real thing. Then again, when I get bored of the demo level....

Burnout Revenge: Good news, it is Burnout. Very well done with smashing graphics and all the trimmings. Bad news, it is still Burnout. If you have played and enjoyed this on the old XBOX you won't find much extra, over better graphics and more destructable scenary. If you have managed to avoid Burnout all these years but have an XBOX 360 it is pretty much a must buy. However, if you have been burnt out before it is probably not a good buy. Instead spend your money on a copy of Need for Speed: Most Wanted. That gives you a similar level of rush, but with a quite different and much more open gameplay.

There was a time when I would rush out and buy magazines so that I could test play the games on their coverdisks. No need now. Just leave the machine chugging wilst I do something else (takes us around an hour to get down a 600MB demo) and then fire up the game.  Great stuff.