On board

If you're looking for something different to play, try Catan or Carcassonne. These Xbox Live Arcade titles are based on popular board games. They have similar goals, controlling land or resources to win, but the gameplay is different.

The Xbox Live Arcade title Catan is based on a board game Settlers of Catan. The object of the game is be the first player to collect 10 Victory Points earned by building roads, settlements and cities. Resource cards are used for building those objects and are gained either through a dice roll, trading with other players or stealing.

Carcassonne is based on a board game of the same name. According to the Wikipedia, it is named after the town of Carcassonne in southern France. The object of this game is to place tiles representing roads, fields and city walls together to form cities where residents called followers are then placed. Once all the tiles are used the game ends. Points are tallied based on where followers are located. The person with the most points wins.

If you're looking for something family friendly (neither of these games are violent) and a change of pace from frantic action like Geometry Wars, you should give these games a look.

Splitting hairs at 30 frames a second

Several video game outlets are reporting that this year's football games, All Pro Football from 2k Sports and the usual offerings from EA Sports (Madden and NCAA Football) will run at a higher frame rate on the Xbox 360 than the PS3 versions of those games. The Xbox 360 version will run at 60 frames a second versus 30 frames a second on the PS3.

What does this mean to you and I? Not a whole heck of a lot. The animations in the game may be smoother on the 360, but that's about it.

However, rabid Xbox 360 fanboys will probably use this bit of trivia to taunt their PS3 counterparts. There may be some serious discussion amongst developers because this may serve as evidence that while the PS3 is a more powerful machine, the Xbox 360 is easier to develop on.