Giant Bomb Video Game News

I've been playing with the NXE (I'm really upset about how quickly I slid into using that stupid acronym) for a couple of weeks now, and in general, I'm quite pleased with the changes that have been made. There are a few navigational kinks, such as the less-than-obvious importance of the new quick launch bar, that took some getting used to, but the menus are bigger and bolder, and generally laid out in a way that makes more sense for what the Xbox 360 is, rather than what it was.

Now I hate to nitpick (a shameless lie, I live to nitpick) but there's a tiny, thoroughly petty thing about the NXE that I've allowed to get under my skin. It's something that took me a while to notice, but there are actually quite a few promotional menu items scattered throughout. The mere presence of the mostly appropriate advertising isn't what gets to me. The thing is, all of these units feature some promotional headline and a short blurb. Not to brag about performing repetitive, often tedious tasks for rent, but I've written a fair amount of promotional copy in my day, and the writing in all of these is categorically terrible.

Check out Sgt. Fenix over here. The imagery is certainly effective, but “Highly Anticipated Sequel” and “Includes jaw-dropping visuals?” That's flat, empty nonsense! How about “Is a Game” and “Got pretty colors,” or just a bunch of gibberish? I don't know what it says about me as an anal-retentive word-nerd, but the use of “Includes” bothers me particularly.

Iron Man's also pretty awesome. “Legendary Super Hero” and “Industrialist fights evil” almost sound like descriptions of the movie that went through Babelfish and then back into English. I imagine those beat out “Flying Man Robot-Fighter” and “He is the diligent protector of children,” but just barely.

On a certain level, I empathize with whoever has the thankless job of trying to cram something that's both informational and evocative into two 30-character lines. I also realize that this is just about the most absurdly trivial thing to get invested in, but dammit, if you're going to cake your interface with promos, make 'em count! Hopefully they'll either find their pace before the November 19th launch, or I'll learn how to be less of a needlessly obsessive lunatic. For what it's worth, the former is significantly more likely.