Xbox Live is running some performance testing right now, and you can get some free items for your avatar. You have to leave your Xbox running and you can’t do anything else on the Xbox while the tests are running. The 3 items you can earn for your avatar are a lab coat, brain helmet, and crazy mad scientist hair. To get all 3 you will have to leave your Xbox running for 6 hours. I suggest doing it overnight, or while out running errands. To find the Xbox Live Labs, sign into Xbox Live then go into My Community. Then it should be the 3rd item over. The Labs is currently scheduled to run through March 27th.

You can pick up a free Halo Reach Beta Avatar Hoodie for yourself. Just pop in your Halo 3:ODST disc, play a game of the beta. Next head over to Halo Waypoint and you will get it for free.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the Friend achievement in “A Kingdom for Keflings”. I bought the game this week since it is currently on sale, I had been keeping my eye out for it, since I got them demo a while back and enjoyed, but just didn’t want to pay $10 for it. Anyways back to the achievement. To get the achievement you do not need to host your own game, you just need to be in a game when a total of 10 Banner Towers are created. I was personally in someone else’s game this morning, when a 3rd person joined. They created the Banner Tower and to my delightful surprise the achievement unlocked. The Banner Towers do not have to all be created in the same game even, it can be across multiple sessions. So go join some random games build your own Banner Towers to help the host along and hope some other people join too.

I’ve been playing through The Beatles Rock Band this week. I am enjoying getting to play a bunch of new songs. I played Rock Band 2 last week, and it didn’t hold my interest nearly as much, I think mainly just because I have played Rock Band way too much. I have downloaded lots of songs for Rock Band & Rock Band 2, but I think there comes a point where you can’t just keep playing the same songs. I am somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 songs between Rock Band 1&2 and the DLC. Playing through the first four venues of story mode in The Beatles Rock Band is definitely a treat. But then you get into Abbey Road which is definitely a shift in the music. Mostly trippy weirdness “I Am the Walrus” & “Octopus’s Garden” come to mind. There are some high points “With a Little Help from My Friends” & “Revolution” are very good. By the time “Here Comes the Sun” comes around in it such a welcome breath of fresh air and thankfully the end of Abbey Road Studios. Next along comes Rooftop Concert, ending with “Get Back”, which I think actually means get back to the first four venues because they are much better than the last four venues. The Beatles Rock Band is also a bright (literally) change from Rock Band 1 & 2, with lots of colors that you would expect from the 60′s, since The Beatles arrived just before color television started exploding. I give this game a 7 out of 10. If you are a Beatles fan to begin with, you can probably add a point. If the game allowed you to import all your DLC into it, I would add 1.5 points. Really nothing would be better than playing Nirvana’s “In Bloom” as The Beatles in the Ed Sullivan Theater. I know “In Bloom” is not available as DLC, but if The Beatles Rock Band allowed other DLC, I am sure it would be the first song Harmonix released.

“Dreaming of Love” by Lights Resolve is being given away for FREE!! Gotta always love free songs, sure wish they had more since I have spent so much money already buying songs.