So, as chronicled over a year ago in Oh Noes! our 360 has done that dreaded thing again: three flashing red lights. Super crash. Must be repaired. At least the repair's free for this one.
This is a fairly good sign that the previous console which suffered this fate was replaced (rather than repaired), and by a console which still had the same defect. Ugh. Oh well, now to wait and hope it gets fixed quickly. I was just starting Mirror's Edge.
Showing posts with label xbox 360. Show all posts
Showing posts with label xbox 360. Show all posts
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Demo Review
Played two different XBOX 360 demos recently: Blue Dragon and Fatal Inertia. I've also downloaded at least three more, so possibly you'll see reviews of those here once I get a chance to play them. This may not be til after the Florida trip though.
Blue Dragon: Compile as many big names in the JRPG business as possible, put them to work on a 360 title to try and get more sales in Japan. That's the name of the game, and I have to say that the demo has me intrigued. The demo only lets you run around on two different fields (or dungeons, if you prefer), and gives you pretty powerful characters to play with. The field map is pretty nice, and you can always see enemies: if you choose to encounter them or they ambush you, you get taken into a battle mode with all the characters present. The neat trick here is that you have the option of encountering multiple groups of enemies that are on the field at the same time: you fight them in sequence, but after each fight completes you get a random bonus for the next fights. So it gets easier and easier. Battles themselves are very FF (early) style, with different commands for each character, an overdrive equivalent that shreds enemies and refills mana, and great graphics. I thought it was pretty fun, and though there's no direct story in the demo, there's hints about it: why do these characters have these freaky totemic shadows behind them? Why do those shadows sometimes materialize and kick massive butt?
Fatal Inertia: Wipeout style futuristic racing game, with weapons and stuff. The controls are funky, about what you'd expect, but the relationship between what I did with the controller and what the ship did on screen had me frustrated more than once as I slammed into walls. Maybe I need more practice, but I think if I've played this style of game before there should be some basic ability there, which certainly was not noticeable with how easily I rammed walls. The weapons are ok, except for the having no clue what they actually do. It's an icon! It looks like... horseshoes! It throws these piddly little bolts forward and does... I dunno? I think I hit something once, but it wasn't really clear what it did. The controls also led to frustration here: it was hard enough to stay on the track, much less actually aim any of the weapons. Some were really flashy, but ultimately the only one who was destroyed in each race was myself.
Blue Dragon: Compile as many big names in the JRPG business as possible, put them to work on a 360 title to try and get more sales in Japan. That's the name of the game, and I have to say that the demo has me intrigued. The demo only lets you run around on two different fields (or dungeons, if you prefer), and gives you pretty powerful characters to play with. The field map is pretty nice, and you can always see enemies: if you choose to encounter them or they ambush you, you get taken into a battle mode with all the characters present. The neat trick here is that you have the option of encountering multiple groups of enemies that are on the field at the same time: you fight them in sequence, but after each fight completes you get a random bonus for the next fights. So it gets easier and easier. Battles themselves are very FF (early) style, with different commands for each character, an overdrive equivalent that shreds enemies and refills mana, and great graphics. I thought it was pretty fun, and though there's no direct story in the demo, there's hints about it: why do these characters have these freaky totemic shadows behind them? Why do those shadows sometimes materialize and kick massive butt?
Fatal Inertia: Wipeout style futuristic racing game, with weapons and stuff. The controls are funky, about what you'd expect, but the relationship between what I did with the controller and what the ship did on screen had me frustrated more than once as I slammed into walls. Maybe I need more practice, but I think if I've played this style of game before there should be some basic ability there, which certainly was not noticeable with how easily I rammed walls. The weapons are ok, except for the having no clue what they actually do. It's an icon! It looks like... horseshoes! It throws these piddly little bolts forward and does... I dunno? I think I hit something once, but it wasn't really clear what it did. The controls also led to frustration here: it was hard enough to stay on the track, much less actually aim any of the weapons. Some were really flashy, but ultimately the only one who was destroyed in each race was myself.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Return of the Xbox!
A refurbished Xbox 360 unit arrived today, luckily the UPS read my note and left it, as I was stuck in meetings for several hours. It had a note saying that since repairs would take a while, they are just sending a refurbished one, with a new warranty and so on. L play tested it today on Overlord and it worked fine, as did an episode of Angel later, so I'm happy that it's finally back.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Box Travel!
And now for your regularly scheduled update on our broken XBOX 360. We got the packing materials yesterday, which included a glossy 8.5x11 page of instructions, anti-static bag, two foam molded pieces for the ends, sticky tape to re-close the box, and a prepaid UPS tracking/shipping form. Did the assembly of the outgoing box, and dropped it off today at a UPS store on the way to the dentist, it was marked as 3-day shipping.
Here's the best part: I walked into the store and one of the two guys that worked there said "An Xbox repair?" Me: "Yep." Guy: "Ok, just drop it there on the counter, the tracking number is your receipt number." Me: "So, you are seeing a lot of these?" Guy: "Yeah, about six to seven a day." I boggle for a while, then walk out. That's a much higher incidence than I'd thought, for him to estimate so many per day, at one of many UPS shipping outlets in Pasadena. I wonder why these problems hadn't shown up earlier? Or if they did, why they weren't as well covered? The first I'd even heard of this type of system failure was when a patch for GHII caused some to start occuring.
Anyways, I checked and the package is now in Ontario, CA, and it's headed to McAllen, TX. Any bets on which day it arrives, post em in the comments. I'm hoping it'll be there by next monday, and back here by next friday. I want to play Overlord! and GHII! And the list goes on...
Here's the best part: I walked into the store and one of the two guys that worked there said "An Xbox repair?" Me: "Yep." Guy: "Ok, just drop it there on the counter, the tracking number is your receipt number." Me: "So, you are seeing a lot of these?" Guy: "Yeah, about six to seven a day." I boggle for a while, then walk out. That's a much higher incidence than I'd thought, for him to estimate so many per day, at one of many UPS shipping outlets in Pasadena. I wonder why these problems hadn't shown up earlier? Or if they did, why they weren't as well covered? The first I'd even heard of this type of system failure was when a patch for GHII caused some to start occuring.
Anyways, I checked and the package is now in Ontario, CA, and it's headed to McAllen, TX. Any bets on which day it arrives, post em in the comments. I'm hoping it'll be there by next monday, and back here by next friday. I want to play Overlord! and GHII! And the list goes on...
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Oh noes!
So it looks like our 360 has died, oh no! Oddly, I haven't named it. I think perhaps I should start naming consoles, as then they can't die on me. At least according to recent comics at Order of the Stick, that could help. This isn't actually the dreaded three flash red lights death (I'll say it so others can't: "There are FOUR lights!"), but rather a general hardware failure (one flashing red light, lower right quadrant). Still haven't gotten through to customer service, but I think I know what caused this issue: It looks like the exact same error code as the three lights, and one of the common failure modes I've heard is that the GPU (heatsink?) can become unseated at high temperatures, which causes everything to go wonky. Since we actually saw it fail while playing Overlord and it was a really bad graphical corruption, this seems like the likely issue. Oh well, at least from what I've heard they add an extra heat sink when they repair this issue. Hopefully I can have them look at the sticky drive door as well.
Anyways... just thought I'd write about the poor console. I miss it already, now I can't play Overlord and Guitar Hero II for a while. :(
Anyways... just thought I'd write about the poor console. I miss it already, now I can't play Overlord and Guitar Hero II for a while. :(
Friday, June 1, 2007
Heroic-mode Guitar!
Guitar Hero II is an excellent game for the PS2. I never actually bought it, or the first game, though I played Tim's copy a lot. That recently changed, with the release of Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360, I picked up a copy of the game, along with the guitar controller which was redesigned for the 360. The short verdict: Excellent game, my hands hurt.
As far as I can tell, there are very few differences between this game and the PS2 version. Most notably, there are 10 more songs, and eight of them were added to the career mode, by making each block have 6 songs, including the encore, rather than 5. Some of the songs have been rearranged a little, so while each block has an additional song, the final set doesn't have any of the new ones, and the first set has two of the new ones. See this article for complete details on that. The other difference is that there's the achievements which are tracked for each profile. The one I'm proud of currently is "Eddie Van Halen Award", which is given for a streak of 500 notes without a miss. I got that one on "Less Talk More Rokk", by Freezepop, on medium difficulty. Also amusing was "Rock Snob Award", given for refusing to play an encore. (Hey, they wanted Free Bird as an encore! I had to say no!) I got help for the "Hendrix Award", which is given for completing a song left-handed.
Song list review: (New songs)
Possum Kingdom - Toadies. Not a cover. For being in the first set, on medium difficulty, this one had some fairly tricky fingering and rhythm. Notably it starts you on the sections which are long repeated notes followed by an almost hammer-on (doubled note, you do have to strum but has a similar feel). Good practice there, and it also has several offbeat sections which can be surprising unless you are paying attention. I don't actually know the song, but L says she's heard it before and she liked it.
Salvation - Rancid. A cover. Not very long song, which is nice, but I didn't really like it. Only interesting part was similar almost hammer-ons as in the previous one.
Life Wasted - Pearl Jam. A cover. In the second set, and I nearly died trying to play it the first time. Has some really tough fast fingering parts, and near the end there's a "this part is just to be an asshole to those playing guitar hero" type solo. On medium difficulty I could manage it, but I wonder what it'll be like on harder settings. Good song though.
Billion Dollar Babies - Alice Cooper. Cover. Love this one, just a fun song to play. Not really as hard as some of the previous ones, but could be because I can play this type of song better. It has some nice solo type sections and the vocal sections are awesome.
Hush - Deep Purple. Cover. Another fun one to play, has a good combination of single note sequences and chord sequences. I like the way it sounds, too, looking forward to seeing what the co-op bass part looks like.
Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo - Rick Derringer. Cover. Lots of off-beat notes, good sequences and has some hammer-on moves in it which I found good to practice. Also a good one for me to practice not releasing lower notes in long sequences that will re-use them.
Dead! - My Chemical Romance. Not a cover, woot! Also a totally awesome song. Pretty fast, lots of cool sequences and arghhhh I only missed two notes that time! This one gets my approval as the best song that was added.
The Trooper - Iron Maiden. Cover. Hardest song in the group that was added to the career sets, the main difficulty on medium is a sequence of lines that just gets painful to try and finger individually, but can be done a lot easier by holding the lower frets and doing the upper sequence. Even that is really tricky in this one as you have to both add notes and reveal to other notes in rapid succession.
Bonus tracks:
Drink Up - Ounce of Self. This one sucks. Hard to read sequences and it's basically the same stuff all the way through to the end. Probably a good one to practice hammer-on and pull-off moves on, but not that fun to play and the music isn't my style.
Kicked to the Curb - Noble Rot. Easier than the previous, and actually fun to play. Has some fast solo sections that are actually readable and also helpful in learning how to do the long runs with no strums.
Honorable Mention - Soy Bomb, by Honest Bob and the Factory to Dealer Incentives. Excellent instrumental bonus track, that I don't think I played in the original ps2 version, but was apparently present.
There's also some purchasable tracks for download on Xbox Live, but so far I've managed to resist getting Killer Queen, my favorite song from Guitar Hero. The other thing that deserves mention is the new controller. The action on it is pretty good, and I found it a lot easier to trigger star power with a subtle motion on this one, making it a lot less distracting than it sometimes can be. It also has a d-pad, xbox button, and start/back buttons! Now I just gotta find a use for that. Maybe Castlevania: SOTN using the guitar controller? :)
As far as I can tell, there are very few differences between this game and the PS2 version. Most notably, there are 10 more songs, and eight of them were added to the career mode, by making each block have 6 songs, including the encore, rather than 5. Some of the songs have been rearranged a little, so while each block has an additional song, the final set doesn't have any of the new ones, and the first set has two of the new ones. See this article for complete details on that. The other difference is that there's the achievements which are tracked for each profile. The one I'm proud of currently is "Eddie Van Halen Award", which is given for a streak of 500 notes without a miss. I got that one on "Less Talk More Rokk", by Freezepop, on medium difficulty. Also amusing was "Rock Snob Award", given for refusing to play an encore. (Hey, they wanted Free Bird as an encore! I had to say no!) I got help for the "Hendrix Award", which is given for completing a song left-handed.
Song list review: (New songs)
Possum Kingdom - Toadies. Not a cover. For being in the first set, on medium difficulty, this one had some fairly tricky fingering and rhythm. Notably it starts you on the sections which are long repeated notes followed by an almost hammer-on (doubled note, you do have to strum but has a similar feel). Good practice there, and it also has several offbeat sections which can be surprising unless you are paying attention. I don't actually know the song, but L says she's heard it before and she liked it.
Salvation - Rancid. A cover. Not very long song, which is nice, but I didn't really like it. Only interesting part was similar almost hammer-ons as in the previous one.
Life Wasted - Pearl Jam. A cover. In the second set, and I nearly died trying to play it the first time. Has some really tough fast fingering parts, and near the end there's a "this part is just to be an asshole to those playing guitar hero" type solo. On medium difficulty I could manage it, but I wonder what it'll be like on harder settings. Good song though.
Billion Dollar Babies - Alice Cooper. Cover. Love this one, just a fun song to play. Not really as hard as some of the previous ones, but could be because I can play this type of song better. It has some nice solo type sections and the vocal sections are awesome.
Hush - Deep Purple. Cover. Another fun one to play, has a good combination of single note sequences and chord sequences. I like the way it sounds, too, looking forward to seeing what the co-op bass part looks like.
Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo - Rick Derringer. Cover. Lots of off-beat notes, good sequences and has some hammer-on moves in it which I found good to practice. Also a good one for me to practice not releasing lower notes in long sequences that will re-use them.
Dead! - My Chemical Romance. Not a cover, woot! Also a totally awesome song. Pretty fast, lots of cool sequences and arghhhh I only missed two notes that time! This one gets my approval as the best song that was added.
The Trooper - Iron Maiden. Cover. Hardest song in the group that was added to the career sets, the main difficulty on medium is a sequence of lines that just gets painful to try and finger individually, but can be done a lot easier by holding the lower frets and doing the upper sequence. Even that is really tricky in this one as you have to both add notes and reveal to other notes in rapid succession.
Bonus tracks:
Drink Up - Ounce of Self. This one sucks. Hard to read sequences and it's basically the same stuff all the way through to the end. Probably a good one to practice hammer-on and pull-off moves on, but not that fun to play and the music isn't my style.
Kicked to the Curb - Noble Rot. Easier than the previous, and actually fun to play. Has some fast solo sections that are actually readable and also helpful in learning how to do the long runs with no strums.
Honorable Mention - Soy Bomb, by Honest Bob and the Factory to Dealer Incentives. Excellent instrumental bonus track, that I don't think I played in the original ps2 version, but was apparently present.
There's also some purchasable tracks for download on Xbox Live, but so far I've managed to resist getting Killer Queen, my favorite song from Guitar Hero. The other thing that deserves mention is the new controller. The action on it is pretty good, and I found it a lot easier to trigger star power with a subtle motion on this one, making it a lot less distracting than it sometimes can be. It also has a d-pad, xbox button, and start/back buttons! Now I just gotta find a use for that. Maybe Castlevania: SOTN using the guitar controller? :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)