My experience with the Xbox 360

About two weeks ago I received an Xbox 360 for my birthday from my wife. She did a lot of research and got a really good deal on a refurbished machine with an extra controller and a copy of Halo 3. Now, I know that 360s are notoriously unreliable and one might immediately assume getting a refurbished machine is a bad idea, but the reduced cost and the supposed elimination of the red-ring-of-death problem (that’s what they refurbish) made it seem like a good idea.

Once opened I immediately activated Xbox live and went to a store to pick up a game with the 25$ gift card that some friends had given me. I expected to get Gears of War or Crackdown because they’ve been out for a year–I was wrong. The used version of each was pushing 50$ which I found astonishing. It turns out that triple-A 360 titles are holding their value as much as triple-A Nintendo titles (go try to find a used copy of Smash Bros or Mario Kart). The only good game that I could afford was Dead Rising by Capcom. I think it was a launch title and it was still 30$ so I had to pay a little. I’d never played the game before but I know it reviewed well and I trust Capcom with zombies. The game turned out to be great (lawn mower + zombies = awesome), I had a fellow eightandfiver over and we played passing the controller. We also played a little halo but the game isn’t that good to watch and my wife was playing with us and wasn’t a big Halo fan. We actually ended the night playing Super Mario 3 that was just made available on the virtual console–score one for the Wii.

Within the next week I had gotten Bioshock and Orange Box through game fly. I also had Gears of War briefly but there were too many new games to play before I went through the catalog. I sent it back and got Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (another good Capcom game, this time for the wii, also with zombies). I also managed to throw down a reservation for Rock Band that involved trading in an assload of games to get to the $160 and the last 360 reservation available at the GameStop I shop at.

Bioshock was great, although with Orange Box I had trouble committing to it, I’m sure the significant other and I will get around to it at some point. I put a lot of time into portal and even started replaying Half-Life 2. Damn these are great games. I had trouble playing team fortress 2 because all my multi-player time was going to Halo 3 (also a great game). I really felt like I had in the heyday of the PS2 when we had just tons of great stuff all at the same time (GTA, SSX, Burnout, Katamari…). I was in heaven—and it was during a game of portal just after I got the weighted companion cube that my 360 froze for the first time.

I restarted and started to play Half-Life 2 and got pretty far when it froze again (thank god for tons of auto saves). This time when I restarted the 360 it was flashing red. It was the standard red-ring-of-death that a refurbished Xbox isn’t supposed to get. I know this because the towel trick worked. The problem lies in some solders that fail to connect. The towel trick involves wrapping the console in a towel to deliberately overheat it so the solder expands and connects again. A temporary fix at best.

The real downer was that the next day I got to pick up Rock Band and then leave the house and spend thanksgiving in North Carolina (where I had a marvelous time). I got back on Sunday ready to try the 360 again, with the towel trick if need be, to finally get to try out the killer rock band drums… I couldn’t get past the title screen.

I managed to get a hold of the company that refurbished it and get a return authorization. They were really responsive and allowed me to keep the hard drive and all other accessories. The system is currently in transit to them, they’ve assured me they have a quick turnaround time and that they’ll mail off another system within a day of receiving mine.

I hope I get it soon. I’m afraid my weighted companion cube is going to miss me.

Read More...

Last night Super Smash Bros Melee was revealed to have Sonic in it. Which is super cool, but really not the best news to come out of Nintendo yesterday. The great news is that Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise is coming. This is the best selling game in Japan at the moment and I love this game. I’ve played it on PS2 and PSP and it’s really a blast. At it’s core it’s a multi player game where people team up to go and hunt monsters all the while collecting loot and leveling up. With a decent wii interface and strong online play this could be the break out third-party hit that the wii needs to be considered a real console as opposed to something that’s aimed at my grandma and the 43 people who still think Metroid is a good game.

Here’s some of the sugar that this iteration of Super Smash will be packing: Apart from Sonic there will be Solid Snake and his box (mangina?) and pit (better known as Kid Icarus). Every other character that appeared in the series is expected back, even the ice-climbers. I expect we’ll see a few more sonic additions like Tails and Robotnik. There is a Pokemon trainer now which has the three starters in their evolved forms from Pearl/Diamond that the player can switch between. The online play sounds very robust. There is the standard friend code stuff but also random matches. There is a sort of ranking system and a tournament mode which allows up to 32 people to take part in a standard bracketed tournament either on or offline. It takes the winners and moves them up to the next round until the winner is determined. There’s also a cooperative (up to two players) beat ‘em up side-scroller called the “Subspace Embassy” complete with bosses and lots of meta-story to justify all of the characters participation. I can’t wait.

Read More...

As a wii owner for nearly a year now I’ve yet to feel like it’s a solid video game console.  Sure I still have fun with people playing wii sports and to a lesser degree wii play.  I even like to pick up some single player monkey-ball once in a while.  I’ve yet to try some of the sports games like The Bigs (baseball) and Super Mario Strikers (soccer) and I expect them to be passable but I’ve never defined my gaming experience by sports games and I doubt I ever will.  So where are the wii games that I want to play?

I had very high hopes for Metroid, I’ve always loved first person shooters (even on consoles) and I was psyched to use the nunchuck wii-mote as the natural fps controls that they are (I liked the controls of call-of-duty wii, but the game was lame).  So along comes Metroid and I was expecting something solid, and maybe it is, but it certainly isn’t fun.  I suspect I had too high of hopes, I really expected multi-player.  It was on the DS Metroid, why wouldn’t the wii have it?  I have no idea.  I’d have rather had a multi player only Metroid than a single player only, alas.

Metroid is a puzzle game disguised as an action game and with out a really fast puzzle-solve-time an fps is a terrible interface for puzzles.  Apart from the anti-intuitive design concept the game is full of other crappy game things like back tracking and looking for differences in textures to identify hidden shit.  I want to shoot things not spend my time combing levels through a black and white filter that requires me to hold a button for about three seconds every time there is something that might be necessary to complete the next section but usually isn’t.  Please.  In the review by Game Informer (a Minnesota grown gaming magazine) the editor had the balls to suggest that there wasn’t enough back tracking in this game and that the backtracking is what made Metroid special…  I’m canceling my subscription.

I guess there’s still some hope.  There’s a new resident evil coming, a shooter on rails that looks promising.  There’s also a new Fatal Frame being made by Suda-51 the guy who gave us Killer 7 one of the strangest games I’ve ever had the opportunity not to finish.  Apart from that powder is of importance.

Since I’ve been biking to work I’ve found that when wearing business clothes during the commute it’s helpful to apply a powder to strategic areas.  At first I used some powder I found laying around–Goldbond.  I liked the effect but Goldbond has a distinct mediciney smell that I’m not fond of.  Sometime later my significant other was heading to the drug store so I requested that she pick up some powder that was a little less mediciney, a little more manly and a little more sexy.  She brought me a big bottle of Vagisil powder.  She still claims this meets my criteria…  I disagree.

Read More...

Where Cat people and Wii people intersect.

Read More...

Two generations ago Nintendo introduced the world to the analog thumbstick on the Nintendo 64 Controller (1996) and changed the way video games were interacted with. It gave console players an intuitive controller that allowed for more complexity than they’d experienced before. At the same time PC gaming was experiencing a revolution with the now standard mouse and keyboard coming into their own as incredibly deep and also intuitive game interface devices. Roughly one year later Sony introduced the Dual-Analog Controller to their Playstation and created the best controller that will ever be made that doesn’t feature motion sensing (I would probably consider the 360 controller the best if it weren’t a complete rip-off, an argument can be made that it’s wirelessness differentiates it enough to garner it the top ranking but I disagree. Leave a comment if you’re still pissed).

Whether Sony realized it or not their dual-shock effectively mimicked and simplified the keyboard/mouse pc standard and allowed Microsoft’s Xbox to step into the market with Halo and Halo 2. The games that most effectively used the dual shock style controller and allowed Microsoft to compete in a market where they could have easily failed.
(more…)

Read More...

After trying a number of different friend code exchange sites I’ve discovered what I beleive to be the best one available:

WiiFriends

Most sites just give lists of friend codes that you can enter hoping some of those entered will enter your code as well. Some sites have a rudimentary messaging system that allows for friends to request each other which is a slight improvement over the former, but WiiFriends’ system is superior to both.

Once you create an account you’re presented with a three column chart. The left column is a list of current MiiFriends members to be clicked requesting a friend code exchange.  Once clicked their name disappears from the list to prevent redundancy and clicking on them a second time.  The name and friend code of the clicker is then sent to the middle column of the clickee indicating that someone is interested in exchanging codes.  The person receiving the request in the second column clicks on the name of the requester which removes that column entry and sends the name and friend code of the requestee back to the requestor’s third column indicating a friend code to be added.  BRILLITANT!
Kudos to the kids who came up with this little system and help them out by signing up and spreading the word.

Read More...

My Slot was glowing this morning(SFW), and I realized what it was right away. I rolled out of bed and immediately hit the power button on one of my Wiimotes.

I hit the Wii Shop and made my first “purchase” although it’s free for now.
(I have a feeling that the rumors about other free purchases, on Christmas morning are True, because that’s how great Nintendo is)

The download was suprisingly quick, and even before I loaded the Internet Channel up, I had my first location in mind. I went straight to Youtube, and hit Video, to get to the Most Viewed Videos of the Day. Now it wasn’t real easy to read the 10 or 11 point Text without zooming in, but I knew where the link for “Most Viewed Videos of the Week” was, and was able to hit it on my first try. So pointing is accurate and it’s easy to navigate the web with this browser. Within a Minute of opening the Web browser, I was reviewing valuable information about how to give my dick in a box for christmas.

So the next step was to see how site’s I’ve built run on the Wii. This is where I realized something I wasn’t real happy about: The Wii only has Flash Player 7 on it.

I’m sure no body really understands what that means. Basically, the Wii is a little behind the times as far as Flash is concerned, but not much. This version of the Flash Player was released in 2004 and since then we’ve gotten to Flash Player 9 on all normal computer systems, including Mac and Linux.

To be honest, there hasn’t been a lot of new features in the newer versions of flash that most people care about, aside from the one that basically made Youtube possible. Flash 8 has much more robust Video Capabilities that are pushing Real Player and even Windows Media Player into relative obscurity.

Now you are asking: “Wait but you said Youtube Works” and you are right, Flash 7 will play youtube videos, but they don’t look as good or stream as well as when you look at them in Flash 8 or higher on your PC. The Dick in a Box video looked pretty decent on my normal 32 inch TV, but it did get real jaggy when I zoomed in. I’m eager to hook my Wii up to my parent’s HD TV later and see what videos and small text look like on there.

Overall, I’m really excited about the Internet Channel and I’d bet I’ll be using it on a somewhat regular basis, if only as a novelty act. It did load webpages as fast as an average PC, it was easy to use and is fun to look at the internet on your TV.

Lastly, after seeing the Wii Browser (I still think they should have named it “Web Bowser”) I realized that I could create a simple yet fun game in Flash Player 7 for the Wii, and I’ll give it and 8n5 theme.

Can Someone tell me/give me the font you used in the Logo?

Read More...

Going into the wii launch I was really excited about what appeared to be a great launch line-up. Wii Sports, Zelda, Monkey Ball, Rayman… and I thought there were a lot more… but it’s a month in and there aren’t. Elebits is on it’s way but one ain’t enough.

Perhaps I’m mouthing a look horse in the gift but at the 250$ price point I think Ninty could be selling a lot more games right now. Sure other consoles rarely launch with more than two good games and there can be an argument made that the Wii has at least 4. But the experience with the wii-mote is so fresh that I have this need to try more new games with it. It feels like when I first got my PS1 with the dual shock, I couldn’t stop playing every game that existed for it (granted that was well after launch but it was a compulsion none-the-less).

Wii Play seems to be available everywhere in the world but here!

Read More...

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/strapreplace.jsp

Although I tend to think several of these “Wiimote Destroys TV!!!” incidents are fabricated, I’m still going to send in for my new straps.

I think most Wii owners have probably realized that the straps are beneficial in the middle of heated Wii Tennis rivalries when hands get sweaty and the controller slips away, caught only by little little threads.

I think Nintendo assumed that the design of the DS Wrist Straps was adequate when they were putting these together. The DS is a lot heavier then a Wiimote, and no one ever complained about that strap. Personally, I’d never carry my DS around by the Wrist Strap or trust it to hold if I was swinging it around and I’m sure that’s the way a lot of people feel. It was just a little extra accessory like those lanyards people put on their Cell phones. I might have to get real nerdy and put one of inferior straps on my phone.

Nintendo seemed to respond to this problem quickly, and I guess this is one more reason to be a fanboy, if their weren’t enough already .

Read More...