6 posts tagged “xbox 360”

VICTORY

Looks like the 360 started on it's long journey back today after someone on the phone today told me that "Oh, it's been 10 business days, it'll be shipped today." Does this mean they just waited two weeks before sending me a new one? I don't understand...

I am happy to report (if the serial number is correct) that this is a new model manufactured at the beginning of October. Will it magically have sprouted an HDMI port while in the bowels of microsoft? Only time will tell...

Just to keep everyone updated:

• I have to call a phone number and dig through annoying prompts every time I want to figure out what the status of the 360 is (the internet doesn't exist within microsoft, I assume).
  
• last week it's status was "maybe next week"
• this week it's status is "probably in a week"
• WTF

*the repair center is in texas and since everything else in texas is texas-size...

We hate you, Microsoft. You have broken our xbox.

I am not special. I have no connections. But my copy of Halo 3 which was supposed to arrive today arrived three whole days before public release and I had some extra time to play through it this weekend. I felt a strong and unnatural drive to finish the single player campaign (mostly because the multi servers aren't up yet) as soon as possible and I will give you the quick-and-dirty. You, naturally, have already decided to purchase this game and I salute you. A solid choice.

Without further ado, it was amazing.

I'll get my only significant complaint out of the way early: it was short. I couldn't possibly have played for more than 10 hours. And I died about a million and a half times in chapter 9 which means that it must be more like 8 or 9 hours for a really good player on normal. Strangely, my frustration with dying so close to the end of the game wasn't too strong and my controller-throw-count was a mind-blowing zero. Now that Halo Day(tm) is in t-minus hours instead of days, the multiplayer servers are probably warming up and there'll be plenty more hours of playtime. Apparently the skulls aren't in the game the first time you play each mission so don't bother, you'll have to go back anyway. If you're looking for even more hours, campaign score mode (co-op, but with running score for each player!) sounds awesome but I haven't even looked in to turning it on yet.

Killing your first scarab is pretty freaking amazing in Halo 3. In fact, most of the things you've done before in halo are pretty freaking amazing when you do them again in 3. You will marvel at how everything looks again and again and then you will remark about how the prophet, 1080p and all, still looks like a wrinkled piece of plastic fruit. Now, the awesomeness list:

• Spiker (awesome)
• Mongoose + dude with rocket launcher (better-than-warthog awesome)
  
• Customizable Armor on multiplayer (4w3S0m3!!!1)
• Bubble shield (protection awesome)
• Spike-grenade tagging (gibs-and-bits awesome)
• New environments (shadowy-sunlight awesome)
• No multiplayer before the release date (LAAAAAME)
  
• Letting the arbiter do your killing for you (priceless)

It is possible that we will be playing in the office this afternoon. Please keep an eye out.

In lieu of the implementation of VoxPoints[1] I've gone and joined a service that actually has points: xbox live. After fighting with my WRT54G and Airport Express to do WDS (essentially have the AX act as a wireless repeater AND allow me to use the ethernet port on the AX as a way on to my network), the xbox 360 is online and I'm racking up points doing meaningless things in Lost Planet on easy mode. FYI and until I can add it to my sidebar[2]:

[1] Please ignore this if you're just trolling for new vox features
[2] See [1]

I picked up an xbox 360 this weekend with Lost Planet and although it won't get turned on until I finish up my exams later this week, what other games should I get? Assume that Guitar Hero has already been suggested (because it has).

From what I've seen, Lost Planet looks pretty freakin' awesome. Halo 3 is pretty exciting also. Please suggest games that don't take 3 hours in-between saves because I really don't have that kind of time on my hands.