Tag Archives: xbox360

This Week in Gaming

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Wow. What a week for games. I picked of Gears of War and Elite Beat Agents yesterday, been playing Guitar Hero II and waiting on my 360′s HD DVD drive.

Monday night I grabbed some Guinness and rocked out with my cock out all night on Guitar Hero II for PS2. I didn’t buy GH2 for PS2 cuz I don’t have a PS2 anymore and I’m waiting for the 360 version. But my roommate has it and thats all i need. I just about finished it on medium but stopped after Hanger 18 because my hand was cramping from playing so much. I have yet to play Co-op but I will soon enough. The game is awesome but my only grip is that the song selection isn’t as fun to play as the first one. The first one had some more modern songs on it and GH2 doesn’t at all. I think the newest song is Monkey Wrench by The Foo Fighters. I would have liked to see some more current hits like in the original. Other than that I’m hooked.

The big news this week is Gears of War for the 360. Now, I never got caught up in the hype of this game for the past year. I didn’t even know it was 3rd person until about a week ago. I ended pre-ordering the Collectors Edition from Gamestop just based on what I’ve been hearing in the past month or so. Picked it up yesterday and played from about 4pm to about 4am completing almost the entire game. I was having a bitch of a time on the final boss so I called it a night. Got up today and must have died 60 times to the end boss before finally beating him and the game. The game is awesome. Not sure if its the best game I’ve ever played but its good, really good. I can’t remember the last time I spent any more than 2 hours in a row on one game and I just sat through 12 hours of this. I’ve never had this much fun dying in a game before.

I also got Elite Beat Agents for the Nintendo DS. With all day and night playing GoW, didn’t really spend time with it. I popped it in right before I went to sleep just to check it out. Its kinda like a Phoenix Wright+Space Channel 5+Dance Dance Revolution mashup. I got by the first song and it was really fun. I’ll try to play alittle more tonight if i can.


Another one bites the dust…

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While my 4th Xbox hasn’t totally died on me yet, it has been plagued with numerous problems. Its locked up on me, lost several hours of gameplay due to disc read errors, and the occasional system error screen when booting up. Talked to the guy at gamestop yesterday and said he would exchange it if I would like even tho its past the return policy. To thank him I pre-ordered Gears of War Collectors Edition. I also picked up a memory card so i can save my profile and games because I’m not losing my progress in Dead Rising. I almost have the Zombie Genocider achievement and, probably would have already if I didn’t lost hours of zombie killing due to lockups and disc read errors.

Since Xbox.com support was down yesterday (its still not up btw), I wrote an email to Major Nelson chronicling my plight so far. AFter that I jumped on some forums and the first few pages of each were posts about peoples Xbox 360s failing on them. That has me worried because from what i understand, Xbox’s warranty is only 90days. So I’m going to pick up the extended warranty from Gamestop when I pick up my new 360 today. The people at the Gamestop have been patient and understanding but I doubt they will keep doing this for me.

Down and Out for a bit

I’ll be bringing in my Macbook to repair my RSD problem today. I hope its only a week but Paul Stamatiou just got his back after 4 weeks. Christ. Since this is my only computer at the moment, I’m not really sure what I’m going to do if it takes 4 weeks. I have everything backed up on a firewire drive so If i need to pick up a $599 Mac Mini, so be it.

In the meantime, my only entertainment will be my new Xbox 360, as long as that doesn’t die on me again. My Xbox Live gamertag is “the8thsign”. Feel free to add me since I’m probably going to be spending most of my time there for the next week or so.

Focker Out.


The Tale of 3 Xbox 360s

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I had Friday off so I decided it would be a good time to pack up my xbox and say goodbye. Gamestop was offering a $80 trade-in that i couldn’t pass up. So i removed my modchip and installed the original hard drive and off I went to Gamestop to buy a new Xbox 360. When i get to Gamestop I go through my trade-in and some other accessories I had and pick up a new 360 Premium and a used copy of Dead Rising.

I get home that night and unpack everything, hook everything up and start setting up my Xbox. Made a gamertag, linked it to my live.com account, even purchased a 3 month Gold membership. After setting everything up I threw in Dead Rising and played for a good 30 minutes getting past all the intro movies and whatnot. Next I downloaded some game demos and some Xbox Live Demos. I didn’t want to mess around too much because my girlfriend was staying with me so figured it would be a good time to check out the DVD playback. Popped in the classic Better off Dead and watched that with her before going to bed that night.

Get up the next day and I was going to watch a movie through Front Row only to find out that it keeps crashing when I select certain movie files(thats another blog post altogether). So instead of messing around I remembered you can stream xvid/divx using the 360s Media Center extender. I have a copy of Media Center running in parallels so I figured it would only be a matter of setting up some software. I start up my Xbxo 360 and press the Green Button on my Media Center remote(which btw works great with the 360) so I could get the URL to download the software. While I’m downloading the software from Microsoft, i hear my fan in the 360 getting loader then finally die as the 360 turned off. I look over and see a half Red ring of death. Great. I turn it off and try to turn it on. Same thing. Unplugged everything, reseated cables, took the hard drive off. Nothing worked. *sigh* Back to Gamestop.

Packed up everything and back off to Gamestop. Returned it for a new one with no problem. Actually the girl who rung me up started telling me her own horror stories. Since I returned it on my way to work, I had to wait until that night to hook up the new one. After work I started to unpack the new one and I noticed something looks wrong. I take it out of the plastic and see the USB door is pushed in. Then i notice its jut not pushed it but the case is cracked right below it. WTF. Back in the box it goes ready for another trip to Gamestop tomorrow.

Its now Sunday and I’m on my way back to pickup my 3rd Xbox 360 in 3 days. This time I get the guy who rung me up the first time. I tell him about the cracked case and he checks it out and proceeds to get me my 3rd 360 from the back. This time I leave and go directly home to drop it off then i head to work. After work I again start unpacking making sure I go over this baby with it was a fuckin’ CSI investigation. Everything looks good. Hook everything up once again and power up. The splash screen takes alittle longer than normal. Uh oh. Then it happens. SYSTEM ERROR E67. You have GOT to be kidding me.

At this point I’m no longer pissed because its just that funny. I was about to pack it back up but decided to check online first to see what the E76 message was. Found a page on Xbox Scene that listed all know error codes and what they mean. Apparently E67 is a hard drive problem. Unplugged the Hard drive and it booted up fine. Replugged in the hard drive and it booted again.

Its now Tuesday and I haven’t had any other problems yet tho I’m watching this thing like a hawk. I have 3 more days to return it and after that its back to Microsoft. I’ll keep you posted.


Well, I’m officially sold on the Xbox 360…

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With yesterdays official announcement of Guitar Hero II coming to the Xbox 360 with a new controller, it pretty much decided I was going to be getting a Xbox 360. Since GH2 isn’t going to be released until next year, I was just going to wait until after the holidays to pick one up. Well lo an’ behold, sitting in my inbox today was a email from Gamestop saying they are currently running a promotion that will give you $80 trade in for your Xbox towards a Xbox 360. $319.99 for a Xbox 360 Premium. And on top of it they are give a $10 credit for trading in 3 games and I just happen to have 3 DS games I was going to trade in. Woohoo. So I should be picking up a Xbox 360 Premium for under $299.

The announcements of the HD DVD for $199 and the Marvel MMO pretty much solidified it for me. I’ll be picking it up tomorrow if I get paid, if not its going to have to wait until next weekend. I play on picking up Dead Rising as it seems like the only game worth playing for the 360 right now.

I’m going to miss my Xbox and XBMC but I’m going to take out my chip and HDD and maybe pickup another down the road if the Apple iTV disappoints. I just wish Microsoft would just enable streaming mpeg4 video. No one gives a shit about Media Center!! I mean people might if it was more like XBMC but its not and probably never will be.