Breaking Windows

Today is the last day. As my Xbox 360 sits literally 15 minutes away in Maumee Ohio at the UPS station, lonely, lacking attention, and likely crying out for me, I await its arrival tomorrow morning.

My 360 officially went through an Emo stage earlier in the week, and how now turned into pure, unadulterated hatred. Since no one told me I could set a vacation time to prevent the poor thing from going through this depressed period, I lost a 209 day playing streak. The sudden stoppage must have made my 360 feel abandoned.

Soon you'll be home. Soon.

So this week Mr. Driller made its way to XBLA. The single player is great. As Ryan said, it feels like the Dreamcast version. But the online multiplayer is broken. You simply cannot play a game. The person who is not the host continually resets to the begining of the level, in a loop.

For Namco's sake, they better be hard at work on a patch. It really makes me wonder how a show stopper bug like this makes it past QA and Microsoft's "stringent" certification. 

It's almost over. It's almost over.

The system was shipped yesterday afternoon after 15 days at the service center. That's absurd Microsoft. You suck. You're lucky your system doesn't.

Now the only question that remains is how long before it dies again.

Xbox 360 DRM is too restrictive to loyal, paying customers. We are not cheating bastards trying to pull one over on the behemouth Microsoft.

While I am glad to hear that Microsoft has done the right thing for a Consumerist reader, I have the same problem as one of the commenters on that article.

My referb/replaced Premium was a complete POS (not another RRoD but drive issues, freezes, etc) so I went and bought an Elite. My Sega XBLA games are now only playable online.

There sits my Xbox,
deader than a box of rocks.

They don't care for you like I do,
and they probably treat you worse than a shoe.

I'm sure you'll be fixed soon,
and then we can back into a gaming boon.

Until then I say,

GET ME BACK MY GOD DAMN SYSTEM YOU LAZY BASTARDS!

Ahem. Sorry.

If you have Bully Scholarship Edition for the Xbox 360, Rockstar today gave you one more reason to play the game - a patch that fixes a bunch of known bugs. The game has framerate issues, and a number of hard crashes.

It took a week and a half to get the box from Microsoft after calling them to report what has become the inevitable these days. I called on the 27th of February, the box didn't arrive until the 7th of March.

The UPS guy who delivered it knew when I opened the door what had happened. "Had a 360 huh?" Yeah, yeah I did. He also told me they won't pick them up anymore and I had to take it to a UPS store to drop it off. I did it that day, the 7th. As of this very moment, the 13th, it's still not there. Yeah. This sucks.

Itchy. Tasty.

"Oh, the 360 Elites are made better."

My ass. I pop in a rented copy of The Club. It loads fine. Just before I get into the game, the drive starts making this loud grinding noise as if it was tearing the disc to pieces. I quickly eject, and that would mark the final screen I would see off a disc. Nothing else works as far as discs are concerned, the drive sounds like a jackhammer when booting up, and the only thing left are my Arcade games until the coffin arrives.

There goes my 200 straight days of playing on 360Voice.

Dear EA, I just dusted Tiger Woods 08 off my shelf and fired it up. It is nice to have the free Turnberry, Ailsa course that was in Tiger 07 as DLC, thanks for that. Did you ever release that, or the premium DLC for PS3 owners? I am pretty sure you didn't. Glad I have a 360. 

Strait from the (short) press release:

Ever since Christmas, Xbox LIVE has had some problems, I attribute this to growing pains over the holiday. But this has been five strait days of up and down service, sort of there service, and just plain unable to connect service.

Major Nelson has addressed the issue, but doesn't really go into details. This is the worst I have seen the service, I sure hope the get things working smoothly soon. Good luck to the LIVE team.

Kotaku is running a quote about the friend cap in Xbox Live, of 100. It was also covered in one of Major Nelson's interviews in the LIVE is 5IVE series.

Here is my comment:

Yes it is a must fix feature, really. I belong to a number of gaming communities and have a number of friends (and yes, some "friends" too) from esch. My list is maxed and I always have to prune. Between my real life friends and my friends from different web sites, 100 is too little.

The PS3 has this same problem, though the dependency of hardcoded 100 from Xbox 1 obviously does not exist on the PSN.

For a much better explanation, download the LIVE is 5IVE Major Nelson interview. I cannot remember which member eof the team he was talking to, but one of them explained the reason why.

Sure it might not be a problem with most, but it is a problem for enough people, including several Microsoft employees, that it is a matter we are bitching about.

Some other comments that are quite relevant:

BY RAZLO
...All of you people condemning people with large friends lists obviously don't play a lot of multiplayer on Xbox Live.

BY RAZLO
I like how people are defending a 100 friend cap like it's a good thing.

BY ADAMONFIRE
XBL Silver FTW!

Dear Microsoft,

I find this odd. When I try and update the Location field in my XBL profile, it will not accept "Bowling Green, OH" or "Bowling Green" or "BowlingGreen" or even "B0w1ing Gr33n" or "B0w£1n9 9r33n" but it will take "Bowling" or "Green". I have seen many others list their city and state.

"Your location contains a word or phrases that isn't allowed. Please try again."

So, can you please explain to me why I cannot put in Bowling Green, OH

Thanks,

Ken

UPDATE: I got a response from our MS rep:

You should be aware that recent changes to the Patriot Act have made living in Bowling Green a federal offense, therefore we are unable to process any requests that contain that phrase.

Umm…yeah, so that’s really odd. I have a friend that works in the Xbox LIVE ops center that I’ll check with to see why you’re getting flagged. I’ll give you a holler when I hear back from him.

While I am not the Elite Score Whore that Matt is (he has the badge to prove this) I have passed 15,000, and actually made it to 16,000 without breaking a sweat, thanks to Guitar Hero III, Rock Band, The Simpsons Game, and to a lesser extent PGR 4.

I would say 16,000 Gamerscore in a matter of two years is pretty good. I don't have the 52,000 Gamerscore that Matt does, but I don't play as much (or as many games).

According to my Xbox 360 blog, I only play 56.6% of my games (97.3% for Matt). That is probably pretty close. I have had my 360voice account for over a year now, so the data it tracks is pretty accurate.

Interesting read of what is not in Mass Effect.

Most games give you the Achievement Points that you earned while playing the demo if you purchase the game. In fact, the majority of them actually taunt you with them. Not Shrek-n-Roll.

I played through the demo levels, which is three in total I believe, payed for the game, and completed the first full level, getting the "Top of the Class" Achievement for clearing Worchestershire Academy.

The problem is that there is a 5 point Achievement "Get Your Feet Wet" for clearing just the first board. It would not give this to me, even if I started a new game.

I deleted the game, that did not work. I tried on another profile, which worked just fine. So the solution is to go into the System Blade, Memory, Games, Shrek-n-Roll and delete the save file (it will have your Gamertag) and start the game again. Then, you will get the "Get Your Feet Wet" Achievement.

I know I am getting flack for this, but its a fun little puzzle game. In fact, I cannot think of another dual-analog puzzler, at least not like this one.

In case you did not know, the David Bowie three-pack is up on LIVE for Rock Band. "Heroes" and "Queen Bitch" are covers, but "Moonage Daydream" is a master track. I personally would have rather had an original recording of "Heroes," but oh well.

Guitar wise they are not that difficult, even on Hard -- and that is saying something coming from me. Medium bored me to death, I can't imagine how slow Easy would be with these songs.

I have not tried it with Drums yet, and I am sure they will be difficult songs to sing, but I think it is safe to say that all songs in Rock Band are not easy for me to sing.

All good Bowie songs to download, you should check them out if you have the game. And as with the rest of the DLC, you can cherry pick if you do not want all three.

It really shocks me that none of the major news sites, nor the two biggest gaming blogs (Kotaku, Joystiq) took the time to collect all the facts on this one. From reading the comments, they have left their readers scratching their heads.

If you download Tomb Raider: Anniversary you will only be able to obtain 250 Gamerscore from it, not the full 1000 if you bought the retail disc. It took me little time to confirm this with Eidos. The reason is that Microsoft restricts DLC to have no more than 250 additional points.

Now, for the sake of completeness, here is the information that you might already know: You will need Tomb Raider Legend to play the Anniversary DLC. There are two separate downloads, the first containing Chapter 1, 2, and Croft Mansion; the second containing Chapter 3 and 4. The downloads are 1.5 and 1.6 GB, totaling 3.1 GB of disk space on your hard drive, and cost 1200 MSP a piece.

So, in real world money, 2400 MSP is $30. This is $10 less than the (new) retail disc, and as stated, only comes with 1/4 the Gamerscore.

I bet you can find Anniversary at $30 used by now for the 360, save yourself 3.1 GB on your hard drive, and get the full 1000 Gamerscore.

I am speculating here, but I bet the DLC piggy-backed on to Legend was the best possible solution, as Microsoft does not have any avenue in place for full game downloads. XBLA games are capped at 200 Gamerscore, though I believe they fit into the 250 additional Gamerscore for DLC (though I am not certain on that).

I would think the Anniversary DLC would fit under "Demos and More" but I am going to bet that there is no way to attach Gamerscore to any of the "and More" part of that category.

Back before the 360 retail disc was announced, the DLC of Anniversary made sense. Now, not so much.

Did you know that Beautiful Katamari has 1250 possible Gamerscore points? Neither did I. Nor did I know a game to have that many points without a download (Oblivion, Gears of War).

I also see no downloadable levels yet. So there is one achievement that, so far, the developer/publisher is making impossible to obtain. Good job guys! Thats even worse than NBA Live 07.

The game is "budget" priced at $40, and the game is fun. It also has a sticker slapped on it that says "Only on Xbox 360." At least for now, its not coming to the PS3, rumors nonwithstanding, of course.

Fun game, I am glad I got it.

Tiger 08 has two courses for download. This week Turnberry was released for free. This course was in Tiger 07 so it was odd they did not have it in this year's game. This one is free, did I mention that?

Dural Golf Resort is also available for 400 MS Points ($5) and is a really challenging course that has been in past Tiger games.

While it is nice to see them bringing more and more real life courses to Tiger on the 360/PS3, some of those fantasy courses are really fun to play. Maybe next year?

Talking about the PS3, these two courses are not available on the PlaySation Store. This is not too surprising for me, as DLC on the PS3 has been lucklaster at best thus far.

Hey did you know they released a soundtrack for the game? They did, and you should read my review. We always try and come up with nifty subheads for our BC articles, and I am quite proud of mine for this one: The 411 on the DLC including AFI for GHIII on the 360 + Review.

It comes with three songs to play in the game, which is the real reason to get the soundtrack. Well that and the remix of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

In other GHIII news, two pieces of DLC were released, both 500 MS Points ($6.25) and of course this brought the Internet fanboys to a frenzy once again. The three-song packs are from Velvet Revolver and Foo Fighters. I personally like the Foo Fighters one better.

Also, Activision will release the Battle Pack later this month, and proving they are not the new EA (charging for DLC that is already on the disc) this will be free of charge. We will finally be able to play "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" outside of the career boss battle.

You know, like it should have been when we got the disc. Like pick up and play co-op should have been on the disc, too. The PS3 is getting the download packs, I guess they are getting the title update sometime in the next century to enable co-op quickplay... but man do Wii owners of GHIII have the short end of the stick on this one -- no title update (that we know of, I am guessing here) plus no DLC (there have been no announcements of DLC coming to the Wii version) which means they cannot play "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" outside of the career battle.

I am not upset about it. Naw, no way.

Here is a thought Neversoft (and every other developer who seems to be doing this recently -- read: all of them) Lets start putting the content on the disc. It is a really simple concept, and it has worked for years.

Yes, you read that right. There's a new milestone to celebrate in my achievement point whoring. 50K was broken today thanks to the Superstar achievement in PGR4 worth 40.

This means I now have thousands of more points than Ken. I have a countless points lead on that drunken Canadian Jason. And I have more points than Juganawt... Wait. He has how many? Aw son of bitch.

Seriously. Try to find one better than this, I dare you. Even if it's staged, it's still a stunning toss.

That didn't take long, the ass holes have invaded Halo 3. The honeymoon is over, we now have to deal with the winning, loud, obnoxious 14-year-olds that will not shut up.

Joy.

I have looked at all my Xbox 360 game cases, and have never seen this designation before, but right after the HDTV badge is "optimized for hard drive."

I wonder what that means. Maybe when the hard drive is present, the game loads faster? I have been very pleased with the loading times for the game, both campaign and MP.

What a long weekend. It was rough, you know, I had to play Halo 3. Tonight I completed the single player campaign, and Microsoft finally turned the Halo 3 servers back on (since Thursday night they had been turned off, meaning no matchmaking).

I got my first double kill and killing spree in my first match, so I am a happy camper.

I really do not see how these things get missed during QA, especially a show stopped like this. In the Tiger Challege there is a Skins challenge that is glitches. Late in the round it will freeze your console.

This means a number of Achievement Points are not obtainable (reminding me of Tiger 06) not to mention you cannot unlock one of the new (beautiful) courses in the game. On top of that, you cannot unlock Henrietta Brockway.

But we are not done with the agony of one of my favorite game franchises. Photo Game Face is also broken. You cannot upload photos to the EA servers. You can use Xbox Live Vision, sure, but uploading photographs would generate much better results.

Someone I played online told me the Tiger Challenge glitch was on Elite 360s only, fancy that, I just got my Elite. However, I just tried it on a non-Elite and it froze too. I hope a patch is on its way.

If you look at my 360voice page, you will notice that as of Thursday Guitar Hero II surpassed Oblivion on my list of top 10 played games.

Yes, I have played Guitar Hero II more than Oblivion now. Not only that, but more than myself and Jordan has played Oblivion, as he plays it while signed into my account.

Scary I have played it that much, I know.

I have gotten a lot better at it, mainly due to playing Encore: Rocks the 80s so much. The chords in that game are killer.

I wonder if this is a common glitch. I talked to my RedOctane PR rep. about it, and he had not heard of it before, but I just talked to Kevin and he had the same thing happen to him.

Both of us had the glitch happen when doing the same thing: deleting a band out of our profile. The next time we went to play the game, it froze the 360, ever time.

The only way to be able to play Guitar Hero II again (on the same profile) is to go into Memory and delete your GH II save file. Meaning you lose all your progress.

Not fun at all.

You know, saying that the 360 hardware failure problem has gotten to epic proportions doesn't seem that far fetched these days.

Fellow BC Editor Josh Hathaway is the latest victim of a dead 360. I can't count the people I personally know who have had dead 360s on my fingers and toes anymore, how sad is that!

And its not like Josh played his 360 a ton. He played one game (Madden 07) and did not play every day.

I sure hope this latest batch of Xbox 360 hardware has been greatly improved. The failure rate, whatever it is, is a joke at this point.

It has been one full month, I kid you not. My 360 died on May 27, and I just got it back today, June 29. I would have got it on the 28th had I been home to sign for it. But that is a full month without my 360.

I did not get a new shell, it still says the same serial number, same born on date. But it does have a different serial number, so it must have been a motherboard swap, which I have been hearing about lately.

I had five or six XBLA games to download!

I did get a letter hoping to "regain my trust," and a one month free card for Xbox Live has been included to ease my pain. So, finally, I can get back on Xbox Live.

Savvy readers know I have not been without an Xbox 360. I just have not been able to get online with my other unit. Let me tell you - an Xbox 360 without Xbox Live really isn't worth playing.

You know, this is all too true. Even the part of the supply problems of cardboard boxes. That was why it took them seven freakin' days the first time.

I just hope I get my repaired 360 this week.

Ring of Fire parody song (MP3)

Today is a glorious day. The UPS guy arrived, and handed me a box *with* a return address label inside. I slapped it on Xbox 360 Coffin #1 (It has been ready for days) and gave it back to Mr. UPS Truck Driver.

Now, the waiting game starts over. Will I get my refurb 360 in less than 10 days, will it have a second heat sink?

My Xbox 360 coffin took seven full business days to arrive, not the two to three I was told on the phone. Counting weekends, thats about a week and a half of time to wait. This does not instill much confidence in the "10 days for repair" I was told over the phone.

So it is packed up and shipped back to Microsoft, or rather their cemetery/repair center in Texas. Well, I would have shipped it today had the box come with the return address label that the instructions said are in the box.

So I am now oh hold with Microsoft Support. This same return label problem happened to Juganawt months ago.

So they are canceling the first coffin, and sending another one. I am not very impressed Microsoft.

Actually, right now I am pretty pissed off, because I just found out that I can play none of my XBLA games when not connected to Live. I remember reading about that, but I never though I would have to worry about the new hardware issue.

I am going to assume I will be getting a new piece of hardware, whenever they can send me a coffin with a return address label, and if that is the case, you can be sure I will raise holy hell. I should be able to play my XBLA games that I paid money for when and if I am not online at the time.

Now wait number two begins. Because someone did not double check the contents of the box, I have to wait for a second coffin.

Will the one month free for Xbox Live that I was promised be enough when this is all said and done?

I called MSFT on Tuesday, and with no questions asked, they are sending a coffin (which I should have tomorrow) to ship my dead 360 back to them. Then wait up to 10 business days, and I will have a repaired unit.

So glad I did not have to pitch a fuss. I was ready to put up a fight, too.

Son of a bitch. Right when I am going to have some friends over, my 360 gets a Red Ring of Death™. It did this a week ago, and it rebooted just fine. Now it won't turn on at all.

I had plugged in my play and charge kit, was charging my controller, and didn't want to leave the 360 on all night, so I turned it off (because it has the very nice feature for auto shut off). Right when I hit the power button, I got the three blinking red lights. One more push on the button turned if off, never to turn on again.

Maybe it was all the Guitar Hero II play it has seen lately.

It is dead, R.I.P. little buddy. My little blast furnace. I am going to miss ya. 11713 Gamerscore is a lot to through with one piece of plastic and metal, ya know?

My system, like so many others, was a lunch day unit. Thankfully, I know how to get this thing replaced, one nice perk of being the Gaming Editor at Blogcritics.

I will keep you posted on how long it takes. Since Monday is a holiday, the clock starts ticking on Tuesday.

Now that I have joined the club, its seems like a lot of people I know have had dead Xbox 360s at some point. Mine didn't even last a full two years!

That took a while. Thanks to horrible games like Shrek the Third!

... Will be the death of Matt. He is a freak about that game.

I have no idea when the game comes out, so don't ask.

GRAW Chapter 2 is now available on Xbox Live for only 600 Microsoft points. For all of you who haven't tried Chapter 2 out yet (or cried like a little school girl at the original price), here's a quick list of what it adds to the original GRAW:

• Continued Co-op Campaign
• Relit Adversarial Multiplayer Maps
• New Game Types
• New Camouflage Patterns
• New Character Customization Faces
• New Weapons

Half off isn't bad, and is well worth it. Though I said that back in June. Once again the early adopters get hit the hardest in the wallet. But hey, the those new co-op levels sure are fun.

Part 1, 2, and 3, with screen shots and concept art. Also watch the "Theater Trailer" from GameTrailers.com (Trailer 5).

DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE TEXAS HOLD 'EM PATCH. Do not start the game. Check MN's site to see the problems with it. It's deleting bankrolls and high scores... IN OTHER GAMES. People have their Lumines scores wiped clean after downloading.

As one commenter put it:

This week's Arcade Wednesday title was a patch to fix Texas Hold 'Em.
Next week's Arcade Wednesday title will be a pactch to fix the patch for Texas Hold 'Em.

One out of four. I have been able to finish one out of four online matches tonight.

I get disconnected the rest of the time, with this:

You have lost your connection to your current game and possibly to EA Nation as well.
Press START to return to the Main Menu

Hey, at least we have progress. I will play a few more games tonigh, and see if I can complete any more of them.

UPDATE: I got through one more race! Of course the one after than froze my entire Xbox 360. This is not good.

Big surprise here, I know. Another EA game that has screwed up online play.

This sort of reminde me of Tiger Woods 06. Serious let down EA, really, nice job. The two cop chase modes sounds really great. Now I would like to try them out.

Every time I try and create a match it tells me it cannot, and to try again later.

I hope they fix this soon.

It is also worth noting that the PC users of Carbon are complaining about the same issues.

Why doesn't EA just use Microsoft servers for their games, like everyone else. Microsoft has proven time and time again that they can run servers for online games. And EA has proven time and time again that they cannot.

Here is a quote from an EA Mod "Carbon 13"

We have found a bug in our server software that we've patched this evening. Hopefully that will solve the instability issues. It's worth noting that we are seeing a huge number of players online with 360, quite a few more than we predicted, so we're working hard to keep up with the demand. Apologies for the inconvenience.

I am beginning to understand why almost every EA game for the 360 has severe lag, or has problems creating online matches.

At least in Tiger Woods 07 you can play a full round of golf, after you look at an annoying flashing "Chose Character/Loading Lobby" screen for 20 minutes.

I will try to play online in Carbon again tonight, and let you know how that goes.

Major Nelson is reporting of some premium content for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, which doesn't even ship until the 17th.

Unlock Golfer – 200 points
Pro Shop – 300 points
Maxed out Player – 200 points
Sunday Tiger– 240 points
Unlock Courses – 200 points

You get these things by playing the game. Do I have to repeat myself? You get these things by playing the game.

Microtransations have officially gone too far. Yes, this is even lower than 160 MS Points for a video about throwing a ball in Madden NFL 07.

Every so often a mod comes along that's so intricate, so amazing, so over the top, that words simply don't do it justice (but we'll try anyway). Ben Heckendorn's Xbox 360 laptop is one such mod.

Indeed, I am speechless. That thing rocks!

The save system sucks, big time. Using the 360's Dashboard to handle everything, you are torn away from the game when you save. Guide Blades swoop in from the left and right, it is all very confusing. Surely they could have covered together a better system. Oh, and you only have one save slot.

When you die (and you will die) you have two options. Save progress and restart the entire game, or load last save. I just started day two and encountered my first auto save.

This is a game you are very likely to play again, so there is no need to force people into only one save file.

Beyond the rotten save system, the game is a hell of a lot of fun.

UPDATE: After playing the game for a few days now, I like the save system now that I understand it. It adds to the intensity and urgency of what you need to do.

I simply cannot believe the number of ways Xbox Live data has been turned into fun websites. This one is 360 Friendspot who linked up with 360 Voice, the one Ken linked to the other day. They take your favorite games, gender, and Gamerscore (and probably more) to match you with people you'd be compatible with. My insanely high Gamerscore makes it a little harder for me since Achievements are all that matter and I'm so damn good, but it's a fun site nonetheless.

360voice.com has a really neat site you should check out if you are an Xbox 360 user. There seems to be a cottage industry for web sites generating reports from Xbox 360 data, but none integrate things as well as 360voice.

I have used it since April and the feature set of the site has grown by leaps and bounds since then. The longer you have been a user, the more useful the data becomes, as expected.

Hitman has been a great series. Contracts wasn't the best, but since I got it free with my Alienware rig, I played it too. Blood Money adds so much depth. The notoriety system and accidental deaths are great additions to the series. You have to be smart with your money. If you are sloppy, you can bribe officials and witnesses.

The graphics in the 360 version are top notch. This is most apparent in the Marty Gras level "The Murder of Crows." The streets and balconies are lined with hundreds of people. It is quite a sight.

With an emphasis on stealth, this stealth-action game delivers on every level. It is a shame the demo held your hand every step of the way, it might as well given you a blow job too. The game itself is very unforgiving. The offset is the shear number of ways to complete any given objective. This freedom is heightened further in Blood Money more so than in previous installments.

So far my favorite "accident" involved rigging the grill with lighter fluid. You can imagine what happened when a specific someone tried to use it. Evil? Sure. But quite effective.

Plus, it was an accident.

This was quite annoying. I downloaded that 725 MB Chapter 2 DLC for G.R.A.W. last night. It took forever. When I fired up G.R.A.W. it told me it had a Title Update. So I updated it.

When I went to search for the new co-op missions, they were not there. So I had to download the Chapter 2 DLC again. Oddly it did not just go by quickly the second time like it usually does when you select "Download Again." That, of course, took forever.

Sure enough when I play G.R.A.W. now, the new content is in place, ready for me to play. The new maps are just gorgeous, but I expected no less.

I wonder why I had to do that, because downloading a 725 MB file twice is just annoying, it doesn't matter what the circumstances are.