Tag Archives: 360

New Xbox Experience: One Paragraph Review

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My Xbox Avatar

The new dashboard is really slick. The entire thing has been overhauled, to the point where it feels like a brand new console, rather than just a software upgrade. At first, it’s a little confusing if you’re used to the “blades” interface, because everything has been moved around and reorganized, but I think the new system actually makes more sense, and certainly leaves more room to grow. The interface is dramatically improved from a design perspective, and while it no longer feels like I’m “at the helm of the future,” the new design is certainly a better fit as part of a larger media center, which recognizes that games are just one part of what the xbox can do. The netflix integration works as expected, and there’s a higher emphasis placed on streaming content from your PC to your xbox. The biggest change, though, is the avatar system. Much like the miis on the Wii, these are good for making a caricature of yourself, but it’s hard to get something that looks just right. (In my case, I think it looks pretty good except for the skinny little cartoon neck, which makes it look too thin.) Of course, if you’re not trying to make a photorealistic one, there is quite a bit more potential for insanity. I haven’t had a chance yet to try the feature I’m most excited about — ripping games to the hard drive to improve stability — because I fell asleep during the 20-minute copy process.

Mass Effect: One Paragraph Review

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Mass Effect Dialog Tree

I was just looking through my draft posts and noticed that I never actually posted my One Paragraph Review forMass Effect. And that’s sad, because I absolutely loved the game. In fact, the reason I didn’t post the review is because I decided I didn’t want to review it until I beat the game, but I forgot that I’m incredibly slow at RPGs because I’m a leave-no-stone-unturned kind of gamer. Add to that the fact that after I beat the game once, using my lawful-good style character, I took Daniel’s advice and played through again with the intention of being a chaotic-evil kind of guy. It was a lot of fun, but since the storyline ultimately involves you saving the galaxy, you can’t be all that evil, so I just ended up playing a total dick. It was a lot of fun, but I guess I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t given the option of going full-on Darth Vader on the universe. Still, for all I’m complaining, I played through the game twice without batting an eye, and was in the middle of playing through a third time whenGrand Theft Auto 4 came out and stole all my game time. Long story short, if you enjoyed KOTOR or any of Bioware’s other RPGs, you’re going to dig this.

Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack: One Paragraph Review

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Halo 3: Blackout

Staying home sick from work and puking my guts out earlier in the day is apparently no excuse for canceling Halo night, especially not when it happens to be the day the Legendary Map Pack gets released. So last night the boys came over and we fired up the old 360 to test out the new maps, and I can tell you that they’re pretty good. Ghost Town is the only new map, and is a smallish area set in the jungle from early in the Halo 3 campaign. It seems good, but I had a hard time telling where I was most of the time. The other two maps were more fun. Avalanche is a remake of Sidewinder, the huge snowy outdoors map from Halo 1. The addition of man cannons and mongooses makes the map playable, even with just a few players. The gem of the pack is Blackout (pictured above), a remake of Lockout from Halo 2. The first thing we did was drop a huge pile of explosives into the central platform, which means that every few minutes, someone would detonate it in the hopes of taking someone out. It never gets old. The previous (heroic) map pack, with the addition of Foundry, I think was really aimed at casual gamers like me, and I really got a lot of use out of it. This pack, with the focus on maps for more serious players and the addition of the goofy forge filters for machinima creators doesn’t give quite the same bang for the buck, but I’d still say it’s worth picking up.

Xbox 360 Repairs – Part Four

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My 360 died again. Just six months after Microsoft sent me a replacement for the one that died, the replacement itself has died.

My screen was freezing after playing a game for a few minutes. Suddenly the whole game would just stop, no error message, no lights, no response to the controllers, nothing. I looked the issue up on the support site, tried the suggestions (basically all the common sense stuff like checking the cables and trying different games, and also clearing the hard drive cache), but nothing fixed it.

Finally, I called tech support, who had me try a couple more things, and then while I was on the phone with them, I got the red ring of death. They’re sending me a box to ship them my console, as well as the power cable (which they didn’t take last time).

One funny thing is that this time around, Annie’s almost as upset as I am – playing Carcassonne has become part of her daily routine during Zoe’s naps!