Rants Tagged with “Games”
1 2 3 4 5 6 > >> (Total Pages: 6/Total Results: 56)
Adam Kinney has created a new Silverlight 2 Application to show off your XBox Gamercard on your site. I like his design and it is not static so it shows what you're doing at any specific time. What do you think of mine:
Do you like?
I finally hit 10,000 XBox Live Gamer Points. How's that for a testiment to wasted time? Burnout Paradise finally put me over the top, though I thought it would be Assassin's Creed or the Mass Effect DLC.
I've been playing Halo 3 a lot this weekend and I have to say I love the "Theatre" feature. It allows you to watch a video of your last few gaming sessions (campaign and online) and take screenshots as well as make movies. The screenshot feature allows you to take pictures from anywhere in the level, not just from your perspective. This means you can float the camera anywehere in the world while pausing the game at a specific, often spectacular moment. I've spent almost as much time finding cool shots as I have playing the campaign. The screenshots are uploaded to Bungie.net automatically so you can share them with friends!
What Bungie doess though is when you take the picture (either with the HUD or not), is it renders it with all the visual tricks on (FSAA et al.) so it looks exceptional as an image. Here's an example from an actual shot of me using a sniper rifle to do a kill close in (I know, not the best weapon for the job):
(click for full size image)
Check out my screenshot collection here.
So as you may know, my XBox died again...but it ended up fine in a wierd way:
When the DVD drive died on Thursday evening, I contacted support and they said they'd send out an empty box to send back right away. Friday FedEx attempted to deliver a package from the repair center but I wasn't home. When I got the door notice from FedEx, I looked it up online to see if I could pick it up. Oddly, the package had been shipped on Wednesday, two days before my unit failed. Is Microsoft psycic? Did they send some magic code down through XBox Live to disable my console? What is going on?
Well, what happened is that when my last XBox was repaired, they actually cross-shipped a refurbished console. Something seems to gone haywire and my original console was repaired finally and mailed back to me on Wednesday. The FedEx package wasn't an empty box but my old console...coming home like a dog in a bad Disney flick. The repair center was supposed to keep my console since they cross-shipped me a refurb. In either case, I am back into BioShock and all is well.
My XBox Karma is alive and well it seems...
This is geting pretty old. Two rings of death, a bad video card and now a blown DVD drive. Next time the whole console is going to just melt...
The really bad news is it scratched my copy of BioShock...
As some of you know, the original version of XNA studio only worked with the express versions of Visual Studio. I already usually have a beta version and a release, having more versions was making me crazy. I am so glad to announce that they have released XNA v2.0 (so I can scratch that XBox 360 dev itch) which supports all versions of Visual Studio.
Now I only have to find time to look at it ;)
UPDATE: My bad...they only announced the new version/features...they don't have this version available publically.
It seems that thos endless days of GOW, Forza 2 and Missle Command took its toll on my 360. After struggling to get through this past week, I finally got through today and my 360 going back to the shop...
I am trying to figure out why I am being punished with a four-to-six week roundtrip time for fixing my 360. Its a harsh puninshment, but they did throw in a free game (Viva Pinata). The funny thing is they made a point of telling me that the free game would ship this week via ground so I would get it quickly...without a machine to play it on.
Oh well, now I don't have any excuses for being late to my editors...
I've been a fan of GameFly for years now. I love the Netflix model for games, but I have finally given up on them. I have had a long-term conversation with their customer service people about the lack of copies of games.
This started about four months back when I noticed of the ten games in my queue, that *all* were marked as "Short Wait" which means...not in stock. Because they couldn't fulfill my game subscription (I was getting 4 games at a time), I changed my subscription to one game at a time, all the while trying to get a straight answer out of their customer service department. Today I finally gave up and cancelled my account. I've been with them for almost years now (can't remember, but at least 4) and this was never an issue with XBox games. Probably growing pains, but I am fed up.
Anyone use other services like this that you would suggest (not Blockbuster, I don't want to go to a store to pick up games)?
UPDATE: I wrote the CEO of GameFly so he would know what my opinion is about the result and he replied (within 8 hours no less):
"Dear Shawn- While I am disappointed that your experience with GameFly has been less than great, I do appreciate your taking the time to write me personally.
Over time, we have discovered that ‘short wait’ is not the best way to describe inventory availability, because it suggests that the game is out of stock. While that may be true at 3 PM when you check your Q, we may receive tens or hundreds of pieces the next morning. Therefore, those with an open slot and the game in the #1 position would have the game shipped to them. To make a long story short, we are working on a system that uses our data to give the consumer an accurate read on the probability that he would receive the game the next day. That being said, we still may not be able to fill all the #1 slots at certain times. It will take us a few months to develop and test this capability.
To avoid confusion among consumers, our CS department is trained to give consistent responses. However, I do understand that this could become frustrating over time. We do monitor cancel reasons closely and respond to thoughtful criticisms like your’s with appropriate changes to our service. Even under the current system, the number of short waits will decrease over time.
If you do choose to return (and I hope you do), please let me know and we’ll give you the first month free.
Thanks again,
Dave"
This hasn't convinced me to return yet, but I am impressed by the response. I'll keep this story updated if anything else changes.
With my experience with my XBox 360/GoW issues, I am not surprised if this turns out to be true. The rumor is that starting tomorrow, all 360's will have their warantees extended to one year. Check it out here.
UPDATE: Its official now. As seen on http://www.xbox.com!
Check out this real-time in-game footage of Assassin's Creed. This has to be the best looking 360 game out yet (even better than GOW I think). Glad Sony screwed the pooch on the PS3 to allow this to become multi-platform.
