Microsoft Xbox 360 which model to get

I was recently asked by a friend to help him in his Xbox purchase as I am pretty familiar with gaming. As I talked to him I realized that to a non-gamer or even a gamer who hasn't kept up with the industry, purchasing a console is confusing as all hell. We both missed the times where each company had one SKU and you were just choosing between companies. Nintendo or Sega? Sega, Super Nintendo or PSOne? Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, or PS2?

Now we've got: Xbox 360 Core, Xbox 360 Console, Xbox 360 Elite, Xbox 360 Special Halo3 Edition vs PS3 (20) which isn't made, PS3(60), PS3 (80) keeping in mind the PS3(20 and 60) both have the original PS2 and 1 chips in them while the PS3(80) will emulate PS2 and PS1 games. Also the PS3(20) didn't have wireless or the cardreader. For the Xbox's the Core lacks a harddrive...unless you're current with Xbox Live gaming and what it offers and the fact that more and more games require the harddrive for updates, there's no way someone would know how a memory card isn't going to cut it. To add a harddrive to you Xbox core with headset would be actually more expensive than just buying the Xbox 360 Console package, they throw in a better cable and a wireless controller with a headset, essential for the Live experience. The Elite comes in black and has the option of connecting with HDMI.

At this point the casual consumer's head swims. How do you want to connect to your TV, what cables are provided, I know that with the XBox360 console with HD the cables provided are very nice, there's an optical audio port, component, and composite cable in one, that was one thing that Microsoft did manage to nail.

In the end we concluded that the Core model was obviously out as well as the Halo3 model because it is as ugly as fuck. If i see anyone with that model I will mock them but respect their love of Halo. The decision between the black elite model and the classic white console becomes a more difficult one. If you have only a standard TV as I do, I'd say go with the Classic. Asethics aside (I still think the white looks better than the black), the Black elite offers an hdmi connection which to my understanding just means that the picture and sound are all in that one cable.... yippee (again i don't have an HDTV so maybe i have it wrong). With the White version also containing composite and component I believe you can get a rather spectacular resolution with it anyways and you can use digital audio as well for your 5.1 surround speakers. The last consideration between the two are the harddrives. The White comes with a 20gb harddrive while the elite comes with an 80gb harddrive. For someone who plans to only game and not use his 360 as a media center there's really no need for 80gb's ...yet. Hopefully in the future the 80gb harddrives will be cheaper and if there is a need to upgrade its there. If you're thinking of using your xbox 360 as a media center, and you plan on downloading tv, movies and other videos through Xbox live the elite might be the better choice... maybe.

As you can see even someone who's pretty current with their understanding with the Xbox360 gets a little flustered in attempting to explain the differences. Thank god I don't own a PS3 yet, I have absolutely no desire to explain why Sony keeps changing their models and components every few months and keeps trying to sell them for absurd prices. I'll consider joining the Sony camp when they have some exclusive games I'm interested in with a console that's below 400 dollars. I'm a gamer. I just want to play games not install linux on my console or watch high definition dvd's on my nice SDTV... I'll join in the blu-ray vs HD-DVD race if I ever crack and get an HDTV but I have a feeling my DVD's will look more than adequate on an HDTV so like most of the world I'll just wait longer for a technology I don't particuarly have a need for. Also Sony, the immersion suit is over, please bring back rumble to your controller that has a locked battery... hmm maybe that's why there is no rumble. I'll discuss why I like rumble in my controller another time.

Until then I await any of you who wait to weed through the various SKU's and finally manage to get on Xbox Live. Send me an invite and we'll actually play some GAMES.

Harry Potter

So on Saturday I was at BJ's Wholesale Club picking up groceries and various other odds and ends when I spotted the 7th and last J.K. Rowling novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. At $18 combined with my curiosity and my own personal desire not to have the ending ruined for me, I picked it up. I finished it that evening and I have to conclude it was a good read. I have loosely kept up with the whole Harry Potter phenomenon having read all the books and seen a few of the movies. It is interesting that my generation is the last generation where children read novels and literature for pleasure. I may have a skewed perspective but I definitely get the feeling that today's youth spends less time reading literature and instead spends more time online, texting and watching tv/movies and playing videogames. With that in mind, I find it shocking that last and seventh Harry Potter will never be on the New York Times Bestsellers list. The Times had decided a while back that children's books should be given their own category... This amuses and saddens me at the same time because there is going to be a plethora of adults who will read this book and I am sure that it would be on top of that list for quite a long time, if it fit the New York Times' requirements. What is sad is that without future so called children's novels being put on the best sellers lists I think the next blockbuster novel might not gain the acclaim and popularity that Harry Potter has. The first Harry Potter did in fact make it on to the best sellers list. For those of you who argue but it's just one newspaper's list who cares, I argue that with so many books being published the majority of our nation uses these lists to get an idea of what books to look at first. Best sellers are also stocked in more stores and are displayed more prominently. If someone can legitimately argue NYT's stance on not including children's literature in their best sellers list I would love to hear it because to me it just seems that there is no reason not to. Sure put it on the children's list but it is still fits the bill in their overall list as well.

With that out of the way, I do recommend that anyone who has a slight interest in Harry Potter or who wouldn't mind a fast but thick novel pick up a copy before people spoil the plot and conclusion of the series for you.

Shadowrun

Now that the Halo3 beta is over, I had been trying to find a game to pass the time. While I have enjoyed games such as Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas, the online component is still different from Halo in that most of the game types involve one life with lots of watching the rest of your team.

On the plus side the Rainbow Six Vegas Black map pack is now available for download at no cost, wahoo. It might be enough to rekindle my interest in the online play except for the fact that I now own Shadowrun.

At first I was skeptical about Shadowrun. Elves, magic, and a first person shooter? On a whim I decided to give it a try and it turns out to be very well balanced, fun, tense and entertaining. The only problem is the lack of a campaign and playing in bot mode is hardly as fun as playing online. Xbox live is definitely required to get the most out of this game.

What has impressed me about this game is that powers, races, and weaponry are very well balanced. Each race has its pros and cons and it allows for exploration to develop your own fighting style.

Unfortunately there is no split screen multiplayer so if any of you want to get online with a friend, its a no go. Next the server/connection issues have improved but the game still aburptly stops if the host leaves the game. Considering the makers of Halo helped to make this game you would think that they would be able to switch hosting responsibilities to someone else in the game. Instead the game ends and usually all of the reamining players are able to restart the game but sometimes you just end up with a screen telling you connection is lost and a new game must be started from the menu. Hopefully that will be fixed in the next update, I can only hope.

Halo 3 Beta

The Halo 3 Beta started yesterday at 8am EDT. Unfortunately, due to an unknown bug, anyone who entered the beta program through Crackdown was not able to download the game until around 10:30pm EDT. It's sad to say, but such delays have become the norm for anything released by Bungie, the rule of 3 website fiasco, halo 2 map launch the other week, halo 2 itself for that matter. Let's just face it, Bungie can't get things out on time, but neither can I so who cares.

After leaving the download going overnight, I finally played my first games this morning. Waking up a early and going to work later, I managed to squeeze my first 10 games in this morning and I have to say I was very happy with the game so far. The game has much more of Halo 1 feel, which is a very good thing. The controls take a little getting used to. While hitting RB to pick up weapons is pretty easy to pick up and is soon second nature, not hitting X to reload is a much more difficult habit to break. There were definitely many times that I threw a trip mine or energy drainer by accident.

Weapons are the most obvious change made in Halo 3. The Assault Rifle has been brought back from Halo 1, plus the addition of the brute spiker, laser, maybe others, I'm doing this from the top of my head. The AR is definitely more powerful than it was from Halo 1 and is actually a useful weapon in some close range situations. I have not had a chance to determine how big of a difference there is between the AR and SMG. It seams that the with the introduction of the AR, the SMG will see much less use. That being said, dual SMG's do tear people up in close spaces so it remains to be seen. Since the 3 maps released with the beta are all open terrain, there is little opportunity to truly assess the abilities/usefulness of any of the dual-wieldable weapons. The shotgun has received an overhaul in the beta, doing more damage than the halo 2 version but with a much smaller magazine, which is a trade-off I really like since it's pretty rare to run out of ammo on a halo 2 shotgun.

One of the biggest changes to the weapons is to the rifles. The auto-aim on all of them has been significantly reduced, returning the feel of actually needing skill to use them like the Halo 1 pistol. Using all of them has a much more satisfying feel to it (people who aren't good at aiming may disagree...). I have heard that the battle rifle has been toned down and that the carbine is a little bit more powerful now. While this may be true, I am not completely convinced. My impression is more that the battle rifle seems harder to use because of the lower auto-aim. It may have a lower rate of fire than the Halo 2 version as has been claimed, I can't say for sure but I still prefer it over the carbine. Maybe I just need to play more for that to change though.

As of yet, I have not touched the laser so can not comment too much on it. However, I have been on the receiving end of a laser shot and while it is a threat, it does not seem like it is overpowered. With practice, it shouldn't bee too difficult to learn how to dodge the shot more effectively so without skill it's by no means a guaranteed kill. There have also been changes to the rocket launcher, the ability to carry turrets around and more but I'll leave those to another time when I've used them more.

Halo 3 introduces various items including the energy drainer, bubble shield, portable lift and trip mine. Many of these items seem like they are much more useful in objective games than in team slayer. The exception to this may be the bubble shield, which has some practical uses in TS. The only games I have played so far have been TS, so the bubble shield is really the only item I have seen used effectively and it can really be a pain in the ass. The bubble shield does exactly what you would probably expect from the name. You drop in on the ground and it shields the area around it with a protective bubble. The effect that shows this bubble is a transparent active-camo like effect, which can be very difficult to see from a distance. One change that I would like to see would be maybe to add a color tint or some other indicator to make it a little bit easier to identify the shield. I will need to experiment more with the other items later tonight when I play some team skirmish. I can think of some good uses for the energy drainer and bubble shield in king of the hill and trip mines could be useful to cover exists in CTF.

Among other changes to the game, the shield indicator has been moved to a bar across the upper-center of the screen, which is hidden when full. I'm much more ambivalent to this change than other people seem to be. Wherever the shield indicator is, I'll be able to see it when I need to so doesn't seem to matter. One change to the HUD that can be somewhat annoying is what I call the red blotch. I noticed it the most in a game of team snipers, but it likely happens in other circumstances. When hit by a sniper shot, I assume that since your shields are now low/gone, there is a red blotchy rectangle obscuring the top half of the screen. This was extremely annoying in snipers since it basically meant that if you got hit you couldn't see the person who was shooting at you because they would likely be in the distance and thus in the top part of your screen. Also, the effect itself is kinda pathetic, it looks like a red rectangle flashing across your screen. The edges could be softened up a little bit to make it a little better looking.

Of course there are many other changes which I haven't mentioned. Perhaps after playing all night tonight I'll say more about them. Overall, the beta shows great promise for Halo3. Hopefully things will only change for the better between now and the final release in "September."

Frugalness and Xbox Live

Haven't been many updates recently, we'll try to do better.... after Spider-man 3 is out of my system.

So recently Gears of War, Halo2, Rainbow Six Vegas have all been releasing content add-ons for their games namely with maps and even new game modes. As much as I enjoy online gaming, I already pay for my internet connection and Xbox-Live and $60 dollars per game... a $10 dollar increase that we've all been forced to live with. I am greatly annoyed that the Halo2 map packs are four dollars, doesn't use the xbox 360 point system, and is on a per console basis.... If you pay for it you should be allowed to have it on many boxes. I have two old xbox's and one 360. The 360 is what I mainly use but for old times sakes and laziness sometimes I will play Halo2 on the Xbox. I would be forced to pay 12 dollars to download the content to each box. On the plus side i suppose that once the Halo3 beta came out I would hardly play any halo2 and once Halo3 was launched Halo2 would see even less play time. It's just frustrating to be nickled and dimed for add ons to games. I hope that future games won't be released without the full product set with more pieces being released on the live marketplace.

As I really do not enjoy Gears of War online I am passing on the new mappack as well. I have hardly played the free map download they offered last time and it is a shame that Microsoft supposedly would not allow epic to release the maps for free. I will probably check out the new maps when they are free later in the year. The same goes for Rainbow Six Vegas which is my favorite shooter next to Halo2 because it plays so differently although I do wish there was a party system.

I blew through TMNT and I must admit that it was ridiculously fun if not a little too easy. The achievement points are also way too easy to get. It would have been more rewarding if some of the points were a tad harder to get. It is also super disappointing that TMNT is a single player game as multiplayer TMNT is a staple of video gaming. Definitely worth renting at the very least.

Next I am looking forward to Spider-man 3 because even though its going to be a licensed movie video game, the previous Spidermans have been fun and Ultimate Spiderman was also very fun. I look forward to playing the game on a next gen console with even more of New York to explore. The only dilemna I face is do i start the game before watching the movie... or do I wait. Hmm..

Till my next late night posting.

Stupid Pricing

I was originally excited by the prospect of downloading new guitar hero tracks on Xbox live. Now that there are downloads I have decided to pass. Songs come in three packs and are over 2 dollars a track.... Buying all the guitar hero 1 songs would be more than the cost of guitar hero 2 with a guitar and guitar hero1 on ps2, which I already own. Yea screw that, Microsoft and Harmonix really dropped the ball on this one.

Secondly, maps that are add ons should be free. I refuse to pay for halo2 maps and for gears of war maps, esp the halo2 maps. I want map packs for both my Xbox and my 360. I don't wanna pay twice to get it on both consoles. Microsoft is sending out a strong message that they really don't care about the gamers and just want to take your money. Micro transactions are the bane of the service and I refuse to pay more for games that are rushed out and unrefined. Points add up fast and hopefully gamers will show their unhappiness by refusing to purchase overpriced content.