I buy a lot of stuff, and sometimes my highest hopes turn out to be the biggest disappointments. I’ve evaluated the things I’ve purchased last year, with an eye to what I use on a regular basis that Gibberish readers may use often as well. Sure, I “use” my Keltec PF-9 every day when I carry it, but most of you don’t have carry permits and its appeal is not as universal as this year’s winner. Here’s a look back at the best and worst gadgets covered on Gibberish in 2007.
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I posted about my Rock Band drum troubles earlier in the week. The good news is that EA was super quick about sending me a new drum kit: second day air at their expense. The bad news is that the new drum set still has the same problems as my old one. I guess I could have gotten another “bad rev,” but I am not going to bother with returning this set. I still have all of the original packaging and will take the whole game back to Target at some point this weekend for a refund.
Oh well … that really sucks, but I have plenty of other 360 games to play.
Posted in: games , hardware , xboxI was super excited when I opened my Rock Band: Special Edition box. The box was huge — weighing in at almost thirty pounds — and jammed to the gills with fun stuff like a drum kit, microphone, and a wired guitar. I put everything together and played a few songs on the guitar before settling down at the drums.
I was stoked at first, but the longer I played Rock Band, the more disappointed I became.
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From today until Friday, you can download the Xbox 360 version of Carcassonne for FREE. I think most of my friends already have this, but if you don’t, please please download it! It’s fun, and I could always use some more folks to play with online.
Posted in: games , link and run , xboxOne of the best things about the Xbox 360 is the Live! service. The free “Silver” level allows you to do a lot, like send and receive voice/text messages, buy and play games via the Xbox Live Arcade, and try out demo versions of games before you buy. One thing the Silver level does not allow you to do is play games online with other people. For that, you need the “Gold” level of service, and that runs you $50USD a year. I spent almost $500 when I got my Elite and one game, and the last thing I wanted to do was shell out another $50 for online play.
There had to be a cheaper way to get access to Live!, wasn’t there? I started snooping around on the Internet, and here are two easy ways to get a year’s worth of Live! Gold for less than retail. You can upgrade online immediately via your 360 for $50.00 a year with a credit card. You can also buy subscription cards (think pre-paid mobile phones) from various vendors, including Best Buy, Target, and so on.
However, not all vendors are charging the same amount, and there are a few deals to be had.
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I was intrigued when I first saw pictures of the Xbox 360 controller chat pad. It’s a little keyboard that snaps onto the bottom of a 360 controller. The form factor looked really cool, and who wants to thumbstick around a virtual keyboard when you have to type shit in? Better yet, the chat pad was only $30. Inexpensive enough for a Gibberish experiment. I went to Best Buy and picked one up two days after it launched in September.
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Almost a year and a half ago I wrote about an underground Battlestar Galactica PC game based off of the Freespace 2 engine. A demo for Beyond the Red Line was released, but work is still spotty on the ambitious independent project. In the meantime, Sierra Online has announced that an official BSG game for the PC and Xbox 360 is set for release on October 24, 2007. The game will feature single- and multi-player modes. The single-player part of the game will feature ten missions from the television series. The multi-player component is your typical deathmatch, team deathmatch modes, with a “domination” game that I didn’t completely grok at first glance. Unfortunately absent is multi-player co-op of the single-player missions.
It really irks me that publishers focus so much on online player vs player. There aren’t enough co-op games out there, and BSG would have been an obvious choice. I might have considered spending the 800 Microsoft Points ($10USD) for the game on XBLA, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it to me to just play ten missions.
Posted in: games , link and run , xboxThis isn’t going to be news to anyone who owns an Xbox 360 already, but since I’m a recent 360 owner you’re going to read about it anyway. 360voice takes each player’s publicly viewable gamer card and turns it into a blog. You can not only see what your friends played most recently (which the 360 default gamer card already shows), but allows you to observe gaming and achievement habits over time. It also displays my longest consecutive gaming streak — seven days — as well as how I rank against other gamers. As you can see from my activity I’ve been playing a lot of Xbox Live Arcade games, such as Catan and Aegis Wing. I’ve also been playing a lot of Lost Planet, one of my current rentals from GameFly.
Here’s a particularly gushing entry:
We played games yesterday… No really… I have proof! DrFaulken might have told you otherwise, but we really did. 865 points of total gamerscore means we are teh awes0me! That is an increase of 30 points over last time! He played LOST PLANET, Catan acquiring 1 achievement, Aegis Wing finishing 2 achievements, and then it felt like he threw my controller and I was like, TAKE IT EASY SHEESH and we stopped.
I am not sure if my 360’s blog will be of any long term interest, but for now it’s an interesting way for me to reflect on what I’ve been playing. I didn’t think I was playing so much Forza 2 until I saw it was ranked #1 amongst all of the games so far. I wish there was an easier way to compare my gaming history against my friends; that’s one big advantage the native Microsoft implementation has over 360voice. For now, I enjoy reading my 360 pine away for me to play with it.
Posted in: games , xboxWell, not quite. But I did purchase an Xbox 360 Elite for myself for my birthday this weekend. The Elite differs from the other Xbox 360s for three reasons: it has a bigger hard drive (120GB vs 20GB), has an HDMI video output, and is black. Lady Jaye, my buddy Roclar and I went out to find one. I had hoped to get a unit from Costco, as they offer an extra year’s warranty on the system. Costco didn’t have any Elites in stock, and the warehouse near us didn’t have any 360s at all. I have a feeling that they are withholding stock until the price drop, rumored for the 8th or the 12th of this month. My plan was simple: buy an Elite and wait for the price drop. I would get a price match and get $30 back, to apply towards a game or buy some stuff from the Xbox Live Arcade.
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Thanks to pantone from Ars for posting this.
Settlers of Catan will launch on Xbox Live Wednesday, May 2. The game will sell for 800 points, or $10USD.
As mentioned in my previous posts about Settlers coming to the 360, I am most curious about how the AI will work, especially in isolation from each other. Playing against three bots in jSettlers is much more difficult than playing against one plus two human players. The jSettlers AI is written to keep human players from winning; for the AI to win is an ancillary objective.
Posted in: games , link and run , xboxArsian and Gibberish reader Agreschn wrote to me recently and pointed out that gaming site IGN has a preview on popular board game Carcassonne on the Xbox 360. The write up sounded promising, and detailed how the game will be played online. Similar to the upcoming Xbox 360 Settlers of Catan game, there will be local and Internet multiplayer options. If a real player drops out in the middle of an online game (as people who are losing often do on online games), then a robot can take over. There will be four computer AI settings, from “DrFaulken” all the way up to “bad ass motherfucker.” Well, maybe not quite like that, but you get the idea.
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Gaming site Joystiq.com has an interview with Brian Reynolds, CEO and director of Big Huge Games, who is making the Xbox 360 version of Settlers of Catan. In case you don’t want to read the interview, here are some important points for those of us who have loved this table top classic game for years:
Until last year, I played massively multiplayer online role playing games for the better part of six years, starting with EverQuest during its launch in 1999. I spent the bulk of my time in Dark Age of Camelot and World of Warcraft. I also played quite a few other MMOs, including Shadowbane, City of Heroes, Lineage II, EVE Online, and the beta for Star Wars: Galaxies.
Besides being online, these games had a few things in common: they kept me busy, and they kept me from feeling socially isolated. Whether I was living in a small mountain town in Oregon or working from home in Virginia with a very small meatspace social circle, MMOs were a way for me to jump online and adventure with friends. While MMOs are a significant commitment and aren’t always fun, I will not deny their entertainment and social value. Not only have MMOs allowed me to keep in touch with friends across the country, but they have helped me make some very real friends in “meatspace.” For some, like Alexa and Fathir, their real-life relationship started in-game.
I felt like online games were keeping me from doing other things, like writing for Gibberish. So I hung up my avatars for good last July. I haven’t regretted this decision, although Lady Jaye and I joke about rejoining WoW. After almost a year off, I’ve noticed that something strange has happened to me and my video gaming: console games are not nearly as compelling as their online role playing counterparts.
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Finally the ability to run background downloading and download queues on the 360 is here. This had to be my number one complaint with the 360's otherwise excellent Dashboard/Blade system.
Other improvements include the option to always boot to the dashboard, improved DVD and music playback, as well as a ton of minor bug fixes.
Posted in: 360 , dashboard , gaming , update , xbox