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Entertainment: Got me an Xbox, woowoo!
Fri, 24 Apr 2009

I've generally been a pretty low stress sort of fella.. things come at me and I've rolled with them, or just gotten my head down and survived hard or tedious things without freaking out. Its one of my super powers - Everyone has a super power, just that most people's power is being an idiot :) Alas, more often the last couple of years I've had my stress-outs - which is just not my style - but such is life right now. Hopefully I can return to form this year .. lose a bit of weight and if not relax, at least be cool.

My wife, bless her heart, allowed me persuade her to get us an Xbox for my birthday. ("Don't worry about my birthday this year.. we're too busy and I have pretty much all that I want", "You can get an Xbox" "Oh, this birthday is very important, we absolutely must get something.. Xbox you say?" ) She's not much of a gamer (though does adore her DS on occasion), so this is more a gift of compassion.. help for my ailing creeky old soul maybe more than its technical merits (rent movies direct to it, etc). She knows I've been a bit of a wreck of late, and this might help.

Also she knows I'm not one for relaxing too too much -- I love a lot of things, but I tend to just 'work' instead or even when into entertainments, I'll try to over-do them -- with free time so tight, trying to max what you get done in your moments is just a new way of stressing. I've often joked the ultimate gaming is software development itself since I enjoy it so much -- the fact of it is that I barely know how to relax, since my 'entertainment' is really a form of work. I guess its the same as people bringing their work home. I enjoy rolling up my sleeves and digging into writing a new game or handheld app.. wtf?! More though -- we all know the distractions the Net can offer, so when I'm working away on some code for this or that when I should be relaxing, its easy to just waste away the time.. so maybe with an Xbox I can learn to relax a bit, kick back with a rum and coke and play a game while sitting on the couch. Or maybe watch a show or DVD or movie without alt-tabbing to email every 10 seconds. Cool. Awesome. (In the evenings.. during the day if I get a moment, I'm going to sit on the back porch, damnit!)

So with all of these and many more over-thought factors, I've wanted an Xbox despite having a capable enough PC, despite half the XBox 360's library being available on PC, and despitehalf the 360's games being arguable better on the PC. (Games that are better played with a mouse, such as an FPS shooter, say.) Well, that and pure gadget lust of course.. the 360 can drive an HD TV, and its a new toy!

The Cons to the gadget-lust of course are the price of the machines -- not cheap, especially during this economy, and the apparent risk in the production values. And the fact that the games are so utterly good looking that they're destroying my interest in building games .. no way I can keep up with those production values! Anyway, if you listen to those on the Net you'd assume that its on the order of 50-100% of them failing within a month of purchase. Of course, most of us just realize this is the usual Net BS -- the grit in the system is most felt.

But it turns out, the production issues of the 360 and the bitching online is much deserved! But despite the scratched disks, the red-ring of deaths and other curious failures, people come back. The content is that compelling.

The purchase and install: So I went to a local store with a relatively easy return policy (a little wary at this point, but not much) and picked up the current 2-game bundle. Got it home, set it up and ignored it for a day until it was my turn for a 'night off' and set to playing. Noticed some curious sparklies in the TV display (and took a couple pictures for proof), and got pissed as hell. (I mean, we got this machine for the de-stress right?) Still, as a good friend of mine in IRC instructed, there was no need to get so PO'd and the store was quick to swap me another machine. (I read later that the issue was likely related to the 1080p resolution I was having it drive - I've a pretty respectible TV so I bloody well wanted 1080p. Apparently there are a number of issues that many 360's can't handle well at 1080p, but were I to drive it at a lower bandwidth output I'd not have had _that_ issue. But no way I'm laying down that amount of cash with a defective unit day zero, right?) This was an "older model" unit - I learned later about the many various internal improvements Microsoft has done over time, and how to pick them out in the field. The older ones run hot and have louder DVD drives, and tend to fail a lot more.... so just as well I had it fail first hour, rather than blow up in another more serious way down the road and get me into the refurbish cycle of hell.

Anyway, upon returning to the point of purchase the next day I found it highly odd that the EBGames (a variant of Gamestop for Canada) fellow gave me a naked 360 unit as my 'new replacement.' "The box is pretty beat it, I just picked it out for you." I mean, if the box was so badly beaten up then may I don't want that one for my replacement unit, but more to point .. with GameStop's well known 'switcheroo' issues, I don't want a naked unit. But whatever, by this time I was resigned to expecting it to also be bad and I was ready to come back for XBox #3. By this time I was mighty good at hooking the unit up and trying various cables to test, so it took only moments for me to hook up and find out Xbox #2 was flaky in a similar way -- it would not even do 1080p at all, just blank out in that mode. Peachy! Perhaps I could've settled with 720p like perhaps most users are, but again.. no way I wanted to settle on sub-par on a brand new purchase.

I did find out one could go to a different EBGames outlet with returns so headed to a more convenient location that was bursting at the seams with fresh new units.. and by new I mean in sealed boxes without damage and the latest system revision (running quieter and cooler I'm told, and with better overall reliability.) XBox #3 turned out to be the one, and has worked perfectly for a week or so now.

The lads I spoke with did suggest they'd seen a very high (30% or more) return rate on some models of the XBox, so the Net moaning is quite possibly well deserved. Or maybe I had been getting screwed by GameStop trickery, them playing the odds I would be happy with a used or screwy unit and didn't have a 1080p TV? *shrug* Who knows. (I do like EBGames .. usually a pleasant experience, as far as game stores go.)

The Content -- so, with all that really really annoying shenanigans out of the way, that I'd not have put up with normally -- the XBox 360 is amazing kit, if a little loud when the drive is spinning. (You can copy games to the hard drive if you have one, to make that moot. And to mitigate the risk of scratching your disks, that people talk about.. *sigh*)

XBox Live Marketplace, where you can get free or rental or purchase video, previews, games and downloadable content is fantastic. As usual we Canadians get the shaft so theres not much in the way of Hollywood movies up, but theres some. Still, theres a fair assortment of indie video (The Guild, *laugh*) and a huge variety of Xbox Live Arcade games, including demos and 'downloadable content updates' for games, free to nab. Pick a game, queue up a download, and go play or watch or something and it'll happily suck down the queue in background. Theres retro titles and redone retro (Pacman and new competitive Pacman, for instance) and quite a pile of great quality new games. *Really* impressive for gamer noobs like me.

The actual on-disc purchased games.. again, while existing in overlap with PC gaming, there is still quite a bit of really good stuff. I'm playing with Fable 2 now.. simply gorgeous and pretty cool.

I do find it very odd that a couple of games I've looked into have weird "family bullshit", that I can't help assume is poached from Sims or some shit. I used to be a bit of a hardcore gamer (more a hardcore gamer wannabee as I went back to my compiler), and I just can't take this stuff seriously. When I found out in Fable 2 you could get your character and go pick of game characters (NPCs, not real humans) for dates, sex, etc, have kids, buy a house or rent them out, and that you should 'go to work' (minigames) to get cash .. I was more than a little W-T-F. I go to work and have a family in RL, I don't need that stress in-game, thanks :) But fine you can mostly ignore this stuff without losing some pieces of the game.. but _seriously._

A few days later, I found out you can do similar stuff in GTA IV, which is really just about loose driving around a city and causing mayhem. Getting on your in-game cellphone to call people and arrange dates... .... .....

I'm told again that perhaps this is just in these two games, two very high profile Xbox 360 games, but still. *BLEH*

In summary -- all told, I'm pretty damned impressed. Wireless controllers with remote on/off is way cool for flopping on the couch. It seems a capable machine graphicly, and the library of both Live Arcade and real store purchases seems fantastic. Accessory options seem good -- with a baby sleeping upstairs I was curious if there was a wireless headphone set (not a headset for gabbing with 12 year olds) and sure enough, and even pretty cheap. So now I can nerd out on the couch with my wireless headphones and controllers and chill a little bit without disturbing anyone. Cool bones.

Aside -- For a long long time I've been saying that things will get to be 'good enough' for the average consumer soon. Its been a long time coming for video card technology, but audio seems to be a much simpler thing. We got "good enough" in the Sound Blaster 16 days imho, so nowadays a good enough audio solution in a computer is pennies. Video is still expensive as heck (couple hundred for a 'good' video card for a PC), but we're getting there. With the current console generation (PS3 and 360) we've got HD consoles in the home, and the graphics are pretty damned good. Maybe this generatoin or next will be 'good enough' that people will not need to upgrade much.. except of course for the artificial stuff, when the company retires its machines and makes new content only for the new one. I just hope the XBox 360 lasts another 5 years... we're not buying another console for quite awhile.

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