Today, I sold my Xbox 360

Today I sold my Xbox 360. I NEVER. NEVER. EVER. Evereverever. Eeeeever. Thought that would happen. How did we get to this point, you ask? Read on.

-I paid $300 dollars for my console. That's standard these days. With the current generation, consumers are getting what they pay for as far as a console goes. I have very few gripes with the console itself. I knew what I was buying. It delivered.

-Xbox Live runs a few different ways. Some people choose $8 charged monthly. I, on the other hand, paid $50 up front. It pretty much cut the price in half for Live. As far as features go, Xbox Live rarely let me down. Netflix, updates, party chat, and Last.fm were regularly used at my house. My Internet always kept me connected, which is another plus. Having router/modem/speed issues would be the death of entertainment in my house. Gripes - ESPN was not included on my Xbox due to my region of the U.S. How gay is that? Super ultra gay. People who play video games in Montana still enjoy sports. Seriously.

The console and Live were about half of my total investment. I can deal with those parts of the Microsoft plan. Now, we have games/publishers/developers. Let me tell you what I think about those D-bags.

- Games. Ef. Where do I start? Games. I'll start with a list: Winners and losers. Then I'll tell you why they win/lose.

Winners. Or money that I felt was well spent.

1. Final Fantasy XIII - Why this game won - Square Enix delivered, plain and simple. Have you played it? You should. This game had a clear direction (Focus, eh??) that kept me hooked and wanting more. Plus, cut scenes in FFXIII were out of this world. Square Enix filled this beast full of cinematic beauty, a story that actually made sense (which is hard for Final Fantasy games to achieve all over the board,) and a gripping story. I hope that this game gets back in my PS3, which I'll talk about later.

2. Borderlands. - Why this game won - Borderlands. Border. Freakin. Ass. Lands. Magnificence. In every sense of the word. Borderlands is a hack and slash, but with guns/levels/skill trees. I will forever and ever sing the praises of this game. I've played through your wondrous land of Pandora, and will gladly jump back in when you release your sequel in the fiscal year of 2013. Borderlands, I love you. With DLC included, this game cost $100 if you bought everything as it was released. I had no problem that. The content that I received was immense and always felt worth it. General Knoxx will always be a legendary gaming chapter in my life.

3. Magic: The Gathering on XBLA - Why this game won - First off, I really enjoy card games. Growing up, Star Wars CCG was a mainstay in my household. The cards are still in my room, ready to duel again at a moment's notice. Magic is my current love, as far as cards go. Collecting cards is a killer hobby. Wizards of the Coast blew me away with their ability to translate the game over to consoles. I purchased this on both PS3 and 360, because I loved it that much.

4. HD rereleases - Why this wins - Through the wonders of the internet, we can now get improved versions of games from the past with decent price tags. Resident Evil, Crysis, Metal Gear Solid and Halo: Anniversary are/have all been rereleased to mostly positive praise. For some, the mechanics didn't translate well into the current gaming styles. I haven't had any problems yet. I'll gladly step into Resident Evil 4 day in and day out and never complain. Since the games are mostly just a graphics overhaul, there are very few issues reported with the gameplay itself. That's a concept I can stand by.


Sadly, I'm going to enter the section of games that lost. Games that failed. And concepts that suck serious, serious D. Once again, sadly, this is why my console had to go. I will include my qualms with developers at the end.

1.Dead Island - Why this game lost - Dead Island had a ton of unique features going for it. The developers took great parts out of stellar games to make an amalgam of awesome. Or so I thought. From launch, this game was very near to unplayable. There was no save feature. The game relied on an extremely unreliable auto-save system that often made gamers repeat chapters of the game that were extremely difficult. There were freezing issues, as well. Enter a certain door. Freeze. Jump to the wrong place. Freeze. Try to pick up two items at once. Freeze. Still, we saw past that. Through means I don't understand, I made it to the end of the game. And how was I rewarded? SAVE DATA CORRUPTED. UNABLE TO LOAD GAME. That is all. I sold it immediately after.

2. Battlefield 3 - Why this game lost - Battlefield 3 will still be fun. Millions and millions and millions (Happy, EA?) will enjoy this for years to come. Why couldn't I? Seriously. What the hell's wrong with me? I was so excited to play it. You remember that. I told you 10,000 times how excited I was. DICE is amazing. EA is huge. Between them, they wouldn't let me down. That's what my naive, young, innocent brain thought last week. Then once again, launch day came. Ef you, launch day. You suck ass. DICE didn't anticipate server use, which caused the servers to crash, resulting in NO multiplayer. How could they not anticipate server use? Come on, guys. You full well knew you had 3+ million preorders, which resulted in you earning 180 million on launch day. And you still couldn't build servers. I never played a single match of multiplayer. 1 year of anticipation down the toilet. Thanks, bros.

3. Online passes - Why this concept loses - Developers are now complaining at how much money they don't receive from games being sold second hand. Look at how much EA made on launch day, posted above, and ask yourself, 'Is that enough money for 1 day?' Obviously, it isn't. Mortal Kombat, Gears of War, The Sims 3, and Battlefield 3 are among games that now charge players additional fees to play if the game isn't purchased new. Supposedly, this is supposed to be used to keep servers up and running. Well, in Battlefield's case, the servers never worked in the first place, so why would I pay more to get what a game should do at launch? I won't do it. I say no. You can keep your broken games. I'll keep my money.

4. Post release patches - Now, this doesn't lose entirely. Many times, patches/updates can be used to re-balance a game, add weapons, raise a level cap, etc. There are a large amount of companies who use these for the greater good. They use patches to update their dedicated clientele, many times free of charge. Other companies, though, rush to get a buggy game released, knowing that they can put a patch out (hopefully) right after release to get a game going. Well, it doesn't always work out. Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Island, and Battlefield all had HUGE problems at launch that were not fixed immediately upon the game being released. I would love if Microsoft put a rule out to govern post release patches. Think about it, if a company was blocked from releasing an update for 3 months from release date, companies would make sure that they had a final finished product before they could sell a game to a customer.

5. The ever increasing price/frequency of DLC - Why this loses - Paying $60 is a lot of money up front for games. A movie is $10 dollars. An album is about the same. I can't always say that I would $30 for most games that are released. In my world, it does actually make sense to buy into a game for $30 and pay ~$10 for each additional DLC that is released. i'm not saying that the micro transaction revenue stream should be cut and copied from Facebook. We aren't all millionaires. Look at the all line up this year. There are 10+ games that will leave a large footprint on the gaming industry. If games stay at the price tag they're at, you can easily pay $800+ if you plan on playing each of those games start to finish. Incredibly, there are people who will do that. Good for them. If I could, I'd be in the same boat with you, but it's an impossibility. The season passes aren't making this any easier, even if you do save a few bucks in the end. Purchasing the passes for Forza and Gears, after buying the games, would put me at $180 for two games. Plus, we just got news today that the first Gears DLC is delayed...



Summary - I am not allowing myself to buy a $60 game that does not function as it's supposed to. I will no longer dump money into Microsoft only to recieve garbage. I do not care about release dates anymore. I will gladly take a delay than play a broken game. Publishers do not understand this, and will do anything to get a game out for financial gain, without regards to the quality of their product.

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Because of that, I no longer support Microsoft. They can continue to play catch up with every game released. Think about owning a pre-Internet console. They had to have games perfect by launch. You bought a whole game in a box. There were no redos. If you made a game that didn't work, your company shut down. Period.

For the foreseeable future, I will be playing PS3. By no means is it a perfect console, as there are none, but it keeps my frustration at a lower level, allowing me to enjoy what I'm playing. So, for now -

Microsoft, go ef yourself.

Favorite Achievement of All Time.

Hey dudes. I'm back form Helena and starting back up my normal life/routine. My roommate in Helena is actually a killer COD player. We rocked out some Ops while we were down there. He had a person by person plan for Sniper Fi. It only took us 3 minutes to complete. Out of control awesome.

Before I left, I played a lot of Rock Band 3. Man, I really love that game right now. I got my drums in and spent a huge ammount of time getting them set up, tweaking, tuning, etc. In Rock Band, there's a drum trainer mode. If done properly, you can practice the modes it gives you and actually learn a few solid things on drums. I know I'm not the best drummer in the world, but the Trainer beast gave me a run for my money. It took me 5-6 hours to get the achievement, and it was hard work. But alas, meet my favorite achievement of all time, Drum Trainer Graduate -


While the achievement itself is only worth 30 points, its True Achievement score is 271. 9X THE SCORE! That might not mean a lot to you, but out of 15,000 people who tracked Rock Band on True Achievements, only 187 have unlocked it. I feel like a conquered a serious piece of awesome with this guy. Way pumped.

So, with that done, I'm now focusing on completing Borderlands and Getting as much done as possible in The Force Unleashed. I'm still aiming for 60 percent. Cheers.

The end of the contest.

Well, the contest is now over. We made it through. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. At the same time, I had some really frustrating gaming moments. I hate collection games with a passion now. (I'm talking to you, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.) If you read throughout, you can see I am the victor. Ultimately, I beat Joe by 10K+, which is what I said I would do.



If I remember correctly, I heard a lot of this - "Gamefly is gay. My name's Joe. I'm super gay. I'm going to win the contest. Blah blah blah."



As we can see, this was not the case. Joe didn't show up. Here's the stats, person by person, for the contest.



Joseph - 3rd place

- Starting score - 12053

- Ending score - 19339

- Total gain - 7286



Joshua - 2nd place

- Starting score - 11370

- Ending score - 20610

- Total gain - 9240



And last but not least...



Jesse - 1st place

- Starting score - 6988

- Ending score - 30902

- Total gain - 23914

- Total Achievements gained - 746



This was the most concentrated span of gaming I've ever gone through. What next? I'm taking things slow. I'm doing one game at a time. That doesn't include Rock Band. I'm going to play that game to death. I'll probably only be posting on here when I do fun achievements/complete big games. First up is Borderlands. 4 Achievements left in that beast.



Thanks for reading up to this point. I'll talk to you soon.

Game completion time.

I set up new gamer goals on True Achievements. I've had games sitting around, collecting dust, waiting for their chance to shine. It's also been a goal of mine to complete a game worth more than 1,000 gs. Well, Borderlands, you're my next target. The hours I have accumulated into that game are immense. I really think we owe each other the favor of a full completion. Yesterday I played MINAC for about 2 hours to get all of the collection achievements. (I still really hate those, but understand they will always be a necessity.)


Up next, I have to do Moxxi's Underdome. Luckily, I found a little gem that will help me get through the whole thing in a fairly easy manner. 375 waves of baddies is a lot, though. I'm guessing it will take me around 6 hours to get the last 4 achievements, but Borderlands will be my most proud completed game.


Once that is completed, I'm going to finish off Reach. I've talked about doing that a lot, but it just hasn't happened. It's going to be a beast to pull off. I have Star Wars: The Force Unleashed coming in the mail today. I'm pretty excited to play that. I haven't had a legit Star Wars game in my hands since.... since... Well, you know how they make Star Wars games.

Gone again.

I WON AN ION DRUM SET FOR ROCK BAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EBAY RULES!!!!!!!!!!! I GOT IT FOR HALF OFF!!!!!!!!!!

I didn't type that myself. I turned the speech-to-text gadget on my computer. So. Life is shredding so hard in my face right now. Rock Band 3 = Gaming perfection. <3

I have Star Wars: The Force Unleashed coming soon. That's going to be a rager. Yes. Yes Yes. Yes Yes Yes.

Currently listening - Re(Mission) by YBF. Steven Colyer is super nice. bee tee dub.

Rock Band 3

I've played RB3 almost exclusively the last week. It's the funnest music/rhythm game I've ever played. I have a bid on eBay for the Ion drum set that you play pro drums with. If I win that, it's game over for my social life. I'll hole up in my music room and won't come out until I conquer everything in the game.

There are a ton of good games coming out right now, but I can't keep up with them. Next up will probably be Mass Effect. Rage Cage.

.

Played some NHL 2K6. Solid. 20 minutes for 750 points. I didn't even try for the last achievement. It was stupid. Also, the best way to get a penalty in that game was to punch the goalie in the face. Victory.

I've been jamming tons of Rock Band lately. I popped a few bass achievements yesterday. I'm number 6 in the world on "I Will Possess Your Heart." 100%. Woo.

I'm bummed that I found out I have until 5/3 with 3 games. That means I have to play a few more junkers. There's no point in having 3 AAA titles at the same time. I couldn't make any headway on more than 1 at a time, anyway.

Also, Rock Band went down to 20 dollars. Go buy it.