Posts Tagged ‘Xbox’

« Older Entries

Oddball Review: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

By Chief Oddball on August 23rd, 2010 at 5:56 pm

Filed under Reviews ··· Leave a Comment

When I first heard about Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, the new Xbox Live Arcade title from Crystal Dynamics, I didn’t think it was going to be that good. Although my enjoyment of the Tomb Raider franchise is well documented — with one exception — this isn’t technically a Tomb Raider game. See, the words don’t even appear in the title and stuff.

More importantly, though, this game departs from the usual retail disc experience of Tomb Raider as well as the core gameplay foundation that its fans have become used to. Rather than a single-player adventure game that has you jumping, climbing and cavorting your way through exotic locations in search of some ancient artifact, Lara Croft: GoL is an isometic action game that focuses much more on combat. Because combat has traditionally been one of the weakest features of the Tomb Raider series, I was not hopeful.

I was also, as it turns out, wrong.

This is a really good game — in fact, I see it as the 2010 Summer of Arcade equivalent of last year’s Shadow Complex, which I also loved and discussed here. It is, in fact, the first time I’ve ever actually enjoyed the hell out of combat in a game starring Lara Croft. You’ll notice I didn’t say “in a Tomb Raider game”, because as I’ve noted, this technically isn’t one. (Hee…you see what Crystal Dynamics did there?)

Furthermore, GoL departs from the single-player roots that traditionally underpin the adventures of Ms. Croft. This is a game with an entire cooperative element fully baked in, where you and a friend each take a leading role — one playing Lara, and the other playing Totec, the Guardian of Light himself. Totec is an Aztec god who was awakened by some greedy bad guys when they attempted to steal the ancient Mirror of Smoke, in which the evil god Xolotl was imprisoned. Xolotl escaped and began to summon his horde of evil from the Negaverse abyss, and it’s Lara and Totec’s job to rein him in again.

Continue Reading…

Comments (0)

Making Progress, Waiting For Resolution

By Chief Oddball on August 17th, 2010 at 8:45 pm

Filed under Journal, Randomness ··· 6 Comments

A lot of stuff has been happening lately. Progress being made. We think.

If this were Facebook, I’d have stopped right there and felt right at home with the millions of other vacuous posts that contain so little detail as to be utterly worthless to anyone but their author. However, this is a blog — indeed, a novel concept — where paragraphs are written, at least so long as the proprietor doesn’t forget to come around and actually write them, in which case the blog collects dust for days if not weeks. But never mind all that. I’m a bit tired right now, and my thinking has become…randomized, to paraphrase V23. Wow. You see? Random.

Up until this past weekend, we went three or four weeks without any showings of our house. I got in touch with our realtor to see if I could get an update, and the update was that there were three new properties whose prices were undercutting us. One was a short sale and the other two were foreclosures, so it wasn’t exactly direct competition, but they were the same model home as ours and when someone is bargain hunting, they tend to start at the bottom. Shortly after we had this conversation, coincidentally, we had two showings booked within hours of each other: one for Saturday and the other for Sunday. Finally, some new activity had arrived.

Apple and I had a fairly busy weekend, doing a lot of shopping and housecleaning and stuff. One of Apple’s Facebook friends reminded us that we should try baking cookies to fill the house with a pleasant aroma before our showings, so we heeded the advice and picked up some ready-to-bake chocolate chip cookies from Immaculate Baking Co. We baked half of them, and they were — in a word — scrumptious. Oh yeah, and the scent was pretty darn alluring too.

Then, we had another showing today…that was scheduled 90 minutes in advance. I got the call around noon, just as Apple was starting to prepare lunch, and the buyer’s agent was hoping to show the property at 1:30. So we had to stage the house, pack up all the food and jet over to my parents’ place pretty quickly, but it all worked out. I did some work on my new Sony Vaio F-series laptop and really is a fantastic machine for work, which is good because that’s why I bought the thing.

Unlike the last couple of showings we had (or didn’t have) a month or so ago, all three of the buyers actually showed up this time, if their agents’ business cards being left on our countertop is any indication. So we’ve had plenty of the home-showing process lately…but can we get some resolution soon? Like an offer, maybe? Just saying. Oh, well…the housing market in Texas continues to depreciate a bit, and interest rates are still declining, so while this isn’t exactly heartwarming news, the delay can only be helpful to us.

Florida has been doing its usual “pop-up thunderstorms” shtick a lot lately. For two days in a row now, I’ve gotten wet whilst walking up to the post office to get the mail. Yesterday Apple and I both went for our usual lunchtime walk, and the sky looked rotten dark so we took the big golf umbrella that I won in an office Christmas party trivia contest some years ago. (No joke.) We needed it, too, because a storm blew up on our way home and nearly blew us away. It took both of my hands to keep the umbrella from firing off across the lawn. The driving rain was so bad that we were both soaked by the time we got home, requiring our clothes to be hung up to dry overnight.

And then again today, I walked from my parents’ house to the post office at lunch time and was promptly rained upon again. I was out there by myself and had brought an umbrella, so it wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but I was still pretty damp by the time I got back. The summer storms here often blast you hard enough that an umbrella only keeps your upper half dry. I’ll never forget how many times my great uncle used to tell the story of how he once visited Florida after being recalled from the second World War, and how torrential the summer storms were even then. In the time it took him to run across the street, he was completely drenched. “My wallet was soaked all the way through in those few short seconds!” he would always say. Having lived here for over a decade now, I am only too well acquainted with that particular anecdote.

Continue Reading…

Comments (6)

Retro Gaming Anniversary: Star Wars: KOTOR

By Chief Oddball on July 15th, 2010 at 11:10 pm

Filed under Reviews ··· 3 Comments

Damn it feels good to be a Jedi gangsta

Seven years ago today — July 15th, 2003 — Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was released for the original Xbox console. Now, I normally don’t go around spouting off release dates of games; I happened to run across this one a couple days ago only because I am once again playing this game. Since I have been so completely addicted to it in recent days, I thought it might be an appropriate subject for one of those elusive Oddball Update “Retro Gaming” posts. And so here we are.

Star Wars: KOTOR (as it shall henceforth be called, since I don’t want to type out that whole name again) has the honor of being the first game I ever reviewed here at Oddball Update. It was, in fact, the subject of my second post ever on this blog. Reading that old post from 2003 is somewhat disorienting today, as it talks about the old Xbox console and its hamfisted controller, and makes comparisons to other games of the era that I have long since forgotten. But the overall bent of the review still holds true: KOTOR is an amazing game, even today in 2010, and now — as then — it’s an absolute pleasure to play.

Today’s post won’t really be a review of the game (hence the absence of the word “review” from the already-overlong post title). It’s more a chance for me to discuss the technical fine points of going to back to such old software on a modern computer. This is a process which is typically fraught with compatibility nightmares, driver hacks and other stuff-and-nonsense that makes you wonder why you even bothered in the first place. However, thanks to Valve Software’s inestimably helpful Steam digital delivery platform, playing KOTOR on your PC is now as easy as plopping down $9.99, downloading 4GB of data and firing it right up — natively — on your Windows 7 box. Yep — KOTOR is on Steam.

Continue Reading…

Comments (3)

Oddball Review: Tomb Raider Underworld (Xbox 360)

By Chief Oddball on July 7th, 2010 at 9:30 pm

Filed under Reviews ··· 4 Comments

Lara Croft stars as the heroine of Tomb Raider: Cleavage.

I haven’t done a review in a while. Sadly, since the rise of the HD era, all of my vintage video capture equipment is no longer sufficient for the purpose of grabbing screenshots of high-res video games and Blu-ray movies. Nevertheless, I’ve been spending far too much time consuming media and far too little actually producing anything of value, even a schlocky video game review on a blog that no one reads. Consider, then, today’s review of Tomb Raider: Underworld a first step toward rectifying that.

One way that the frugal (a.k.a: cheap-ass) gamer can enjoy his video gaming pastime for very little expense is to buy games a year or two after their release. Although I’ve always been a “mild fan” of the venerable Tomb Raider series (who can trace his lineage all the way back to 1996′s very first installment on the PC), I never bought Underworld when it hit store shelves in late 2008. I did, however, download and play the free demo and liked what I saw. So when a friend popped in the DVD of Angelina Jolie’s first Tomb Raider film over the Independence Day weekend, I got in the mood to revisit this storied video game franchise on my own time.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is a direct sequel to 2006′s Tomb Raider: Legend, which I bought (at full price) and enjoyed that year, but quickly traded in as it was quite short and had essentially no replay value. By comparison, when I picked up Underworld a couple days ago, I paid eight bucks and change. I can say with certainty that Underworld would have to suck pretty hardcore for me to feel ripped off after a transaction like that. That’s the advantage of buying old stock, friends. After hitting up Xbox Live for the free DLC packs (mostly costumes and such), I fired up the game and decided to see what my eight greenbacks got me.

To be honest, I don’t remember much of anything about Legend, the previous game in the series. My memory of it is very flash-in-the-pan, like a recollection of a dream I had five years ago. So I was a little bit (okay, a lot) confused when the game dropped me right into a scene straight out of an action movie: Croft Manor was burning, Lara was trying to escape from it, and all kinds of shit was hitting the fan. None of this made any sense. I thought I at least remembered the climactic final scene from Legend, and it hadn’t involved burnin’ down the house (with apologies to the Talking Heads) whatsoever. What’s going on?

As it turned out, this little “teaser” scene at the beginning of Underworld is precisely that: a teaser. In other words, it’s actually a snippet of action that comes later in the game’s story. Shortly after the teaser reaches a climax of sorts, we cut to a very cinematic title animation, followed by a date card reading “One Week Earlier…” Yeah, thanks for throwing me for a loop right out of the gate. Oh, and that teaser? You earn 25G for completing it. It basically consists of walking around three corners, jumping twice and crouching once. If you’re wanting to powerlevel your Gamerscore, this game is looking like a promising way to do it.

Continue Reading…

Comments (4)

Pictorial: The Xbox 360 Hard Drive Transfer Kit

By Chief Oddball on March 24th, 2010 at 7:17 pm

Filed under Reviews ··· Leave a Comment

Since there seems to be a dearth of conclusive information (and a lot of repetitive questions) about the Xbox 360 Hard Drive Transfer Kit, I thought I’d document the process of using mine in case anybody is wondering how the thing works. I’m using it to transfer the contents of my 60 GB hard drive to the 250 GB hard drive that came with my new Final Fantasy XIII special edition Xbox 360.

First and foremost, some basic Q and A.

Q: Where do I get the Xbox 360 Hard Drive Transfer Kit?
A: If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, you can order it from the Microsoft Online Store. It also comes packaged in the new standalone 250 GB Xbox 360 hard drive that’s going on sale this week.

Q: Can I use the Transfer Kit on a drive whose contents were transferred once before?
A: Yeah. The stuff that’s currently on my 60 GB drive was originally on my launch-day 20 GB drive. A few months ago I had the transfer performed at a local game shop that had a Transfer Kit available for use. Today I used my own Transfer Kit to migrate the same stuff onto a new 250 GB drive. The central limiting factor is that the target drive must be the same size, or larger, than your source drive. For instance, you can transfer from a 120 GB to a 250 GB, or a 120 GB to another 120 GB, but you can’t go from a 120 GB to a 60 GB (even if you have less than 60 GB worth of stuff on your source drive).

Q: Can the Transfer Kit be used more than once? I hear it self-destructs after you use it!
A: It’s possible that the original revision of the Transfer Kit — the one that only worked on 20 GB source drives and 120 GB target drives — self-destructed after one use. I’ve heard some stories to that effect, though I don’t know for certain. I do know, however, that the newer model Transfer Kits can be used multiple times. The fact that a local game store offers the use of their lone in-house kit for customer transfers should be evidence enough. Take note, however, that the contents of your source drive will be erased after the transfer is complete, so no more than one “copy” of your source drive’s contents may ever exist at a time.

Q: How long does the transfer take?
A: It depends on how much stuff you have on your hard drive. I had about 25 GB worth of stuff on mine, and it took about an hour and forty minutes to complete the transfer.

Q: How do I know which revision of the Transfer Kit I have?
There are two revisions of the Transfer Kit hardware. The original has part number X812003-001 on the cable’s large end and only supports transfers from 20 GB hard drives to 120 GB hard drives. The second revision, which is also the most recent as of this writing, bears part number X815251-002 and supports all Xbox hard drive sizes up through and including the 250 GB. For more details, including part numbers for the included software CD, check out this forum post on CheapAssGamer.com.

Continue Reading…

Comments (0)

If You’re Gonna Buy an Xbox, Buy an Xbox

By Chief Oddball on March 22nd, 2010 at 5:57 pm

Filed under Journal ··· Leave a Comment

So after my 2006-era Xbox 360 suffered terminal RRoD on Friday night — you may have read about it — I decided to pool together my remaining Gamestop store credit and some cash from a recent side job in order to replace it. In my blog post on the subject, I went into the usual insane amounts of detail (at four in the morning, no less) about the various Xbox packages that were available and debated with myself over which one to get. Eventually, I decided that the $299 Elite was the sweet spot.

On Saturday, however, I decided that the $399 Final Fantasy XIII Special Edition Elite was the sweeter spot. This was mostly decided for me by a quick call to the local Gamestop, when I learned that they not only had just one FFXIII console left, but also the limited edition faceplate to go with it. The faceplate, which was originally intended to be for preorder customers only and is not for resale, essentially solved my biggest gripe with the special edition unit: that it didn’t look special.

Naturally, then, I went down to the store and got it. As a bonus, the store’s best employee was working the register that day. Not only is he not a douchebag and knows exactly what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t try to screw you out of promotions or take forever to ring up a trade-in, as some of the store’s other workers have done. I hadn’t seen him for a while so I wasn’t sure he was still working there. Normally I don’t bother with those Gamestop surveys they always give you on your receipt, but I filled this one out as soon as I got home, because that guy rocks.

Anyway, I unpacked the Xbox and laid it all out, making sure all of the components were in order. The Special Edition bundle came with two wireless controllers, plus a new headset (in black, like the Elite…which was interesting because everything else was white). This made it easy for me to simply retire all of my old equipment — console, power supply, and both controllers — by packing them up in the box my new stuff came in, then tucking it into the closet. I’m pretty absurdly detail-oriented with this kind of crap, so don’t act surprised.

Continue Reading…

Comments (0)

Three Rings to Screw Them All: Another Xbox Dies

By Chief Oddball on March 20th, 2010 at 4:24 am

Filed under Journal, Rants ··· Leave a Comment

Crap. My 360 died. Part Deux.

A long time ago in a not-so faraway land, my launch day Xbox 360 console bit the dust, killed by GPU failure. Tonight, the refurbished console that Microsoft sent me as a warranty replacement for that original unit also bit the dust, also killed by GPU failure. It was a new design, sporting a new chipset, a quieter DVD drive and, most importantly, an enormous heatsink inside. And it failed anyway.

Ironically, I turned on my Xbox tonight because my friend Forster suggested some online gaming. He was undoubtedly in the gaming mood, having just received his warranty replacement Xbox from Microsoft this week after his original console suffered the exact same problem as mine. So we decided to try some co-op in Borderlands, a pretty cool hybrid shooter/RPG that I just got my hands on last weekend.

On our first game, we got about three minutes in before my Xbox locked up hard. Forster was in the midst of telling me something over the chat headset when both he and the game sounds completely cut out. Most unnervingly, I could immediately hear my console’s cooling fans spin down, as if the system had been returned to the dashboard, but it was completely unresponsive and required that I press the power button on the console faceplate to turn it off.

Upon booting it back up, I once again fired up Borderlands and was about to start the game when it abruptly crashed again, this time displaying a solid screen of black and white vertical pinstripes. First tangible sign of GPU failure, CHECK!

Forster and I tried three more times to start a co-op game, and each time I encountered a hard lock a couple minutes in. I was starting to get a little pissed off, so I suggested we try another game — Forza Motorsport 3 — to see if the problem would manifest there, or if it was just something goofy with Borderlands.

So we started up Forza, got into a 5-lap competitive race, and proceeded to finish without any hiccups whatsoever. Hmm.

Continue Reading…

Comments (0)

Wolfensteal

By Chief Oddball on September 24th, 2009 at 2:33 pm ··· 2 Comments

Such irony. After posting my impressions of the Wolfenstein Xbox 360 demo last night, and deciding that it wasn’t worth $60 to me — but that I’d pick it up on sale — today I discover that Wolfenstein is Amazon’s deal of the day. You can save a cool $20 and pick up the game for $39.98. Naturally, I’ve put my money where my mouth is and ordered a copy.

Edit: Apparently my brain really has melted, because I misunderstood Joystiq’s post and thought that the Wolfenstein discount was good until 4 PM. In actuality, it’s good for the rest of today. So, go to it.

(Thanks to Joystiq for the timely tip.)


“We’re Going BACKWARD in Time.”

By Chief Oddball on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:17 pm

Filed under Reviews ··· Leave a Comment

So said James T. Kirk, he of much maudlin sleeve-rippage in “The Naked Time,” upon discovering that the Enterprise was on its way back to November 5, 1955. Er, no. That was something else, something that I believe involved — of all the preposterous things — a stainless steel car. I, meanwhile, am taking my own separate trip back through time as I dust off the shocking number of Xbox 360 games that I never finished, never even played, or simply haven’t seen in a long while.

Yes, the video game “holiday release cycle” is once again almost upon us, and we’ve got a slew of excellent titles bearing down on us, many of them pumped up to the usual extreme levels of hype-factor. There’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on the PS3, the sequel to what I still believe is that console’s best game. There’s Halo 3: ODST which just dropped from orbit — shocking! — yesterday, Need For Speed: Shift (possibly the first non-turgid NFS game in years), Forza Motorsport 3, Brutal Legend, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2…can I get a glass of water here? And I’m not even counting the stuff scheduled to drop early next year, or even the recent releases that I haven’t picked up, such as Wolfenstein, Dirt 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Of the aforementioned games, I currently have the funds available for exactly one. And those funds are as good as spent: They’re going to Forza 3. As the Xbox 360′s answer to Sony’s Gran Turismo series, Forza provides an unmatched driving experience on Microsoft’s current-gen console. Being a serious gearhead, I probably put more hours into Forza 2 than any other game on the system. Thus, for maximum value-for-dollar, Forza 3 seems like the one to choose. My preorder is already locked in at the local Gamestop (although admittedly, I went with the standard edition, not the big-money collector’s pack that comes with — of all non-sequitur things — a 2GB USB memory stick.)

It’s not that I’m poor — indeed, I was just paid for some sidework I performed during July and August — but that all of my money is earmarked for the restoration of a real car: our 1979 Trans Am. So, given that I must make hard choices governing my entertainment in the meantime, I’ve opted to put a select amount of money toward a select few games that I expect will bring me maximum enjoyment over a long period of time. To that end, I’ve already picked up The Beatles: Rock Band — its downloadable albums releasing over the next three months will no doubt keep me occupied over the long term. And I’ve already mentioned why Forza 3 makes sense for me.

So, with my gaming fix for the remainder of 2009 already planned out, what am I doing to prevent jealousy from setting in as my daily browsing of gaming blogs inundates me with news about the spiffy new releases I’ll be passing up? For a start, I’ve decided that it’s time to deal with my overwhelming video game backlog problem — I’ve got so many games that I’ve completely fallen behind. There are titles on my shelf that I bought on sale or as part of a volume discount and have yet to even play. This very evening, then, I decided to start resolving this problem.

Continue Reading…

Comments (0)

Confirmed: Trans Am WS6 in Forza Motorsport 3

By Chief Oddball on September 21st, 2009 at 2:34 pm ··· Leave a Comment

Firebird Trackdays Event from Forza 3

Sweet Forza Motorsport 3, you have done this fan the ultimate service: Included a ’98-’02 Trans Am WS6 Ram Air in your list of cars. Moreover, there’s an entire event dedicated to the Trans Am line. As proof, I offer this screen capture from a Forza 3 demo video recorded last month at Germany’s GamesCom 2009. (Click it to enlarge.)

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a fourth gen WS6 in a video game, and thankfully it’s one of the best-looking racing games out there, complete with fully-modeled cockpits and a livery editor that will allow me to dress it up exactly the way I dressed up my real WS6.

Forza 3 comes out in the U.S. on the October 27th. My preorder is ready and waiting.

Edit: The 2002 Trans Am WS6 was the Forza 3 “car of the day” on October 14th. Check out this awesome gallery of a Sunset Orange Metallic T/A…looks amazing!


« Older Entries