As far as the internal hard drive goes, I’ve read tutorials on how to install a DIY hard drive (the Xbox uses a standard SATA connector for internal drives on the new Slim models) but apparently the drive has to be formatted with a proprietary Xbox format, and that’s how the official microsoft drives are formatted
there are workarounds to get that special format structure on a third party drive, but apparently microsoft can “permaban” a console modded/upgraded in this way if they detect an “unauthorized” mod, if the console gets permabanned, it won’t ever be able to get online
frakkin’ stupid draconian money-grubbing leeches, it’s MY console, I decide how I want to set it up and run it, want to sell more internal drives? then lower your prices, $120 for a 250GB SATA drive in a plastic box? I don’t think so…
I had to replace the DVD drive in my unit…had to move the Disk Controller card from the one drive to the other…required soldering…WTF? (On an up note, the drive was only $10.)
Why in the hell would you ever want a 250 GB hard drive anyways? Meh. I’m not much of a homebrew type of guy, but I’ve got a 20 GB drive and I have 5 GB left after years of playing. No biggie.
Ive got a 120 that came with my elite (before it rrod’d), and I’ve used up 30 or so gigs of it with downloaded video games.
Modern warfare 2 is installed to my HDD (this let’s you be host more often, as well as lowering load time). I digital downloaded both mirrors edge and sw:tfu, and have a lot of demos and odd and in crap.
Reasons to want a big hard drive:
Downloaded games
Movies.
Copying games to your hard drive to reduce wear and tear on the disc. (this is not pirating, it’s an OS feature, it speeds up the game, but the game still accesses and checks the disc)
Rock Band addiction.
Because it’s a big hard drive, and more capacity is always better than less, what pisses me off is that I have a spare 120 GB bare SATA drive, and thanks to MS’s stupid proprietary format, I can’t simply just plug it into the drive bay and go, noooo, I have to use a drive formatted with their proprietary format…
OTOH, if the capacity is only used for saving music, movies, and other media files to the Xbox, then maybe a hard drive is overkill and a 16GB flash drive would suffice for game saves and the like
as far as flash drives go, is it a total of 16 GB available capacity, or can I use multiple 16 GB drives, load up the back USB ports with a couple flashdrives, giving me, essentially, 32 GB of storage
what, specifically, are the advantages of having an internal HDD in the Xbox, compared to just using USB flash drives instead?
Oh, and incidentally, the Xbox is a keeper, I had been contemplating returning it due to the nickel-and-diming MS seems to be enamored with, but my Panasonic DVD player has just pissed me off for the last time, I dropped in my pristine Terminator 2 Ultimate DVD to watch T2 tonight, and the player gave me three seperate “this disc cannot be played, please try another” errors, the drive is clean, the player has never been mistreated, it’s just getting fussy, so as of tonight, it’s been replaced, the Xbox will now be the DVD player for my home theater…
I have all three of the “current Gen” systems, and I’ve done my online gaming (mostly confined to sports games) on my Ps3 due to it being free. However, I’ve had bad experience with it lagging and crashing on me often enough to be noticeable. I’ve been told by friends that Xbox Live Gold is far more reliable, and considering how many hours of online gaming I can log in a years worth of weekends and evenings, the cost seems like a pittance. I’m thinking of getting it when NHL '11 comes out.
I’ve had two experiences with XBL:Gold…the teenagers with Tourettes, and the folks that are SO far above me in abilities that I’m just there for score padding.
I kept it for Netflix, right up til Netflix came available (for free) on the '3. It then took WAY too long to figger out how to downgrade.
In terms of XBL:Gold experience, I’ve had overall, a fairly positive one; That said, I don’t play the kinds of games that are likely to attract the moron teenagers, so, I guess if you like those sorts of games, that could be a problem. Certainly, I’ve run into a few jerks and losers, but also a (to me) surprisingly high number of friendly and sportsmanlike players.
Again, if you want to play online and don’t want to mess with kids, there are ways. It’s incredible how many times I have to bring up websites that cater to older gamers here. It’s almost like you guys can reach the Dope messageboards, but fail to realize there are other communities out there as well.
Nooo, I mentioned the other issue: the gap in skillset. It’s NOT FUN if all your gaming experience is: Spawn. Die. Spawn. Die. Spawn. Die. End Session. Wait 10 minutes for the next game to set up (for games like Forza Motorsport 3).
I get 20-30 minutes of game time a session, I don’t care to spend half of it dead or waiting for the game to start.
“So practice, You’ll get better!”, You say. To which I retort: I’d LOVE to have the time and dedication to do that. But I don’t. My mileage is varying from yours.
Some games do have matchmaking features that try to pair you off with folks of roughly equivalent skill level. It’s not perfect (You’ll always get someone who’s actually incredibly good, but only bought the game yesterday, so hasn’t got enough points to be ‘ranked’ high yet, or a match against someone who’s out of your league because there was no one IN your league available to match against, but, well, depending on the game, those matches can be very valuable.) but it beats Spawn/Die/Lather/Rinse/repeat.
Of course, it really DOES depend mostly on your taste in games. Though also, as has been pointed out, if you actually find yourself a community of people who are playing FOR FUN and want to make you feel welcome, they might, you know, show you the ropes a bit, so LOUNE’s point still stands.
Hell, I think a lot of the time, even total strangers are likely to be willing to help out. I know that if I had a SSF4 match against someone who I trashed but who then sent me a message saying “Good game! I just got this yesterday/last week/whatever, would you be willing to do a few rounds in endless and give me some pointers?” that the answer would almost certainly be “Sure! Let’s do it.” These are people you’re working with here. While you can’t -count- on any given person being willing to help you out, I think it’s unreasonable to assume that just since someone is better than you, that they like nothing better than stomping your newbie face and then mocking you about sucking. It’s in the best interest of good players to have more good players to play against, and a lot of them realize that. Just taking your toys and going home (i.e. not playing online even in game types you enjoy.) isn’t really an adult way to approach the situation.
Sometimes there are advantages of being on the “trailing edge” of gaming, I just picked up a couple used games…
Project Gotham racing 4; I’m not a big arcade racer fan, but PGR4 had a couple of things that appealed to me, it features one of my favorite cars, the Ariel Atom, and the price of the game, $5.00
The game itself is a tad too “drifty” for my tastes, but I do like the way they implemented the motorcycle engine, I actually do better on the bikes
Ghostbusters; there’s a truism in gaming, and that is that licensed games typically suck, they’re designed to sucker the casual gamer, but Ghostbusters is the rare exception to the rule, it’s an unofficial “Ghostbusters 3” movie, set weeks after the events in the largely forgettable “Ghostbusters 2”, you are the newest hire at the GB HQ and end up as Egon’s guinea pig, testing out new 'bustin tech.
The game creates a very believable world, you’re walking around with a proton pack on your back. PKE meter and image intensifier goggles at the ready, when you fire up your pack and throw a neutron stream at a pesky specter, you feel like you’re an actual GB, there’s something viscerally satisfying about taking a tethered ghost and using your proton stream to slam it into the floor, ceiling, or walls, causing a massive amount of collateral damage in the process, or using your capture beam to pick up parts of the environment and toss them around, using a capture beam to pick up and toss a commercial stove blocking your path, or just using the proton stream to destroy parts of the scenery/enviroment is just plain fun
I’m not planning on defending the game’s gun modelling (although the AK isn’t bad if you’re simulating a skilled shooter), but what do you think the proper accuracy of an AK-47 is supposed to be? Do you expect to shoot it at a target 40 yards away and have the round be 5 feet off? What do you think the average deviation measured in minute of angle on an m-16 (combat guns, not race guns) is vs an AK-47 at typical video game ranges of 10-40 yards?
Shotguns are also not wildly spread at short distances unless they’re choked to be that way. At the longer range shots you can take in the game, shotguns are not very effective.
The silliest part of the weapon modelling is actually that you can reload at incredible speedy gonzalez on meth pace while using your weapon to bash away zombies. The game is way too actiony retarded in that sense - I’d much more appreciate a game where you only faced a relative few zombies, but where you had very limited ammo, fumbled a bit while reloading at a realistic pace, etc.
I don’t think there’s anyone in the world that would consider the AK-47 a battle rifle. It’s the prototypical assault rifle, and the only case you can possibly make is that it uses a 30 cal round, but it’s still an intermediate rifle round.
How does this even work? Do you load your friends list up from strangers from a website and hope you can catch them when they’ve got enough people on to fill a game?
