Xbox 360

[Diddly]

Thanks a BUNCH for that article Matt. One of my only concerns about buying a 360 is the RRoD but it sounds like the Jasper unit has taken care of that problem. In fact I was price comparing at stores today and noticed Best Buy had $100 60GB hard drives for sale. Yeah it's the same price as a Pro but I wouldn't be stuck with that Kung Fu Panda/Lego Indy set (already have Lego IJ and don't want KFP). That deal on the 20GB is obviously a little better. I'll have to think about the hard drive but looks like I'm picking up an Arcade now.

downloads and stuff...  You basically can't game against other people unless you pay.  You can get like previews of games and stuff to dl though.  To me that's worth it...  Gaming online wasn't something I was into but then I got into COD4 and HALO3, and, well....  that became addicting enough for me to actually pay.

Thanks Jesse. I'm not that big of an online gamer but you kinda have to resort to online play when nobody else wants to play Halo. I'll probably end up sticking with the free stuff until summer. Good to see it's still $50 a year, that's affordable.

[Jesse James]

Wait'll you play COD...  I loved HALO with the kids, then they got me playing people online...  Fun times, and the goofy weapons make the game unique.  Then though, we got COD4...  I played it against the kids, before I even played the campaign actually, and had fun, but then they got me into playing online...  It propelled me into abandoning one game I was in the midst of to play the COD4 campaign just so I got better at playing COD4 online.

I'm not much of an online gamer, but that became some addicting ****.  I'd play till 4 a.m. some weekends...  It became depressing almost.  Random grenading, runnin' and gunnin', mowing down kneecaps, upgrading the M4 (my absolute favorite weapon)...  COD4 is just fun times x10.

HALO is still fun too, don't get me wrong.  It's just different fun.  Both are very, very, very fun online games...  Trust me.  You'll dig both I think. 

I'm a cheap bastard too, so if you're worried about cost the gold membership is cheap.  Currently our Live is down and I went through withdrawals about 3 months ago when we lost it...  Problems with the router.  It's something though that I really look forward to getting into again.  COD5 is supposed to be fun but I'm thinking the limited upgradeability of the WW2 arms will be a letdown to the gameplay.  I mean you can't add grenade launchers to every gun, laser scopes, etc.  COD4 probably will be my go-to when I get back online.

[Rob]

I just grabbed Fallout 3 with this Target sale... anyone else played it?

I hear it's really really big.

And I loved Oblivion.


Sorry if there's discussion about it somewhere in this thread already.

[Matt]

Thanks a BUNCH for that article Matt.

No problem.  If I was buying my first 360 today, I'd want it to be a Jasper.  Just make sure you read the "how to identify a Jasper" page--apparently they're kind of tricky to track down at retail.

One of my only concerns about buying a 360 is the RRoD but it sounds like the Jasper unit has taken care of that problem. In fact I was price comparing at stores today and noticed Best Buy had $100 60GB hard drives for sale. Yeah it's the same price as a Pro but I wouldn't be stuck with that Kung Fu Panda/Lego Indy set (already have Lego IJ and don't want KFP). That deal on the 20GB is obviously a little better. I'll have to think about the hard drive but looks like I'm picking up an Arcade now.

Bigger hard drives are nice if you're planning on ripping any games to the hard drive.  Keep in mind with a 20GB you only really have around 13 or 14 GB of space you can actually use--the rest is taken up by various system items or whatever.  I've been fine with my 20GB since I got it back in January, but ever since the NXE came out last month, I've only had enough room on there for one game at a time.  (Especially after importing all my Rock Band tracks.)  Needless to say, I'm looking for a bigger hard drive now.  May get a 120GB in the next day or two.

Thanks Jesse. I'm not that big of an online gamer but you kinda have to resort to online play when nobody else wants to play Halo. I'll probably end up sticking with the free stuff until summer. Good to see it's still $50 a year, that's affordable.

13 months @ Buy.com for $40

5% off @ Buy.com coupon

I'm terrible at math, but whatever that is. . .  $38?

[Jesse James]

I dunno about you guy's areas or not, but in my neck of the woods you can buy giftcards at the grocery store and the cards will earn you change off their gasoline.  You take the card to BB and buy your gold membership, and you save even a little more then on gas on your next fill up. 

Sounds a bit complex just to save some cents off but if you're already there it's worth it grabbing that giftcard if you know you're making a purchase at Best Buy for a certain ammount.

[Darth_Anton]

In the last two months I've picked up four games: Lego Indiana Jones, Civilization, Oblivion, and Gears 2, all for half off except for Gears which was only 25% off. Only played and finished IJ so far.

My family's really getting it's moneys worth out of the netflix thing.

[Rob]

Plan on giving up a few months of your life for Oblivion.

Warn your family ahead of time.

[Matt_Fury]

Or forget Oblivion and get Mass Effect.  Of course Rob's warning still applies.   

[Darth_Anton]

I'm pretty obsessive compulsive, so yeah, the warning is well taken. The only saving grace, my wife is in live with Patrick Stewart.

[Diddly]

So I picked up a 360 Arcade the other day, the Jasper unit. No Live until MLK weekend when I go back to school. One game so far, NCAA football 09, I'm kinda scared to pick up anything else because I know I'll become addicted to something.

[Ryan]

I went on a big post Christmas game buying binge. I picked up CoD WaW, Mirror's Edge, and LEGO Star Wars TCS.

LEGO SW is alright I guess. It has its moments but the game feels too damn long. I want the 1000 GS but I don't want to spend forever playing the game. It gets somewhat tedious replaying all the damn levels in free mode just to go back and get the stuff you couldn't get the first time through.

CoD is pretty fun. I mostly only ever play CoD for the single player. I hate the ranking system that they use for online play and the idea of earning upgrades is asinine. So the people who are already 10x better than you get guns that give them a bigger advantage? That makes perfect sense. I went straight into the campaign on Veteran. There have been a couple parts that have been so ridiculously hard that it just about falls into the category of not being fun. Some of the enemy spawns on the levels that involve trench warfare are just stupid. There will be a dead end trench right off to the side of the main trench that some banzai attackers are supposed to spawn in and they don't spawn there until you are literally right on top of it. Throwing a grenade around the corner to clear does nothing because the guy hasn't spawned yet. And when there is heavy machine gun fire coming down the main trench and machine gun fire coming from the other side of the dead end there is no where to safely take cover. Enemies in the game can see you no matter what too. When you fight the enemy sniper in the Stalingrad level run to the bottom of the stairs behind the counter. Even though there isn't a window in sight the guy the knows exactly where you are. the bullets will still come through the wall at just the right point. And don't even get me started on how many grenades these bastards have. It seems like all you even do in veteran is avoid the grenades. On the level after Stalingrad as you move up through the trenches to take out the German armour in the village, at any given time there would be 3-4 grenades around me in that damn trench.

MP on there isn't all that great though. The maps are too big. Don't get me wrong they are nice looking maps and would be fun to play if you could play with 32 people, but with 4-16 they just don't cut it. I played on some village with 16 people and played a 10-15 minute game and had one kill and one death in the entire time. I was moving around the whole time too. I've always been a Halo fan I suppose so I guess I'lljust keep going back to it.

Mirror's Edge is amazing. I absolutely love that game. They really made a great physics engine. At first I really questioned their choice to make in first person rather than third person, but after playing though the first level all doubt I had was erased. It really immerses you in the gameplay and I like the idea of only being able to see the environment the way you would if you were actually there. I think this game is a must have for anyone looking to pick up a new single player game.

I might still get another game too. I'm kind of thinking maybe Fallout 3 or Left 4 Dead. But that new LOTR game (which is made by the same company that developed the Battlefront games, and seems to fit that model) looks interesting and might be worth picking up, The demo wasn't bad.

[jedi_master_sal]

Left 4 Dead is fun Ryan. However after you play all four campaign's in it, it gets boring fast. It's always the same thing zombies zombies and more zombies. Oh and some "special" Zombies.

Other than playing it on a harder level it's not challenging at all and there are no "Boss" levels.

Many of the achievements are easy to get. Only the many thousand kills (53,595 zombies killed?) is hard to get. Well not hard, but time consuming.

[Jesse James]

I think the fun of L4D is in playing online as I think, but am not sure, that the AI increases in difficulty the further into it you get with friends.  I've heard that anyway.

I played it for the first time Wednesday for a couple hours.  It's fun...  It's as good a zombie game as is out there, honestly.  I'd dig a bit more storyline, maybe some puzzles and things, and I really think the L4D series coudl "take off" then.  I was hung up on the Mercy Hospital roof so I bailed and went out for a bit.  I'm sorta looking forward to getting back to the game.

I'm finding I'm f'n sweet at mowing down zombies with the riot gun.  Man those bad asses just drop like flies when I'm tearin' up zombie meat with the scatter gun!  It's fun letting a lone one get close, punch his dumb ass back and blast him to pieces.

Ironically I left the game to go to the mall.  Hah.

[Matt]

So I picked up a 360 Arcade the other day, the Jasper unit.

Awesome. 

Oh, and I picked up a 120GB hard drive the other day.  Paid the full $150 plus tax for it, which sucked, but I used a gift card, so it didn't really suck all that much.  Wish I could have found one for $90, which is what Target was clearancing them out for just a month or two ago.  Still, it's nice to have one since they appear to be drying up at retail.  Went ahead and ripped all my games to it (except Halo 3) and still have plenty of space left over for other stuff. 

Many of the achievements are easy to get. Only the many thousand kills (53,595 zombies killed?) is hard to get. Well not hard, but time consuming.

For a second there I thought you had L4D confused with Dead Rising (which has a very similar achievement, which also takes forever).  Had to look it up, and the Dead Rising one is for 53,594.  Kinda funny.  I'm looking forward to the one for 53,596 in Dead Rising 2. 

[Darth_Anton]

Not that I ever doubted about Oblivion's level of involvement, but, damn. I also contracted vampirism. That sucked.