Indiscriminate Transgressions

Well I was all pissed off that Bully: Scholoarship Edition was locking up one of my Xbox 360s, the important one, but Rockstar released a patch.

The thigh-texture problem (people with ballooning, flashing thighs) and some frame rate problems still exist, but at least the lockups are gone. The game shows Version 1.03 on the title screen now, and philosophically that’s an interesting thing, a version/patch identified on a console game, because it indicates that the slippery slope of PC-style patching for console games is well and good, and is headed more and more in this direction.

In this case 1.03 fixes the lockups. But here’s my question/conspiracy theory…

Were 1.01 and 1.02 released to manufacturing? Some people complaining of lockups went back to the store and exchanged their copy that locks up and got a new copy that didn’t lock up anymore. Maybe 1.01 was the initial release to manufacture (maybe even in error), and 1.02 was the “jesus christ we screwed up let’s manufacture the new ones with this copy but hey don’t throw out the ones you already made as that would cost dollarzzzz?” Then the patch comes out to take _everyone_ to 1.03 is to try to save face?

Cos we already KNOW that the “only on older consoles” thing is a line of crap, as MANY people with really new consoles (including 2 month old elites) had the lockup problem. And we already know Take-Two/Rockstar will lie first when confronted with something.

So I mean, I guess I’m not buying the “horrified” act.

Microsoft’s $240 million investment in Facebook suddenly made more sense to me.

Facebook can’t monetize. Microsoft has a micropayment system (Microsoft Points) already in place. How many Xbox 360 Live users are on Facebook already? Switch on the micropayment system and all of those users have a micropayment wallet ready to spend.

The Zune users are also part of the Microsoft Points universe, but I don’t know how many of them there are. They both tie into the same system.

This could be huge, and I haven’t seen this discussed. Perhaps this is what this strategic investment is about? Or maybe I’m just full of myself.

So I payed the $10 (800 Microsoft Points (is this a real currency at this point? like do they trade it in currency markets?)) to get the E4: Every Extra Extend Extreme.

First off, this game should probably be called something like Ten Times Toomuch Telemetry because holy wow is there a lot of information on the screen at one time. Combo counts, multipliers, multipliers of multipliers, clocks counting up and down, and the scores make late-edition pinball scores look low. I’m not religious, but Jesus Christ.

The game has 4 modes, E4 timed, E4 untimed, S4, and R4.

E4 is chains and multipliers on steroids, coupled with an almost anti-shooter game mechanic. You detonate yourself to blow up all kinds of crap on the screen, and the groups of crap release icons which give you something good. The something good depends on the color of part of the crap, and it can be extra time, quicken (speeds up the movement and introduction rate of the crap, not to be confused with the bookkeeping software), bonus, and something else I forget about. Did I mention you should also detonate yourself on the beat of the accompanying music for additional multipliers? Yeah it’s insane, and kinda cool, you have to do a lot of balancing and it’s got a good feel.

S4 is just E4 but to your own tracks - you rip a CD on the 360, then in the game you pick a track and the game does some Amiga demoscene/medtracker looking crap to try to determine the bpm, and then you play to that. It doesn’t really work, especially if your song changes BPM.

My favorite mode is R4: Rhythmic Rolling Revenge Revolution. This is like a complete different game, and it would be like if someone took Warning Forever by Hikoza.T.Ohkubo and threw it in a blender with Mu-cade and rRootage by ABA Games. In other words, quality. I thought I was going to explode when I played this, and I will likely be playing it until I get the level 100 achievement.

So Guitar Hero III and The Orange Box are all lonely because of E4, so I guess that’s $10 well spent, as long as the others don’t get too angry-jealous.

So I discovered a bug in the Xbox 360 version of Puzzle Quest that allows you to cheat, pretty significantly. Here’s how you do it.

I played until I was level 49, then I quit and I deleted the game from my console. I then downloaded the trial version of the game, which caps your level at 7, until I had enough experience where I would be moved to level 50. Then I hit start, unlocked the full game, and immediately jumped to level 50, receiving the Legendary Hero achievement. The bug is that in the process, I gained 176 skill points that I could apply to my character. (50 - 7) * 4

So I did that and then immediately was able to defeat Lord Bane to get the Master of Death achievement.

Looks like a bug when the next level is figured out when you unlock. The developers should patch this, so if anyone knows how to get this info to the developers, please do so. I’d imagine that this will work for any level change, like 40 to 41, etc., but I haven’t tried it. All you’d need to do is take your level X character, get him close to level x+1, then quit and delete the full game. Download the trial, play to get your experience up to the next level, then unlock the full version of the game.

What I really wish I had a cheat for is the forge godlike item. Anyone have this achievement? Update: I picked up the final achievement (Master Craftsman) this afternoon while on a conference call, and am now 200/200.

Um, so…

Need I say more?

Portal r0xx0rz.

Two days ago I hooked up the HD-DVD player and watched The Big Lebowski in HD. It seemed somewhat silly to get this on HD-DVD, but a quick compare between this and the DVD version and I was sold. The level of detail is almost distracting, and this is on my Samsung 720p set.

Anyhow…

Yesterday I was waiting for a ride to the Poconos, and I decided to play a couple of games of Track and Field or something on Xbox Live. I fired up the ‘Box, and lo and behold:

I guess since the Beta was available for public consumption a few months ago, they’ve gone through Gamma and Delta versions and have now started playtesting the Epsilon version. They must be pretty close to gold at this point — the release date is what, the 25th of September? That gives you 6 weeks guys, the clock is ticking and you should be making DVDs already.

I’d imagine this is the final version, though maybe they’ll go to Lambda and get us all confused with Half-Life.