Xbox Live Avatars

I thought I'd post some of my friend's Xbox Live avatars. I've linked directly to Microsoft's servers for the images, so if they don't show up, sorry, not my fault.

NXE - New Xbox Experience

So, a while back I signed up to be an early participant in the New Xbox Experience (that's Microsoft's way of making you feel special when you find bugs in their software). The Xbox is getting a new operating system interface rolled out via Xbox Live tomorrow and I was fortunate enough to be able to get an early look at it. One of the biggest changes, which I'm not going to go much into, is the addition of avatars. Basically, Microsoft saw that tons of families with kids were flocking to the Nintendo Wii and it's feature, the 'Wii Mii' and Microsoft wanted a piece of that action. Really though, the new Xbox avatar is nothing more than a customizable character you get to have on your Xbox Dashboard that stands around striking poses. You can even snap a picture of your avatar to use as your gamer picture.

From a users standpoint, all this is is a new paintjob on the same old car. Sure it ran great, but I guess Microsoft just felt a little too much rust was showing and they needed to touch it up. Nothing much changed in how the Xbox OS works. You still get the same information, just presented in a newer, flashier way. Here's how the new profile page looks when you go into it. Now instead of having to click on My Games, you get a page for each of the games you've played that you can scroll through.

There are a few interface changes that are marked improvements as well as a few that are easily a step in the wrong direction. One of the new changes I like is the way it presents achievements for each game. Before, you had to click on an achievement to get a good description of what it was, but now the display shows the description at the top as you scroll through them.

A stunning oversight in my mind is how they handled the background for the new interface. Before, we were able to download themes for our Xbox blades. This allowed users to customize the look and feel of their Xbox interface. A lot of users paid good money for themes they liked. With the new interface, Microsoft has gone and covered up half the screen so you can't see the theme image at all.

Selecting your theme

How the theme looks when applied

What would have been nice is if Microsoft had allowed users to make the background of the interface transparent or not there at all. This would allow people to still enjoy the themes they paid money for. If they can't do that, I at least hope Microsoft lets people download new, updated themes free of charge--themes that work on the New Xbox Experience.

One new feature that Microsoft is releasing along with the NXE is a new application that allows Xbox users to view Netflix streaming videos over their Xbox 360. While I can understand the marketing strategy to pair it with the NXE, I'm pretty sure the Netflix application (that's all it really is, an downloaded application) would have worked on the old dashboard interface just fine.

The only real sad part about the Netflix app is that Sony, Microsoft's arch nemesis in the video game market and owner of Columbia Pictures, has somehow managed to stop Netflix from allowing Xbox users to view their videos. Hopefully something can be worked out to allow the whole Netflix media library to be available to Xbox 360 users.

Another (cool?) feature that Microsoft added in this update is the ability for gamers to install their games to their Xbox 360 hard drives. This means that for those 15 hours gaming binges that your DVD drive in your 360 won't have to be constantly spinning your disc. Instead, after installing your game to your hard drive, the disc drive will only spin at first to make sure you have the game in the drive (their attempt at anti-piracy).

It took me only 15 minutes to copy my Gears of War 2 game to my 360's hard drive. The game takes up almost 7 GB of hard drive space. As I only have the old 20 GB hard drive, I'll have to upgrade if I want to copy any other games to my hard drive. It doesn't really make much of a difference in gameplay time, but I'm sure this is just Microsoft's attempt to throw money at the problems they've been having with the Xbox DVD drives malfunctioning and destroying game discs. The idea is just to reduce the wear and tear on the drive over time. Maybe it'll work for them.

Overall, I think the biggest improvement in the new interface has to be in the speed in which things load. Navigating through the old dashboard architecture was a real pain in the neck for some people because they weren't used to waiting so long (really, it was only a couple of milliseconds...but to some gamers, that's an eternity). The new interface is significantly faster at loading, especially when in a game. They found a way to make it faster and even provide a little more content available to the users than before.

Now, back to playing Gears of War 2...

Free Tech Support

Anyone else who reads this and considers themselves a geek is probably in the same boat as me. The more I do with computers and tech stuff, the more my family & friends view me as a free tech support guy. It started out when I was in school with my parents asking me simple stuff about setting up their email and such. That wasn't so bad. Gradually it spread to where my extended family was calling me about the simple stuff as well. As soon as my neighbors learned I was a CS student I became the first person they'd call whenever they had a computer question or problem. It went up a step when a year or so ago I helped my brother wire his apartment for ethernet so he could play his Xbox 360 in a different room from his computer. Apparently I am the only person who can use a crimp tool.

I find it funny how people seem to think I can solve problems with just a simple telephone call. I had an uncle call me because his computer was stuck constantly restarting and not loading the operating system. Somehow he thought I could just tell him to hit some magic key (right next to the Any key) to fix the problem. And it's not like I can just drive over to his house to fix the problem. He lives far enough away it'd cost me roughly $50 in gas to drive there and back. It would be cheaper for him to take his PC into a tech support shop and pay the $30-$40/hour they charge.

Now, I don't mind helping people with simple stuff or giving advice when I'm visiting or actually there in front of their computer. Doing support over the phone when they aren't able to converse on the same tech vocabulary level is very frustrating. With my family, I'll get calls while I'm driving down the road and have no frame of reference to what they're doing, and sometimes they're not even able to articulate what the problem is exactly.

I really think people should have to go through some sort of introductory course on how to use a computer before they actually get one. I think the biggest problem when it comes to computer problems, bugs, viruses, etc is user education level. A computer takes time and effort to keep in good working order, just as does an automobile. People think it's important to take care of their cars - get it washed, change the oil, etc, but they seem to think a computer will just take care of itself. Then they wonder why their computer runs so slow and is plagued with problems just a few months after getting it. Then again, you could always go overboard, as a friend of mine does, in that he reformats and reinstalls his entire operating system every few months just to be sure nothing is on there he doesn't want.

Gears of War 2

Friday after work I picked up Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360. I enjoyed the first Gears of War game mainly for it's single player campaign. The multiplayer portion of the game was plagued with connectivity problems when played online as well as glitches in how the weapons worked. After playing through the campaign of Gears 2 and some multiplayer matches, I was very pleased with my purchase and look forward to many hours of enjoyment. To appease those gamers who want a score applied to this review, I'd have to give it a 9 out of 10.

Campaign
Just as in the original Gears of War, the campaign is available both in single player and cooperative modes. I played the campaign in single player mode for Act 1 and cooperative mode for Acts 2-5. The campaign is a bit longer in the sequel than in Gears 1. It took me roughly 14 hours to complete the game on Hardcore difficulty. The storyline is just as riveting in Gears 2 as it was in the original. The story focuses on the COG's efforts to destroy the Locust infestation as well as helping your squad mate, Dom, find his wife who was separated from him when the Locusts first attacked.
In the original game, one of your squad mates, Anthony Carmine, got killed in a rather inopportune way--getting sniped in the head while his gun was jammed. In Gears 2 you get to have Anthony's brother, Ben Carmine join your squad. The dialogue indicates Ben is just as green as his brother was, yet in actual gameplay Carmine is one really brave soldier, always rushing into enemy forces with just his sniper rifle in hand and coming out unscathed. I don't doubt we'll see another of the four Carmine brothers in Gears 3.
Gears of War 2 didn't let up when it comes to showing blood and gore. The original Gears of War was probably the bloodiest game I'd ever played. Gears 2 easily out does that. In fact, Gears 2 has probably the bloodiest and most gory scene I've ever seen in a video game or movie. Warning: very bloody.

The game also has quite a bit of strong language as well. Epic Games got one thing right though. They knew they were making a game that if it was a movie would easily be rated R, but they put into the game the option to turn off the gore and to filter the strong language. This allows gamers who want to play this game with their family present to tone things down a bit. Overall, I think that decision to include filters will increase sales for the game and allow a lot more people to enjoy it.
There are still small items to pickup throughout the storyline as there were in Gears 1. This time however, they're not just the COG tags of fallen soldiers. This time, they're actually small Collectibles like newspaper clippings or paper reports that give you more information about what's going on and add to the storyline experience.
Just as in Gears 1 there is a slight cliffhanger ending to the storyline. The developers, after all, did plan for this series to be a trilogy. While there is a tremendous victory in the end for the COG forces, the cliffhanger at the end of the game credits makes you question if what happened may or may not have been the best choice for the people of Sera.

Game Settings
A new great feature of cooperative campaign gameplay is that the difficulty settings for the game can be player specific. That means you can have one really skilled player playing on Insane difficulty and another playing on Casual.
Unlike other games where developers overlooked a large demographic, this game actually has a fairly decent set of left-handed control options. The settings allow gamers to have default, legacy, left-handed default, or left-handed legacy thumb stick controls. Another first that I've seen in a video game, is that this game also allows you to have left handed triggers (i.e. left trigger shoots primary weapon). You can also invert either your X or Y-axis (or both). There's even an alternate button control scheme that has the actions for each button in a slightly different layout.
As mentioned earlier there are settings options to turn off the gore and language for gamers that prefer not to have that. For multiplayer games, players have the option of setting their default player model to use, both for COG and Locust forces.


Developers also put in a great information section of the game called the War Journal. Here you can find multiplayer leaderboards, both public and private (friends only). There's also a list of Collectibles showing how many you've found and on which levels you found them. Gears 2 also has probably the best display for in game achievements. It lists each achievement with a description of how to earn it, along with a progress indicator for how close you are to getting it. Even during actual gameplay, a progress notification pops up in the bottom corner of your screen when you do something that brings you closer to getting an achievement. This comes in very handy for those achievement hunters out there trying to get them all.

Multiplayer
The game has a great tutorial mode to familiarize players with the different game modes for Gears of War 2 multiplayer. There are five steps to go through, not hard at all. You even get an achievement for completing the tutorial mode.
There's a new multiplayer mode in Gears 2 that wasn't in the original--Horde. This consists of up to five players playing on the same team against wave after wave of Locust hordes. I had the opportunity to play this mode earlier today with four of my friends starting at wave #1. It goes up to wave #50. Each wave up to #10 has more enemies than the previous that are in turn harder to kill. After Wave #10 you start over again, but this time the enemies get a boost in health and skills. After the next 10 waves, they get another boost and so on.

Even though we played on Casual mode, by the time we hit wave #50 it was incredibly difficult for all of us to survive the whole wave. Just for kicks when we were done we tried wave #50 on Insane mode. We lasted a grand total of 47 seconds before we were all dead.

Mirror's Edge (demo)

I downloaded the demo for a new game coming out, Mirror's Edge. The game is set in some futuristic city where information security is so tight that the really sensitive stuff gets hand delivered. The people delivering the information are runners who run across the city's rooftops jumping from building to building to deliver the packages. Somehow the main character is caught up in something and uses her running skills to find out what and how to get out of it. Pretty simple, straightforward plot design. Actual gameplay though was horrible. I went through the whole demo and was bored out of my mind within two minutes.

All you do is run around and jump over, under, or through things. This game really doesn't qualify to be considered part of the Action genre, as Xbox's site suggests. What it should be classified as is a puzzle game because that's what it feels like. All you do is run around and figure out how to get from point A to point B. I guess the only real upside to this game is it's not 'Rated M for Mature'. I wouldn't have a problem giving a game like this to a 12 year old to play, as opposed to something like Gears of War 2 (which I'm going out today to pick up most likely).

Dead Space

I've never been one for the horror genre. I think it must have something to do with watching Friday the 13th when I was about 3 years old. I don't mind compelling stories or even suspenseful ones, but I really can't stand the ones that just try and shock you by throwing blood and gore at you over and over. When I heard about Dead Space before it was released, I was mildly excited to play it. Maybe this would be different. Maybe game developers would figure a way to use today's technology to actually tell a compelling horror story.

Well, the release date came and went. I didn't buy the game, mostly due to being enthralled in other games such as Call of Duty 4, Castle Crashers and Portal. Then one of my friends went out and rented it. I waited to see what he said about the game. Needless to say, this massive oversight by the game developers burst my hope bubble and removed any decent expectations I might have had for the game. In my opinion, if developers can't get the basic mechanics of a game right, why should I think they got anything else right?

The final nail in the coffin for my hopes for this game came when I saw what popular game reviewer Ben Croshaw had to say about the game. Instead of rewriting his review, I'll just let you watch it yourself. Warning - it does contain strong language.