Eomer
01-03-2002, 06:21 PM
So awhile back in some forgotten thread I made a long post with a whole lot of positives about the Xbox, and how much I was liking it. I have since finished Halo and had the chance to play/buy several other games since, and have a few more things to share.
First, Halo is incredible. One of the best FPS I have ever played, damn near as good as Half-Life, and better than just about anything else. I love that game!
That's where the good stuff ends! Either I have some terrible terrible luck, or there is a serious issue somewhere with X-box's. 3 out of 4 games I have purchased and played a decent amount, have completely frozen the system at one point or another. Totally frozen.
I played through the entire Halo campaign single player with not a single crash or bug, although once or twice during the loading screens the progress meter would stop, and occasionally move back a bit, before continuing on again with no problems. That struck me as odd though. But then when a friend came over one time, and I decided to try one of the first two or three missions of the campaign in co-op mode to show my buddy the ropes of the game and just to have some fun. Pick a mission, mission starts to load, progress meter gets about halfway, stops, moves back a bit, moves forward, then: "This disc is either damaged or defective. Press A to try again." I press A. Hard freeze. Oh, the disc must be dirty, so I pull out the disc, notice it looks perfectly fine for me, but wipe it clean regardless to a nice polish. I try again, and it does the same thing on that mission every time I tried it.
So I decided well fuck it, this sucks but it's 1am and I can't really return the game this late, I will try another mission. The rest all seemed to load fine, it was just I believe the 2nd and 3rd missions I could not properly load. I returned the game a few days later and it seems to load those missions fine now, and I haven't had a problem with Halo since.
DOA3 plays perfectly that I have found, but then again, it's the game I have played the absolute least of.
So then for Christmas I get Project Gotham Racing from my sis. It's an okay game I guess, but I have always preferred simulation type racing, more along the lines of Grand Prix 3 (Geoff Crammond owns, and to me, GT3 seems arcadish, let alone Project Gotham), so I am not the biggest fan of it. But regardless, that's not the point of this. I played the game quite a bit, got through a few levels of Kudos challenges and was having fun. Then I noticed my sister was driving a car that I didn't yet have access to, and she said she had just been doing "quick races" and not "Kudos Challenges". So I figure "cool, I want a Camaro too" so I go to Quick Races, and pick New York Wallstreet or something like that. Game starts to load, little "K" in the bottom right corner happily spins showing it's making progress... then it kind of gets jerky, stops, start, stops, and stays that way. Oh for fuck's sake I think, you have to be kidding me. I got it to freeze 8 times in a row on this race before I got bored, I pulled the CD out, cleaned it, popped it back in. Loaded race fine. I try to load again, freeze. So then I try in Quick Races San Franciso. Freeze. So by then I am extremely pissed off that my 600 dollar (we use monopoly money up here!) investment seems to work as well as the '87 Chevette I race with, if not worse.
I decide that there must be something seriously wrong with my Xbox, perhaps the DVD drive is wonky and that's why it seems to freeze all the time while loading. I also decided that Project Gotham is gay, and want NHL2002 instead. So I return my Xbox and get a new one at Future Shop with no hassles (they didn't even sign my receipt or anything else, was almost strange. they just gave me another one, told me to show my receipt to the person standing at the door, and I walked out. Ima go back with my receipt and get me a free Xbox!). I go to Toy's R'us and am told by the guy in the game dept. that I can only exchange for the same game, but then the customer service people gave me in-store credit and I got NHL2002 instead (the geek was bitter as fuck, looking at me all dirty and shit).
So great, NHL2002, I lub hockey! It's a pretty good game for the most part, not realistic in any real way, but better than NHL Hitz anyways. But lo and fucking behold, it freezes too! I have only maybe played it for two hours maximum, and only completed two games, but it has already frozen on me, a brand new game, on a brand new Xbox. I had just finished my first season game against Ottawa (5-2, oh yea) with 20 minute periods (more on that later, btw), and my players were dancing around the goalie all happy as pigs in shit they had one, then the screen freezes and the sound just starts looping the last half second it had played, and stays that way until I turn the console off. Wow, that's reassuring.
But not only that, from what I can tell, NHL2002 has a rather MASSIVE oversight/bug, or at least it seems to on my Xbox anyway. You can play a full season, or a partial season or whatever on it. When you choose to start a new season, you are given a menu with various options, like the difficulty level, period length, what whistles are blown and so on. I picked 10 minute periods prior to playing that game against Ottawa. The game options default is set at 5. My game against Ottawa had 20 minute periods. This is a rather large issue. I have since tried creating 3 separate seasons all with varying options etc, and yet every damn time that I start the first game, the period is sitting happily at 20:00.
After all this, I think I am going to be returning my Xbox altogether and getting either a refund or store credit for it. I really don't feel like having a 600 dollar investment that is barely working properly a month after I bought it. At least with PC's I can fix them (oh yea, I am writing this on my secondary box cause it appears my primary's mobo died sometime between last night when I shut it off, and this afternoon when my sister went to turn it on to get Civ III out of it).
Anyone else out there with Xbox's that have anything to say about this?
First, Halo is incredible. One of the best FPS I have ever played, damn near as good as Half-Life, and better than just about anything else. I love that game!
That's where the good stuff ends! Either I have some terrible terrible luck, or there is a serious issue somewhere with X-box's. 3 out of 4 games I have purchased and played a decent amount, have completely frozen the system at one point or another. Totally frozen.
I played through the entire Halo campaign single player with not a single crash or bug, although once or twice during the loading screens the progress meter would stop, and occasionally move back a bit, before continuing on again with no problems. That struck me as odd though. But then when a friend came over one time, and I decided to try one of the first two or three missions of the campaign in co-op mode to show my buddy the ropes of the game and just to have some fun. Pick a mission, mission starts to load, progress meter gets about halfway, stops, moves back a bit, moves forward, then: "This disc is either damaged or defective. Press A to try again." I press A. Hard freeze. Oh, the disc must be dirty, so I pull out the disc, notice it looks perfectly fine for me, but wipe it clean regardless to a nice polish. I try again, and it does the same thing on that mission every time I tried it.
So I decided well fuck it, this sucks but it's 1am and I can't really return the game this late, I will try another mission. The rest all seemed to load fine, it was just I believe the 2nd and 3rd missions I could not properly load. I returned the game a few days later and it seems to load those missions fine now, and I haven't had a problem with Halo since.
DOA3 plays perfectly that I have found, but then again, it's the game I have played the absolute least of.
So then for Christmas I get Project Gotham Racing from my sis. It's an okay game I guess, but I have always preferred simulation type racing, more along the lines of Grand Prix 3 (Geoff Crammond owns, and to me, GT3 seems arcadish, let alone Project Gotham), so I am not the biggest fan of it. But regardless, that's not the point of this. I played the game quite a bit, got through a few levels of Kudos challenges and was having fun. Then I noticed my sister was driving a car that I didn't yet have access to, and she said she had just been doing "quick races" and not "Kudos Challenges". So I figure "cool, I want a Camaro too" so I go to Quick Races, and pick New York Wallstreet or something like that. Game starts to load, little "K" in the bottom right corner happily spins showing it's making progress... then it kind of gets jerky, stops, start, stops, and stays that way. Oh for fuck's sake I think, you have to be kidding me. I got it to freeze 8 times in a row on this race before I got bored, I pulled the CD out, cleaned it, popped it back in. Loaded race fine. I try to load again, freeze. So then I try in Quick Races San Franciso. Freeze. So by then I am extremely pissed off that my 600 dollar (we use monopoly money up here!) investment seems to work as well as the '87 Chevette I race with, if not worse.
I decide that there must be something seriously wrong with my Xbox, perhaps the DVD drive is wonky and that's why it seems to freeze all the time while loading. I also decided that Project Gotham is gay, and want NHL2002 instead. So I return my Xbox and get a new one at Future Shop with no hassles (they didn't even sign my receipt or anything else, was almost strange. they just gave me another one, told me to show my receipt to the person standing at the door, and I walked out. Ima go back with my receipt and get me a free Xbox!). I go to Toy's R'us and am told by the guy in the game dept. that I can only exchange for the same game, but then the customer service people gave me in-store credit and I got NHL2002 instead (the geek was bitter as fuck, looking at me all dirty and shit).
So great, NHL2002, I lub hockey! It's a pretty good game for the most part, not realistic in any real way, but better than NHL Hitz anyways. But lo and fucking behold, it freezes too! I have only maybe played it for two hours maximum, and only completed two games, but it has already frozen on me, a brand new game, on a brand new Xbox. I had just finished my first season game against Ottawa (5-2, oh yea) with 20 minute periods (more on that later, btw), and my players were dancing around the goalie all happy as pigs in shit they had one, then the screen freezes and the sound just starts looping the last half second it had played, and stays that way until I turn the console off. Wow, that's reassuring.
But not only that, from what I can tell, NHL2002 has a rather MASSIVE oversight/bug, or at least it seems to on my Xbox anyway. You can play a full season, or a partial season or whatever on it. When you choose to start a new season, you are given a menu with various options, like the difficulty level, period length, what whistles are blown and so on. I picked 10 minute periods prior to playing that game against Ottawa. The game options default is set at 5. My game against Ottawa had 20 minute periods. This is a rather large issue. I have since tried creating 3 separate seasons all with varying options etc, and yet every damn time that I start the first game, the period is sitting happily at 20:00.
After all this, I think I am going to be returning my Xbox altogether and getting either a refund or store credit for it. I really don't feel like having a 600 dollar investment that is barely working properly a month after I bought it. At least with PC's I can fix them (oh yea, I am writing this on my secondary box cause it appears my primary's mobo died sometime between last night when I shut it off, and this afternoon when my sister went to turn it on to get Civ III out of it).
Anyone else out there with Xbox's that have anything to say about this?