X-Box 360 Elite's Revenge

In September of 2008, my X-Box 360 Elite received an E74 error, prompting me to send it in for a repair while I got myself a new X-Box 360 Arcade unit to play with while waiting for the Elite's return. My original plan was to sell my Elite when I receive it back from Microsoft but then, it occurred to me that it would probably be best to just keep an extra 360 in case I experience another red ring of death failure again. This way, I would always have another 360 to play on while the other is being repaired by Microsoft. Since the domestic Limited Edition release of Deathsmiles is going to include a beautiful black custom faceplate, I have decided to transfer my content licenses back into my Elite so that the faceplate would not look so jarring compared to the rest of the Arcade unit's white exterior.

I'm back and ready to please my master with a face lift soon!

I must say that I have missed seeing my beautiful Elite and it still looks as sexy as ever. Now, my display is sandwiched between two black consoles and this elevates the overall aesthetics of things. The license transfer process took about an hour to complete. Compared to my newer Arcade model, this Elite is slightly noisier. There is this silent hum that constantly fills the room when I have the unit on, that is until the game's audio kicks in. I was surprised that I had to delete and then reinstall the retail discs into the hard drive after the license switch. Apparently, the full disc installation ties the specific discs to the specific console, as specified by an error message I received when I tried playing Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5 soon after the license transfer was completed. I know that disc installation is optional but after its introduction, I only play a game on the 360 after its installed on the hard drive because the disc drive is just too noisy. I really do hope that this Elite console will last for a while - maybe forever? - especially the fact that it was repaired during the time when Microsoft was pushing out units at a significantly lower failure rate.

I mostly leave my shmups permanently installed on my HDD.

Deathsmiles Limited Edition!

The official announcement that happened earlier in January about Deathsmiles' upcoming domestic release in the U.S. was exciting enough but now there's even more reasons to celebrate this bullet-hell shoot-'em-up's eventual arrival: During its first print run, Deathsmiles will be sold with a Limited Edition packaging that mimics Cave's treatments of special edition releases in Japan! The game will include a custom faceplate that would just look exquisite on the X-Box 360 Elite - and since my Elite hasn't seen much action since it was repaired, I may have to do a license transfer today so that I can have the Elite back up in my Game Room - as well as a soundtrack CD. The goodness doesn't stop there: This Limited Edition release will only cost $49.99! That's even less than half the price that others have paid for the region-locked Japanese release! Thank you again Aksys Games! The game will be released on June 29th of this year!

In this case at least, death can't come any sooner!

Sleepless Gaming Session Result

I stated that I would report the result of my "Sleepless Gaming Session Celebration" yesterday but the experiment was so unsuccessful that I must have subconsciously forgotten to write about it yesterday. Well, I only lasted until around 1:00 am. The goal was for me to stay up until 4:00 - 5:00 am. I decided to play some Culdcept Saga alone against the computer near midnight. It was a long but hardly challenging battle and I fell asleep as I was resting my head back on the futon during a round while my 3 computer opponents were making their moves across the map. Very anti-climactic, I know. Perhaps it was a bad idea to begin with or at least a very strange one.

Don't blame the failure on the game - it's a masterpiece. Blame it on me instead.

Dirt 2 Performance Report

After realizing that the difficulty I had installing the game last night was a user error, I was finally able to get to play Codemaster's Dirt 2 today. I must say that this game is certainly the best looking racing game I have ever seen to date. Heck, it's not even far-fetched to declare it as one of the best looking games ever. With my current PC build, I am able to run the game at an average of 52 frames per second with all the game's options set to maximum with 4x MSAA and the native resolution set at 1920 x 1080. At 8x QCSAA, I am able to still run the game quite smoothly at an average rate of 48 fps. The only option that is left at "Medium" is the post processing and this is because this option can only be increased with graphics card and an operating system that can run DirectX 11. The texture works in the game - you can see the smallest cracks on the road - and the real-time lighting are simply incredible. Let's see how long it's going to take for another racer to outperform Dirt 2's graphical feast.

Dirt 2 sets a new visual landmark for racing games.


"Bring it on, Polyphony Digital!"

Heroes of Newerth: A Hint of Politeness

I logged on to the Heroes of Newerth open beta client today because I was informed that the game has been recently updated. A new hero has been added into the game - an ugly looking chipmunk by the name of "The Chipper":

I think he is a descendant of that squirrel guy in the Ice Age movies.

A pop-up message in the game explained that the next upcoming heroes will all be based on the community suggestions - the result of that should be very interesting. Unfortunately, the update did not include a "versus A.I." option so those who are just absolutely troubled by the game's nasty community will have to wait longer to get into the game again. While I was loading up a "Practice" game by myself to check out the new hero - what's so difficult in actually allowing us to do a practice game against the bots anyway? - I was surprised to see the following:

Oh yeah, that's really going to help all right.

Well, I shouldn't be too pessimistic because at least S2 Games is trying to influence the game's community to be more polite and respectful to each other. I doubt that the jerks that this message was created for are going to heed to these words though. I mean, how can they be nice when their valuable lives - I mean - stats are at stake?