June 05, 2006

Table Tennis . . . Red Lights of Death!!!

I got the impulse to pick up Table Tennis for the 360. This wasn't a game I planned on getting, yet for some reason while driving home I decided to stop by Best Buy and pick it up. Maybe it was because I am taking a break from Oblivion, finally beat CoD2 on Veteran and already finished GRAW on Hard and just needed a fresh new game for the 360. Sure, I haven't beated PDZ yet . . . but I was not in the mood to get frustrated with that game's controls. I've always been a big fan of table tennis, even though I've probably only played it about five times in my life. And I suck at it. But it sure is fun. The video game version, from Rockstar, is also surprisingly fun. Maybe not deep in features, but extremely enjoyable. They did a fantastic job in capturing the feel of the sport. The graphics and animation are superb. On-line play is also very good. The big missing feature is a career-mode. This could have been icing on the cake. As it is, there are only single exhibition matches and a few tournaments of diffrent difficulties and on-line play. The lack of an in-depth career mode is seriously going to hurt the longevity of this title. Of course, I won't be able to determine how long the game will continue to be fun without it because . . .

MY 360 DIED ON ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, after speanding months reading on message boards of users complaining about defective units, freezing, skipping, scratched discs, over-heating systems and me thinking that I was lucky enough to get a perfectly working unit, my 360 started acting up a week or so ago. It all stared while playing an on-line match of Table Tennis. The game just froze on me. I restarted and started playing a regular single-player match, and after 15 minutes or so, it froze again. I restarted, decided to play some music off my hard-drive (maybe the game was just glitchy) and after five minutes, it froze again. D'oh!!

I turned the system off, unplugged all the cables and left it alone for 15 minutes, then connected everything again and booted it up. It was working fine again. I played for another hour or two with no problems. Problem solved I thought.

The next morning I decide to play some Halo 2 on-line (for some reason, I just now started getting hooked on Halo 2 multiplayer after I've had the game for two years) and everything was fine. I played about four matches when all of sudden, my 360 froze again. This time for good. Upon restart it just froze at the Xbox 360 logo. Then, the red lights of death showed up in the ring of light. NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

I tried unplugging everything again but to no avail. It was dead. It would boot to the dashboard, but would freeze after a minute or two. I called Microsoft support, spoke to some lady with a really heavy accent for about ½ an hour and now they are shipping a box out to me so that I can send it in for repair. =(

I guess I should be happy I'm still under warranty. But I treat my systems like gold. I've never had any problems with any system ever (I still have my launch day PS2 working just fine) so I was very distraught that my 360 became one of the many of faulty units out there. I'm going to look into getting an extended warranty from Microsoft once my system gets repaired. I've read of gamers having to pay $129 to get their systems repaired after they've bitten the dust past the 6 month warranty. Looks like I just made it too, because I bought my system at the beginning of January. I should be receiving the UPS box any day now. :(

I've actually reconnected my old X-Box (which I had stored in the closet) and have been playing Halo 2 on-line. I have a love/hate relationship with the game. I love it when I am doing well and in a "zone" and want to throw it out the window when I'm getting my ass handed to me. Yes, I am very competitive.

I'm also still playing MLB: The Show. I’m playing my Career with a starting pitcher I created. I'm in my second year, in the Marlin's minor league system and playing AAA ball. This game is fantastic. I urge any true baseball fan to not pick this title up and be totally amazed at all the little things it does right. And that commentary continues to amaze. Why can't all sports developers *cough* EA *cough*, “get it” like these guys certainly do.

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