Tom

I picked this up because I heard that Alex Garland wrote it, and that Ninja Theory had developed it. And because I had heard it was underrated.

This game is fantastic! Excellent graphics, mocap (how the heck did they get the eyes so perfect that they could convey nonverbal body language like rolling eyes?!?), voice acting ("So...I should just...go get it...m'okay.") and varied, challenging gameplay...well, it was a ton of FUN and even let you establish an emotional connection to the characters.

One of the best games of the year.

hey, that's a picture from Queen Street West in Toronto! and to the left is the bike chop shop where the most notorious bike thief in the city was busted last year :)

[sorry i'm off topic :)]

The update just bricked my buddy's 360. Niether of us were experiencing any problems with the game and he had played through GH2 for hours and hours--much more than me. No way I'm accepting that patch.

Alrighty then....when/if I'm ever done with GH2, I'll then go buy a used GH1 bundle for my PS2 for a much lower price. See? I'm speaking with my wallet.

I was thinking about how the pricing for this must have been calculated. There is the $1 expectation for iTunes songs on one side, and then the specific purpose (gaming; not listening on a portable device or CD) and quality (covers) of the GH songs on the other. Then bundling. And the fact that the development for these GH1 songs was already done (for the PS2 game), but would have required some amount of code tweaking (probably batch application) for the songs to work and be downloadable on the 360. Pretty dicey stuff to consider and balance, but, without being privy to the actual math, at a gut level, I think this would have been better priced lower, around $1 per song. I don't think as many people would have a problem with the bundling at that price point. Even if the overall cost of all the GH1 songs worked out to some reasonable premium over the total cost of GH1, say, up to 20%, I think people would still bite.

This is Oblivion horse armour and Lumines all over again. I didn't buy the former, only got Oblivion's Mehrune's Razor once it was free, paid for Shivering Isles, and bought some of the first pack and the very cheap second pack releases for Lumines. So I'm again trying to speak with my wallet and purchase things that only meet my own value criteria.

I won't be buying any of these GH downloads until the pricing changes to meet that criteria.

For all you non-Canadians out there: "Ottawa's also offering a C$8-million loan" means that loan's coming from the Federal government ;)

"because obviously when you own a $400 piece of equipment you try to break it and experience all the joy of warranty red tape"

Yes, that's exactly the attitude that Xbox customer service takes. I experienced the same thing when they denied ever receiving the crap wireless headset I sent in to a local repair center, effectively robbing me of $70 I paid for it.

Woe to anyone who has to deal with them, 'cause, you know, they're perfect and all us customers are a bunch of con artists and liars.

This colleague should contribute to the Big Box Project...

God, I read the first couple pages of this...what, is the author about 12 years old?!? Fugedaboudit...I'll just play for FUN.

Oh, here we go...

Mid-December I realized that my 360 wireless headset is a lemon--it had -every- problem that's been noted. Got on the phone with Xbox Cust Svc and was amazed at how helpful the first person I dealt with was. She was great, gave me the address of a suburban Toronto repair location and told me to mail the headset with the cust service ticket/reference number. And after registering my console with them, she told me I'd get a replacement for FREE as a thank you for buying the 360 at launch! I was seriously impressed.

So on Dec 13th I put said lemon headset into a small padded envelope, stamped it at a post office, and mailed it...but I didn't send it registered mail (too much on my mind with work, holidays and moving...) And that was my fatal mistake, it seems.

By Jan 2nd I was in my new house, and called XBCS again re: status of my replacement. The first girl had no idea what to do, and limited English skills, and put me on hold. When I was picked back up, I was talking to a much more knowledgeable guy. But I was told by this guy that he could not see on his system any indication that the repair center had received the headset...and he asked me for my "tracking number" But I was calling for my tracking number. Oh, I finally figured out he was asking me for MY MAIL tracking number of which, of course, I didn't have one. The first girl I spoke to didn't even suggest it was required and honestly, how often does mail get lost from a friggin postal outlet these days?

I talked and he talked and I banged my head against the wall, until finally he started robotically responding to my ever-more-anxious comments like "So what you're saying is that I'm screwed?" with "I wish I had better news for you"...over and over and over and over.

Of course he was insinuating that Canada Post lost the envelope because there was NO POSSIBLE WAY that the REPAIR CENTER was negligent...

I mean, I still have the receipt, I still have the headset's AC adapter...but obviously not the good faith of Microsoft. Would I have gone through all this trouble just to con them out of a wireless headset?!? Cause that's certainly the stance they are taking. I'm not some kid with nothing better to do with my time or life. It's only $70, but the PRINCIPLE of the whole thing... I will now be speaking with my wallet and, especially after hearing about so many problems with this headset, be VERY VERY UNLIKELY...no, actually, I will NEVER again buy an accessory from Microsoft. [insert favourite expletive here, related to bodily functions and/or parts or parental lineage of said customer service reps]

I don't even have time to write about the circus that occured between these calls about the headset that had to do with an "invalid code" on a 2800 Microsft Points card that I bought--3 reps, 2 hours on the phone, and such creative replies from the CSRs as, "You didn't buy it from a registered Microsoft reseller" and "Fax me a photocopy of the [3 point font]code; we have technology that can enlarge it." (OMFG...RLY??? Can we buy that for our office?)

Argh. Serenity now...serenity now...serentiy now...

I am getting really tired of listening to Sony executives spout all this "me too!" crap. Why don't they focus FIRST on getting a solid product out the door and into the hands of gamers--one that's glitch free and can be trusted as being worth its price tag--and THEN focus on promising everything (else) under the sun? They might come off with a bit more credibility then. Then again, these announcements may only be made for the benefit of stockholders and analysts, so that they can be convinced that Sony has an actual strategy other than "we'll throw everything at the wall and see what sticks!"

Holy crap, good show! You would think that no one in the place would be familiar with, nor appreciate, what he was dressed as. Pretty impressive. Even more impressive is his friend's...uh...never mind.

But it's also funny that you -still- don't see the guy's -face- in either picture ;)