The Xbox 360 Thread Elite Edition

[eugimon]

We will never tire of Mass Effect! The DLC will see to it that we don't forget about it, and then ME2 and ME3 will be on the horizon and we'll all be slobbering over them.

I'm still having fun, and I'm well into my third time through. The classes are different enough that it really affects the way you play the game.

[mikeszekely]

I just finished it a few minutes ago. Definitely the most rewarding experience I've had with my 360 so far. Halo what now? In all honesty, for a new IP, the ME world is remarkably fleshed out. It's definitely a setting I'm looking forward to revisiting, be in in games, novels, movies, or even a good tabletop RPG.

Anyway, quick question... in KOTOR and Jade Empire, regardless of how you played most of the game, there were in both games a "point of no return," if you will, where you make a choice that determines your ultimate ending. Am I correct in assuming that

in ME, it's whether you rescue the Council or hold back the Fleet? Are there three different endings for ME, then, one for each choice? Does the conversation you have during the ending have anything to do with it?

[eugimon]

I just finished it a few minutes ago. Definitely the most rewarding experience I've had with my 360 so far. Halo what now? In all honesty, for a new IP, the ME world is remarkably fleshed out. It's definitely a setting I'm looking forward to revisiting, be in in games, novels, movies, or even a good tabletop RPG.

Anyway, quick question... in KOTOR and Jade Empire, regardless of how you played most of the game, there were in both games a "point of no return," if you will, where you make a choice that determines your ultimate ending. Am I correct in assuming that

in ME, it's whether you rescue the Council or hold back the Fleet? Are there three different endings for ME, then, one for each choice? Does the conversation you have during the ending have anything to do with it?

I don't know how many endings are, but there are at least two. And depending on how you end the game, it will really affect things in the next game. Completely change the political climate. I'm on my 3rd playthrough right now, and I'll try fiddling with the ending again... I'm playing as a paragon but I'll try the "renegade" ending and see if anything is different.

[Ishimaru]

I just finished it a few minutes ago. Definitely the most rewarding experience I've had with my 360 so far. Halo what now? In all honesty, for a new IP, the ME world is remarkably fleshed out. It's definitely a setting I'm looking forward to revisiting, be in in games, novels, movies, or even a good tabletop RPG.

Anyway, quick question... in KOTOR and Jade Empire, regardless of how you played most of the game, there were in both games a "point of no return," if you will, where you make a choice that determines your ultimate ending. Am I correct in assuming that

in ME, it's whether you rescue the Council or hold back the Fleet? Are there three different endings for ME, then, one for each choice? Does the conversation you have during the ending have anything to do with it?

I don't know how many endings are, but there are at least two. And depending on how you end the game, it will really affect things in the next game. Completely change the political climate. I'm on my 3rd playthrough right now, and I'll try fiddling with the ending again... I'm playing as a paragon but I'll try the "renegade" ending and see if anything is different.

I believe if you are playing as paragon you do get the options

to either destroy the Sovereign or protect the council fleet, I'm not sure about a third as changing any choices after that wouldn't affect much, probably different dialogs but thats it. Of course without thinking twice I went after the Sovereign, the ending was fantastic.

[mikeszekely]

I believe if you are playing as paragon you do get the options

to either destroy the Sovereign or protect the council fleet, I'm not sure about a third as changing any choices after that wouldn't affect much, probably different dialogs but thats it. Of course without thinking twice I went after the Sovereign, the ending was fantastic.

I did that too.

I decided that, for Achievements, I've decided to continue my previous Shepard to 60 on Hardcore, trying to play as a Paragon this time, I'll take different party members with me, and I'll focus on the shotgun and sniper rifles. Naturally, that'll also give me the Achievement for finishing it twice. That should just leave me with the last two party members, the tech and biotic masteries, the medi-gel, and finishing the game on Insanity. The last two party members will be a simple third time through, probably on Insanity starting with a 60th level Shepard. That'll just leave the tech and biotic masteries, which brings me to a question. As much as I enjoy the game, I don't think I'm looking to do more than three consecutive runs, as I've got Rock Band, Forza 2, Call of Duty 4, and Super Mario Galaxy all begging to be played. Do you actually need to kill with the biotic/tech abilities, or just use them 75 times each? I'm thinking it'd be much easier to create a character, invest in nothing but enough of one skill to unlock a needed one, and fire away on the wall for awhile, right? As for the medi-gel, I figure I'm a long way from getting it, as I probably used the medi-gel maybe a dozen times in my first run through (Tactician Achievement!), but I'll probably need the medi-gel a lot more on Hardcore and Insanity. Does anyone know if that one's cumulative? Like, if I use it 20 times in my first play, 50 times on my second, and 80 times on my third, does that count as 150 times, or do I have to do it all in one run?

[eugimon]

I did that too.

I decided that, for Achievements, I've decided to continue my previous Shepard to 60 on Hardcore, trying to play as a Paragon this time, I'll take different party members with me, and I'll focus on the shotgun and sniper rifles. Naturally, that'll also give me the Achievement for finishing it twice. That should just leave me with the last two party members, the tech and biotic masteries, the medi-gel, and finishing the game on Insanity. The last two party members will be a simple third time through, probably on Insanity starting with a 60th level Shepard. That'll just leave the tech and biotic masteries, which brings me to a question. As much as I enjoy the game, I don't think I'm looking to do more than three consecutive runs, as I've got Rock Band, Forza 2, Call of Duty 4, and Super Mario Galaxy all begging to be played. Do you actually need to kill with the biotic/tech abilities, or just use them 75 times each? I'm thinking it'd be much easier to create a character, invest in nothing but enough of one skill to unlock a needed one, and fire away on the wall for awhile, right? As for the medi-gel, I figure I'm a long way from getting it, as I probably used the medi-gel maybe a dozen times in my first run through (Tactician Achievement!), but I'll probably need the medi-gel a lot more on Hardcore and Insanity. Does anyone know if that one's cumulative? Like, if I use it 20 times in my first play, 50 times on my second, and 80 times on my third, does that count as 150 times, or do I have to do it all in one run?

I'm pretty sure the first aid achievement is unlocked for total usages. I got it on my 2nd run through, only a few missions into the game, and I know I didn't use it 150 times.

[David Hingtgen]

Every Biotic and Tech is different for unlocking requirements. Bascially, they tried to do it so that you COULDN'T just spam for an hour and unlock everything. But they couldn't be too strict about it or it'd mess up "valid" uses. Anyways:

Healing. You can only heal when hurt. Hard to spam.

Biotics---barrier works always, as you target yourself. Throw/lift/singularity---works best on any targetable object, though I think I got quite a few from walls/floors. Or it could have targeted immobile ojects. Try some crates/barrels---they're guaranteed.

Tech---usually needs to be an enemy to target them. AFAIK AI hacking only works on geth, so it'll take a while.

[yellowlightman]

Seriously guys, why not make a Mass Effect thread? It's been two pages since it was "too late" and it's been two pages of near solid ME posts.

Anyways... The Divx compatibility is nice, except it doesn't seem to support soft subs? I own a Divx-compatible DVD player anyways, so it's not a huge deal for me. Kinda nifty, though. Now if only the 360's were reliable enough to be worth using more than with just games.

[JsARCLIGHT]

How has the reliability been with the newer HDMI equipped Xboxes?

I've been thinking of buying a new 360 with HDMI out to go with my new 1080p TV purchase this holiday season but I have this nagging feeling that my old 360 has been such a trooper but I fear a new one will fry in two days. By all accounts of reason that should not happen and my old one should have broken ten times over by now according to everyone I've talked to... but I fear Murphy's law that the second I replace my old unit with a new one the new one will melt down.

[eugimon]

How has the reliability been with the newer HDMI equipped Xboxes?

I've been thinking of buying a new 360 with HDMI out to go with my new 1080p TV purchase this holiday season but I have this nagging feeling that my old 360 has been such a trooper but I fear a new one will fry in two days. By all accounts of reason that should not happen and my old one should have broken ten times over by now according to everyone I've talked to... but I fear Murphy's law that the second I replace my old unit with a new one the new one will melt down.

there are reports of them breaking down. but since they came out in two waves, who knows. Mine has the newer heat sink and it crashed for the first time today while playing ME. It also got hot enough, apparantly, for the lubricant in the DVD-ROM drive to liquify and spray all over the disc, leaving a fine film of white grease. But I haven't experienced and graphic rendering errors or anything.

[Chowser]

I must be lucky, my 360 pro w/hdmi (from August 2007) and Halo edition 360 w/hdmi (also August 2007) have both been working fine. The Halo edition is hooked up by HDMI, the pro is still component. The Halo edition is noisier and that's about it.

[JsARCLIGHT]

You know, I just noticed the 1080p TV I'm looking at has a 15 pin VGA input. I guess that settles my need for a new Xbox... the old soldier will march on!

Now in OTHER non ME Xbox talk:

Anyone playing Orange Box?

[CoryHolmes]

Anyone playing Orange Box?

The only orange boxes I come across are called "Malfunctioning Equipment" and don't need any hacking to open...

[TheLoneWolf]

It also got hot enough, apparantly, for the lubricant in the DVD-ROM drive to liquify and spray all over the disc, leaving a fine film of white grease.

Holy crap, that's the first time I've heard of that one!

[eugimon]

Holy crap, that's the first time I've heard of that one!

yeah, I was pretty shocked, the I could launch ME from the dashboard, so i opened it up and looked at the disc. I though at first that my baby had opened and closed the drive when I wasn't looking, but sure enough all over the disc was a fine spray all splayed out from the center of the disc out.

Also, got the Fall update, divx support works as advertised and I was able to watch gundam 00 and what not with the 360's video player. fun fun.

[David Hingtgen]

At this point, I'm hoping my refurb lasts until the next real update---65nm GPU. From what I can tell, they "cooled down" the wrong processor (CPU). The really hot one that sits under the drive and heats it up to disc-warping temps(GPU), is still 90nm.

Plus, disc drives still vary. There are currently 4 main one in use AFAIK:

Loud Hitachi. (not launch-loud, but close)

Quiet Hitachi. (almost as quiet as a quiet Benq)

Loud BenQ. Loudest ever used in a 360.

Quiet BenQ. Quietest of all.

You can get a 360 built last week, and it'll have the same loud Hitachi as one from 18 months ago. Or a silent one. Or a super-loud, slow-loading BenQ. Even getting the coveted BenQ is no guarantee of getting a good drive. (Different drives do load at different speeds--normally not much of an issue, but since ME streams off the disc constantly, 1/2 second DOES make a difference)

Or if you're really unlucky, a year from now you get a 360 with a 65nm CPU, a 65nm GPU that never overheats and lasts forever---but has a super-loud, slow-loading drive.

[myk]

Now in OTHER non ME Xbox talk:

Anyone playing Orange Box?

Phew. If it's anything like COD4 you can count me out...

[mikeszekely]

Phew. If it's anything like COD4 you can count me out...

I like COD4, in short bursts.

As for Orange Box, I played Half Life 2 when it was on the original Xbox, and didn't like it at all. I can't imagine adding a bunch of content and prettying it up will make me like it any better.

[JsARCLIGHT]

I myself enjoy Half Life 2... for no other reason that it's a fun romp. It's the first game that I've ever played that makes you feel "smart" when you do something goofy like launch lawnmower blades at people or grab enemy grenades and shove them down their throats with that gravity gun.

That and HL2 has something few games truly have these days... atmosphere. A lot of games fumble and paw at atmosphere but they never really pull it off IMHO. It always feels like you are playing a corny video game.

[myk]

I like COD4, in short bursts.

I guess that's the key: playing in short bursts, as that game is exhausting, I'm almost afraid to say...

[Ishimaru]

At this point, I'm hoping my refurb lasts until the next real update---65nm GPU. From what I can tell, they "cooled down" the wrong processor (CPU). The really hot one that sits under the drive and heats it up to disc-warping temps(GPU), is still 90nm.

Plus, disc drives still vary. There are currently 4 main one in use AFAIK:

Loud Hitachi. (not launch-loud, but close)

Quiet Hitachi. (almost as quiet as a quiet Benq)

Loud BenQ. Loudest ever used in a 360.

Quiet BenQ. Quietest of all.

You can get a 360 built last week, and it'll have the same loud Hitachi as one from 18 months ago. Or a silent one. Or a super-loud, slow-loading BenQ. Even getting the coveted BenQ is no guarantee of getting a good drive. (Different drives do load at different speeds--normally not much of an issue, but since ME streams off the disc constantly, 1/2 second DOES make a difference)

Or if you're really unlucky, a year from now you get a 360 with a 65nm CPU, a 65nm GPU that never overheats and lasts forever---but has a super-loud, slow-loading drive.

Trying to get one of the 360's with HDMI and the new drive David?

I wish I could find a way to get one.

360 went beserk when it didn't even load the textures properly for ME, gave me a disc read error, and just crashed.

System still works like a charm most of the time though.

[mikeszekely]

That and HL2 has something few games truly have these days... atmosphere. A lot of games fumble and paw at atmosphere but they never really pull it off IMHO. It always feels like you are playing a corny video game.

I find that amusing when the last several pages have been about Mass Effect, and a few months before that it was Bioshock. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of games that are just out to make their publishers a quick buck, but I think there are a lot of developers who take their craft seriously and approaching their games as a serious art and an alternative to traditional television, movies, or books as a means of storytelling.

I guess that's the key: playing in short bursts, as that game is exhausting, I'm almost afraid to say...

Yeah, I mean, I started playing, I played one mission that was presented as a flashback, and then I needed a break. The firefights are always intense, and even when you're not surrounded by people shooting at you, the game creates a tension that with one wrong move you could walk into an enemy ambush.

I wound up going to the store to pick up a game just to play in between COD4 missions.

[eugimon]

Every Biotic and Tech is different for unlocking requirements. Bascially, they tried to do it so that you COULDN'T just spam for an hour and unlock everything. But they couldn't be too strict about it or it'd mess up "valid" uses. Anyways:

Healing. You can only heal when hurt. Hard to spam.

Biotics---barrier works always, as you target yourself. Throw/lift/singularity---works best on any targetable object, though I think I got quite a few from walls/floors. Or it could have targeted immobile ojects. Try some crates/barrels---they're guaranteed.

Tech---usually needs to be an enemy to target them. AFAIK AI hacking only works on geth, so it'll take a while.

stasis works on any usable object, like doors locks or crates.

[JsARCLIGHT]

I find that amusing when the last several pages have been about Mass Effect, and a few months before that it was Bioshock. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of games that are just out to make their publishers a quick buck, but I think there are a lot of developers who take their craft seriously and approaching their games as a serious art and an alternative to traditional television, movies, or books as a means of storytelling.

Actually IMHO Mass Effect fails at setting an atmosphere. Sure it tells a story and sets a plot but the atmosphere of the game just feels... meh. Everything is so repetitious in it's layout and look, nothing really has a unique "flavor" to it in the game. One planet looks just like the ten others you were on an hour ago and none of them set a mood or give you an emotional response. It's all brightly lit generic hallways linking to generic rooms inhabited by generic enemies. Sure they'll change out the textures every once in a while but it all feels so "been here before". The same argument can be made for Bioshock... it was very good at setting it's atmosphere of creepy but that look and palate just continues through the whole game with minor tweaks. They did a good job of "livening it up" with asymmetrical level designs and ever changing enemy skins though. You have to admit that unlike ME when playing Bioshock you don't say to yourself "Deja Vu! I've been here before!" every time you land on a planet or board a ship.

HL2 has spots that take your breath away, both from a cinematic sense and an emotional sense. Ravenholm was creepy as hell, City 17 was eerie and looming. Heck Bioshock always seemed to find a new way to creep me out around every other turn. Mass Effect was bland... I know it's the "future" and all but when I board a derelict freighter or land on a hostile enemy world infested with Rachnai I want to be creeped out like I was playing Ravenholm or Apollo Square, not focusing on how "the same" everything looks.

... and "atmosphere" and art direction are quite weak in the game world. Six or seven really well designed, atmospheric games compared to what, a hundred? two hundred? It's just like everything else. Out of a hundred TV shows only one or two are "good". It's because there are far more folks looking to make money than make art.

[eugimon]

yeah, that's a pretty fair complaint... there's just not a lot of variety in the game in general. the abilities just get stronger, we don't see any visual changes as your powers grow and all the weapons and armor look essentially the same (for each class).

[JsARCLIGHT]

I believe most of my issues with ME's atmosphere come from the cookie cutter nature of the game. They were not setting out to make a cinematic experience through linear story telling, they set out to make a random world... as such their random world recycles a lot... well in truth it recycles way too much. Admittedly comparing a "use and reuse" game like ME to a linear scripted game like HL2 or Bioshock is not really fair. HL2 and Bioshock benefit from a lot of uniqueness because they don't have to worry about making twenty some planets and forty some building interiors... but at the same time damn... how many times when playing ME do you enter a base or a freighter and say to yourself "ok, first hallway into a foyer that only has one door into a big room full of crates into another hallway into another foyer but this one has TWO doors that lead to two nearly empty rooms!... But WAIT! That crate! It's... gasp... different!" ME's level layouts always made me wonder if every building in the future rolled off of some huge assembly line somewhere. It's almost as if one huge company got the contract to build every building in the universe and they used prefab tilt up structure for all of it. I wonder how they were able to get such seeming uniqueness and randomness out of KOTOR levels but ME is just so darn repetitious.

[eugimon]

I think a part of it has to do with the conflict between HD resolution and relatively low capacity DVDs. All the textures and audio is going to take up more space now then they did for the xbox. And people just won't settle for low res graphics or stereo sound anymore.

By the end of the 360's scheduled product life, I think developers will really have to figurre out how they're going to get around this limitation and I think we'll be seeing a LOT more DLC... not as bonuses like in marvel alliance... but to actually help flesh out the game.

[JsARCLIGHT]

If they'd just spool to the HD it would not be much of a problem. I mean Oblivion pretty much required a HD and people didn't crap themselves over that. I still can't figure out why these new consoles come with hard drives when hardly any games use that function.

[Chowser]

I just wish they would make all games require the HD nowadays, or give us the option to run a game off the HD. It'll be faster and quieter.

Isn't that how PC games are done now? Everything is installed to the HD?

Microsoft should really let us do what Sony does and upgrade the HD ourselves if we need to. I've got an old 100gb 7200rpm notebook drive sitting around doing nothing, it would be nice if I could stick that in the 360. Guess I'll save it for the PS3 if I ever get it again.

[CoryHolmes]

While Mass Effect may not have "atmospere" as you call it (and you're right, it is VERY repititious), the game really hooked me in with how in-depth everything is. Especially the Codex and the world blurbs. It amazed me that each world had it's own little biographical blurb giving it's size, gravity, atmosphereic pressure (if any), orbital period, and even distance from the primary. And the Codex, jeez. How many other games (or movies, or books, or TV shows) that take the time to explain to you how heat is managed on a ship? Or how where you choose to fight in a ship dictates how long you can fight for? Or pointing out that the ships in this universe need to discharge an electrical build-up, either by landing and grounding directly to the planet or by hovering in a planet's magnetic field and dumping the charge into that?

Little touches like that, which have NO bearing on the game whatsoever, was enough to make me overlook the recycled level design or those stupid Mako missions.

[mikeszekely]

Actually IMHO Mass Effect fails at setting an atmosphere. Sure it tells a story and sets a plot but the atmosphere of the game just feels... meh. Everything is so repetitious in it's layout and look, nothing really has a unique "flavor" to it in the game. One planet looks just like the ten others you were on an hour ago and none of them set a mood or give you an emotional response. It's all brightly lit generic hallways linking to generic rooms inhabited by generic enemies. Sure they'll change out the textures every once in a while but it all feels so "been here before". The same argument can be made for Bioshock... it was very good at setting it's atmosphere of creepy but that look and palate just continues through the whole game with minor tweaks. They did a good job of "livening it up" with asymmetrical level designs and ever changing enemy skins though. You have to admit that unlike ME when playing Bioshock you don't say to yourself "Deja Vu! I've been here before!" every time you land on a planet or board a ship.

HL2 has spots that take your breath away, both from a cinematic sense and an emotional sense. Ravenholm was creepy as hell, City 17 was eerie and looming. Heck Bioshock always seemed to find a new way to creep me out around every other turn. Mass Effect was bland... I know it's the "future" and all but when I board a derelict freighter or land on a hostile enemy world infested with Rachnai I want to be creeped out like I was playing Ravenholm or Apollo Square, not focusing on how "the same" everything looks.

... and "atmosphere" and art direction are quite weak in the game world. Six or seven really well designed, atmospheric games compared to what, a hundred? two hundred? It's just like everything else. Out of a hundred TV shows only one or two are "good". It's because there are far more folks looking to make money than make art.

I can't comment on HL2, as I never finished it, nor am I trying to take away from it, but I disagree with you on both ME and Bioshock. Yeah, it's true that all the uncharted planets you can land on are basically a grid of plains broken up by random mountains, but in every other way each one was different. Like one was sunny and green with pollen in the air, one looked kinda like Mars, one had comets streaking through the sky, one had an atmosphere full of swirling dust and a planet hitting its Roche limit dominating the sky, etc. One planet in particular stood out for me, when I drove the Mako up to a high plateau and got out to survey some mineral and paused for a moment to admire the red giant star looming large in the sky. Now, do I think it would have been better if BioWare had made unique maps for each planet to help them stand apart from each other? Sure, but I also wanted to play the game sometime this decade. What's more, I don't think a few hilly grids on planets you don't even have to set foot on to play the game detract from the fact that for a new IP, Mass Effect has a remarkably detailed and fleshed out universe that's on par or better than established sci-fi TV, film, or literary franchises.

As for Bioshock, the game fairly reeks of atmosphere. The developers really captured that 1950's vision of what the future would look like in the architecture of Rapture, and the fact that it's run down and abandoned save for gangs of mutants, creepy little girls, and giants in diver's suits with drills on one of their hands really brought a sense of dystopian creepiness.

Your complaint about how Bioshock doesn't really mix up the level designs doesn't make the game any less atmospheric. I would imagine that a utopian city built under the sea around one man's vision would be architecturally homogeneous, and too much variety would actually detract from the game's atmosphere.

Don't get me wrong, variety helps keep a game fresh. But any game can do the standard fire/ice/water levels. Variety does NOT equate to atmosphere.

And while I'm disagreeing in the cases of Mass Effect and Bioshock, I'm agreeing with you fundamentally. For every Bioshock there's a truckload of Maddens, Tony Hawks, GTA clones, and generic JRPG clones. I just feel that this fall has been good to us game-wise.

[JsARCLIGHT]

To Cory:

Yeah but to be blunt that is all useless droll... you never have to use any of it in the game so including it adds nothing to the gameplay. It's more or less jerkin' material for sci-fi geeks. Having all that info in your game but no connection between it and the game pretty much is like having a feature that lets you read the newspaper in a GTA game... except none of the stuff you learn about in the paper is applicable to anything you do in the game.

At the beginning I was actually reading all that gobbledygook until I realized it has zero bearing on the game. It's all just in there to make you say "oooooooh they really thought out this game"... but they didn't... if they would have thought out their game you would not be playing the same darned building layout over and over again. All they did was write reams of nonsense backstory and "lore" that you gain nothing from reading other than saying "gee, the writers sure got paid on this game". It would have been so much neater if by reading the codex your character gained insight into the world and it opened up new dialog choices or actions... like reading how the ship works means your character has the option to do something along those lines or solve some problem that comes up later in the game based on that knowledge that would have not been available to him if he had not read that material. Instead it's a reference manual to the mundane.

IMHO the point of a video game is application of the data, not just data for the sake of data. In my mind why bother telling me what a Koala eats, how much a beach ball weighs on Mars and how my space suit channels my farts away from my face if I have no use for that information in the game? At least they could have snuck in the typical "password" tricks to force you to read the entries like most games do so you can write down passwords to open doors.

To Mike:

My complaints on Bioshock were not about it's atmosphere but about it's repetitiveness of certain elements. Bioshock had wonderful level design and lighting, but it kept falling into video game and movie cliches every now and then for it's "setpieces". While that is not a "bad" thing it certainly detracts from the game when you notice the "game" setting itself up. Kind of like the "lulls" in the Call of Duty games. You totally clear out a level of badguys then when cross an invisible line all of a sudden they flood the place out of nowhere. That is not a fault of the game's atmosphere but rather one of it's play mechanics.

I will not argue that ME "looks good" but it has no functional variety. Everything is well lit, evenly laid out and bland. The game has no "mood". You enter places that are supposed to be ravaged or under attack and they look just like every other place you've been in. The most notable is

the final battle at the citadel... all they did was light a bunch of fires everywhere and bing! it's "ravaged". You go to Feros, a planet that is supposed to be blown to hell and it's surprisingly still well lit and navigable aside from some small piles of debris. For a planet that just got invaded is sure doesn't look it... it looked more like a dump that a bunch of people live in that just happened to be attacked.

Edit: I'm not trying to be an ass but I myself to a good degree have become a pseudo "art director" at my company and I just pick up on all these things these days that people oooooh and aaaaaah over that are more or less bland. Sure it looks nice but thematically it's not well thought out or laid out. The biggest gripe I have about ME is it's lighting... it's just so uninspired. At times it has these little specks of good lighting in it but it seems to waste those elements on mundane shots. Then in other situations that IMHO really call for some neat mood lighting it just blankets the scene in bland ambient light. Heck, simply "moody-ing up" some of the lighting in some areas of ME would have made quite a difference to me. Instead the future is quite well lit and relatively clean, even it's war zones are quite orderly and clean. When playing many levels of ME, not just the side missions, I kept thinking how they would have benefited from little things... lower the ambient drastically, add more concentrated lights, a tweenie here, a finger there, a gobo or two on the light sources and bam what was once a well lit, static and emotionless area of a level (like the tram station at Noveria that was supposed to have been a site of a gory death) can become an ominous, looming, foreboding place that you venture slowly into with trepidation and fear rather than just another room you tromp into and then leave.

[TheLoneWolf]

I just wish they would make all games require the HD nowadays, or give us the option to run a game off the HD. It'll be faster and quieter.

Isn't that how PC games are done now? Everything is installed to the HD?

Part of the problem is that there are some people who bought a Core set, thus no hard drive. What I don't get is why don't the games' programmers write some logic code for the game to search for a hard drive. If a hard drive is found, begin cacheing game data. If no hard drive is found (or if the hard drive is full), use RAM exclusively. My only guess as to why they don't go this route is that it might double the time it takes to beta test the whole game.

[David Hingtgen]

Oblivion. If you have no hard drive--fine. But if you do have one---enjoy the texture cache! And that's one of the earlier 360 games. It can't be that hard to do.

[David Hingtgen]

Well THAT sucks:

http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2007/12...r-accounts.aspx

Silver memberships have to wait at least a week before being allowed to download any new free demos etc.