[quote]pookie wrote:
En Sabah Nur wrote:
That’s also because I can’t upgrade my HDD, which the largest option is 120gb which is around $130. And to add insult to injury I can’t add my own content, only Microsoft’s. Even if I could these Blu-Ray movie rips are runnig 8GB a pop, so I’d kill the Microsoft hard drive before I got started.
You can plug an external HDD in the USB ports and the Xbox will see it and read the contents just fine. Your music, movies, photos, etc. It’s read-only, but all your content is accessible as long as the 360 has the right codecs for it.
[/quote]
But in actuality the 360 really doesn’t support very many codecs. I’ve got Xvid/Divx files from 2 - 3 years ago that it won’t play, including some of the newer mkv rips which are in HD but I can’t watch. Not to mention there’s no option for subtitles in these files and the max playable file size is 4gb, again messing up my HD stuff. No 5.1 either only stereo, requiring more work on my end.
If some guys in their spare time can come up with a great app like Xbox Media Center why can’t a company deliver this small stuff?
And I can use my own content on the external drives but not proprietary software like on PS3.
[quote]pookie wrote:
I’m really surprised the used ones are so expensive in your area. Got mine used (in near-mint condition, as they say) for $15.
[/quote]
Games aren’t that cheap around here, either. Maybe you live in some sort of gaming netherworld.
I looked at gamefly to see about renting them ala netflix, but 16 bucks a month for one game at a time? And $21 for 2 games at a time? Screw that.
I tried buying an NCAA Football 2007 from the internet a year or so ago for the xbox, but in would never load. Sent it back, and never heard from the company again.
I think I am going to stick with the new games at Best Buy. I just won’t be able to buy as many as often.
[quote]En Sabah Nur wrote:
But in actuality the 360 really doesn’t support very many codecs. I’ve got Xvid/Divx files from 2 - 3 years ago that it won’t play, including some of the newer mkv rips which are in HD but I can’t watch. Not to mention there’s no option for subtitles in these files and the max playable file size is 4gb, again messing up my HD stuff. No 5.1 either only stereo, requiring more work on my end.[/quote]
Yeah, the codec situation sucks. It used to be even worse, so maybe a future update will fix it? I’m not holding my breath.
XBMC has been ported to Windows, Mac and Linux. I think my eventual solution will be to build a custom PC and run XBMC on it. Then I’ll be able to stream anything I want from the network, HD included. I really hate having to swap discs to watch movies or play games.
Yeah, but that bothers me a lot less. I use the 360 for games (90%) and I’d like to be able to replace my old Xbox with XBMC as a media center… Right now, XBMC is still my main media center, and I stream HD thru the 360, but only in stereo.
MS needs to tell the RIAA and MPAA to fuck off and find a way to put all known codecs in the world in a dashboard update. Right now it seems they want you to use the X360 to stream movies, but only those you’ve rented from them for $9 a pop. WTF are they smoking? I can rent a BluRay for $3 at the corner video store. The owner has to pay rent, utilities, salaries, etc. and can rent the movie to me for 3$; downloading it has none of those costs (ok, storage and bandwith, but those are cheap)… I should be able to rent it for a dollar or less.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
pookie wrote:
I’m really surprised the used ones are so expensive in your area. Got mine used (in near-mint condition, as they say) for $15.
Games aren’t that cheap around here, either. Maybe you live in some sort of gaming netherworld.
I looked at gamefly to see about renting them ala netflix, but 16 bucks a month for one game at a time? And $21 for 2 games at a time? Screw that.
[/quote]
Shit man its even worse at Blockbuster. $9 for 1 week for 1 game or like $21 or $22 a month for 1 game. Pretty ridiculous.
If I get something used I’ll stick to meeting with the people in person at their house so if they fuck me over I can show up with the broken game and 2 options for them to choose. I’m sure you can guess the 2 options.
That or GameStop. They guarantee their used games to play.
Fight on a high roof (the guards will climb up to you) and win only by grabbing the guards and throwing them off the roof.
Fight on a pier and throw them in the water. No one could swim in 1191 apparently.
Stay on a ladder and kick or pull down every one who climbs up or down to you. Tough one.
Position yourself so that every dead guard falls over another dead one. It’s pretty hard, since you don’t know which stabbing animation you’ll get, but you can do nice body piles.
Do a large battle without using the counter-attack move. Dodges and attacks only. (You get the dodge move towards the end of the game).
Enter a city and try to kill every guard you see silently without raising an alarm. You have to be fast because dead bodies alarm the populace who call in guards to the area.
Get on the rooftops and remove all the rooftop guards across a city. I got bored before I finished - the cities are vast - but it was going well. You have to stealth kill them so that the bodies don’t fall to the streets.
Try to kill a whole guard patrol from horseback without getting knocked off your horse. I haven’t managed that one either. Yet.
Note that none of that is required by the game, but they are all great fun to try. With a friend over is even better.
[/quote]
[quote]pookie wrote:
Yeah, the codec situation sucks. It used to be even worse, so maybe a future update will fix it? I’m not holding my breath.[/quote]
I’m surprised they’ve given us what they have. I’m not really holding my breath either.
[quote]
I really hate having to swap discs to watch movies or play games.[/quote]
Likewise which is why I wish MS would give a little head room in this area.
Wirelessly? I’ve only been able to stream my HD content through a wired connection.
If it is wireless, what kind of connection are you running, i.e. a, g, n? You’re going to have to explain that feat.
[quote]En Sabah Nur wrote:
Wirelessly? I’ve only been able to stream my HD content through a wired connection.[/quote]
No. My house is wired with Cat5.
Did a test with my laptop, and streaming HD doesn’t work well wirelessly. It’s a “g”… I guess it can’t sustain the necessary bandwith. Everything else streams fine, although I never watch whole movies on the laptop.
[quote]pookie wrote:
En Sabah Nur wrote:
Wirelessly? I’ve only been able to stream my HD content through a wired connection.
No. My house is wired with Cat5.
If it is wireless, what kind of connection are you running, i.e. a, g, n? You’re going to have to explain that feat.
Did a test with my laptop, and streaming HD doesn’t work well wirelessly. It’s a “g”… I guess it can’t sustain the necessary bandwith. Everything else streams fine, although I never watch whole movies on the laptop.
[/quote]
Have they standardized the “n” yet, or is it still ‘draft n’? I’m not leaving ‘g’ until I know there is a new wireless standard.
[quote]pookie wrote:
I tried buying an NCAA Football 2007 from the internet a year or so ago for the xbox, but in would never load. Sent it back, and never heard from the company again.
Picked up CoD4: Modern Warfare last night…best game I bought so far. Lots of action and the graphics and gameplay are amazing!
Oblivion is kind of boring me at this point, there’s too much running around questing and not enough killing shit. I also HATE that health does not regenerate slowly at any kind of rate on its own. That actually pisses me off about Fallout 3 as well. I’m considering taking Oblivion to my local GameStop and trading it in and using the money to get the Assassin’s Creed (found another GameStop that has it for $19. They had 3 copies so I didn’t fret about getting it that day.)
[quote]Travacolypse wrote:
Health doesn’t auto-regen in Oblivion but magic does. Just cast healing spells.[/quote]
Yeah I know…but I like to play Warriors. Which basically means I suck ass at healing, have very little mana (magicka or wtfever its called in oblivion), and I’d prefer not to cast spells at all. Whenever I play an RPG I like to be a purely melee based character. I’m not into the magic stuff so much as I like being a plate wearing warrior going toe to toe with foes and slashing them down with swords and stuff. Or maybe a rogue style character sneaking around and assassinating foes out of stealth…I just don’t dig the magic side of it all that much.
I have been doing what you say so far, and its getting old. The higher level I get the more HP I have to heal and I still have the same super shitty amount of magicka and so I have to cast the heal spell a few times, then wait a few minutes for magicka to refill, cast again, wait more, cast again, repeat over and over. Really its already getting old. This is the first RPG I’ve played where health does not regen at any kind of rate at all on its own, and Fallout 3 did the same stupid ass thing.
[quote]josh86 wrote:
Travacolypse wrote:
Health doesn’t auto-regen in Oblivion but magic does. Just cast healing spells.
Yeah I know…but I like to play Warriors. Which basically means I suck ass at healing, have very little mana (magicka or wtfever its called in oblivion), and I’d prefer not to cast spells at all. Whenever I play an RPG I like to be a purely melee based character. I’m not into the magic stuff so much as I like being a plate wearing warrior going toe to toe with foes and slashing them down with swords and stuff. Or maybe a rogue style character sneaking around and assassinating foes out of stealth…I just don’t dig the magic side of it all that much.
I have been doing what you say so far, and its getting old. The higher level I get the more HP I have to heal and I still have the same super shitty amount of magicka and so I have to cast the heal spell a few times, then wait a few minutes for magicka to refill, cast again, wait more, cast again, repeat over and over. Really its already getting old. This is the first RPG I’ve played where health does not regen at any kind of rate at all on its own, and Fallout 3 did the same stupid ass thing. [/quote]
Fallout3 is based on the original fallout rules to some extent at least.
Besides, in every fallout game you’ll end up with about 999999999 stimpacks and 50 large stims at some point… Healing should not be an issue. Can’t you just rest in F3? (via pipboy)
Not being able to cast levitation in morrowind/oblivion is kinda stupid btw… Lots of stuff can only be reached via levitating (though I don’t remember if it was quite as bad in oblivion as it was in morrowind).
[quote]josh86 wrote:
Picked up CoD4: Modern Warfare last night…best game I bought so far. Lots of action and the graphics and gameplay are amazing!
Oblivion is kind of boring me at this point, there’s too much running around questing and not enough killing shit. I also HATE that health does not regenerate slowly at any kind of rate on its own. That actually pisses me off about Fallout 3 as well. I’m considering taking Oblivion to my local GameStop and trading it in and using the money to get the Assassin’s Creed (found another GameStop that has it for $19. They had 3 copies so I didn’t fret about getting it that day.)[/quote]
Imo Oblivion gets tiring fast… Due to the auto-leveling of enemies you never feel like you actually achieved something when getting great new armor or defeating some high-level enemy… Cause it doesn’t help you any more than the last armor did and the huge beast doesn’t feel that much harder or easier than that tiny goblin shaman you killed ages ago. You just sort of keep up with the enemies/they keep up with you. Unless you down-regulate the difficulty, which will make the game pathetically easy…
I thought that Oblivion had some really cool parts… Like retaking Kvatch (provided that you leveled up some first so that you get to fight the Dremora people in Kvatch instad of those stupid lizard things).
Anyway… Watched some Fallout 3 last night on Giga TV, as well as Crysis: Warhead. Mh. The new crysis seems better than the main program… No more wasting 12 shots on one pathetic human solder. Weapons still fire kinda slow… But it looks like fun.
Fallout 3 looked fairly good (as far as landscape and such goes), but the effects weren’t that great… Combat did indeed look disappointing to me
and the guns seemed kinda puny (i.e. Laser gatling… Fallout 2 variant sounded much better etc and they could have made the rays and muzzle flash look cooler in F3…)
Also, it seemed a bit boring… They raided some raider camp (haha) with some huge mutant trapped in it… Do you get party-members in FA3?
It was too much like oblivion… Run through the country side, and here and there you might see an enemy… Duh. I hope there are some cool BOS missions in there where you get into some larger fights as was originally advertised.
Unfortunately, they showed the German version where all blood and dismemberment is cut out… God I hate Germany.
Also got to see the new Silent Hill. Hmm. Ok, but not too sure about it.
I want to see Silent Hill 1 and 2 remade…
Last night I was doing the Azusa or Azura whatever daedra lord quest and I couldn’t figure out how to kill the damn will-o-wisp to get its dust or whatever for the offering. I got so bored I killed the people worshiping at the shrine for no reason other than pure boredom.
I agree the Kvatch mission was fun…probably the only really fun one so far.
All in all CoD4 > Fallout 3 > Oblivion for real. I’m thinking tomorrow or Friday depending if GameStop is closed tomorrow my Oblivion is going to magically turn into Assassin’s Creed.
BTW - Whoever mentioned the gamestop edge card…where I live the card is 10%/10% not 15%. Forgot to ask if its still $15, shit better only be $10. lol
BTW CC - that sucks that the German version has all the blood and gore taken out. That is literally my favorite part of the game. Like sneaking up on a raider and sniping him right in the chest and watching the blood squirt out as he gets 1 shot killed. (criticals when shooting out of stealth if not yet spotted).
Also using the VATS system or even sneaking up and using the VATS and shooting off limbs is great fun!
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
josh86 wrote:
Picked up CoD4: Modern Warfare last night…best game I bought so far. Lots of action and the graphics and gameplay are amazing!
Oblivion is kind of boring me at this point, there’s too much running around questing and not enough killing shit. I also HATE that health does not regenerate slowly at any kind of rate on its own. That actually pisses me off about Fallout 3 as well. I’m considering taking Oblivion to my local GameStop and trading it in and using the money to get the Assassin’s Creed (found another GameStop that has it for $19. They had 3 copies so I didn’t fret about getting it that day.)
Imo Oblivion gets tiring fast… Due to the auto-leveling of enemies you never feel like you actually achieved something when getting great new armor or defeating some high-level enemy… Cause it doesn’t help you any more than the last armor did and the huge beast doesn’t feel that much harder or easier than that tiny goblin shaman you killed ages ago. You just sort of keep up with the enemies/they keep up with you. Unless you down-regulate the difficulty, which will make the game pathetically easy…
[/quote]
That’s been my issue with Oblivion and some of other RPGs I’ve played lately. I don’t see the point of having your enemies scale to your level. Like you said, when they do that, there’s no point to leveling or getting better armor or weapons. You’ll have the same difficulty killing the guy as you did before.
Half the fun of RPGs is when you get to a higher level and you pretty much walk around like a god, stomping things that used to be difficult to kill earlier in the game.
I wouldn’t mind a system where only some, but definitely not all, of the enemies scaled to your level to keep you on your toes. Account for the fact that maybe some enemies are capable of getting stronger as the game goes on, but certain types of enemies should be ‘dumb’ and easier and easier to kill as your skill level improves.
[quote]josh86 wrote:
CC - how do I kill a will-o-wisp? lol
Last night I was doing the Azusa or Azura whatever daedra lord quest and I couldn’t figure out how to kill the damn will-o-wisp to get its dust or whatever for the offering. I got so bored I killed the people worshiping at the shrine for no reason other than pure boredom.
I agree the Kvatch mission was fun…probably the only really fun one so far.
All in all CoD4 > Fallout 3 > Oblivion for real. I’m thinking tomorrow or Friday depending if GameStop is closed tomorrow my Oblivion is going to magically turn into Assassin’s Creed.
BTW - Whoever mentioned the gamestop edge card…where I live the card is 10%/10% not 15%. Forgot to ask if its still $15, shit better only be $10. lol[/quote]
Cod4 has one main issue: Unless you like to play it in multiplayer, then it’s a one-shot thing… You play through (took me what, maybe 4 hours?) and that’s it.
Definitely prefer it on the Pc, too… Easier modding and much better controls (aiming… More fun… No need to tap the aim button all the time to make use of the autoaim… I think you don’t even get that on pc).
But yeah, it was a damn great game. A little annoying (defending the tank and then advancing from there was a bit of a bitch imo, and the mission where you shoot out of the helicopter sucks on highest difficulty because there’s no way in hell that you can avoid getting hit) at times, but otherwise great.
Oh, spoiler alert:
I thought it sucked that Gaz died at the end and that you don’t find out what happens after you get rescued:)
