Red Ring of Death: Xbox pathologist explains the plague
Mere weeks after the launch of the hotly anticipated Xbox 360 in 2005, rumor spread like wildfire of a dreaded video-game Grim Reaper. We didn’t know why, how or when he would strike — all we knew was that he manifested himself with three red lights, cursing 360 consoles with a permanent GAME OVER. Microsoft ensured us that it was a minor problem that happened only to a select few, but time eventually revealed the ugly truth: everyone was at risk. After class-action lawsuits and bitter word of mouth, Microsoft finally put a three-year warranty in place, guaranteeing that all systems affected by the red lights would be fixed at no charge.
Chances are you have your own story about the Three Red Lights of Death. Perhaps your console was under warranty and returned after a few weeks. Maybe you bought a new one to skip the wait. You may have even cracked it open and somehow fixed the problem yourself. For me, my first system was killed by Overlord, one month before the launch of Halo 3. Four years later, my second system croaked after the first level of Gears of War 3, at which point in time the warranty had expired.
The Wizard of X
A replacement Xbox 360 Slim would have set me back at least $300, so I was somewhat relieved when my local GameStop referred me to David Peyregne, owner of Computers for Less. Peyregne is an experienced technician who has run his own business fixing computers and video game systems for over a decade. A former journalism student who turned to computer science, Peyregne sometimes lets his southern drawl come through his hollow voice that was scarred from polyps at a young age. With a husky explanation, he handed my system back to me, good as new, for $100, a sum much less daunting than the cost of a new console. Recently, I sat down with Peyregne to get the whole story on the Red Ring of Death: what causes it and how does Peyregne fix it? As it turns out, it took him a long time to figure it all out.
Skulls of the Shogun – XBLA Fans Guide – Region Five
Hello and welcome to the XBLA Fans guide to the fifth and final region of Skulls of the Shogun. On this page, you’ll find a walkthrough to each of the levels in this region, as well as how to win all of the Gold Skulls for the area. Enjoy!
Please note that to get the most achievement points possible from Skulls, you’ll need to play on normal difficulty, which is the default anyway.
Awesomenauts Guide – Voltar, the Omniscient
Abilities Breakdown [springboard type=”youtube” id=”P_VdG6XSXQM” player=”xbla001″ width=”640″ height=”360″ ] Special 1: Heal bot – Voltar’s heal bot is many things, but first and foremost it’s a useful. This ability places …
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Puddle review (XBLA)
Puddle was developed by Neko Entertainment and published by Konami. It was released January 25, 2012 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.
We like to think of ourselves as glass half-full people. As game journalists, we have to be. Consider us surprised then to find that Puddle defends blind optimism as its core game mechanic, requiring the player to salvage a puddle of liquid (on most stages) against all types of elements (mainly hot stuff). The game may appear artsy and Braid or Limbo-esque, but it presents no philosophical argument against the dangers of protecting a pool of liquid without transparent reason, and you’ll often find yourself wondering why you’re playing the game to begin with (maybe that IS the philosophical theme? Har Har!).
There are only two buttons to concern yourself with: the left and right triggers. They’ll tilt the screen in two directions and are the only means of getting your pool of liquid from one area to the next. If this sounds simple to you, then you’re just like us. Unfortunately, once you get your hands on the controller you’ll find that the combination of tilt and physics is much harder to control and that most deaths are cheap deaths, resulting in unwarranted frustration.
XBLA’S Most Wanted: Deus Ex
Before Deus Ex: Human Revolution graced our consoles and reignited our admiration for the FPS/RPG hybrid, there was its predecessor (technically, the second iteration of the series) Deus Ex on the PC that basically created it. Gamers at the time were delighted to discover a game similar–mechanically and atmospherically–to System Shock, but intrigued by a storyline complex enough to challenge contemporary literature. It confronted the social implications of human augmentation as well as the overarching status of the fictional political stage in America–a future rife with corruption and conspiracies but also feuding organizations bent on national hegemony.
You play as J.C. Denton, a government agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO). Denton is your typical anti-hero equipped with a raspy voice and a general curiosity that gets him into many sticky situations. But what makes Deus Ex so great is how it allows the player to approach these scenarios. For example, if the game shoves you into a seedy section of Hong Kong and requires you to bypass a dozen or so criminal types, you can go gung-ho and blast your way through, hack a door that leads to a side entrance, silently take down your foes or even dive into a pool of water and avoid the gunfire all together–all of which lead to the goal of that particular level. The game is about choice.
Contest: guess the Marvel Pinball announcement, win a Marvel Pinball starter pack **Update** Winner Announced!
**UPDATE**
Zen Studios announced at Comic Com that a Ghost Rider table would be coming to Pinball FX2 this winter. After sifting through our entries and then entering some …
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E3 Preview From Dust: Resculpting the landscape
When I look at From Dust I see the vast, treacherous deserts plaguing an aboriginal society. I see people literally walled off by rocks formed from years of volcanic ash. I see a lifestyle of forced reliance on the temperamental flooding, life-giving waters. I see a microcosm of human history, and it’s all under my control.
Launching this summer, From Dust is a god game where players will have to keep their villagers alive without directly controlling anyone of them. Instead players will have to shape the landscape of the earth to make inhabitable for their people. A typical interaction requires players to create a pathway from one totem to another, before a timer runs out. Players can pick up and drop sand, water or lava and utilize these in any combination to accomplish their goal. Should they be unsuccessful a roaring flood will wash away their village and they will need to start over.