Doob scores an Xbox 360
Folks, I'm happy to say that I scored me an Xbox 360 for Christmas (thanks dear!). Naturally, Madden '07...pretty much the only game I play...sucks on the Xbox. Well, maybe not *sucks*, but it's a severe culture change from the gameplay on the PS2. I'm trying to muddle through it, but one of the most obvious things that's missing is Madden's commentary during the games...I mean it's Madden '07! His name's right in the friggin' title! How do you NOT have him?
The other aggravating thing is that this thing was obviously meant for big screen high definition TVs. The problem is that I have two 27" standard definition TVs in the basement. I actually had to take it off of the one in my office (the worst one) because I was only able to read about 90% of what was on the screen. Moving it into the family area of my basement was better, but I still have to squint to make out a lot of text.
Now I'm going to have to bump up getting a high def TV on my to-do list. Of course, what'll happen is that the high def TV will go upstairs, we'll spend another $1000 on new furniture to accommodate it (we have an older wooden entertainment center that just barely squeezes in a "32 TV) and then the 32" TV will wind up going downstairs. So I won't get a high def TV to play the 360 on, but at least I'll have another 5" to enlarge those hard-to-read characters.
And for those of you wondering why I just don't bring it upstairs, it's because of the network connection. I just hard wired the living area in the basement with CAT 5e cable a couple of days ago so that I could use the Xbox Live feature. The den upstairs sits on a slab floor and the TV is up against the outside wall. To hard wire a connection there would be a herculean feat (to me, anyway) that would probably involve running the cable from my basement up a floor into my attic, all the way across the den, and then dropping it behind the wall. The other option would be to run it across the floor against the wall but, of course, the most direct way is complicated by a sliding glass door in it's path.
I'm sure a lot of you without 360s are crying over my horrible dilemma.
Oh, and that's doob77 on Xbox Live if anyone's interested (can you believe some effer already had doobie77??).
posted by Doobie | 1/04/2007 08:37:00 AM
10 Comments:
Did your wife stand in line for 90 hours like my mother did for my brother for one of the systems? :)
Let's just say that my wife no longer wishes to do business with Toys R Us and Circuit City ever again.
You could always go wireless with the 360, if you wanted to.
Also, Microsoft is aware of the problem you're talking about with the text being too small to read on standard definition TVs and is planning, in their next software update, to make an option for standard def TV users to make the text larger. That said, yes, the 360 (as well as the PS3) were designed to be HD consoles and so are really intended for HDTVs.
Unfortunately, wireless isn't an option because of distance. In fact, the upstairs den was the first room I hard wired because the place where I used my laptop was on the outside limits of my router's range. And as soon as I moved the laptop from the table by the love seat, I lost my connection completely. This happened so many times that I just gave up and hard wired the room.
I might be able to go pre-N for my router for better range, or maybe just add another router where I added the jack in the den, but that would cost more money AND I'd also have to get a wireless adapter for the Xbox.
I'll just suck it up for now.
Yeah, I actually ended a wireless network extender in my house, and it seems to work pretty well. But I get what you're saying...
Too bad you didn't get one of these copies of Madden:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/753/753047p1.html
:)
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I think that, as a teenager, if I found hard core porn in my Madden box, my expression would be a little more gleeful than that kid's puss. Oh, alright, that also holds for my current age too.
Seriously though, I'll bet that kid's full of shit. Unless that Madden logo's printed on that disc, it sounds like the kid got busted with porn and is trying to play it off like it wasn't his fault.
The biggest hurdle you'll face moving from the PS2 to the XBox (original or 360) is the controller, but once you've been using the 360 controller for a while, you'll never be able to go back to Sony, and you'll wonder why the hell Sony didn't think to put swap the left analog stick and the D pad years ago.
I was actually getting used to the analog stick with NHl hockey on the PS2, which forced you to use it. Some other things I'm still trying to adjust to on Madden, but it's more of questionable button locations than anywhere else (some moves seem awkward).
But I'll figure it out...as I tell all my friends who spend 10 minutes prior to each game reconfiguring the controls on their joysticks to their tastes, "you could LEARN the default controls in the time it takes you to reconfigure it".
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