Archive for the 'xbox' Category
Rocking Out
This past Friday we went out and bought Rockband for the Xbox 360. We were lucky to find a copy of this game since it has been flying off of the store shelves since it was released. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s pretty much Guitar Hero on steroids. Instead of just getting to play the guitar or bass, you get to also play the drums and sing. If you think that sounds crazy, well you’re right - it’s a gong show.
We found that the guitar playing was pretty similar to what you would find in the Guitar Hero series. The drums proved to be quite difficult, but I was able to consistently play them on the ‘medium’ setting by the end of the evening. ‘Hard’ proved to be nearly impossible.
It took a little while for anyone to take take on the lead vocals, but after a few beer the courage levels increased. My rendition of ‘Run to the Hills’ by Iron Maiden proved to be ridiculous. Gordo managed to please the crowd while hamming up his performances of ‘Say it Ain’t So’ by Weezer, ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ by The Ramones, and ‘Ballroom Bliz’ by The Sweets.
I also managed to take a number of videos during the evening which proved to be solid gold. After some prying, I think I have managed to get Gordo’s permission to post his performance of ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, as well as one illustrating ‘how serious we took our performances’. The only catch is that I will have to post my performance of ‘Run to the Hills’. I’ll try and get these up as soon as possible. As for the other videos, I believe his verison of ‘Ballroom Blitz’ is off-limits. See me in person to get a look at these. In the meantime you can check out the rest of the pictures from the evening. Rock on!
1 commentRed Ring of Death
About two weeks ago I was talking to Curtis about the XBox 360 and the three year warranty extension that Microsoft had granted all customers. I mentioned to him how he, Travis, and I had been lucky up to this point since so many other people have had their 360s pile up on them. I felt the urge to knock on wood, but I’m not a superstitious guy so I said, “screw that.”
The very next night I was trying to watch a movie with my 360, but it kept freezing. Blaming Rogers Video for their frequently scratched DVDs, I cursed to myself as I tried to clean the disc. But to my surprise, the movie continued to freeze. I decided to recycle the power on my 360 when I was greeted with the notorious “Red Ring of Death”. You can see my poor 360 below.
After calmly stating out loud, “My 360 just died”, I quickly turned it off in hopes that it was just an anomaly. I let out a sigh of relief when the the “Red Ring of Death” didn’t return, but my hopes were dashed when the 360 splash screen froze. I turned it off, not to try and turn it on again until tonight. Sure enough, the “Red Ring of Death” returned, and it was time to call Microsoft.
After walking through a couple of paltry troubleshooting techniques with the support rep, he finally agreed that I had experienced a hardware failure, and we set up the warranty claim. I’m happy that the repair process is fairly straight forward, and free to me, but I’m just hoping that I don’t have Jeffrey’s experience from hell. If this had happened at any other time, it wouldn’t really have been a big deal (I haven’t actually played a 360 game all summer). But with the release of Halo 3 tonight, I’m definitely SOL. The timing couldn’t have been worse.
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