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Sunday, June 18, 2006
Sunday, June 18, 2006
The latest Xbox 360 dashboard update hasn't solved my random "DVD drive powering down" problem. I didn't think it would, but I suppose I might as well confirm that it hasn't. Playing Hitman: Blood Money just now and heard it start to spin at a lower speed, followed by the inevitable "the game disc is dirty - please remove and clean" error message. It's brand new disc, you fuck! There's not a mark on it.
So I do what I should have done months ago and I phone MS customer support. The chap on the other end of the line is pleasant enough, but the steps he asks that I go through in order to check the hardware... well, they're bloody insulting. Are the cables plugged in correctly? Have I tried another disc? Look, it's happening with most of the games I've played on the thing and it's happening at totally random times - sometimes I'll be able to get five or six hours straight out of the thing without a hitch, other times it'll die on me after three minutes.
The worst step is the last. Delete the saves for the games it happens on, play those games again and see what happens. We're talking about saves that are at around twenty hours worth of time invested in some cases. I've already said that it's a problem that's occuring with the majority of games I own - do you honestly think that I've been so unlucky as to have *all* of their saves corrupt on me? And that a corrupt save file is in any way connected to the clear and obvious fact that there's a hardware fault with the DVD drive?
So I'm going through the motions and it's turning gaming into work. Delete the PGR3 file. It's only now that I have to play through it from the beginning again that I realise what a dull game it is - and I've got to play the fucking thing until the random crash pops up. Why? Like I say, it's bloody obvious that the problem isn't anything to do with saved games. And hell, it's not even like I'm going to get a new console at the end of this process - I'll send it back to them, in return they'll send me one that somebody else has returned as faulty and that they've refurbished, which'll be just as likely to be faulty. Trustworthy anecdotal evidence suggests as much.
All of which leaves me in the bizarre position of wishing that the thing would hurry up and crash again.
No wonder MS offer an extended warranty for an additional £60. Almost as if they knew full well that there were going to be problems relating to build and parts quality.
In happier news, I bought a second-hand GP32 and love it. The screen is fantastic (bar the lack of a decent light source - mine's a front-lit unit which, much like the GBA SP, makes colours look washed out and bland). The microswitched jostick comes second only to that of the Neo Geo Pocket Color. The one commercial release that I've played on it to date demonstrates the machine's ability to pump out great 2D visuals. Mainly, though, it's the emulation and homebrew that makes it such a nice thing to have. Portable PC Engine/Megadrive/SNES/C64 from a company that intended it to be just such a thing all along (even if they did fuck it up slightly by not including enough buttons)? You don't get much cooler than that.
It takes a bit of digging around the Internet to find the files necessary to link the thing to your PC to be able to transfer all this stuff across, becaue the (stupid) official websites stopped supporting it ages ago, but it's more than worth the effort. Other things that let the side down a little are the ease with which you can get dust particles between the screen and the screen's frontplate, which then show up horribly whenever the light's turned on.
Oh, and the file system can feel a bit counter-intuitive at first.
The most comfortable handheld that I've used in a good long time. A couple of round nobby bits on the back provide you something to curl your middle fingers around - nice element of grib, nice and comfortable. Colour scheme of the hardware is dead attractive, creamy white and grey.
Basically, I wish I'd supported it when it was still a going concern. How can you not love the idea of a Korean company trying to take on the giants of the industry by providing a hardware alternative that, by being truly open to bedroom development, goes against everything that those companies have traditionally stood for? Playing it now, it's such a shame that it ultimately failed to generate the interest that it required to be able to compete at any significant level.
The chances of me picking up a GP2X in the future - should a third hardware revision appear that has a more sensible button layout - just went through the roof.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 15:16
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Losing the fight against mediocrity for the last few years. Fire a volley |
