Systemfehler

Funnily enough, 14 days before my Xbox 360’s product replacement plan through Best Buy is due to expire, my 360 starts doing some weird graphical stuff while playing GRAW2. I reboot to see if it fixes the problem and whammo, get a single red light of doomy doom. Behold, the gallery of shame.

According to some useful debug information, the error could be because of a screwed A/V cable or a failed A/V encoder. I have two A/V sets, one for component and one for VGA. I’ve tried both of them, which worked before the problem, now both show this error. I’m inclined to think it’s a deeper hardware failure.

I’ve been using my 360 through the VGA connection so I can utilize the 1080p resolution on my set, so who knows, maybe running the 360 in a mode it wasn’t originally designed for has cooked the video chipset. At any rate, tomorrow I’ll probably be going to exchange it. Whee!

Review: Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

Title: Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Platform: Xbox 360

Trying really hard to break the record for the longest game title, GRAW2 came out this week to a relatively decent amount of fanfare. Sort of. Well there IS a TV trailer which doesn’t even show in-game footage, but lets not go there.

If you’ve played GRAW1, you’ve played GRAW2. The gameplay is nearly identical, with some generally good improvements. Graphically, it’s a pretty large leap above GRAW1, which was pretty interesting in that GRAW1 looked pretty fracking good. Here the shadows and lighting effects are unbelievably good, with a very cinematic quality which immediately sets the mood for you. Things are almost too realistic here, it’s even more of a challenge to spot the enemy which makes the gameplay move at a more strategic pace.

The Cross-Com interface has been improved with some neat enhancements, such as the ability to hold down the RB button to see a full-screen view of the team member or support unit you’ve got selected. You can manually control drones this way, and with squad member in single player it lets you swivel the camera around and issue orders. You could almost stay back away from the action and just coordinate efforts from that view. It’s pretty slick.

Multiplayer has a new co-op campaign to play though, and has a couple of new game types such as Helicopter Hunt, where it’s your squad vs. an onslaught of helicopters. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the later choppers are gunships with missiles. Ow.

Overall though, the multiplayer area of the game is obviously where the development focus was, so if you’re buying this for the single player campaign you’re going to be slightly disappointed. The SP campaign is good, don’t get me wrong, it’s just ridiculously short. GRAW1’s was longer than this, but that being said GRAW2’s is far more cinematic and intense, as well as being easier to manage with all the Cross-Com enhancements. Still, multiplayer is where it’s at here, so if you didn’t enjoy that with the first game then give this one a pass.

You can even change the time of day in the non-co-op matches, so you can play during the day or at night. This means you probably won’t see too much in the way of $20 downloadable content consisting of relit maps, something which is universally considered to be a great big pile of crap.

Otherwise if you even liked GRAW1 in the slightest, this is definitely a great evolution of the game. Well worth trading in the old game for this, since I doubt anyone is going to be playing that anymore.

Rating: 8/10

New Comic, just like riding a bike

Finally got back into doing comics after returning to playing EVE. It’s so great to be back into the general swing of things after two months. It’s been neat to come back to the player politics, especially with the “everyone pile on BoB” thing that’s been going on.

Been playing a ton of Crackdown on the Xbox 360 as well, which has proven to be a great way to pass a lot of free time. It’s incredibly light on the main “plot” missions, but more than makes up for it with the free sandbox gameplay. Finding new ways to jump around the city rooftops and such is more fun than most games of the genre.

Also had a chance to play the new GRAW2 demo, which is basically like saying I’ve been playing GRAW again but with prettier graphics. It’s the same game. Almost exactly the same, and I can’t see why this is being marketed as anything other than an expansion pack at best. The shadowing is very impressive, but only really showcases that the AI cheats more.

Other than gaming, today was an interesting milestone: I finally got a chance to take my car out for a spin, after two months of it sitting all nice and clean in my garage. I seriously missed it, and ended up missing out on some prime AWD conditions. 😦 But such is life, and there’s always next year.