Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

The Electronic Entertainment Expo most famously known as E3 is in full swing over in sunny Los Angeles and the news threads are already coming in thick and fast from the opening ceremonies. One of the first was of course Microsoft and their XBox 360 presentation which covered a huge amount of features I’m really looking forward to, however the most shocking of these features is the news that come Autumn my 360 will be receiving a brand new dashboard interface. Not just a minor software upgrade, the whole user interface and functionality will be altered.

Image from XBox360 Fanboy

While I understand that many people disagree with this theory, I’m one of those that believe the new update looks to be a fairly big rip-off of the Nintendo Wii and Apple iTunes all in one go, the main menu comprising a coverflow style selector while your gamer card now adds a Mii avatar…you all know what I mean. A little cartoony character you can make up to look exactly like you. This will then be used to give a ‘virtual environment’ method of viewing your friends list, with all online friends popping up in the background doing their own little thing. Along with this improvements are apparently to be made to the actual interaction side of things, with chatting and sharing images and music becoming easier, along with an interesting new ‘permanent group’ option to help people who want to play together, stay together. The current 360 system makes it very easy to get separated from your mates when you least want to.

I’m still a little unsure if I do like it, however it seems I’ll just have to let it grow on me. It has enough gimmicks that it should eventually.

When I got my XBox 360 I knew all about the infamous red rings of death, the fatal flaw eating at the edges of the consoles success. Put down to a motherboard fault which Microsoft has seemingly had no end of problems repairing, an XBox after a year and a half/two years will suddenly get all lit up with red lights on it’s infamous power circle and that will be it. The end of your console. Personally I wasn’t too worried, I bought mine just as the Elite came about, the version which claimed to have repaired this problem once and for all and led to all other models of 360 having the same fix. This combined with Microsoft having extended their warranty to three years, their record for getting the consoles shipped to and fro for free repairs (no doubt a PR necessity to appease customers) and the fact that I doubted I would be playing it in any way as hardcore as some gamers do meant I really wasn’t too concerned.

Nevertheless, I was midway through a Call of Duty fight today when my screen froze. Restarting the device confirmed the obvious…three red rings.

My 360 which has quickly become my favourite console and alternative to my PC for gaming has finally come to it’s end. Thankfully I had it registered with Microsoft’s dedicated XBox site and logging in showed my console as ‘Under Warranty’ and a nice button marked ‘Request Repair’. I’m hoping this will go smoothly, I hear it’s simply a case of receiving a shipping paid box in the post, placing your console inside and sending it back, hopefully receiving a ‘refurbished’ model instead.

I hope it’s this easy.

It’s just twenty-four hours until I get my grubby mits on one of the most anticipated games of the year! What I’m looking forward to in this instalment of Rockstar’s much maligned franchise are the alterations to game mechanics, such as a proper lock-on system for combat as well as the first appearance of a proper cover system. I’m also hoping to see the controls tightened up which is highly likely, these days I’m finding that the Playstation 2 controls feel flimsy and lack the precision of the XBox 360 controls.

Of course, seeing Liberty City in all it’s next generation glory will also be exciting too, I’m a sucker for the modern graphics of the 360.

Finally, the addition of a proper full multiplayer will keep me happy for hours, the third party multiplayer options for previous GTA’s have never done the game the justice it deserves.

So what could be enough to drag me away from my usual “What do I feel like tonight?” tour of World of Warcraft, EverQuest 2 and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2? (My current new obsession I should add, though to be honest it’s nowhere near as enjoyable as Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War.)

Call of Duty 4 Variety Map Pack. Four new multiplayer maps!

There’s ‘Creek’, a departure from other CoD4 maps with wide open fields and numerous farmhouses in disrepair scattered around. This is the map I’ve had a chance to test and it’s certainly a very different affair to that which I’m used to, it’s open environment has made it fairly easy to get picked off unexpectedly.

Then we have ‘Broadcast’, a multiplayer modified version of the slaughter fest that was the single player map ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’, set as you may have guessed in an Arab TV station.

‘Kill House’ sounds like an exciting change, a small and tight recreation of a training kill house as the name implies, with lots of chipboard walls and mocked up buildings.

Finally the one that really excites me is the import of Call of Duty’s Carentan level. However for CoD4 it’s been modernised with a conversion to a Chinatown theme and apparently it’s set at night…which is also a fun setting.