30 posts tagged “microsoft xbox 360”
I am writing this because I had trouble finding this information. Every forum thread, support page and tech tips site I found on Google was terrible.
a) The Microsoft Xbox 360's wireless adaptor *is* compatible with the Apple Time Capsule
b) You do not need *any* other equipment to get them to talk to each other
Here, in a nutshell, are the settings you need for your Xbox 360 to successfully find and talk to your Time Capsule. These instructions assume you know how to use the Airport Utility (Apple's support site).
In Airport > Wireless...
- Radio mode: 802.11n (802.11b/g compatible)
- Wireless security: WPA/WPA2 Personal
In Internet > Internet Connection...
- Connection Sharing: Share a public IP address
In Internet > NAT...
- Enable NAT Port Mapping Protocol: Yes
Assuming everything else is set up correctly (i.e. you can get online with other devices attached to your Time Capsule), your Xbox 360 should now connect, too.
29 is the atomic number of copper. 29 is also the age I have been since Saturday.
Eva got spayed on Thursday last week, so I took Friday off to stay home and care for her. We spent all day playing Street Fighter IV (yes, she played... maybe), cuddling and napping. It was great. Other than the scar on her stomach, which they sealed with surgical glue rather than stitches, she was in great shape from day one. Her behaviour hadn't changed a bit - she wasn't feeling sorry for herself or moping, she was just as happy and excitable as ever. This cheered me up, because I had read a ton of spaying horror stories before we took her in.
I had a great, but quiet, birthday. On top of all the cards and messages from friends and family, I was spoiled and received...
- Lots of money to spend on nice things
- Saints Row 2: Collector's Edition for Xbox 360 (it's the game, a USB stick shaped like a bullet, a money clip, a poster and an art book in an embossed tin)
- New jeans
- An awesome t-shirt: www.isteamphone.com
I felt very spoiled and very loved. Today, I came into work to find chocolate from my friends Jason and Brad, too.
Jess was very good to me. On top of my presents, I got a tasty breakfast in bed (biscuits and gravy) and she suffered Indian food with me that night. The place we went to was shockingly good, I would say the best Indian I have had in the US so far.
This week, I'm back to work. Rather than sending her to daycare, where she might over-exert herself and mess with her scar, Eva is staying with her aunty Lindsay every day. This kills two birds with one stone - Eva gets one on one care, Lindsay gets all the puppy kisses she wants. WIN!
Winner: Tales Of Vesperia
For: Xbox 360
Fifty hours. That's how much time it took me to get through this game from start to finish, an epic journey that took me all over a fictional world called Terca Lumireis, fighting everything from bouncing frog-things to shark pirates to rock giants to daft-looking dragon/fox hybrids with my team of typically gender-dubious misfits.
The story is the typical JRPG gibberish, recanted with twee abandon using regular animated cutscenes, in-engine sequences and bizarre headshot panel sequences. Blah blah blah, evil dudes plot to take over the world, accidentally unleash catastrophic intergalactic space squid thing, references to a great war and some entirely baffling pseudo-science about dragons that turn into glowy battery things. While the story is a potential turn off (especially when they keep repeating annoying things like one character being undecided about continuing the adventure after every bloody boss), it's at least well presented.
So why then is this my game of the year? It's simple: while it suffers the usual pre-boss grinding and some of the typical RPG quirks, this is the most perfectly balanced, beautiful, fun game I have played all year. The cel-shaded graphics are nothing short of jaw-dropping, the combat system is a pleasure, and the game - while a little linear - really makes you feel like you're making progress on your own merit.
And I really do want to single out combat. Battles aren't random like other examples of the genre: you can see enemies on the world map and avoid them if you want to (although some are hard to pass). When you do initiate a battle, your primary character is under your control while everyone else follows a strategy you had set in the menu system. The AI is a little clunky sometimes (once or twice, I found my mages wading into melee combat when I specifically told them to stay back), but generally they will play an important role in how you do.
The strategy system allows you to control what each party member does individually - with details like item use, spellcasting and the like - and as your party is made up of the usual mix of strong warriors, fast warriors, hunters, attacking mages and healing mages, you can tailor the game to how you want to play.
Runner-Up: Fallout 3
For: Xbox 360
Fallout 3 is practically the opposite of Tales Of Vesperia. On a visual level, while Tales douses your eyes in bright pastel hues, F3's desolate post-apocalyptic Washington, DC has a very flat grey/brown palette... and that isn't even the start of it. Tales' Yuri Lowell is a very well defined character for whom you just provide the input, F3's Vault Dweller is almost devoid of personality and story - the choices you make as a player define them, from the haircut to moral compass. And Yuri had friends on his journey, the Vault Dweller is very much alone.
With a very clever setup (where sequences showing your character's birth and adolescence cleverly mask the customisation options), the game introduces you to your father, James, who has raised you alone in a nuclear bunker called Vault 101 since your mother died during child birth. One day, your father disappears, his best friend is dead and you are urged to escape the Vault to go find him.
This is where the story picks up, with a hurried escape into the wastelands where your character sees sunlight for the first time in their life.
Although designed to operate more like a first person shooter with RPG elements, I have been playing the game almost entirely in the third person view. This would make combat (with the game's assortment of oversized bugs, stray irradiated mammals, mutants, ghouls and opportunist survivors) difficult were it not for the VATS system. Tap a button and the action pauses, with your character zooming in on the nearest enemy. You have a regenerating pool of action points which you can use to fire off shots at specific parts of the enemy's body. It makes combat less frenzied and more strategic, and I love it.
As well as shooting things, you have to complete numerous quests that take you around the vast expanses of desolate wasteland as well as the remains of the city of DC itself, quests for which you will have to chat, explore, fight, hack, lockpick and sneak in various amounts. All of this earns you experience, and at each level, you can assign points to yor various skill categories (for example, if you prefer combat, you can focus on being better with different types of guns) as well as choosing a perk. Perks run the gamut of allowing you to carry more items to making animals like you - a good thing with nasties like the mutated bear-things called Yao Guai roaming the wastes.
The game is a bit of a slow burner, but still great fun. Its quests try to give you moral dilemmas which, in the now-standard video game fashion, are still very much black and white issues with no room for blurring. The result is that you often gain or lose karma, with minimal benefit or penalty bar slighty different responses from characters. Depending on where you fall on the scale, you will earn a specific achievement when you reach level 8, 14 and 20 (the maximum level in the game), and later on, you will be targeted: I've been playing as a goody two shoes, so there is now a contract out on me, with the odd random encounter with mercenaries to deal with.
* * * * *
I would strongly recommend both of these games, although I can see how either might not be to everyone's tastes.
Show us your favorite piece of athletic equipment.
Seriously, didn't you get the memo?
Parties, dinners, pageants and more. How does technology help you survive the hustle and bustle of the holidays?
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If I get invited somewhere I've never been, Google Maps on my iPhone shows me the way. If I get bored, Facebook and NetNewsWire on my iPhone give me something to do. If I want to take a photo, my iPhone lets me snap one without carrying several devices. iPhone iPhone iPhone. Sorry, but that, my laptop and my Xbox 360 are my favourite widgets right now.
I wish I *could* feel better, Tylenol Sinus, believe me.
I have a cold. I'm not one of those men who somehow turn into the walking wounded when they get a minor sniffle. More than anything, being ill just pisses me off. I can barely breathe properly at the best of times with my stupid allergies, but this just exacerbates the problem and makes me snippy. And tired.
Then to make matters worse, I had to wear a scarf to combat the cold weather this morning. While in the summer, buses are air conditioned to freezing point here in Chicago, in the winter, the heat is full blast and you're too packed in to successfully remove and replace clothing. Scarf plus cold plus heat... ugh. Hate, hate, hate.
Other than my immune system coming under fire, this weekend was quiet. We spent most of it packing things up ready for our move (if it ever happens, we're still waiting for our mortgage nonsense to be signed off); I finally completed Tales Of Vesperia - an effort that took over 50 hours of play time, all in; and Josie came to see as us it's been a billion years.
After my last move (across an ocean, no less) I have definitely gotten more ruthless about throwing things I don't need away. Not that my brother Ricci can agree with this, seeing as his attic is half full of guitars and CDs and books.
Anyway, this week, we are crossing things that our mortgage and all that come through so we can just worry about being ready to move on 22 November. Yes please.
UPDATE: We are clear to close, we are definitely moving!
What's the last gadget/toy you bought that you didn't really need? Why did you buy it?
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Every gadget/toy I ever buy. Who really needs them? Nobody, that's who.
The replacement Xbox 360 was the last. I didn't need it, but I wanted it so I could play Fable II - a game I've been waiting for since I first heard it was coming out.
Show us your latest purchase.
It's alright... but considering it's been in the making for 10+ years, I expected more. As it is, it's just a slightly prettier take on Marvel Ultimate Alliance, replacing comic book heroes with Norse mythology. Lots of random mashing of buttons.
This weekend has been... yeah, it's been alright.
Jess made last minute plans to go up and visit her mum in Wisconsin - her mum just had surgery and needed an extra pair of hands, plus they haven't seen each other since Christmas and there's been... stuff in between then and now. I was going to go to some event downtown with co-workers but between the weather and being tired, I lamed out and had an early night.
On Saturday, my friends Jim, James and Nick from back home wanted to play some Mario Kart Wii online. We set up a video chat session on Skype, buggered about forever getting our accounts connected on Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection service then played and chatted for a couple of hours. Although Nintendo's online system is absolutely retarded and as un-user-friendly as it gets, it was good fun.
Other than that, I watched a ton of VH1 countdown shows, played some Grand Theft Auto IV online (which, by the way, was infinitely simpler than the Nintendo solution) then had an early night.
I started my Sunday by watching the Radiohead special, followed by more GTA IV; a trip outside to pick up a package/trade in some games/get supplies; yet more GTA IV; rubbish TV, and so forth. Now I'm having a relatively early night ahead of work tomorrow.
I won't see Jess till after work. Bo.
And now I shall try to sleep in spite of the screaming morons outside.
Two huge releases here in the United States this week. The first, Mario Kart Wii, is the latest entry in the racing series that started on the Super Nintendo and has appeared on every Nintendo system since - bar the Virtual Boy and weird iterations of the original Game Boy. The second is Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest entry in the controversial third person crime sim.
I have both, and after playing them, I can safely say that playing violent games does make you violent. Although, if you think this is a comment about Grand Theft Auto IV, I'm afraid you're sorely mistaken - I'm talking about Mario Kart Wii.
While earlier games in the series took the word Kart in the title seriously, focusing on the driving of said karts, Nintendo has made latter entries focus far too much on the use of the weapons scattered about. These weapons include banana skins you can use to make other cars skid, red shells that lock on to the guy in front and, more recently, THE BLUE FUCKING SHELL.
I emphasise this item as it is the single-most annoying feature in any video game ever: it locks on to the person in first place and doesn't stop until it has exploded in their face, causing practically every other driver to then overtake them.
This game already has the odds stacked against it. Although you can use the GameCube or classic controllers, the game rewards you for sticking the already irritating-to-use remote inside a gimmicky plastic steering wheel shell. While not as terrible as using the remote on its own, it's little different from kids sitting in cardboard boxes, holding up plates and saying "Broom broom!"
Add to that the increased number of drivers on the course who volley weapons at you and overtake en masse when they connect, and it seems the game is designed to be anti-fun. The entire game, although beatable in time, basically punishes the player. It's something Nintendo are doing a lot - their Animal Crossing series has a bunch of design decisions that combine to do similar, and most of the games on the Wii, with their stupid control systems and horrible graphics, feel like punishment side by side with titles on the Xbox 360. Coming from someone who hated the original Xbox and has owned every Nintendo system (bar that Virtual Boy), this is not good.
Grand Theft Auto IV, on the other hand, is great. After playing it, there are definitely a number of items that make *me* cringe - shooting people close up causes very realistic blood spatters to hit the screen; the physics and animation technology make all the carnage more visceral; and the word "Fuck" is used more excessively than I could ever possibly use it... even after playing Mario Kart Wii for an hour.
We have to remember, though, that this is a game designed for a mature audience. If your child is playing it, and you either consented to it or don't know about it, the blame is entirely yours if they are affected by it in some way. With the internet, there is no excuse to not know about the content of the games your children play. If you are thinking of buying it, I recommend this post on the excellent What They Play:
http://www.whattheyplay.com/features/ask-gamerdad-april-28-2008/
