Posts Tagged ‘Xbox 360’

Last night I sat to watch a film I’d missed at the cinema, and that a few of my friends had recommended: Juno. As I’m a man of the digital age, I opened my Xbox360s disk drive, and popped the DVD in, I sent that DVD back into the Xbox and jumped to the couch and changed the tv channel to my Xbox’s output.

Then nothing. No picture. But a glimmer of sound, I turned the volume up on the remote and I could hear the start of the movie, I franticly changed cables around to rectify the problem, but nothing would work, I’ve got crystal clear sound coming from my TV, but no blooming picture.

In a near fit of rage by this point – I should probably note that I wasn’t entirely bothered bout the film, more about my broken console – I found myself cursing at my luck. I looked at the heavens and said: “why me?”

Now it maybe sounds a bit dramatic but I’ve already lost one Xbox 360 from the red ring of death, and it was 3 days past the year mark, so I had to do a lot of begging to get it changed, but this time I have no chance. I’m so gutted aswell, because if it is a major problem I can’t afford a new one, and with Gears of War 2, Fifa 09, Fallout 3 and Call of Duty 5 out just in time for some Xmas presents to me, I couldn’t be more annoyed.

I’m hoping it’s just a cable problem, but its annoyingly expensive way to know - £15 after a quick check online – but its better than a whole new console.

It got me thinking about Xmas (again) and how I always seemed to get the broken toy. It’s actually become a bit of a family joke because every year when I was younger, even if I got the same toy as my brother, mines would be broken. It got so bad that my parents used to wrap both presents up then swap them round until they didn’t know which was which before putting our names on them – for me to still receive the broken one anyway.

I used to have this crazy ability to break anything technological. I remember getting yelled at in secondary school for handing a report to my computing teacher on a 3” floppy disk, only for it to be blank. The only explanation I had was that I got a static shock when I picked up the disk (on the metal shutter bit) so must have wiped it – and it happened more than once. Maybe I’m a superhero? Staticman – Zapping bad guys all over the place just don’t come near me with a fork. I’m like a violent Uri Gellar when cutlery is involved.

It dawned on me last night that I’ve not played my Xbox360 for about 2 months. It doesn’t seem that long, but I used to play it to death – I even killed one from overheating during a marathon game-fest on Xbox Live, and I’ve worked my way through every rank on Call of Duty 4, I’ve played Halo 3 for hours, and I mean hours on end, Gears of War was a particular favourite, but now my consoles gathering dust.

I know what the problem is though: I fell out with Xbox Live or more specifically, the people on it.

After you do something so much, it becomes a chore, and loses all sense of fun. I think there is only so much abuse you can take from the millions of people I’ve spoke too over a crappy plastic headset, and it brought me to the conclusion. Xbox live is full of #@$%’s.

I used to regularly play with this one guy from Texas, good guy (as far as you can tell over a headset anyway) but he always used to have these tag-a-longs, who did my head in. His little buddies used to argue amongst themselves, sing down the headsets, and worst of all scream down the microphone. That is not fun.

Another guy I used to play with from Colorado, again decent guy, but he always argued with his girlfriend/sister/whatever, every time he played. I could hear her say stuff like, “are you still playing?” and other dumb questions that were clearly rhetorical, if she’d just open here eyes and not her gob for a second.

So I guess I got bored of the Xbox, not just because of these two, but because of other annoying, whiny little kids that somehow think its ok to call you an “English so and so” (I’m not English), but then quit out if you retort.

It does my head in. Sometimes you could get a retort in so fast that you could make these kids quit out though embarrassment. Like the one kid who gave me so much crap in the lobby, then got put on my team, and had to keep asking for my help. I shot one of his assailants who dropped his weapon, only for this kid to yell “I’ll take the turret” to which the natural reply was “I’ll bet you do”…the silence was golden. The quitting out was instant. The glory was well and truly mines. Come to think of it, that was the last time I played.

I’ve moved on to the Nintendo Wii now, its no where near as cool/manly, but I don’t have to listen to little kids whining that I’m beating them, or hear stupid redneck girlfriends/sisters/both if their partner/brother/both has finished playing yet. When I go home, I may well put the Xbox on, but I’m not sure, looks like it could be an eBay job…