Sunday, September 14, 2008

GTFO, Fable

I'm done with this game. It's not that it's a bad game, per se, it's just kind of cumbersome in a lot of ways, so that it's been only barely holding my interest with it's middlingly cool combat. The plot is unremarkable to this point, and a lot of the voice acting is shit. I don't like the linearity of the world, either. It's all these tiny zones with narrow paths through them that you are totally unable to stray from. It reminds me of FFX or that LotR 'B-team' RPG they came out with that totally aped FFX. Plus, the game just locked up on my 360, costing me an hour and a half or so of time that I'm not willing to put back into it. I guess the moral of this story is that you had to be there at the time.

I wish Rock Band was getting the new Metallica album instead of Guitar Hero III. They shred pretty well this time around.


8 comments:

Greg said...

Sorry to hear that Nas. You may have noticed I was logging in and out a lot tonight. Turns out my xbox 360 is starting to act up again. This is my fourth system....

However, this time the problem seems to be less severe (no red rings of death). A couple of days ago my console started automatically rebooting while I was in the middle of playing PGR4. It made some kind of crackling noise and I thought, "Oh shit, there goes my drive." For a while I was unable to open the disk tray. I powered down and eventually I was able to get the disc out after restarting. There were no scratches. When the system was bugging out, the center power light was blinking green, that was it.

I figured maybe it was a fluke. Then it happened again. The second time I was browsing the marketplace with no disc in the machine. The third time it occurred, I was playing Forza 2. Then I got pissed and called MS support.

They thought the problem might be a improperly connected hard drive. I dismissed this since after one of the episodes I powered down my console, removed the hard disk, and powered back on but still could not get the green light to stop blinking or the disk tray to open.

MS said I'd have to send it in and pay $99 for repairs. I told them this was my 4th 360 and I didn't think I should have to pay. The rep basically said, "sorry, have a nice day" (aka fuck off).

I continued to try to experiment on my own and the machine had many more rebooting episodes. I did some searching on the net for do-it-yourself repair tips and found a post from a guy whose console had exactly the same symptoms as mine. He figured out that the problem was the hard drive not connecting properly to the console but did not post how to fix it. Then I realized how loosely my hard drive fits into the console; when fully inserted, my hard disk can be slid back and forth with ease.

So, I removed my hard disk drive and played a few games to see if the console would start rebooting again. I experienced no reboots with 3 different games after about 30 minutes. Now I am feeling more convinced that the console itself is not the problem.

I tried plugging the disk back in, this time making sure to keep the drive pushed back towards the rear of the machine. I play tested for about 10 minutes with geometry wars 2 and had no rebooting episodes.

I hope I've got this thing figured out but only time will tell.

I thought I would post the story here in case it helps somebody in the future.

Count Elmdor said...

Sorry to hear about your troubles with that. You should red ring your 360 on purpose so you can get a new one out of Microsoft's 3-year warranty policy. I've heard of people doing that when their 360 was messed up in some other way.

If your problem is in your hard drive, though, that wouldn't help anything. If worse comes to worst, you could try to find a cheap 360 hard drive online somewhere.

Anonymous said...

Hey Sal,

If it's your hard drive, it's pretty easy to swap it out (and cheaper) for a bigger drive. Look up the instructions on Youtube. Takes about 2 minutes. If you want to back up your stuff, you'll need to use your PC as well. But not too hard.

Nas, I'm sorry you didn't like Fable. I was somehow charmed by it. I rather liked the voice acting but the combat, you're right, is pretty bleh.

It doesn't take long for me to hate on a game these days with all I have to play, which is why Etrian II has gone into the sell pile.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and that LOTR RPG sucked ass! Screw that game. I can't believe I finished it!

Final Fantasy X was dope.

Count Elmdor said...

LOL, you finished that game? Well, I finished FFX, which was impressive at the time, but I'd sooner replay ANY other FF than X now. I can't stand that corridor crap any more.

And actually, I thought the combat was probably the best part of Fable. The abilities and such, anyway. I probably would have soldiered on and may have eventually finished the game if not for the glitch. No way in hell I was going to spend another hour and a half doing the same shit I'd just done. I wasn't that into it. I've got PLENTY of other stuff I can spend that time on.

Speaking of which, I'm playing Assassin's Creed now. A pleasant surprise... it's actually pretty awesome!

Anonymous said...

Nice! It's on my short list which gets ever longer by the day.

Yeah, I used to be a total completionist about games, but that has since gone out the door. NO TIME!

FFX was just a big dungeon, granted, but the rest of the game made up for it, I think not having the airship or world map hurt the whole thing. IMHO. I still have to play XII!

I'm going to go back and play it again someday, though, as I really enjoyed the story and the level up mechanics.

I'm currently on a quest to get the "mile high club" achievement in CoD 4. Fuck that stage.

Greg said...

Update:

My theory on wtf is wrong with my console is all shot to hell. The thing glitches with or without the HD attached.

If I didn't have so many great games yet to play on xbox, I'd drop kick this worthless hardware.

Count Elmdor said...

Red-ring that sucker and get a replacement. Wrap some towels around it and let it overheat so you get the RROD, and MS will ship you a new one. You can do some googling for the details.