Sno

I haven't had to deal with it in the last couple years, i honestly don't know. I would be surprised if it has changed. It used to be like 3 years for the RROD problem and 1 year for everything else.

Have you ever read up on what causes the RROD? Just prior to the 360 launching, there was a ban on lead solder. So the 360 was revised last-second with a lead-free solder that doesn't deal with heat as well and becomes brittle. So the system cooks itself and connections break. It's crazy that it's such a simple, dumb issue. It seems like the slims don't have the problem anymore, and even prior to that, running changes were making the 360 increasingly reliable. (My current 360, an elite, has almost outlasted all of my other 360's combined.) The best thing you can do for your 360 though, is keep it in a well ventilated space. The hotter it runs, the faster it'll die. Even if the "towel trick" seems like it's working, covering up all the vents on your 360 is just going to make the problem worse.

Well i certainly wasn't buying them, Microsoft was replacing them under warranty in a relatively painless way, and no, i was never happy about it. For me, it just comes down to liking the 360 and what it offers enough that the hardware problems haven't soured me on the system. It's also not the first console that has failed on me multiple times, and definitely won't be the last.

I was playing on XBLA if anybody wants to co-op there.

I would be up for Gears MP, i'm going to go pick up my copy later today, I'll probably solo through it first though. They are definitely great games, especially for co-op campaign. (Competitively, it's a little foggier, the second game was kind of a trainwreck in adversarial modes.) The new horde mode looks pretty great, the thumbs should get together for some of that. I'm on my fifth or sixth 360 myself, i know this pain. On the topic of 360 exclusives, anybody play much Halo?

Ok, but what about a lot of people ending up in the same scenario and having had no problems with that fight? My first time through that boss fight was with a stealth build, an upgraded pistol, and an untouched combat rifle. I had almost no ammo, and maybe two health items. I was clearly unprepared for a boss fight. I mean, so what was so different for you that made it such an unworkable situation? Well, you've outright said that you didn't take advantage of all the tools that were made available to you, and that you didn't feel you should have to. I mean... whatever... I feel like any point i try to make will be dismissed by "Well they're still terrible boss fights, so fuck the game." This is a poor topic for me to try and make this argument around, so i give up.

This is not a fail state we're talking about, the actual boss arenas are littered with everything you need to win. I believe it's more the matter of having to quickly adapt your play style to the specific run and gun tactics you need to beat them, that seems to be the real hurdle people are having. The game is just intermittently throwing the stealth path under the bus, possibly forcing you to come to grips with the combat mechanics under the most unideal conditions. (Unideal = Being unspecced for combat. They're easy if you're combat specced, hard if you're not, but possible either way. Jensen doesn't start out like JC in the original game, he starts out as an already capable fighter and gets stronger.)

When i finished it the second time i was maybe seven points shy of having everything.

I generally feel that if you want a game to be designed for meaningful choices and freedom of those choices, you have to accept that you can wedge yourself into scenarios you are not suited for, and that there is some responsibility on the player to be aware of that and therefore prepared for such eventualities. If the game is designed such that ANY solution is viable for ANY situation, it cheapens ALL of the choices you can make. I mean, also not arguing for the bosses in Human Revolution, i still think they're probably the worst part of the game, and the above argument certainly doesn't really justify how they're implemented, but... I don't know... video games. I guess the argument to make is that those bosses are kind of just the occasional result of that style of mentality in game design. At some point somebody lost sight of the objective and the choices narrowed down and the solutions became few, it probably did not even really occur to those guys that they would be such a roadblock for so many people. From the perspective of the gamer, i think it's something to accept and take as part of the bad that comes with the good.

Human Revolution isn't a GFW game, but it does have Steam achievements, which is probably what he was talking about. And i really, really believe the bosses as an issue has been overblown. Just keep a few grenades/mines on you and you're fine. You shouldn't be ignoring the grenades/mines anyways, certain types are even valuable in stealthy and/or non-lethal playthroughs.

Yeah, it was towards the end, i think in the last two hours or so?

That only kicks in if you're recklessly destroying the area you're fighting in. Smart vision really helps though, being able to see robot legs lady through the active camo.

There basically is only 3, the 4th one hardly counts.

Classy.

So has anybody else played Radiant Silvergun yet? I think i've said it already that i've never played the game before, so this is a new experience for me. Tried emulating it a few times in the past but could never get it running. So I've got a few hours into the XBLA version and so far i really like it, i think it has a well deserved reputation and this seems to be an excellent port. Seems to have everything you could hope for, really excellent stuff. (Treasure's XBLA port of Ikaruga has a few issues and omissions, by comparison.) Game is just wrecking my shit though, this is an extremely difficult game. I used to be able to 1CC Ikaruga, but i'm just not making any progress at all here. I always had more trouble with old-school shooters though, the bigger hit boxes and faster projectiles. There's definitely a lot of odd common elements between this and Ikaruga though, Radiant Silvergun even still has the sniper shot on the basic vulcan cannon. It's obvious why Treasure regards Ikaruga as a spiritual successor, but not a direct sequel. These two games are both strangely familiar and completely different. Getting a handle on the chain scoring gimmick seems paramount to earning enough exp to power up your weapons, otherwise you just get totally overwhelmed. (I really dig that they've added Ikaruga scoring to this, i'm not all that into how the original chain scoring works.) There's some other scoring weirdness with bosses, the destruction rates. Trying to wreck as many of the tangential boss elements as possible without hitting the time limits that will just make you lose all of the potential points/exp rewards. It's all very clever, i like it. This is definitely a Treasure game.

Wait? Is it on XBLA already? I didn't see it on Live when i went to download Radiant Silvergun.

Eh, i never felt that boss was as bad as people made it out to be. If i remember right, it was mostly just a matter of keeping your distance and staying in effective cover as he moved around. The bosses in the second game were much, much, much more annoying. Stupid QTE's.

Same here, did a run through on the Deus Ex difficulty and really didn't have any trouble.

It's also an instant kill on unarmored headshots, and can fire through walls. (Try it!)

Yeah, and the AI has him constantly scrambling to stay close to you to compensate for the plasma rifle's slow projectile speed. So i kept just backpedaling and throwing out mines that he'd keep running straight into, and then be staggered by the explosion so i could just dump ammo with whatever i had.

If it doesn't, you can comfort yourself with that europe-only localization of DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu.

Radiant Silvergun arrives on XBLA this wednesday, that seems fairly relevant to this topic. Otomedius Excellent comes out as a goddamned retail release on the 20th... So there's also that... I guess...