Topic: MS releases 360 DRM consolidator thingy

[idolminds]

News

Not sure why they didnt provide a link to it...

This is for people that had their 360 replaced and then had to be online to play all their XBLA games and stuff. Guess this transfers the license to your new system.

[Cobra951]

My glee was short-lived.

Note that if you received your new Xbox 360 as the result of a refurbishment or repair, the licenses have already been transferred as part of the repair process . . .

BULLSHIT!  I've already gone this route.  Nothing I do allows me to play XBLA games I bought without a Live connection.

[PyroMenace]

I wonder if this is what would have fixed my problem with my last 360. Either way, they are too late.

[Cobra951]

I looked at that page, and I have 2 consoles listed, with most licenses on the first entry.  I'm going to have to locate the serial number on the new one to make sure which is which.  Even then, I'm going to have to take it slow.  I don't want to screw things up worse.  I'm way too tired for that now.  At least it looks like something to try.

[Quemaqua]

"Too little, too late" seems to be the Microsoft mantra.

[MysterD]

"Too little, too late" is the Microsoft mantra.

Yeah, that is perfect.

[Cobra951]

OK, this works.  The process is a lot less painful than it sounds, because you don't really re-download everything.  After following the steps to transfer the licenses by logging into Live from the console when the tool tells you to, you are told to go through your download history and get everything again.  But it immediately says "download complete" on each item you select.  So while it's still a bit of a bitch to have to click on every single item you own, it all gets done very quickly.  I've verified that I can play my full arcade games with offline profiles.

Took me a while to take the plunge.  Not a big deal after all.

[Cobra951]

And here I am again.  I tried my 360 again today, and it has now officially RRoD'd.  After cursing it, I figured that at least now there was no doubt.  The freezing wasn't corrupt files, or any other such bullshit.  I had accumulated around $300 of cash I've been putting in a drawer as play money, so off I went to Best Buy.  Got an arcade unit, Jasper chipset.  They have a deal for a free game if you get one of those, so I got Fallout 3 GOTY and Batman Arkham Asylum.  $60 off that put me at around $255 including tax, which I just realized means one of the games at least cost less than I thought.  Either that or there's some other discount in there somewhere.  (It should have been $260+tax.)

Got it home, hooked it up (150-watt power brick for final verification--yay!), and now I'm transferring licenses as in my above post.  Unfortunately a couple of things so far want to redownload from scratch, including Shadow Complex.  To make matters worse, their servers must be getting hammerer, because it's slow going.  I ended up canceling out of Shadow Complex, which means I probably won't be able to play it at all until I decide to bite the bullet and wait for all 835 MB.  I don't know why the hell the transfer can't be applied to everything without going through this bullshit, but at least it's doable.

The unit comes with a wireless controller, itself around $50 on its own, so really, it's not too bad of a hit to move to a hopefully more reliable chipset.  We shall see.  And I'll finally get to try the wireless controller, which I've been actively avoiding because of my hatred for batteries.

[W7RE]

I'll finally get to try the wireless controller, which I've been actively avoiding because of my hatred for batteries.

I got the play and charge kit, but quickly got annoyed by the cord. So now I have a quick charge kit, which came with another battery pack (I have 2 now). So one stays in the charger and the other in my controller, and I've always got a full battery pack.

[Cobra951]

Hey!  I have a new memory "card" with 323 MB free.  That's the internal memory, I'm sure.  One more little bonus to ease the pain a bit.

Shadow Complex does still work as long as I'm logged into Live, so the aborted download didn't nuke it.  I'm in Fallout 3 Now.  I'm 10 years old, and I have a feeling I'm going to love adulthood.  Good setup stuff so far.

[idolminds]

Oh man, I hope you enjoy Fallout. I need to get around to picking up the DLC packs and playing it again myself.

Protip: Explore! Feel free to ignore the main quest line for a while. It will bee-line you to the end and you'll miss tons of stuff thats just scattered around the wasteland.

[scottws]

I felt like I explored too much in Fallout 3.  I ended up maxing out my level well before finishing the main quest and I felt like there was no incentive to play anymore.  That's just me, I know.  I've already seen several people on here say there is so much to do even after maxing out.

[Pugnate]

I felt like I explored too much in Fallout 3.  I ended up maxing out my level well before finishing the main quest and I felt like there was no incentive to play anymore.  That's just me, I know.  I've already seen several people on here say there is so much to do even after maxing out.

I wonder if that's just you. I and a dozen other people had that exact problem with Oblivion. We were all maxed out with the game still 70% to go. It was fucking absurd, and really turned me off from the game. If you are going to give the players so much to do, you should try not to limit the level cap so much.

[Quemaqua]

Fallout 3 is nothing like Oblivion in that regard, at least I don't think so.  I was totally compelled to play after hitting the level cap.  In fact, after probably level 15 or something, I didn't even give a shit about level anymore.  I paid no attention to it whatsoever beyond picking new stuff to fit my already-established set of general operating parameters that I'd sort of agreed upon with myself at that point.  By 20, I couldn't have cared less that I was maxed.  I was having too much fun doing stuff and seeing things.  To me that's what made this game so special.  It wasn't false, mechanical stuff that tried to keep you going forward... it was the world itself.

[scottws]

It was the opposite for me.  I felt like I'd seen my share of subways and convenience stores and the leveling up was the only thing keeping me going.

[Xessive]

At first I was kinda miffed when I heard about the level cap; I assumed it was going to be a bummer like in most other games (mainly NWN2). However, in FO3 I felt the game was well-balanced and the levels were more of an indicator of where you can go and what you ought to be dealing with.

For me, reaching level 10 was like a coming of age. I can now venture further into the wasteland confident that I can tackle most encounters. From that point on leveling up was a bonus, hitting the level cap wasn't as restricting as other games. Plus when I got the Broken Steel DLC it raised the cap to 30 and that just made me nearly invincible in my style of play (Ninja Sniper) but it also allowed me to explore other perks.

[Cobra951]

This GOTY version has Broken Steel, as well as Operation Anchorage,  The Pitt, Point Lookout, and Mothership Zeta.  Was the original release on 2 discs?  I'm wondering if the 2nd disc is all this stuff.

I'm now in Megaton.  I had wandered East when I left the vault, and everything I ran into was hostile.  So at first I assumed that robot guardian by Megaton's gate had to be killed.  The sheriff came running out after I fired a few shots, and killed me in like 2 seconds flat.  Haha!  I was Level 2 and had less than half my HP left (with all healing items gone).  I hit Level 3 after making friends with him in town.

The size and depth of this are terrific.  There's so much to see, do and learn.  Technically, it's very well behaved too, though I'm looking into freeing enough space on the HDD to install the game to it if possible.

This system has an HDMI port too, as I discovered by looking at the box.  Provided it doesn't end up crashing and burning like its 2 predecessors, I think I did the right thing here.  Before trying the dying system again last night for the final time, I was looking at the 20+ games on the shelf that I could no longer play if it didn't behave itself.  I had some of the more memorable experiences running through my head.  I turned on the thing, let it do an Xbox Live update, which took a good 10 minutes to download.  When it rebooted it froze.  Turned it off and back on, then got the RRoD.  It was 6 PM local time almost exactly, the time I had decided earlier would be ideal to go shopping if I were so inclined.  (After rush hour, during dinner time for many.)  There was just nothing else to think about, and out the door I went.

[Xessive]

This GOTY version has Broken Steel, as well as Operation Anchorage,  The Pitt, Point Lookout, and Mothership Zeta.  Was the original release on 2 discs?  I'm wondering if the 2nd disc is all this stuff.

I'm not certain about the X360 edition but I believe it was just one disc originally. The second disc must be all the DLC. As with the GOTY PC edition which now comes with two discs as well.

[K-man]

Yeah original Fallout on 360 and PS3 was one disc.

[Cobra951]

Cool.  Thanks!

I revived this thread because my experience yesterday was very much like the one which triggered the last post I made back in July of '08.  But I guess I should probably go talk about Fallout 3 in its own thread from now on.  I know it's old hat for most here, though.

Oh, and Batman Arkham Asylum was $40, which is why the total was over $20 less than I expected.  The system was $200, the $60 for F3 were subtracted out, and the grand total came in at $240+tax.  Considering I would have spent $60 on each of these games alone, I think I made out like a bandit.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  I should not have had to buy a 360 all over again.  Fuck Microsoft and all that.  First time I ever have to replace a dead console out of my own pocket, actually.

[scottws]

I've never replaced a dead (or stolen) console.  I've got two dead PS2's at home: one is mine and one is Jennie's.  But we'll just live without it.  Had a GBA stolen out of my car, but let that go and just later gave my GBA games to Jennie's son to play on his DS.  Xbox RRoD'd, but it was under warranty so I didn't have to replace it.  All my other stuff is still in my possession and works.

Batman: Arkham Asylum seems like it is probably a pretty cool action game, especially one featuring a well known property like Batman.  Most games of this ilk are just flat out terrible cash-ins by their publishers.  I haven't played anything but the demo; however, what I did play was a pretty good time.  I didn't go out and buy it, but it has crossed my mind several times.

[Cobra951]

I played and loved the demo during the last healthy days of the old box.  After reading some reviews, I was pretty much sold.  Yes, most games based on TV or movie properties do end up sucking badly.  Horray for the notable exceptions, like Goldeneye.

Well, I hope you can keep that record with your consoles for as long as I did, at least.  It started with the Sears Tele-Games version of the Atari 2600 in 1980.   

[Xessive]

I think Goldeneye was the first and only successful 007 game. By successful I mean genuinely good!

[scottws]

I actually liked Everything or Nothing.  It wasn't truly great like Goldeneye was, but it was a solid game.

[W7RE]

This GOTY version has Broken Steel, as well as Operation Anchorage,  The Pitt, Point Lookout, and Mothership Zeta.  Was the original release on 2 discs?  I'm wondering if the 2nd disc is all this stuff.

If you put in the second disc all it does is asks you which DLC packs you want to install and installs them. You need the first disc in to run the game. I've actually heard that you can borrow the GOTY disc 2 from someone and use it to essentially get all the DLC for free. Just install it all, then give the disc back.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, Arkham Asylum was quite cool.  I seem to remember we had a beefy thread on it around here.  I played through to the end and enjoyed the whole thing quite a bit, actually.  It wasn't perfect, but it was far better than I'd expected.  Good times.

The only dead console I ever replaced was my PS2, but it isn't actually dead.  It still works, just won't read certain disks.  I know for a fact that I could fix it if I could recalibrate the laser, but when I tried to fix it myself I couldn't get the drive open and stripped a screw trying to.  No idea why it was so tight.  Since I needed more shelf space anyway and Julia and I both use the system so much, I just sprung for one of the new smaller models.

[Xessive]

The only dead console I've replaced was my Sega Saturn.. Twice. My sister plugged it raw into a 240v socket (it was a 120v system). Fried it. Took it to the shop, got it fixed the next day, cost me about $100 USD, brought it home then I went out with friends. She fried it again and she still had no idea what she did wrong. Took it back to the shop, cost another $100 USD, brought it home and locked it in my room.

[Cobra951]

Ahahaha!  The first LOL of the day.  Thanks.