Who is on XBox Live?

[Mark Fletcher]

Hey,

Its my birthday today, the big 29 , and my significant other bought me Xbox Live for my birthday. Ive only got one Live enabled game, Crimson Skies, but Im getting Halo 2 next week.

Im wondering if there are any other Big Moose Salooner's that are on XBox Live? If so, what games would you recommend? It would be fun to meet online and *ahem* school you all, so if you want, list your Gamertag here.

My Gamertag is DugDug. Yes, its scary I know :roll:

Mark

[Jason Menard]

Happy Birthday!

I recently got on there. I got it to play Madden 2005. Unfortunately, most of the people I have been unfortunate enough to play against are snotty 15-year olds more interested in winning any way possible than playing a good game. I too plan on getting Halo2 though next week.

My name on there is SixBox. I will try to keep an eye out for you.
[ November 04, 2004: Message edited by: Jason Menard ]

[Mark Fletcher]

Hey Jason,

Ive sent you an invite Yeah Live! has its fair share of munchkins, as I discovered last night playing Crimsons Skies online. I just mute the headset and get on with fragging them.

I popped into Best Buy at Lunchtime there and picked up a copy of Project Gotham Racing 2 - Its on Platinum now for only $20 so it seemed like a good buy.

Hopefully see you (and others) on Halo 2

Mark

[Jason Menard]

Originally posted by Mark Fletcher:
Ive sent you an invite

Got it and accepted! Hope to see you around.

[Jason Menard]

Got my copy of Halo2 today. Got me some fraggin' to do!

[Mark Fletcher]

Ive been on today already. Its very good fun on Live as well.

It seems that Bungie are finally getting their revenge for the leak of Halo 2 at a pressing plant in France last month. A lot of people with modded consoles have been finding today that theyve suddenly been banned. The exact reason is unknown, some reckon its users who have installed a larger hard drive in their machines.

Others reckon that XBox Live is scanning for Halo 2 Saves linked to the French leak and then banning those.

Whatever the reason, the fact that Halo 2 is released on the same day as a whole bunch of bannings surely cant be a coincidence!

Mark

[Mark Fletcher]

You might also want to try this

Use a keyboard and mouse with your XBox

[Jason Menard]

I played Halo2 on XBox Live last night. I am so underwhelmed. Once you choose the type of game you want, you sit around for sometimes over five minutes waiting for it to match you up with 7 other people before a game begins. Then you get into the game, which lasts only a couple minutes. When the game ends it dumps everyone at a score screen. Then your only option is to exit out of the score screen and start the whole cycle again, along with the requisite several minute wait! You'd think it would just automatically start another game, but no such luck. You have to wonder how such a crappy way of joining games made it through beta.

The actual gameplay wasn't bad and the folks I played with were all nice enough. It certainly is humbling getting beat down repeatedly by a foul-mouthed pre-pubescant though.

[Gerald Davis]

I hate modern 3d games, theres nothing but sports and quake style games with very few origanal multi player games. What ever happend to games like R-Type, sonic the hadgehog, mario world ,monkey island, discworld, street fighters. With all these 3d fight-em-up , it is possible to win with eye closed.
I thought the future would be fun, it sucks bad time

[Marc Peabody]

Mark & Jason,

I've both Crimson Skies and Halo 2. I stopped playing Crimson a while back but wouldn't mind jumping on again. Wild Chicken rules!

Halo 2's #1 problem is definitely the wait time between matches but there are 2 ways to make it not so bad:
1) Set up a custom game and invite friends - I believe for those you host the game so there is no waiting.
2) Invite people to your "party" and wait for the games to start together. It seems to go by much quicker when you're talking about the last match or BSing with a buddy or two.

BTW - I'm sarcmarc I'll see if I can find y'all online.

[Jason Menard]

Yeah, I've been playing Halo 2 a bit more lately and have come to grips with the matching system, although I still don't know what they were thinking when they thought it was a good idea. I'll definitely keep an eye out for you, Marc. I should let you know though... I seem to be [i]really/[i] bad at this game.
[ November 16, 2004: Message edited by: Jason Menard ]

[Mark Fletcher]

Regarding the long loading times on Optimatch, Bungie are working on a fix as detailed here -

Bungie Weekly What's Update

Nice to know that they're also working on new multiplayer content - perhaps a little something for Thanksgiving or Xmas?

[Jason Menard]

I was home during the day yesterday, so I decided to hop on to Halo2 and do a bit of fragging. In a couple of games I was in there were European players playing. I was impressed that there was no perceptible lag despite the fact that games had players from both North America and Europe simultaneously.

I was also quite surprised at how generally anti-French even the kids in the US seem to have become. One of the games had several French kids playing and some of the American kids were being merciless towards them. I would have liked to have thought that people would keep that kind of nonsense out a game. The Brits and the Americans seemed to get on quite well though when they were in the same games.

[Jason Hocker]

if you need someone to beat up on ...

Senor DingDong

[Bob Rocks]

I have a crap load of live games, catch me by the name of

bobrocks LOB

[Mark Fletcher]

Just finished the campaign mode of Halo 2 on Normal setting. Without giving too much away, its a bit of a cliffhanger, obviously paving the way into Halo 3, whenever it comes out. Apparently Bungie's next project is not Halo related, so dont hold your breath.

A tip. When you finish the campaign mode, *watch the credits roll*, theres another clip at the end!

As for Halo 2 multiplayer - I suck! Getting schooled by kids left and right, Im not going on until I get my keyboard/mouse adapter and then I can rule old school style Plus Im trying to get through Half Life 2 right now on the PC (BUY IT! BEST PC FPS EVAAAARRR!) so I'll turn back to Halo 2 then.

WOW! A lot of good games coming out right now, I cant remember a time when we were spoiled so much, apart from 2001 when the XBox, Gamecube were released. Really looking forward to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, being released... plus World of Warcraft. Its a real fun online RPG, Im going to buy the Euro version next year so I can play with my buddies back in the UK on it.

Now if only I had more free time. Any rich patrons at Javaranch looking to fund a sabbatical?

Mark

PS. If I havent added you into my XBox Live Friends list I will soon.

[kayal cox]

A slight deviation from the main topic.

I am as illiterate about gaming as illiterate can be.

But I do like dancing on those dancepads at gaming arcades. I saw some of those on sale recently, and am thinking of adding it to my wishlist for Christmas. I suppose it runs on a playstation...? Can anyone give me some suggestions on what kind of setup I would need.

[Marc Peabody]

Ah, yes - DDR!

You'll want either a PS2 or an XBox.
PS2 will have more titles and options (including EyeToy) but XBox lets you play online against other people.
You can end up paying anywhere from 15 to 300 dollars for your pads depending on how good you want them. RedOctane pads are very popular.

I have an XBox and got DDR Ultramix with 1 pad for my wife's XMas present last year and we really like it. Ultramix 2 for XBox was supposed to come out last week but we have not seen it in stores anywhere.

If you want to know more, ddrfreak.com is a good site.

[kayal cox]

Hey, thanks so much for the info.
ddrfreak.com is a cool site!