Xbox Live
So we went to have an xbox live 48 hour freebie last weekend, in the hope that we could team up on stuff like Gears of War and other split screen games.
However Xbox being the bastards they are required 2 Xbox Live accounts to play online split screen. Only game i know that lets you just play the way you want is Halo. Unfortunatly Halo in my eyes is as much fun as playing UT 2003 on a NES pad. That being said we still had a quick go on Halo 3, although the maps we were given were crap, no vehicles and only some pistols and rifles...
Mez then decided that he was going to get a months free trial on Xbox live. AWESOME we could play GoW online together then, unfortunatly it was fairly dull... I remember playing it with Jode and it was a right laugh, although this time the maps were dull, i couldnt tell who was who and everyone had sniper rifles who could 1 shot me, and i didnt even know where the other weapons were.
After getting bored of that we spent the rest of the day taking turns on Rainbow Six : Vegas, and Battlefield Modern War. We also tried Kane and Lynch, although we couldnt remember what the controls were, and ended up just getting killed constantly.
Although i wasnt overly impressed by the many FPS titles we had to play on Xbox live, i still think its the best online system associated with a console to date. I dislike the fact that even though you shell out £35+ for a game you still have to pay £35+ to play online with your friends, its not an MMO, although to be fair i guess microsoft needs some income to support live even if they do have a field of money trees already.
Fable and some other Xbox classics
Due to games running as stable as a psychopath on LSD on my laptop, ive been forced to look elsewhere for some decent gaming. Luckily for me Jode has his old Xbox tucked away in the back room with a plethora of games.
I started playing Fable a while back on the Xbox, back when i had just left university and was staying over at Jodes parents place. The game reminded me of a more realistic looking zelda, with the charm of wierd english sounding npcs. My original gripes with the game were the annoying interface for equipping things, as it took me 5 minutes to cycle through all my crap, just to find and equip what i want then sell the other crap. However playing it again now i can forgive it slightly because it is a fairly good game.
For those of you who followed Fable's development and release, it was full of promise and wonder, however when they released it there was only a fraction of that left in the game. If it had a few more things such as coop or even a reason to go good/evil then it would be alot better a game than what they released. Now dont get me wrong its still a good game, but there is room for improvement, which im hoping they will take into account with Fable 2.
I'm also currently playing through GTA:SA with Mez and Jode. Im not a big fan of the GTA games after GTA 1 due to it being a little to open for me, and i get lost easily. I remember spending entire days travelling accross the world in Morrowind just to find out that i was meant to go to a house across the street from where i started.
Taking my awful path finding into account we are doing quite well and considering its a game based around crime and all things bad in the world its entertaining and has a decent storyline with characters that actually come accross as nice guys.
Anyway its kinda fun playing on the Xbox and PS2, as most games these days tend to be a bit bland and boring (looking at you EA). Will update some more soon as im working like mad to finish off all the components for the Php game before end of Q1.