I have a dark tale for you, a tale of loss and strife, a tale of swords and sorcery eternal retold, of disease and death, and a quest for the new and exciting.
Anyway, I got a dual shock three controller for my PS3 at the weekend, while I was there I also grabbed a few cheap crap games for some idle amusement. We seem to be in that slack period between big release times and there is very little out that is worth having that I don't already own. I for the ps3 I got Timeshift and Conan, the 360 I got Alone in the dark. I have heard bad things about all three but for under 30 quid for the lot you can get a lot of mileage out of that.
Timeshift is a generic fps with a time slow/pause/rewind gimmick, it is OK but nothing amazing its difficulty curve bounces between too easy and too hard randomly but some of the later weapons like the flame thrower smg are quite fun. Conan is a straight hack and slash game but it is fairly well implemented in a god of war style, the graphics are nice and the story is suitably silly.
Then I came to Alone in the Dark, I turn on the x360 and low and behold the dreaded Red Ring of Death. This is the second time a 360 has done this to me, I rang up microsoft support, they barely asked me anything just took the number and told me to pack the thing off and send it to them. In a nice twist of irony I still have the box this 360 came in from microsoft when it replaced my first one, so I'll use it to send it back again.
To add to my woes I have a cold or flu or hay fever, possibly all three. It's the sort of unpleasant level of ill that's not enough to confine you to bed but enough to make doing anything unpleasant.
To cheer myself up I bought myself an Advent 4211 aka MSI Wind which I'm using to write this post. Admittedly when I ordered this atom powered wonder I didn't know I would need cheering up at all so it's almost precognative cheering but still I take the breaks where I can get them. I may well review the thing as and when I'm feeling a bit better since right now I can't see a good reason anyone would buy any other UMPC (bar maybe battery life and even that is a short term issue that may be resolved as battery component supplies pick up).
So that's two x360's down, so far they last about a year then die, given the warranty extension gives out this year hopefully this next one will be better built than the previous 2.
Comments
Well, I think that's bloody appaulling about the 360, mate. It's just shit. That's a terrible failure rate and MS should be offering to extend the warranty because it should really reset when they send it back. Shoddy shoddy shoddy.
As for your own brokeness, get well soon, sir. Virii during the summer are the worst ever. Be nice to yourself. :)
Good grief; another one? And right after I said in another thread that the reliability is fixed. Hopefully, you'll get one with up-to-spec solder on it this time. :/
And Rob's right, they really aught to warranty their warranty replacements the same as they would a new one.
So far the 360's I've had last about a year and a bit. Course that's actually better than my first ps3 which got bricked (well I say bricked it's more like a breeze block size wise) by one of the firmware updates and it was only a few months old.
Hmmm they now managed to send me two separate ups return labels days apart. Naturally I had already sent it off under the first one only to find that wasn't the one they wanted, Bugger.
Hopefully they will be able to relink it with the other ups ship thing now that I have emailed them the ups receipt. The console should already have landed in frankfurt so hopefully they can find it before someone bins the thing.
They've dispatched me a repaired/new/reconditioned xbox so that's nice should be along sometime next week I would imagine.