My Gripes: Xbox 360 Chatty Chatty Chat Chat

The Xbox 360 voice chat system is a complete mess, and if they really want to move forward with their vision of being a community-friendly console, they really need to do something about it.

When the NXE was released and first introduced “Party Chat,” it seemed like things had really gone in the right direction. Having the ability to talk with multiple friends regardless of whether you were playing the same game or not was a really great idea, and generated some good times. It made the clunky “Private Chat” system for the most part obsolete, which was a blessing in my book, and added a fun new dimension to console gaming. But now, with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and surely many copycats to come, you can’t be in a party chat while playing in most online matches in order to keep people from cheating. This is ridiculous. We shouldn’t all have to deal with reduced functionality just because there are a few people hopping on the opposite teams of their friends and providing intel. I don’t even think that happens very much anyway. Plus, private chat is still enabled, so two friends actually can talk while on opposite teams, not to mention how easy it is to hop on Skype with your friends and circumvent the entire process.

Speaking of Skype, I am led to my next issue with the 360 chat system: the extremely low sound quality. Half the time I can barely hear the people I am talking to, voices cut in and out, and overall it just sounds cheap and gimmicky. Most of the time, I would rather have my laptop next to me as I play, and chat over Skype, which is infinitely more stable and has crystal-clear quality. I imagine a dream-team where Microsoft and Skype hook up and offer an amazingly high-quality 360 chat service. It would be like Kobe and LeBron on the same team (or for our international friends, it would be like Renaldo and, um, some other really good footy guy on the same team). That’ll take some of the sting out of that $50 a year I pay.

Finally, one last little note. Does it bug you as much as it does me when you want to send a text message to a friend and the default option is to send a voice message? How often do people do that? I would say that I send roughly one voice message for every thousand text messages, and that one little “down” button press is a huge pain in the ass. CHANGE IT NOW!

End transmission.

My Gripes: IGN’s Top 25 Xbox 360 Games List Is Ridiculous

IGN has posted a list of what they believe are the top 25 Xbox 360 games today. I’ve got some major issues with it, and I’m sure that you will too, as long as you have a head on your shoulders.

The first glaring error is the list’s predilection towards Halo and RPGs. I’m having a hard time believing that three RPGs deserve to stand in the top five 360 games, or that Oblivion should be so near the top of this list. And Halo 3: ODST is better than Rock Band 2 and Left 4 Dead? You’re killing me. Gears of War is #10 while its infinitely superior sequel is nowhere to be found? And how about that little Modern Warfare 2 game that barely even made it on the list; if they even play the “more of the same” card with CODMW2, then they should eat their shoes, because Virtua Fighter 5 Online is the epitome of “more of the same”. Not to mention the great games that didn’t make the list like Assassin’s Creed (1 or 2, take your pick), Guitar Hero II, Call of Duty 2, Rainbow Six: Vegas, or Crackdown.

This makes me fear IGN. It’s one of the most-read gaming sites and they’re providing garbage; now some unfortunate soul is going to go out and buy Halo Wars.

Full list:

1. Mass Effect
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
3. Fallout 3
4. Oblivion
5. Grand Theft Auto 4
6. Halo 3
7. The Orange Box
8. BioShock
9. Braid
10. Gears of War
11. Halo 3: ODST
12. Halo Wars
13. Borderlands
14. Geometry Wars
15. Rock Band 2
16. Forza 3
17. FIFA 10
18. Left 4 Dead
19. Virtua Fighter 5 Online
20. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
21. NHL 10
22. Shadow Complex
23. Dead Rising
24. Lost Odyssey
25. Dead Space

My Gripes: BF1943 Two-fer

As much as I love Battlefield: 1943, there are two really annoying things about it that I just can’t get over.

First, when reloading as the sniper, your character always loads five rounds into the rifle, regardless of how many rounds you’ve actually spent. So, if you’ve only shot one round and would like to reload, you have to sit there and wait for him to go through the entire process. In Call of Duty, if you shoot one round, you reload one round, simple as that. This a very small thing that can be done to enhance the realism of the game.

The next thing that bugs the hell out of me is how you can’t see the awards page unless you back all the way out to the main screen. I like entering a match with a specific goal to achieve in mind, but I’m definitely not going to back out to the main screen between each match. There is more than enough time to check these things while the maps are loading if only it was available to do so.

So, two very minor but very annoying things that I would love to see fixed.

My Gripes: The Final Countdown

We just finished recording this week’s Threecast, where I talked about pretty much the only game that I’ve played this week, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, and I totally forgot to mention this major gripe. So, for you unfortunate souls that can’t (and you assholes that choose not to) listen to the smooth, boner-inducing sounds of our three voices, you get to read all about it.

We’ve all heard about the one major problem that PQ:G has that makes it almost unplayable to many people: the LeapGate hacking. If you don’t know what they are, they’re boring, repetitive, unnecessary minigames that make you find a set number of gem-matches before time runs out which allow you to move to the next part of the game. They don’t sound too bad on paper, but when you have to do them over and over dozens of times each time you play the game, they start to get really old.

Fine, they exist, they can’t be avoided, I’ve learned to deal with it. What I can’t learn to deal with though, is how when you are hacking a LeapGate, if you match a set of gems that result in a series of multiple matches as the subsequent gems continue to fall, time still ticks away while you just have to sit there and wait until they are finished. Normally, getting a bunch of combos in a row helps you, but in the hacking, they just burn precious time, and there has been more than one occasion when the clock has run out while I’m waiting for my next turn.

It’s such a cheap design flaw that it makes me want to bend my DSi in the opposite direction every time it happens. The time should stop whenever something uncontrollable happens so it doesn’t punish me for what is essentially a good move. I know there are at least the three or four of you out there that know exactly what I’m talking about and agree.

The weird thing about Galactrix is that there are more bad things than good to say about it, but I still like and and can’t stop playing.

My Gripes: A Little Continuity, Please?

Last night I finished the main campaign of Crackdown, and felt really good about doing it. That is, until I watched the final cut-scene that pretty much stripped me of all sense of accomplishment.
I’m not talking about the mildly surprising little story twist at the end, I’m talking about the fact that even though I played as the tattoo-faced, Polynesian-type character throughout the entire game, the final cut scene showed me as the black guy (one of only two in all of Pacific City, I might add). I had become really close to my character, especially since his distinctive look set him apart from the rest of the Agents.

Watching the game give all my credit to another character really sucked all the wind out of my sails. Would it have been that hard put my guy in there at the end? I’m no game-maker, but I’m sure Realtime Worlds could have figured that out. Maybe they just thought the only reason people would buy the game was for the Halo 3 beta invite, and no one would ever get that far.

Still though, it was a fun game and I’m glad I played it.

My Gripes: “Y” Are You Being Such “A” Jerk, Far Cry 2?

Being just a tiny matter of pushing one button over another button that is less than two inches away, this is going to seem like a very ticky-tack gripe for most of you. However, I know there are a select few out there that have dealt with the same thing, and I are going to appreciate what I’m saying.

Obviously, vehicles, and the driving of, are a very important aspect of Far Cry 2. Jeeps (both the officially licensed Wrangler and Liberty varieties), hatchbacks, dune buggies, and fan-powered pontoon boats act as your literal chariots-of-fire while you shred through Africa looking for arms dealers, conflict diamonds, malaria meds, and…save points. Some of these vehicles are equipped with either a mounted weapon of some sort that you can switch back and forth between with supposed ease, but more often than not, this turns into a huge pain in the ass and leaves me standing outside of my car with my dick in my hands while getting lit up like a Christmas tree from an enemy .50 cal. And this brings me to my gripe.

To enter and exit a vehicle, you have to press Y. Why? I don’t know. The A button is the video game world-wide default button for enter, exit, climb over/into, interact with, press, and so on and so on, but Far Cry 2 thought it would be fun to make you use the completely un-intuitive Y button. And then, when you have finally wrapped your head around that and are in the car, to switch to the weapon, you have to press A. What?! You want me to use the primary button on the entire controller to perform a secondary task, while I have to use arguably the lamest button on the pad to perform the one action that I do more than anything else in the game? It’s so frustrating, because what usually happens is someone starts shooting, I want to switch to my mounted weapon, intuitively I hit Y, and all of a sudden I standing next to my Wrangler on the business end of a bullet bukkake.

So, let me wrap this up, Ubisoft. The A button should be used to get in and out of the car, and the Y button should be used to switch positions, just like God intended.

My Gripes: Tanks For Nothing, COD:WaW

I just wrapped up a hot and heavy COD:WaW sesh wherein I decided that I can no longer keep my mouth shut about the broke-ass tank mechanics in the game. Maybe “mechanics” isn’t the right word, but whatever you call it, there are problems with the tanks. First of all, it takes faaaaaar too much damage to destroy a tank, even when you are in one yourself. It should be a video game standard that it takes no more that three (3) tank rounds to destroy another tank. Anything more than that is just ridiculous. I guess tanks in COD:WaW have a “sweet spot” somewhere on the back where it is more vulnerable to damage, but just like a clitoris, I’ve never found it.

Gripe #2: I’m thinking of a number between zero and two, which also happens to be the number of tank-mounted .50cal rounds to the body it would take to put an enemy on his ass. Ok, I know it’s a video game, and to make it that realistic would suck all the fun right out of it, so I will offer the following simple death-matrix:

Non-Juggernaut = 2 shots to die

Juggernaut = 3 shots to die

I mean, come on, the turret overheats if you hold the trigger for more than four seconds, and then you’re just a sitting duck for snipers while you wait for it to cool off.

One quick last gripe before I dismount my armored high-horse. The RPGs are too weak against armor. They only allow you to carry two rockets at a time, and that’s how many direct rocket hits it should take to destroy a tank. I shouldn’t have to hit it twice, die, and respawn to hit it again. It’s not fair.

Ok, I’m done.

My Gripes: iPhoto Folder Organization

iPhoto has a feature they call “Events”, which is basically like little photo albums. As you can see above, you can create themed events and throw your pictures into them for easy browsing.

And though this is all fine and dandy on the front-end side, your actual photo folders on your hard drive remain untouched. Which means that before importing my photos into iPhoto, I have to physically organize them into folders (which I do by year, then by general events/themes, like “2009/House”, etc), lest I just have a “Photos” folder that has a gazillion unorganized photos in it. This is a pain in the butt because if you want to add photos to an existing folder (“2009/Oliver” has seen a lot of activity recently, for instance), I have to re-import that entire folder. Luckily, you can have it skip duplicates, but remember all those photos you “deleted” through iPhoto during your last import? iPhoto doesn’t actually delete them from your hard drive, so they all just showed up again. Another gripe right there.

Basically, I wish iPhoto worked like iTunes in that iTunes will organize your music folder for you – by artist, then by album. If iPhoto did the same by year, then by event, I’d be one happy camper. Considering that Apple is all about streamlining processes across each of their applications, you’d think this would be done already.

My Gripes: Twitter Replies

I like Twitter, because of the things wonderful she does, except for one. I would like the ability to follow particular people but mute their “@” replies. For instance, I follow John Roderick, the singer of Seattle band The Long Winters. He’s a great guy who makes about two funny posts a day. Problem is, he replies to nearly every “@” reply that he gets (even mine!), and he has about 2,500 followers. Which means that my Twitterbox is full of conversations that I don’t want to read about.

While I’m on a roll, I would also like to be able to follow Major Nelson but not have to read his stupid XBLA code giveaways. Am I right or am I right?

My Gripes: Xbox Live Edition

I love Xbox Live, and gladly pay $50 a year for the service. Free demos and downloads, a robust friend/chat/party system, and free Netflix streaming – I couldn’t ask for more. Well, I could actually, and that’s the topic of this post. Three ways to make Xbox Live better:

1. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to see my “Active Downloads” in NXE. What if I want to pause a download, or adjust my queue? I seriously spent several minutes looking in vain for it the other day. It used to be super easy to find, now I’m lost. Bring it back!

2. I get a little annoyed when I have to update my game and it disconnects me from Xbox Live for five seconds, only to put me back online. But what really annoys me is that all of my friends are greeted with the fact that I am back online after a five-second stint offline. There should be an option that you won’t notify your friends that you’re back online after an absence of less than a minute.

3. This last one isn’t as much a gripe as an idea that I would like to see; when playing in a party, you should have the option of having the achievements pop up when someone else in your party gets an achievement. It wouldn’t have to say exactly what the achievement is (in case there are spoilers), but it would be pretty sweet to see when your party members just got some cheever gold.

My Gripes: “X Means Reload”

For the most part, FPS and shooter games have been using the Xbox 360′s blue “X” button in order to reload (and the PS3′s square button, alternatively). There are a few exceptions, but it’s become ingrained into my subconscious lately. So imagine how annoyed I get when I pop in Dead Space for a second and instead of reloading my fancy-shmancy tools/weapons, I give myself a nice little health pack, which I usually don’t need at all. Reloading, by the way, requires you to hold the left trigger and press “A”. It’s also a little embarrassing when I’m playing Drake’s Fortune, hiding from bad guys, and then I press “X” and find myself punching thin air. How do I tell my brain to press “up” on the D-Pad instead?

Tyler’s all about games having configurable controls, and after a few of these un-reloading-reloads, I can start to see his point. I could understand if certain controls simply NEED to be a certain way, but for the most part they don’t. Personally, I like the right-bumper reload method of Gears of War the best, because I don’t have to take my thumb off the right analog stick.

My Gripes: Dead Space’s Flamethrower

As much as I love the Ripper, I freaking hate the flamethrower. I was excited when I was finally able to buy it, but it really let me down.

On top if it being extremely weak, it takes almost an entire canister of fuel just to kill one of the basic enemies, and when a canister runs out, it takes forever to reload. Also, unlike other weapons, it doesn’t really stop any enemies from coming at you. Even whilst engulfing a baddie in flames, he/she will still be running towards you, screaming and flailing their murderous limbs in the air, ready to chop your uninfected head off.

There’s a cheever for killing 30 enemies with this glorified sparkler, but I don’t think I’ll be getting it. Anyone else care to opine?

H.U.D. Life – How We Check Our Maps, Objectives and Ammo In Video Games

I sort of don’t like to do “tops” lists because invariably someone brings up a game that I completely forgot to add to my examples, then I look like an idiot. Look, I can’t commit! So go ahead, readers. Disembowel me with your pointy, pointy words.

*Ahem*

Head Up Displays. Second in the “Make Tyler Hate You” competition only to un-customizable button layouts, are cluttered, ugly, unnecessary HUDs that stand out like the sore thumbs. It’s a real let down when a game gets story, graphics and gameplay down pat and totally whiffs when it comes to the HUD. Think about it; in an FPS, it’s the one thing that you will see every second in every frame of the game. It’s a hard art to master, I’m sure. How do you make something that doesn’t exist in the Game World but feeds you the telemetry of the character? When should you push a fresh interface over a subtle, out of the way one? I don’t really know, but then again I don’t get paid to make video games. So I can sleep at night, I chalked some prime examples of a few well done HUDs and GUIs.

King Kong

You can’t get a better HUD than no HUD at all. If it’s done right, that is. Not knowing important info when you need it is just as bad having a ton of non-essential shit lining the edge of the screen. Admittedly, King Kong doesn’t have a lot of weapons juggling, branching pathways, resource managing or intricate scoring that you have to keep track of. There are only three guns in the whole game (pistol, sub-machine gun and rifle), you can only carry one at a time and you’re limited to only the ammo that came with the gun. You’d think that this would hamper the gameplay but it doesn’t, due to the fact that you’re always on a fairly straightforward path and can’t easily get lost. The “ammo count” button will inform you through your character’s (Jack’s) observation of how many bullets you have in the weapon, and each gun has a hip and ADS fire option. It made the game a lot more cinematic and challenging (in a good way). Also, since you don’t have a reticle, Jack points at what he’s throwing with his off hand, clever! May be confusing or scary to people who have never played a video game other than Snake on their cell phone, but easy to handle if you completed reading this sentence without drooling in to your keyboard, shorting it out and starting a structure fire.

My Gripes: PS3 Downloading

Not a good sign when I’ve only owned the system for a week and I’ve got an addition to our “My Gripes” section. This gripe concerns downloading stuff on the PS3.

1. So, say you want to go to the PSN store and go buck wild, downloading demos like crazy? Well friend, the queue system on the PS3 is designed to keep you from enjoying yourself too much. After you select a download, you have to confirm it, and then it starts the download right then and there. You then have to choose to have it “download in the background” or something like that. Wash, rinse and repeat. Oh, and as far as I can tell, it doesn’t download these in the order of how you selected them (as in the first one you selected keeps downloading and the others queue behind it), it actually cancels the download you were working on and resets to the next one you select.

2. See the picture above? After you download something, you then have to install it. It takes several minutes, depending on the size of the file. The above demo took about 6 minutes to install.

3. I don’t think you can set up downloads and turn the system off (while just the downloads continue), like on the Xbox 360. Hell, you can’t even charge the controller and turn the system off (and keep charging).

4. While downloading some demos, I decided to play a few minutes of Resistance. Just downloading stuff in the background caused the sound to cut in and out, like I was playing inside of an Army tank or something. Ridiculous. No wonder the PSN is free, because I wouldn’t pay a dime for this trash service!

My Gripes: Download Stopped Edition

I come forth today to gripe about that fact that Xbox Live stops any download I have in progress when I play another game online. Case in point: Earlier today I started to download the Frack-sure Fracture demo, and I thought I would pass the time with some COD4 action. But as soon as the multiplayer stats up, I get a “bleep” window telling me that my demo has stopped.

This may not be as big of a deal to most as me, but the majority of gaming I do is online, and I hate having to choose from one activity or the other. I understand why it might be like this: bandwidth, connection, etc., but it still bugs the shit out of me.