Battlefield: Good Company

I would like to thank EA for the very bold move of enabling Xbox Live party chat during online multiplayer matches in the upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company 2. You’re right, guys, cheating is not so rampant to the point that I should be blocked from functionality that I pay damned good money for.

As much as I looooove Modern Warfare 2, there are two things that I absolutely hate about it. The first one is obvious, and the second one is those goddamned pot leaf emblems and callsigns. They are embarrassing. Just embarrassing.

Getting an open NAT with Verizon FiOS and Xbox Live

I hope someday we’ll stop writing about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, but for now, it’s foremost on our minds. Matter of fact, we had an impromptu, partial-Threevue sesh just last night, fragging some mofos.

Of particular concern lately has been Tyler’s ability to connect to my Xbox 360; we weren’t able to play the Left 4 Dead 2 demo a couple weeks ago, and we can’t join a party of just the two of us. We’re thinking it has something to do with our NAT settings (mine is displayed as “moderate”).

I stumbled upon this forum which has the perfect solution to my configuration (Verizon FiOS and an Xbox 360 hooked up with one of those underpriced wireless adapter dongles). If you are having connectivity issues, this should work beautifully.

Live It Up While Live Is Down

Remember boys and girls, Xbox Live is down for scheduled maintenance all day today, so all of your Xbox gaming and/or solicitation of young boys will have to be done strictly offline (sorry, Tyler).

So how will you be spending your day? Offline games? PS3? Wii? I spent my first few hours sans-Live finishing Gears of War 2, which was EPIC. Whatever you end up doing, have fun. Just make sure he’s at least 16, Tyler!

Too bad “sup I smoke” is already taken.

Hey everybody, I’m thinking about changing my Gamertag. TheJesusZombie has served me well for a few years now and got a few laughs from some cool people, and some anti-laughs from some chumps, which both make me equally happy. But, variety is the spice of life, and although I’m not 100% that I want to change it (I’m still really against the fact that you have to pay 800 points), it might be time for some new hotness.

I want to stick with a sacreligious and/or a Simpsons related theme, so I’ve come up with a few that I have in mind. Vote on your favorite, or if you have another idea, leave it in the comments; I’m definitely open to suggestions. Also, you can vote multiple times, and you can add your own, so click ‘em up!

Cheapskate: Braid on the Cheap!

I’m sure many of you saw this already, but the Threevue.com 2008 Game of the Year, Braid, is now available to Xbox Live Gold members for the bargain basement price of 800 Microbucks.

If it was a little too pricey for you at first, or if you’re just recently joining the Xbox Live party, this is an amazing game and well worth the 800 points. Pick it up if you haven’t yet? ?tey t’nevah uoy fi pu ti kciP Pick it up if you haven’t yet.

Together Again For The First Time

Finally, after an entire year of trying, I finally got Tyler’s Xbox 360, and my Xbox 360 to play nice and allow us to do all the things that come so easy to other Xboxes, like start a party, play online together, and unsuspectingly flash our junk to each other over games of UNO.

Up until now our Xboxes would never let us hook up online without a third party acting as an intermediary. Now we can, and it’s great. All I had to do was change my router’s MTU from 1500 to 1364 which would open up my NAT type, enable UPnP, hack into the Pentagon mainframe, repel into the Area 51 cafeteria and eat an entire block of cream cheese, the POOF! We’re getting shot by our own teammates in Left 4 Dead before we knew it. Good times.

In It For The Long Haul

Having just redeemed the 13 month Xbox Live Gold card I recently bought from Amazon at the bargain basement price of $30, I’m am now subscribed all the way up to November, 2011. By that time, I’ll almost be 29 (and in effect, almost 30), Russ’ kid will be walking, Tyler will have gone through puberty, and we will probably be enjoying Call of Duty 7. We may even be looking forward to the next-gen of consoles.

Kind of puts the future in perspective.

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.

I’m Watching You Right Now

It still blows my mind that I’m able watch Netflix movies for free over Xbox Live instantly. It just seems like something that’s almost too good to be true.

I was having problems recently though, because I didn’t realize that you need to add movies to a “Watch Instantly” queue on your online Netflix. I though it just filtered your regular queue and picked out the ones that you could watch on the spot, and puts it in your Xbox Live list. I was wondering why the only movie it would show for me was Gone Baby Gone.

I figured it out though, and as I type, I’m watching episode three of the first season of Heroes in HD. Next up? Who knows? Unbreakable, maybe? Maybe not.

Das Is Und Komedie

Ok, I don’t know how I never saw this before. I think I remember reading about it awhile ago, but Christ Almighty, this is hilarious.

Please watch it. Even if you accidentally stumbled across this site while looking for some Jeff Foxworthy beef jerky and have never played a video game in your life, please watch it. Even if you are Der Furor himself, please watch it, and come on, lighten up and have a laugh at yourself.

Xbox Dead

Tonight, the entire staff of threevue.com tried to get online and play Castle Crashers, but all was not well. Only 2/3 of us could get online in the same room at any time. Then Tyler had to leave to watch a movie (I think it was a midnight screening of Bambi), so then Mark and I played for about, oh, 5 minutes before it booted him off. Happened one more time and then we called it a day. And we pay $50 a year for this?

I Don’t Think It’s Too Much To Ask

Because we were all gypped a day of XBL, every paying Xbox Live customer should automatically get a free day tacked on to the end of their current subscription. Therefore, I’m going to submit the following eloquent-yet-hard-hitting letter directly to the Microsoft corporate office:

To Whom It May Concern;

PAY UP, SUCKAS!

Sincerely,

Threevue.com

I think they’ll get the message.

Play Offline? As if.

And so begins the 24 hours of no-Xbox Live.

I came home tonight after work, looking forward to some COD4, but was thwarted by my inability to connect to Live. I forgot that today was the day that they are shutting it down for 24 hours to prep for the arrival the “New Xbox Experience.” I even tried unplugging and re-plugging my modem and router before I realized what was happening.

Couldn’t they have done it on a Tuesday or Thursday, when I have school and work all day? Why did it have to be on a Monday, where I have one 50 minute class, and then an entire evening of pants-free gaming? I really would have like to have been consulted on this, Microsoft.

A Major Expense

Do you guys/gals think Major Nelson has to pay $50 a year for Xbox Live? I’ll bet he doesn’t, because if he did, it probably would have become free a long time ago.

Multiplaying

Earlier today, some of us in the Threevue.com community got together for some hardcore COD4 action. Raul, blacktail9mm (or Steve), Tyler, and I all teamed up and pretty much got the crap kicked out of us, but it was still a lot of fun.

For some reason, though, it was really difficult for us to get together as a team at first. Disconnections, mis-connections, and Tyler’s retardation kept getting in the way. But once they were sorted out, things went swimmingly.

Games are infintely more fun with a group of people, and as soon as I download Castle Crashers, we’ll do it again.

Oh yeah, I forgot. cj913 played with us, too, but he had to go to cheerleading practice.