VampireG’s Blog

Ok Mass Effect has arrived in my life, it has been over a year and half since I first heard that BioWare where going to be creating a game within their own universe.

A whole new universe with new races, characters, ships and planets. Knights of the Old Republic was one of my favorite Xbox games and to know that BioWare where going to release a game on 360 got me excited.

Well the game arrived Friday and so far I have managed to invest 8 hours of time playing it, and I have to say it does not disappoint. The game is amazing! The story is interesting, the characters I actually care about, the dialogue system is very fluid and every damn line of speech in the game is actually voice acted.

There a couple of niggles with it however, I mean it is not a perfect game but it is the most enjoyment I have had playing my 360 for a long time, and for me so far this has to be the game of 2007.

I am sure I will write more babble when I get further into the game, however for those of you that own a Xbox 360 and like RPG/FPS games then this has to be in your collection.

Ok heart attack moment last night, my Xbox 360 decided to display a single red light and an error message of E74! I have already had one Xbox 360 display the three red lights of death and this is the replacement. Now would you say this is sods law, I have actually had my PS3 on over the last couple of weeks and more so than the Xbox 360. I come back to the 360 and low and behold it starts to play up, my guess this is either one jealous console who is warning me that it needs to be played or it is aware that November is a good month for games.

November we have Call of Duty 4 (out in 2 days), then we have Assassins Creed (out in about a week and a bit), and then we have the game which I have had on pre-order for over a year now which is Mass Effect. Sods law would tell me that my console is bound to pack up on the month Mass Effect is out!!! So far it seems to be working… but I am watching this closely!

Incidentally the E74 error message can be displayed for one of the following reasons: 

• There is a 90% chance it’s a scaler chip problem (the “ANA” or “HANA” chip near the AV cable connection) #
• Can be caused by a faulty AV cable.
• In rare cases it is a problem with the GPU

 (The above information was found at Xbox-Scene.com)

OK well here is my take on the big debate on whether the 360 is better than the PS3 or vice versa!?!

Before I go into the nitty gritty I want to point out a couple of things first:

• I have a PlayStation 3
• I have an Xbox 360
• I am not a PlayStation Fan-boy
• I am not an Xbox 360 Fan-boy

Why did I mention the above? Well I really wanted to make the point that I am going to give this a fair go and try and understand the differences, the strengths and the weaknesses of both consoles before I make an opinion. It was also worth stating that I own both of the consoles as people who normally slate the 360 don’t actually have one and the people that slate the PS3 also don’t actually have one.

It is also worth saying I am not a fan-boy of either and I am coming at this from pretty neutral ground.

So where to begin!…

The looks

XBox 360 -Ok so this is a pretty ugly looking beast I would have to admit, yes the Elite is black and to be honest black is better but I don’t have a black one, I have the Premium Console which was purchased on day 1. I think standing vertically improves the looks by a small degree but overall I would have to conclude that it really does not make me feel I own a piece of amazing technology. The Green circle of lights is a nice touch although the 3 red ones are not (more on that later) however it looks like a nice shiny green ring of lights sitting on the front of a very big ugly lorry. Have you all seen those boy-racer blue lights that the lorry drivers have on their dash, well it reminds me of those really.

PS3 - So the PS3 is going to win round one hands down really, it is black and it is sleek. It looks like something that just broke the atmosphere and landed on my TV stand, I can almost imagine the back opening up and lots of tiny little spaceships to come flying out and shoot the shit out of the Xbox 360. It looks as if it was designed to be a sexy gadget that you would not mind taking front of stage in your living room. I love the cobalt blue light something I liked on the PS2, I like the front loading CD and I love the shiny black finish. (The wife incidentally hates the shiny black finish as she has to keep dusting it).

So round one would be a PS3 victory and probably by a long way. Yes the Xbox 360 hides the presence of dust and the PS3 is a dust magnet, it is just the PS3 is overall a damn nice looking gadget. You would not mind taking the PS3 out to dinner and showing it off to your mates, with the Xbox 360 however… well it has face made for radio! However in the next blog we will find out whether looks actually matter a hoot, when I will take on the first of what I know will be the crunch test “GRAPHICS!”