(Lightning is one bad bi-- SHUT YO' MOUTH)
I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... Fuck, Fuck, Fuck! After all the tries, the multiple open-heart surgery, the mayhem, the triumph. I think it's quite possible that my Xbox has breathed its last breath, in a sense. There was tell tale signs. The fact that booting up my Xbox was akin to that of starting up a jet engine, for one. The others, game freezes, and general disobedience when it came to my gaming habit. My poor Madden and NHL games didn't stand a chance and it was well on its way to making Final Fantasy XIII another victim of its disc scratching dominance but not before Final Fantasy perhaps, said its two cents worth.
We pooled everything, okay not everything. But we gathered a lot of games and brought them into EB to get Final Fantasy on a credit, it was only after we seized our bounty that it came to my attention that I could've gotten Final Fantasy for 14.99 instead of 69.99 but no, the EB Games employees heads were too far up their own goddamn asses to even let me in on that little tidbit. ANYWAY. Victory was all but inevitable, after hearing about how fun the game was for a couple of weeks I could not take it anymore.
I got to enjoy the game for all of about 6-7 hours of game play time before it started to crap out on me. Apparently the game freezing is not an un-common problem as a small round of internet detective has taught me. Regardless, my Xbox is in a state of which repair is a necessity and I don't know if I want to go down that road again. Maybe it was Final Fantasy that had the last laugh?
The game itself, started out pretty well. The game decided to let the action and cinematic speak for itself rather than trying to deliver a more traditional "FF-RPG" experience. That isn't to suggest this is a bad thing, I think it works but I think its also a bit of the reason why the game is very demanding on even PS3 systems. When I was growing up, you used to have to play FF games for a couple of hours, not a few minutes, before you were rewarded with a cinematic. The game play didn't serve as a simple bridge to another cinematic, the cinematics were the door to a new portion of the game. Even 12 didn't seem so gratuitous with its cinematics. Natasha loves it, I feel as if its a bit too much.
Now, I didn't even get to play 10 hours into it so that's not really my official stance on the game so much as its my first impression. I love the new combat system, though it can be quite tedious at times The game just seems to be a showcase for their cinematic prowess and if they really wanted to do that, why didn't they just make another Final Fantasy movie? Advent Children didn't do that badly did it? I was under the impression that most everyone loved it.
So, the demanding might of FFXIII crushed the spirit of my Xbox. Instead of those perilous three red lights, now there is just one taunting me. Lower right quadrant, signifying a hardware failure. It could really be any number of things. Dr. Natasha wants to open 'er up again and see if she can revive the 360 yet again. To be honest, I'm tired of it running louder than anything I've ever seen, I'm tired of it scratching my games to the point that they don't want to even run properly anymore (it managed to get a good number of marks on FF before its demise) and I'm just tired of worrying about it. I'll save up for the two or three paydays it will take, then I'll buy an 360 arcade because they're cheap and just put my old hard drive in it and hopefully things will be good as new and HOPEFULLY it won't scratch the shit out of my games like a little bitch.
You've won this round, Microsoft. If Sony didn't have its head up its ass with its retarded bundle packages, and I didn't already own a good number of 360 games. You bet your ass I would be spending my money on a PS3 if they sold their console for a considerably reasonable price.
