Xbox 360, finally

I finished up my presentation slides and demo code on Thursday night, so I’m ready to go next weekend.  This means I can reward myself by sitting down to finally play something other than Hexic on my Xbox 360.  My lovely wife purchased me the Call to Duty 2 game for my Christmas present, and I picked up Knights of the Old Republic (for the original Xbox, but is compatible with the 360).  I jumped in to the Call to Duty and I have to admit it’s one of the hardest games I’ve played.  I’m really not used to the controls.  I haven’t played a console game system in quite a while, so I’m used to a mouse and, maybe, gamepad or keyboard.  The two joysticks for movement and facing is going to take some getting used to.

I like the fact that during the training excercises in the game it recognized that I kept trying to push the right joystick up when I wanted to look down (which is how it works with the mouse in Battlefield 1942).  It asked if I wanted to switch the control automatically.  That’s pretty slick.   I got through half of the second mission when the 360 shut down and I got three red lights on the “ring of light”.  This is NOT encouraging.  I looked this up on Microsoft support and did as it suggested (rebooted the console).  Well, that worked but it meant I had to start the mission over.  Hmmm, it seems when I reach checkpoints it’s not saving the game automatically like I would expect.  So now, each checkpoint is manual save point for me.  I haven’t seem to find a “quick save” function yet, so I have to pause the game, tell it to Save & Quit, then resume the game from the main screen.  Annoying, but not worse than redoing whole sections of a level.  So far I’m enjoying the game.

I played the Knights of the Old Republic for just a few minutes while I was waiting for the munchkin to wake up.  Seems like Bioware just took the rules engine from Never Winter Nights (which is based on the d20 gaming system by Wizards) and just encorporated it into this game.  This seems kind like it can be good game, but I have to get used to the controls and the menu layout. 

So, let’s hope this shutting down doesn’t keep happening.  Otherwise, I’ve been having a gread deal of fun.