1 vs 100 Canadian Beta /Xbox Live Primetime impressions

Once upon a time, during what was Microsoft's E3 2008 presentation, they unveiled a very ambitious project called Xbox Live Primetime. 

They said that they would bring the excitement of live gameshows to Xbox Live where all players could participate and potentially win prizes.   It would be online, interactive and very much fun.

It's a year later almost now and the Canadian Beta started last Friday.   I attempted to play it then and was getting disconnected left and right.   I decided to hold off on forming an opinion then because They had said in the 1vs100 forum that this was an issue.

Last night was a whole other ballgame.  The thing worked and worked great!

First the experience.   The Xbox Live Primetime room will have a list of all the next shows.   Hitting the shows will give you the option to Add a reminder of when the next occurance of the game is.   The games, at least in the beta, last for 2 hours.

With 5 minutes till showtime, you get a notification popup from the Xbox saying that the game is about to start.

When you start the game, you get dropped into a lobby and matched up with a group of 3 other players.   the game seems to make an effort to match you with other players on your friends list which is a nice touch.  In this lobby before the game starts, Microsoft's Live Host will welcomes everyone, goes through some idle chatter like only a host can and then the game starts.

So at this point, the game randomly picks people out of the crowd to be the one, the 100(henceforth knows at the Mob) and the crowd.

The one can win prizes for their in-game performance ranging from 160 to 10000 Microsoft points, the Mob can share what the One loses if/when he does lose and top 3 point scorers in the crowd can win points or free arcade games.  Everyone answers the questions and seperate score is kept relating to your performance there.

After last night's 2 hours, I can sincerely say that I firmly believe that Microsoft has pulled this off masterfully.  

If the host is to be believed, at the peak of the evening, they had 16 000 people playing this concurrently.  That's amazing by any standard.

At one point I was one of the Mob.  Sadly the One was a chicken and walked away with a score of 1200 points after 3 or 4 questions.  The rest of the evening was spent in the crowd.   I'm really looking forward to playing this more.

Cheap things are AWESOME!!

So I'm an Aerosmith fan. I love the band. My first album was Pump and I listened to Get a Grip until my casette broke.
I actually have a Bronze Power Listener badge on the Zune Social for Aerosmith:

http://social.zune.net/member/Anirask

So I was somewhat looking forward to Guitar Hero: Aerosmith but at 49.99 for the game when it came out, I decided to wait till the price dropped before buying.

Well I was browsing the 360 rack at EB during my lunch hour after my trip to the gym and came across the game for 20$. Look over at the used rask and there's a copy there for 17.95$. I pick up the new copy and walk over to the cash. I was going to pay with some trade-in credit I got from RE5 and the dude just offered to activate that Edge card for 2.00 so I got the used copy for 15$..

Tonight, I find out how Joe Perry lives!

 

Ethics of Digg..

Is there any? 

Is it frowned upon for people to Digg content that they have created or contributed to?

To trade in or not to trade in.

I picked up Resident Evil 5 last Friday.   I had a pre-order.

When I bought Star Ocean 4 last month, they pitched me a deal where if I pre-ordered RE5 that day, I could buy the game the ay it came out and within that first week, I could bring it back to them for trade in and I would get all of my money back in store credit.

Cost of game, taxes etc.  All of it.

So I got the deal and am now enjoying the game.   I'm almost done with my SP playthrough (the full thing with a co-op partner to boot, fun times).  However, I don't really forsee this being something I really go back to once I'm done. 

Would I get more than a week's play out of the game were I not to trade it in?  Probably.   I could see a good 2-3 week enjoyment out of it.   But it's not something I could come back to over and over again down the line.

So I submit this to you 2Old2Play - Do I get my money back and miss out on an additional few hours of enjoyment or get that extra week or 2 of gameplay and lose half my money in trade-in value.

I could just rent it for 7-8$ cdn at Blockbuster down the line if I really wanted to play it again....hmm..

Star Ocean: TLH or how to do Multi-Disk Games badly..

Holy crap! I got posted to the main 2o2p page! Yay.!!!

Instead of having the article here as well I'm just going to link to my newfound glory! =)

http://www.2old2play.com/News/Star_Ocean__the_Last_Hope_or_How_To_Do_Multi_Disk_Games_Badly