Xbox Live Achievement

Today I achieve a milestone, albeit a personal one. Today I reach 11,111 achievement points on Xbox Live:

It is funny and sad how I reached that achievement. I did it by drowning the beloved Guybrush Threepwood in the new Monkey Island remastered version :

RIP Guybrush. You will not be be dead for long.

FPS Freek Hands On

I first heard about this gaming add-on last year in a Gizmodo article (3/2008). On Wednesday it finally arrived in a non-specific USPS envelope :

The packaging is bareboned and consists of nothing more than the plastic container (which is easy to open), the paper insert and a pair of the Freeks. All I can say is that I'm glad it didn't come in a 12" x 12" cardboard box filled with packing shells.

Installation is pretty simple and straightfoward : clip on top of the analog sticks. That's it, you're done. Here is the installation with my Xbox 360 controller (360 glowing in the background).

Here is the claim & challenge of the FPS Freek :

"FPS Freek was tested by professional gamers in Halo tournaments and by avid gamers across the country. The results are clear - FPS Freek enhances aiming precision and increases game performance with minimal learning curve. The added ananlog stick length provides 40% more linear distance from full stop to stop."

"Take the Challenge! Try FPS Freek and see how it can improve your game. Use FPS Freek for 2-3 hours and then remove it to see the difference in your game."

In this test I used the multiplayer of Halo 3 as my lab table. First of all, my FPS console experience is limited. I have experience playing many console FPS : Halo, Halo 2, Gears of War, etc. That experience, however, is limited (mostly) to the solo campaign & not to multiplayer action. My multiplayer experience in FPS comes from PC, mostly. I find that a keyboard and mouse is a much more precise interface than two analog sticks and have saved most of my FPS gaming for the PC. Since Wednesday, I have played approximately 6 basic traning sessions to test out the FPS Freek (total play time is around the 60-90 minute mark). My results vary, but so far I'm averaging 10 kills/session and have been in the #2 spot (of the 4 person match) three times. I am still short of the recommended 2-3 hours for testing, but so far am still on the fence about the product's effectiveness. It could be doing something or on the other hand I could just be getting used to the analog controls (the old practice makes perfect theory). I guess I will have to test with some other games & then again without the FPS Freek, to garner any difference in ability/performance. Stay tuned.

XBox 360 60 GB Upgrade Installation & Impression

I bought my Xbox 360 approximately 20 months after it launched, as I didn't want to rush in again (I had the original NES and Xbox on the day they came out). Outside of 3 ring of death events (all recoverable; the last one occuring more than a year ago) & some sporadic disc read issues, I have not had any many complaints about the system. I am very please with my choice.

Recently, I had run into a HDD space issue, espcially in light of new features such as copying the game locally. The original 20 GB HDD just isn't enough. I had tried, unsuccessfully, to ghost my existing drive onto a bigger harddrive. Unfortunately, the system's copy protection involves hardware locks & OS pre-installs. The price of an Xbox 120 GB HDD, even used, is way above the current GB/$ street value. This is one of features I envy of the PS3; the ability to upgrade the HDD easily (the other is the BluRay capabilty). Recently Microsoft released a 60 GB upgrade. Buying it from Amazon's surplus depot & a defect in the packaging, drops the price to under $80.

I also head previously read about Microsoft's USB Transfer Kit, which I procured for just this event. It allows for a one time copy/cloning of one HDD to another. I crack open the packaging :

Inside the package you will find :

1. 60 GB HDD
2. Instruction manual
   
3. 3 month XBox Live gift card
4. Headset
5. Cat5/6 ethernet cord
   

The next step is to follow the USB transfer instructions :

So connect the new HDD drive (replacement) to the appropriate side of the transfer cable (it's the large end) and then connect the other end to a USB port on the back of the XBox (the instructions implicitly warn NOT to connect the USB to the front ports). Like so :

And this:

You then just follow the on-screen instructions :

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

90 minutes later :

After a restart. Fin:

The results are great. I have Fallout 3 & GTA IV already installed locally, to boost performance and keep the system running quiet. Netflix works pretty well too, though I cannot tell which videos will be HD ahead of time or from the online queue/library. If you need some space and are looking for a relatively cheap solution or are upgrading your system from the arcade or core system, this is an option you should consider.