rapture

I can say that as of lately, I've been busting a lot of Team Fortress 2 on my PC.  My XBOX 360 has been getting limited gaming time.

However, I think that will change once the new Halo 3 map pack comes out which is right around the corner. 

And by the way, I think Gears of War 2 is going to the next Halo 2.

My 360 arrived it the mail on Tuesday.  I still haven't played it.

I've been spending my time playing on Steam - mainly Team Fortress 2.

Here's a really good Soldier video from a skilled player:

What's the deal Microsoft?  You still haven't returned my XBOX 360.

Oh well.  Thank goodness for Steam. 

I'm not looking forward to playing on such a closed system once I get my 360 back.

I told you that I've got to get my XBOX 360 Elite repaired.  Microsoft sent me an empty box for me to ship my console to them.  However

THEY FORGOT TO INCLUDE THE SHIPPING LABEL.

So, guess what?  I had to hop back on the telephone and call XBOX support.  They made me go through the complete troubleshooting process for my console.

All I needed was a shipping label.

Fortunately, they gave me the option of printing the shipping label out on my home computer and printer.  That saved some time.

I've been using Twitter.com lately. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/ericatkins.

Three XBOX 360's have failed me since the launch of the console.  My XBOX 360's disc drive just went out on me.  It stopped reading my discs.  Microsoft is sending a replacement in no longer than 3 weeks.

And it works like it should.  Just in time for a New Year's party in which Rockband was the star of the show.

Initially, I had Rockband stuffed in one of our bedrooms.  First 2 people were playing it.  15-minutes later, 4 people were playing.  15-minutes later, there were 12 people stuffed into a 12x12 bedroom singing and cheering to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive". 

After the Auburn game, I put Rockband out in the living room so that more people could observe.  Rockband was an amazing party game...

as was Scene It! Lights Camera Action:

Dang it. Besides Rockband deciding when IT wants to connect to XBOX Live or not, my guitar's up-strum is broken.  This is actually a known problem with that input device.

The good news is that EA (the company) is sending me a replacement and empty box in the mail.  I pay nothing.  The process was very easy.

3 days ago I hoped online to visit EA's support site.  In a few minutes they had already given me a UPS shipping number.  All I have to do is wait for the new guitar to come and place my old guitar in the box.  No cost to me.

My wife gave me the Special Edition of Rock Band for Christmas.  It's been a ton of fun for games and non-gamers.  I think this game will appeal to a diverse group of people.

Problems with the game:

I just made my way through the Games for Windows version of Gears of War.  The Brumak battle was fun and I wished it was in the regular XBOX 360.  However, the new chapters added very little to the GoW storyline. 

I took over 200 screenshots while I was playing the game.  I uploaded them to my Flickr Pro account.  The shots are at 1680x1050 resolution at max settings in DirectX 10.  My video card is an XFX 8800 GTX 768MB.  I used my custom designed Alienware Aurora ALX to frag the Locust:

Tags: gearsof war, alienware, aurora, games for windows, games for windows - live