XBox Live - bored to tears.

[dataDave]

Capcom vs. SNK 2

It might not be the best 2D fighter, but it's better than anything else I'd ever play on the Xbox.

3rd Strike online would make me buy an Xbox tomorrow.

[srgbilco]

This is one thing i dont understand about Xbox Live. Correct me if i'm wrong, but currently aren't all the games peer to peer? If that's the case then why is there a yearly fee for Live? The only hardware and bandwidth we need have already been paid for. Is it just a glorified admin fee?

I've always wondered about this. I don't have Live! but I always hear reports of only player-hosted servers availible, rather than the dedicated servers MS promised. Isn't this false advertising or something? I'm surprised nobody's made a ruckus about this anywhere yet.

[Roost]

The only servers about are the centralised Xbox Live servers so you can see your friends etc.

[KingMike]

Get Midtown Madness 3 for Live! and your sorted.

hmmm I thought that too. It's too similar to the predecessors imo, and the fact that sometimes it's damn near impossible to get a good game on it (why the hell can't u filter out french/german etc games?) means you can waste a good hour jus tryin to find a game.

Your damn right. Its incredibly annoying when you cant get in to a game. I spent ages and then admitted defeat and turned the game off in a fit of rage.

They do definitely need to sort ouf a filter and the soundtrack glitch but its still a great game. I probably enjoy it more having not played any of the older Midtown Madness versions.

Enjoy Xbox Live! because really you owe it to your wallet.

[Roost]

Theres a way sort out the soundtrack glitch by just putting a small music track at the top of your playlist. As it plays that first everytime a few secs of nothing then randomizes through the rest of the soundtrack i think

[Burai]

Enjoy Xbox Live! because really you owe it to your wallet.

What's the point in forcing yourself to enjoy something, just because you've spent money on it? What's **** is ****, even if it cost you ?40.

I've gone right off Live and can't see much to get me to return. I need something more compelling than the offline games I'm playing to actually get me online again.

[Baroque]

Look, we've covered all this before on the run up to the current crop of consoles.

Online gaming was this flim-flam show cooked up by designers who didn't have any new ideas, and adding a HD and ethernet port to consoles hasn't been the gaming renaissance some people hyped it to be.

This crop of consoles, to me at least, has always been evolutionary, if things follow the same roadmap as they have, the next crop of consoles should be revolutionary.

I'm talking a jump the size of the transition from SNES & Genesis, to the Playstation, Saturn & N64. That kick you got when you saw decent 3D on a console for the first time.

As for online, it was, is and for the short term at least, will remain to be a hard sell to the casual gamers out there. I'd be shocked if we ever got to see a solid set of numbers, but I'd imagine the number of users who re-subscribe to XBox Live after their year is up, will probably going to be sharply down from the amount of people who signed up when the service began.

It was pitched as a unified service with a fixed one time payment, PSO pretty much blew that out of the water, and with EA and all the other big third parties going the way Yamauchi said they would (Building their own infrastructure), Microsoft will had better hope that HALO 2 multiplayer is a god send or we'll watch the XBox Live die a very slow death.

Now you know why they are frantically working at stuffing MSN services into XBox Live, it's a drowning man looking for a life jacket...any lifejacket, even if it has nothing to do with gaming.

[angel]

msn on a d-pad. grrreat.

[ezg]

...All i want is an online car racer PGR2 wont be out for ages and even so they said there'll only be something crap like 4 cars per race. Wooooo. I can play Live For Speed now, for free and that supports an entire grid full of racers, with customisable cars and you can even make your own paint jobs...

I think you'll find Bizarre Creations have never said there would be four cars per race.

They have stated that there will definitely be eight players per race in PGR2 and that there live menu system is on a par, if not better than Moto GP2's.

[Kerraig UK]

Baroque what are you talking about? I take it you don't actually own xbox live cos your experience is waaaay different to mine. I haven't got to bed before 3am in the last 5 nights because i've been too addicted to MM3 and wolfenstein. Every other game I have has been put on hold because of the addictive grasp of online. I have had no difficulty finding good games of Wolfie. As soon as I find a solid/good server I just addthem to my friends list. I'm now pretty much guaranteed a good game every time I go online now.

I find it totally revolutionary to be honest. 16 player team games with voice support on a console. In dolby digital 5.1, on a 36" tv. Certainly not the experience I had with any of the last generation of consoles.

[Welrain]

I got very bored of RtCW after awhile as people seemed to forget about team play as people learnt more about the game and maps..the first few months were superb though.

Midtown Madness is fanastic, had a nearly full game with peeps from my friend list and it was very very good (and I kicked ass!)..a quick 30 mins go lasted for 2hrs 30 mins instead.

As for the trouble finding games...you need to build up your friends list, its the best way. When i play with foreign types I do just tend to unplug the headset and just play.

I've been well please with live so far.

[charlesr]

Anyone got any idea what the renewal fee will be after a year? Or is it a one off payment? If there is a renewal fee, then surely it can't be more than a live kit, otherwise, people would just buy another one. Sorry if I am showing my ignorance. Please educate!

[Lebowski]

i cant belive how rubbish wolfenstein is, i got it free with my xbox live kit and it lags, it crashes it dosent even play that brilliantley online, all things that were pointed out in its reviews. and before i get any come back unless you have a 1meg connection or above you dont even want to try playing it with more than 8 players,

i was quite impressed with the headset though voice seems clear but that is all i can say for this, i think its a bloody rip off that were paying 40 quid a year for nothing but the privlage, as they are not hosting dedicated servers for the games, now all ineed is a game to play on it.

the silver lineing is i got ?27 for wolfenstein in game station. as no one has been tradeing this in an got an eyetoy which is fantastic

currentley playing socom and hardware on the ps2 with the OAP clan, and both games are really fun with a good mix of people, i think this is the problem with online games in that they are only as good as the people you play with.

[Kirby]

It's hardly revolutionary though is it? I was playing Midtown Madness online like 5 years ago. Same goes for 99% of the FPS's and Mech Assault games.

I'm really not knocking Xbox Live, i think it's a great idea and is a good step forward to bringing online to the mainstream.

I just wish they'd give us more than stale old PC games, I have err a PC for them. I'm not paying ?45 and a yearly fee to play a game that i could get on the PC for ?25 and play online for absolutely nothing.

[Kerraig UK]

I played a 16 player game for 3 hours last night without a hint of lag and no crashes. In fact wolfie hasn't crashed at all for me.

I think it's a fantastic game on live.