December 21, 2010

A Simple Cure for the Open Tray Glitch on the XBOX 360

SO you have an XBOX 360 and it has the dreaded little brother or the red ring of the death, the open tray glitch. The open tray glitch prevents you from playing games on discs because it cannot read the disc because the laser is at the end of the disc drive and wont go back to the front. THe solution however is simple and there is two ways you can do it.

Option 1
If you don't have a warranty or have modded your 360 then open it up and manually push your laser to the front of the disc drive. Nothing fancy just move it up with your fingers.

Option 2
For those of us who are either lazy or don't want to invalidate our warrantyt then do this technique.
1) Pick up the XBOX 360 that is lying in the horizontal position.
2) Tilt it 45 to 90 degrees.
3) Place the XBOX 360 on your lap and smack it against your lap like you are putting the head of an axe back on the handle.
4) Plug it back in and play your game.

Remember to make sure there is no disc inside your XBOX before doing either of these techniques. I also am not responsible if you manage to screw up your XBOX doign either of these techniques. The second option worked for me twice and i highly reccomend it to anyone who still has a warranty but deoesn't want to send their XBOX to Microsoft.

December 19, 2010

Do you like Metal? How about Metal about Video Games?

Well do you? in case you do, which you should, then listen to a little band from Sweden called Machinae Supremacy. They are SID Metal, a sub genre that uses an SIDstation synthesizer that just happens to utilize the SID chip from the old Commodore 64. Their newest album, A View From the End of the World was released on November 3rd this year and to put it simply, is fucking awesome. So go to Youtube, listen to their songs and buy their albums you wont be let down, because any band who has song names like Rocket Dragon, Crouching Camper Hidden Sniper, and Indiscriminate Murder is Counterproductive has to be awesome.

December 7, 2010

An End to the Dark Ages, A Renaissance Begins

An important note before I write this article. I am a hypocrite who does not keep his word and actively supports Blizz-Activision despite feeling very horrified by doing so.

So about a month ago I came back to WoW after my 15 month hiatus. I levelled my rogue to 80 (my 3rd 80) and started to level up a shaman. WoW has been in a dark age for the past 2 years, Blizzard has made some bad decisions that has hurt the growth of the playerbase. In fact the amount of subscribers only increased by 500 000 during Wrath of the Lich King, compared to the millions of new players that joined during the Burning Crusade, WoW's first expansion that's nothing. Mnay people unsubscribed their accounts during this time in fact I know many people in real life who quit because of WotLK. Today howerver the renaissance can begin. Cataclysm has came out and if it stays liek the beta then we shouldn't have to worry about the appeasment of the vocal minority.

During WotLK Blizzard made some poor decisions, Naxxramas 2.0 for example, the only raid dungeon for over 6 months with trivial content and was cleared immediately. The badge system because nothing says that you earned your shiny epics better then doing the short, easy, boring heroic dungeons. Let us also forget Blizz's lovely policy of bring the player, not the class. THanks to this adage Blizz was able top design encounters by only focusing on ranged DPS, mellee DPS, tanking and healing, instead of the 30 individual specializations of players.

But let us not forget the good things, yes there were good things that came to WoW from WotLK. The quests were phenominal, I had never quite enjoyed leveling until I played WotLK. Phasing is a brilliant new idea that came into WoW and has caused the world to feel a bit more dynamic due to player interaction via quests. FInally there was Ulduar. Considered to be the best raid of all time Ulduar managed to create a challenging but doable raid for the general public along with non-binary hardmodes that challenged the most elite players.

WotLK was a mixed bag, full of win and fail but Blizzard has admitted to the mistakes they made in Wrath and have been willing to change the game for the better. Now Blizzard has one final challenge with Cataclysm, whether or not they will bow down to the cries of the vocal entitled casual minority or stand true to their word.