Category Archives: X-Box (Microsoft)

Computers, X-Box (Microsoft)

Updated “Best Handheld Ever”

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A few posts back (but over a year ago) I wrote about the best handheld PC I’ve ever had. Here’s the link to that post. Well, now there’s a new one. This one looks almost exactly the same as the white one in that photo, but it’s black. It’s the ROG Ally X, and it’s the next iteration in the ROG Ally series. It’s not the most recent, but only one generation older than the latest version, which is called the ROG XBox Ally and the ROG XBox Ally X.

They changed the case just a little and modified the back buttons based on user suggestions and all the minor changes are nice. This model is a little thicker than the ROG Ally, not not too thick as to make it more difficult to hold while playing.

One nice advantage to the thicker case is that the SSD is now a standard size and it also has room for an SSD heatsink – this means it can handle ANY standard SSD. So everyone’s touting the 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB SSD cards as great upgrades. I took it to the extreme though and bought the max – 8TB. Yes, it was a bit pricey, but for me it’s my dream machine now. It holds close to 200 of my favorite games and my entire retro collection – THOUSANDS of retro console and arcade games!

With a nice 1080p 7″ display, this is everything I could want in a handheld. Every game I’ve ever played in my gaming PC I can now play in my hands, anywhere. The battery is even better than the ROG Ally, and it’s more optimized, and since the X-Box version has recently released, the built-in control software, Armoury Crate & Command Center, has recently been enhanced quite a bit with new features and functions, aligning it more with X-Box. The X-Box features don’t interest me much overall, as I’m not a subscriber, but I like and own a lot of the X-Box games, so the more the better.

I’m not sure I ever posted anything about this, but a couple years ago I sold my huge collection of games, consoles, and accessories. I had a few Playstions (3 and 4), a few X-Box versions, and even a Wii and Wii-U, as well as many accessories and physical games for them. They all sold pretty quickly and I freed up a lot of space in my mancave. This makes the retro collections, and the ability to play my games anywhere I want even that much more valuable to me.

I had to keep my Nintendo Switch, as the Nintendo games (like Mario, Kirby, etc.) aren’t available for PC like most other games are – they’re locked to Nintendo (except their older emulated games) and I still wanted access to them. Pretty much everything else I enjoy to play is available in a PC version. So now I’m down to two platforms – PC and Nintendo – and most games are digital as well, so I’m saving a lot of space at home.

Anyway, that’s my update. If you have any comments or questions, I’m checking my site much more often now, so feel free to post a message. I believe my site will also e-mail me whenever anyone posts a comment, I’ll be notified fairly quickly.

Thanks for visiting!

Entertainment, X-Box (Microsoft)

Gaming Geezers

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My view of “The Toads”, as we refer to them in Ingress, has changed a bit over the years. I’ve been playing Ingress for over 5 years now, as a Resistance player (blue team). We fight “The Toads” (the green team – The “Enlightened”) day after day to dominate our individual areas, and ultimately, the Ingress world. Ingress is a virtual world that exists as an overlay on top of our real world. Using GPS, it’s a global “capture the flag” game, as both teams work to cover the earth in their color–blue or green.

I used to hate seeing green and would often strive to remove all green portals and fields I could find, then turn that same area blue for our team. I still do that, but these days I no longer “hate” seeing green. It now seems more like an invitation, a “proof of life” if you will, that there’s still a load “toad” out there, eager to fight for their team. Nowadays I actually get a little thrill when I see a cluster of local green portals (a “farm”), as it gives me a purpose during my daily walks. When I find one of these areas, I will often scout the area and try to determine the best possible walking route to combine a decent walk (1 mile minimum is usually my goal) with the most efficient route to destroy and rebuild all of the portals for our team.

This, along with the fact that our team has dominated the Kenosha, WI area for quite some time now, has made me realize that, like other multiplayer games, Ingress isn’t much fun without a good balance. Though the goal is to dominate, it is very difficult to maintain your area for any length of time. At least in Ingress it is. It requires constant attention to your portals–almost daily–to avoid having them decay to the point of their resonators dropping off of them and their fields and links dropping. This is where teamwork becomes very important. I have tried, many times, to maintain as much of the Kenosha area as possible over the past 5 years, but I have always ended up frustrated in the end, seeing portal after portal and field after field drop and go neutral.

This has taught me, in the end, that once you dominate a large area, it’s much easier to just let things fall, then rebuild them fresh again, instead of trying to keep everything charged yourself. If none of your teammates is willing to commit to the same area and help maintain it, it is way too much work (and too frustrating) for one player to maintain on his or her own. This can (and has) even lead to many players quitting the game. Everyone has to work out a playing strategy that works for them–one that keeps the game light and fun. After 5 years, I think I’ve found my preferred playing techniques and favorite areas I like to play in the most.

You’ll find my areas sometimes netral, other times fully blue and fielded. It depends a lot of my schedule and free time, and a little on the price of gas. I try to play while walking as much as possible (doctor’s–and Niantic’s–orders). It motivates me to walk more, giving me something to do along the way, and I often find that I walk further than I originally planned to…which is a good thing! I have lost a bit of weight Ingressing over the past 5 years, and the benefit of that, alone, outweighs (pardon the pun) any of the in-game benefits, and the toads certainly can’t take THAT away from me!

I had originally intended this article to be more about multiplayer games in general though, and how these types of game just don’t work unless they have their primary ingredient: Players. One example I enjoy is Joust. This is a classic arcade game from the 80’s, and was a key game from the novel “Ready Player One” (but wasn’t in the movie at all). These days I like to play this game on my X-Box One. This game has awesome multiplayer capability too. I often try to start an online game and seek a random opponent, but the game usually times out before finding one. Sometimes though, I have success and I’m able to play against another human, and it’s a blast! I wish more classic arcade games offered this option, but since most players opt for the newer generation of MMO games, there doesn’t seem to be many that still hang out in the old classic games like I do. I think it would be pretty amusing to visit my fellow “old geezer” players in a virtual arcade of some kind… I have a feeling there would be very few kids in there, if any. A lot of us “old folks” can’t handle all the bells and whistles of today’s MMORPGs and “first person shooters” like the young whipper-snappers of today…lol… but we sure like to try! I dabble in them all, but I’m usually overwhelmed with all of the options. It’s great to have a controller with 20+ buttons on it, but how to do remember what they all do?! Not to mention the fact that those 20+ functions only apply to ONE GAME… There are hundreds more, all with different controller options and control schemes! What’s an old fart to do?!

But I digress. Anyway, in the end, every successful game needs some kind of balance. Whether it’s two or more teams battling for control of the same game board or an MMO game where it’s every man for himself and you can team up with others at your own discretion. If the elements of the game are interesting and attractive enough, the game can be hugely popular, like Ingress and Pokemon Go, and will even end up attracting their own unique demographic.

Where am I going with this? I have no clue. I just had to get it out there though. That’s all.

X-Box (Microsoft)

X-Box One S 2TB Special Edition For Sale

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I am selling an awesome X-Box One S – 2TB Gears of War Special Edition with an extra matching controller for $200.  This system is currently selling on Amazon for $300 and up, used (and that’s even without the extra controller).  It has only been lightly used and is in excellent condition.  If you’re interested, be the first to e-mail forsale@jimtrottier.com.  If you’re not in the Kenosha, WI area and it has to be shipped, you’ll also need to cover the cost of shipping & insurance.

News, Playstation (Sony), X-Box (Microsoft)

Update on my Lego Worlds addiction

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I certainly haven’t stopped playing Lego Worlds.  In fact, it has gotten a bit out of hand.  I now have it on 4 platforms: X-Box One, PS4, Switch and Steam.  Crazy, right?  I only mention it now because I just completed another milestone.  I just made it to 100 gold bricks on the PC version.  Here’s my stats for each system:

Switch – 985 items, 106 gold bricks
X-Box – 1175 items, 115 gold bricks
PS4 – 1194 items, 127 gold bricks
PC – 830 items, 100 gold bricks

With that goal completed, my next goal is a bit more challenging and probably only requires a bit of time:  Acquire all building block types on each platform.  On PS4 I’m actually at 100% already.  I’m not sure how, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t coincidence.  The game seems to just “give” you another piece you need when you either tackle the troublemaker in any world or open a chest.  This is completely random though, and most of the time you’ll get other items, including gold bricks, tools, or actual brick builds.  It just seems to be very random, so it only takes time to eventually get there.  It should be interesting to see how long it takes.  I’ll keep noting my progress here once in awhile.  Not that anyone’s actually interested though.

 

 

 

 

 

Entertainment, X-Box (Microsoft)

X-Box 360 Upgraded

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My X-Box 360 is now upgraded.  I was shocked at the simplicity.  Not even any tools needed!  The hard drive on the X-Box 360 is actually attached to the left side of the console (at least on MY model it is–I think there have been one or two new versions released since mine though).  You just push in a button there while pulling on the drive and it disconnects and pops off.  No wires, no muss, no fuss.  Connect the new drive the exact opposite and you’re half done!  The transfer cable then attaches to the old drive, which I just disconnected, and provides a USB connection that plugs into the back of the X-Box.

After attaching the new drive and connecting the old one via USB, I powered up the X-Box and looked around. My profiles were still there, but obviously no content.  Without the “transfer disc” that I had seen on the Interwebs, I was a little concerned about the process.  So I went to Settings >> Storage, and there I found the options I was looking for.  The drive showed that it was Internal and empty, and the options on it included “Transfer data”.  I chose the “transfer data TO this drive” option, and was then able to select a source device, which was the external drive, then I was given the list of item types on the source drive (Profiles, Demos, Games, Videos, etc.) and asked which ones I wanted to transfer.  I chose everything, then deselected Demos and started the process.

With a 120GB drive, it took about an hour to reach 100%.  Once it finished, I powered off (but wasn’t prompted to), disconnected the old drive connected to the rear USB jack, and then powered up the X-Box.  Ah, quietness!  The system is much quieter now, though still a little noisier than I thought.  I think the DVD drive mechanism is just loud when it checks for a disc.  It still works fine though, so I’m not concerned.  The system came up fine and all games and content looks great, installed, and I still have over 390GB free–lots of breathing room with everything I currently own for the console already installed.  I just wonder if ALL of Microsoft’s consoles are this easily upgradeable, or if I just got lucky with this one.

News, Playstation (Sony), X-Box (Microsoft)

I’m not old, I’m “classic”

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xbox-360-elite-wcontrollerWe recently dug out our old X-Box 360.  We hadn’t used it in a few years, though it was still hooked up to a TV.  Again, like our PS3, the hard drive had gotten full, so things started getting difficult, and it ended up just going unused as we moved on to other things.  I considered selling the console, and even went as far as to gather up all of the info about it, including the 26 games for it that we have on discs, and I posted it on our Slack Team’s site.

But after a day with no response–during which time Kevin discovered about 11 or 12 more games on discs that I had missed–I also found that I have about 70 more games that I purchased as digital downloads from X-Box Live that were on the hard drive!  I should have considered this before posting the ad I guess.

So I took the X-Box 360 and moved it out to the living room and set it up again so I could thoroughly go through the system and catalog its entire contents.  After doing this, and actually finding many “lost treasures” in the form of classic games from my youth, I decided to promptly pull the ad and keep the X-Box 360.  The 70+ digital games alone would be quite a chunk of cash (at least for me) to throw away, let alone the 30+ disc-based games that we had purchased.

I loaded up a few of my classic favorites yesterday, just to try them out, and quickly found myself enjoying them all over again, not wanting to close them until finishing “just one more level.”  The hard drive did start sounding pretty loud after the system was on awhile though.  It’s the system’s original 120GB hard drive.  It’s pretty maxed out with everything I purchased back in the day, leaving 2.2GB of free space on it… barely enough to hold another decent game.   And of course, you know me… I immediately jumped on the interwebs and found a replacement internal hard drive.  The largest internal drive I could find, that matched the older X-Box 360 model I have, was 500GB for $40.  So I grabbed it.  In a few days I should be able to upgrade and then have plenty of breathing room to work with on my “refurbished” X-Box 360.

Just like with the PS3, I justify it by stressing how cheap the games, parts and accessories are for these old systems… And they play all the good old classic games I love.  I hope the 360, as well as the PS3, last for many more years.  I’ll probably try to keep my youth alive as long as possible!  Let the old-times roll!

Entertainment, Playstation (Sony), Technology, X-Box (Microsoft)

The big 5-0, Ingress again, X-Box, and Spam

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OMG! I turn 50 this weekend! The horror!! I just wish it was past already. My wife’s got something planned and she keeps insisting it’s nothing big, just a small get-together at the house… I sure hope that’s accurate. I hate all the “Over The Hill” gifts and parties I’ve seen others have over the years. It’s just another day, take it easy.

I’ve been obsessed with Ingress lately (see my previous post if you don’t know what Ingress is). I finally made L8 – the highest level in the game, and it only took 4 months! Now I am changing my focus from leveling up to helping other teammates level up–primarily Kevin, Tyler, Matt, and Eric. Having a nice group of L8’s in our area will give the Resistance some serious power in the game. It’s fun, very addicting, and I’ve met a lot of nice people who play the game.

Microsoft introduced their new X-Box recently–The X-Box One.  Really? One?  This is Three, right?  I don’t know about you, but when I refer to the ORIGINAL X-Box, I call it the X-Box One.  Hello confusion.  Are we going to get one? Probably.  Just like the PS4.  Eventually.  Everything changes.  Gotta keep up.

Finally, I managed to find a excellent plugin for my website that totally eliminates the spam I’ve been getting! This is exciting for me, because it was such a pain to keep cleaning up hundreds (sometimes thousands!) of spam messages each month. Now I can focus on other things more… like hacking portals, or posting a little more often…

X-Box (Microsoft)

X-Box 360 First Impressions

The 360 has been out for quite some time, but I’ve been in “PS3 Land” for the past few years, and I’ve totally avoided anything X-Box up until last month, so this is my look at how it is, from someone who now has both the PS3 and the X-Box 360. There are some very interesting similarities and differences, that’s for sure, and I’ll get to those soon enough. Kevin had been wanting the “Viva Pinata” games and a few other “X-Box exclusive” games for a while now, dropping hints here and there. I mostly tried to ignore them in the past, but in my spare time I’d look closer at them once in awhile, read some X-Box reviews and comparisons to the PS3, nothing too serious, just guaging the competition. So as his birthday approached (and tax refund time came) this year, I focused more of my time on the 360 and its pluses and minuses, and eventually–just before Kevin’s birthday–decided to go ahead and get one. We made it a birthday present, though it’s far beyond the budget we usually have for his birthday gifts. We explained to him afterward that it’s more of a gift for the entire family, and he understood. We also got him the Viva Pinata games though, and those are “just for him”. He’s enjoying them a great deal. But those, as it turns out, are only a small part of the big picture. The selection of online X-Box Live “Arcade” games is pretty big, as it turns out. I would say it’s about equal to PS3’s selection though. Both the PS3 and X-Box 360 have online services of course, and one of the “minuses” I have found with the 360 is that there is a monthly fee for the “X-Box Live Gold Membership”, while the PS3’s network is completely free. It’s not much, and it’s cheapest if you pay for it annually, but it’ll add up, that’s for sure. There is a free “Silver” membership option, but you lose a lot of the best features of the service that way. Another “minus” is in the structure of the X-Box Live account–only one user can be online at any given time on a single account, even though you can have multiple “profiles” on that account. So you you want to play a 2-player split-screen game locally (in the same household) forget about it, unless you have two separate X-Box Live Gold accounts! So this mean that in order for Kevin and I to play against each other and have the system keep our “Gamerscores” and achievement stats separate, we both have to have our own completely separate accounts–which costs me double annually. I’m hoping Microsoft comes to their senses on this eventually, but I doubt it. For now, Kevin and i have our two separate accounts, and we’re enjoying the heck out of them. The PS3 and the 360 also both have trophy systems–The PS3 calls them “Trophies” and the 360 calls the “Achievements”, but they’re pretty much the same thing. You earn a trophy in a game when you either perform a very difficult or interesting task in a game, or if you complete a specific mission or level in a game. each game designer determines the number of trophies or achievements their games have and what is required by the player to earn them. Sony then lets you compare your trophy collection with all of your friends. Microsoft, however, has taken this much further and developed a cool way of collecting all of your achievement points into a “Gamerscore”. You can not only compare your achievements with your friends, but you have a total “Gamerscore” that represents your overall achievement total. You can see just how adept your friends are at a particular game by checking out thier total gamerscore on a game, or see just how active they are overall by looking at their full score (and drooling). On the minus side for the 360, however, is the way they handle the monetary system on X-Box Live. On the PS3 network everything is in dollars. You can see that an add-on is $2.99, or a partular full game is $19.99. But on X-Box Live you have to deal in “points” that don’t really match up with any solid equivalent. You can buy them in “packs”, for example, 1600 X-box Live points for $20.00, $25 buys you 2000 points, etc. Basically the exchange rate is always “100 points = $1.25 US. This is supposedly very consistent, though the exchange rate for other countries for the same number of points varies quite a bit. Anyway, it makes it a little more confusing trying to determine how much you’re actually paying when you purchase something, while the PS3 makes it much simpler. As for gameplay itself, I’m not find much difference in quality of gameplay between the two systems. They both seem to be up to the task of playing today’s games quite well, though the X-Box network is rumored to be much better-optimized that the PS3 Network. I haven’t had enough personal experience with that yet to be certain myself though. This weekend, with Tyler (Jayson’s son) visiting, we’ve been giving the 360 a workout, and Tyler’s really enjoying Left4Dead a lot. It has a great local two-player split-screen mode, but he’s also been playing online already, and is the first one to try out the headset that we got with the system, talking to the other players in an online battle against (and with) other zombies and human players. He says it works really well. This coming from an 11-year-old who–up until Kevin’s birthay–said he hated the X-Box 360. So all in all we’re pretty happy with it. It’s a slightly different world than the PS3, so there’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s really fun! Our Gamertags are: JimNKev (mine) and KevNJim (Kevin’s). Tyler’s gamertag is TylerNTrottier