My early Christmas present

Yet again, I apologise for the complete radio silence on this blog over the last month.  I'm not sure why I haven't posted as there have been several important events that have occurred over the last month which I have been quite interested in such as the new Cure album, The Cure playing the O2, the U.S. presidential election and the wonderful Dead Set.

One other thing to happen to me this month is my (almost) free acquisition of an XBox 360. I have a friend who earns a fair amount of money. He is also quite impatient. His second XBox 360 started showing the infamous red ring of death and was therefore useless. I assured him that he could get it repaired and that I would even sort it all out for him and send it off myself. He didn't want to wait that long and the next weekend he went out and bought himself a brand new premium model. He then donated the broken console to me to send off to be repaired.

I bought some packing paper and bubble wrap (this is the almost part of the previous paragraph - cost = £6.00) and sent it off to the Microsoft repair centre in Frankfurt. It has only been a week and I have already been told via Microsoft's support site that they have sent out my new XBox. I should have it arrive some time next week.

Now the last time I wrote a post about video games was back in April. I was annoyed at not being able to play Grand Theft Auto IV and I mentioned I was very much a PlayStation fan. It's not due to any mindless fanboyism, it's just because I have had Playstations since 1998 and most of my favourite franchises are Sony exclusives (WipeOut, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid). I do not, however, have a spare £299 + games to spare on buying a PlayStation 3 so a free XBox will make a pretty good stand in since other than the franchises I have mentioned, most games are cross platform or indeed Microsoft exclusives. 

I am still faced with the problem of disliking the controller and of course having to quickly translate A, B, X and Y into X, Triangle, Circle and Square. I'm sure after playing GTA for a few hours I will have worked it out but I still doubt I will ever love a controller more than the Dual Shock.

Another problem I am facing is the fact that I'm not a huge fan of first person shooters. OK, this may sound strange coming from someone that often cites Half Life 2 as one of his favourite games but that's different... that's Half Life 2. I am looking forward to Bioshock and maybe one of the new Call of Dutys but I couldn't care less about Halo 3 or 90% of the other FPSs that clutter up the XBox game catalogue. I am also not fussed about XBox live. I don't particularly want to pay £30 a year to be called a 'gay' or a 'pussy' by a fifteen year old American kid because I don't play the game 19 hours a day. Online gaming is really something that has passed me by.

So there we are. I am a PlayStation fan forced to go over to the dark side. When I bought my iMac back in April 2007 I thought I was rid of Microsoft but they have a funny way of getting themselves back into your life. Lets just hope that they've sorted out their god awful quality control and my shiny new box won't die a horrible death lit by three red lights in a few months time.

I shall report back once I've had a few days of play with it and I can say for sure whether I feel cheap and dirty from cheating on Lady Playstation with her most bitter of rivals or whether I will be starting divorce proceedings.