The Hotdog Laserhouse

May 14

So after more than a year of promising it was coming down the pipe, there’s finally a Twitch.tv app for the Xbox 360. And it’s… functional but not great. Rather than build out the entire Twitch.tv experience in to an app, they kind of boiled the site down to its absolute bare basics and only surface featured or popular content.

What this basically means is that there’s no way to chat (even though you can have a USB keyboard hooked up to your Xbox, which I do), and not even any way to see chat - in particular, watching PJ practice for the Super GnG World Record was sort of weird because he answers questions from the chat while he plays so you’re kind of missing half the conversation in that regard.

There’s absolutely no way to access a channel page. It’s live feeds or nothin’, so don’t expect to go in to this to browse and watch stream archives - which is actually pretty annoying, because I personally was kind of hoping for that feature. I have this weird setup where I download Youtube videos and throw them up on my media server, where I access them via the Xbox and watch them there (in part because the Youtube Xbox 360 app is a crash-prone, laggy piece of garbage). There used to be a way to download Twitch archives for me to also put them on my media server, but due to “piracy issues” that’s no longer available, and this app does nothing to help alleviate the issue.

Video quality could be better. Presumably the reason they only surface featured and popular content is because of the quality selector - Twitch only provides stream quality selectors to channels that they deem worthy enough to need one. While the quality selector on the PC generally lets you pick from 4 or 5 different options, here you’re only provided with “High” (720p) and “Low” (240p), and as you can tell in my screenshots, even in Standard Definition, “Low” is pretty blurry. Having a middle quality (480p) would be nice.

The app also does the same thing all Xbox video apps do where on my display the text looks super aliased and gross. It doesn’t show up on the above images because those are S-video screencaps from my capture card, but when viewing it through my other monitor in HD it looks like garbage. Here’s an example image I put together when the Youtube app came out last year. I don’t know if it’s a scaling issue or what, but it doesn’t happen on the Xbox dashboard, and it doesn’t happen in any games. It’s just these video apps. And it’s worse than ever in the Twitch app.

But yeah… it’s… alright, I guess. I dunno. I’ve never been one for EVO or anything because I don’t like having to constantly pay attention to a specific web browser tab, so maybe this’ll make me watch more of that kind of stuff? We’ll see. Depends on how blurry things look at “Low” quality, because I certainly don’t have the bandwidth to stream 720p.

Posted 4 days ago

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1 note

Twitch, Streams, Xbox 360, App, Twitch.tv,

Apr 23

ARE YOU GONNA OTHER YOURSELF SOME MOTHERFUCKING PIZZAS ON SOME MOTHERFUCKING XBOX LIVE?

Anonymous

Let me answer this joke question in a completely serious manner:

Probably not, because despite the fact that I am what you would consider to be “husky” in the weight department, I do not often indulge in the realm of McDonalds or Pizza Hut or anything of the sort.

Why spend $8-$10 on a Pizza Hut pizza when I can just go get a Tombstone or whatever from the supermarket for like $4? Arguably Pizza Hut’s are larger pies, but then I have to ask myself: do I really need a larger pizza? No, probably not.

Also: I have never actually been one for Pizza Hut pizza. That’s not to say I will not eat and enjoy it - I have consumed plenty of Pizza Hut in my day - but their sauce is kind of tart. My fondest memories of ordering pizza are Papa Johns at my Grandmas when I was in high school. Now that was a pizza. Unfortunately Papa Johns kind of cleared out of my town long ago - jibberjabber “on the streets” was that they hired a bunch of extreme pot heads and they were doing something gross to the pizzas, so the health department actually shut them down (thankfully, the ones my Grandma always ordered did not come from here). No other Papa Johns location opened up to replace them, so the only place to go get that now is like 15-20 miles in to another town.

It has been so long since I’ve had a Papa Johns that I am not even entirely sure it tastes the same anymore. I am pretty sure they’ve had ads talking about how they “improved their formula” since the halcyon days of my youth. Oh well.

Posted 3 weeks ago

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pizza hut, papa johns, xbox 360, app, /pizza, pizza,

Apr 7

How do you feel about Sonic Unwiished?

aero-dude

You are poking a hornet’s nest with this one.

Well, kind of.

Posted 1 month ago

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4 notes

questions, sonic unleashed, xbox 360, playstation 3, ign, gamespot, wii, sonic unwiished, hub worlds, sun medals, moon medals,

Apr 6

Oh hey, somebody on Xbox Live Indie Games made a Pokemon clone. With… well, I don’t want to be too harsh on the art, because it’s really not abysmal, it just looks like a Newgrounds Flash game from 2004.

I am curious how this got through the approval process, though - those overworld sprites look suspiciously like they were lifted from somewhere else given they are several orders of magnitude better than the rest of the art. I mean, compare the screenshot where he’s walking around near some tall grass - the characters and the rocks look great, but then you have this ugly green splotch probably meant to represent a tree

I refuse to believe somebody who could make those overworld sprites wouldn’t know how to draw a tree.

Also: that border what is wrong with you.

Posted 1 month ago

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1 note

Xbox Live Indies, Indiemon, Pokemon, Nintendo, Xbox 360, sprite rips, Newgrounds, Flash Game,

Mar 4

Oh man you guys look out, Xbox.com is having CRAaAaAaAZY 24 hour sales where they discount stuff on their “Games on Demand” service to crazy low prices

Such as offering the vanilla version of Mortal Kombat 9 for the incredible price of $20. When you add in all of the DLC, you’re only spending $45 to get everything.

Or you could go over to Amazon and buy the “Komplete Edition”, which comes with all of the DLC built-in, for $16. Or you could get the same version for $20 at Gamestop. Or if you were feeling REALLY masochistic, you could buy Komplete Edition from Wal-mart for $30.

Welcome to Xbox Games on Demand, where you’re expected to pay $30 for basic versions of six year old games and even when they “discount” something, it’s still more expensive than what the stores are charging.

Posted 2 months ago

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3 notes

Mortal Kombat, Xbox Live, Xbox 360, Games on Demand, Spoiled by Steam, Microsoft,

Feb 23

So I don’t know if this is just localized to the Burning Rangers track or what (it’s been the source of a lot of bugs across all versions of All-Stars Racing Transformed), but here’s a cool/weird bug I encountered.

This was the Burning Depths race event in World Tour mode and I restarted the race in the middle of doing a trick while transforming, which restarts me in boat form. But I can still drive like I was a car! Weird!

Posted 2 months ago

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1 note

sonic the hedgehog, sega, all-stars, racing, transformed, bug, glitch, xbox 360,

Feb 13

Not really thinking, I put the game on Easy mode, because I have long-standing childhood trauma from the many Capcom and Konami games I played back on the SNES. In return, I was given a game that bored me to tears: Anarchy Reigns is a fully-3D evolution of the brawler, with similar roots in classic games like Final Fight or Streets of Rage, overlaid with Platinum Games’ typical over-the-top Japanese-style insanity. You punch your way through literally endless waves of cannon fodder until you get where you’re going – in this case, the game’s next mission marker. The combat system is incredibly simplistic, but not entirely devoid of depth – by varying one’s rate of attack at the right times and switching between weak and strong blows, minor variations in combo strings begin to emerge, though obviously nothing like Platinum’s Bayonetta. And that’s where the difficulty selection comes in to play: on “easy”, you can effortlessly cut through these generic thugs like a hot knife through butter. This becomes a pretty significant problem, because Anarchy Reigns‘ entire schtick is making you fight these thugs over, and over, and over again – the game is structured so that new missions only unlock after you acquire a certain number of “points”, and there are a number of times where the only way to gain points is to spend time grinding through these mindless, boring enemies. By turning the difficulty up, combat immediately becomes more engaging, if only because the cannon fodder becomes more willing to fight back, demanding you employ more strategy and finesse. (keep reading…)

So here’s my Anarchy Reigns review. It’s honestly not such a bad game, really, but it’s not a really great game, either. Not all of its problems are its fault, though - it’s the kind of game that hinges on having a community to play multiplayer with, and while there is one, it’s not terribly large.
I should maybe be getting Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed for the 3DS today. I saw somebody on Twitter say disparaging things about it, but I never read reviews of a game I have to write about myself because I don’t want anyone else’s opinion to color my own.

Not really thinking, I put the game on Easy mode, because I have long-standing childhood trauma from the many Capcom and Konami games I played back on the SNES. In return, I was given a game that bored me to tears: Anarchy Reigns is a fully-3D evolution of the brawler, with similar roots in classic games like Final Fight or Streets of Rage, overlaid with Platinum Games’ typical over-the-top Japanese-style insanity. You punch your way through literally endless waves of cannon fodder until you get where you’re going – in this case, the game’s next mission marker. The combat system is incredibly simplistic, but not entirely devoid of depth – by varying one’s rate of attack at the right times and switching between weak and strong blows, minor variations in combo strings begin to emerge, though obviously nothing like Platinum’s Bayonetta. And that’s where the difficulty selection comes in to play: on “easy”, you can effortlessly cut through these generic thugs like a hot knife through butter. This becomes a pretty significant problem, because Anarchy Reigns‘ entire schtick is making you fight these thugs over, and over, and over again – the game is structured so that new missions only unlock after you acquire a certain number of “points”, and there are a number of times where the only way to gain points is to spend time grinding through these mindless, boring enemies. By turning the difficulty up, combat immediately becomes more engaging, if only because the cannon fodder becomes more willing to fight back, demanding you employ more strategy and finesse. (keep reading…)

So here’s my Anarchy Reigns review. It’s honestly not such a bad game, really, but it’s not a really great game, either. Not all of its problems are its fault, though - it’s the kind of game that hinges on having a community to play multiplayer with, and while there is one, it’s not terribly large.

I should maybe be getting Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed for the 3DS today. I saw somebody on Twitter say disparaging things about it, but I never read reviews of a game I have to write about myself because I don’t want anyone else’s opinion to color my own.

Posted 3 months ago

Comments

anarchy reigns, max anarchy, review, xbox 360,

Feb 8

Microsoft is to blame for the 7 Month Delay of Rayman Legends & Screwing over the early WiiU Release

morbi:

rickz0r:

“Titles for Xbox 360 must ship at least simultaneously with other video game platform, and must have at least feature and content parity on-disc with the other video game platform versions in all regions where the title is available. If these conditions are not met, Microsoft reserves the right to not allow the content to be released on Xbox 360.”

Well that explains that

It’s also still stupid as all fuck and is probably going to cost Ubisoft more sales that going multiplat will make them.

But boy, thanks Microsoft.

I’m pretty sure this is BS because plenty of games have launched at different times across multiple platforms. See: Resident Evil Revelations, The Witcher 2, Cave Story, Mega Man 9, NBA Jam, Goldeneye Reloaded, and so on.

Even if that really is Microsoft policy (and I wouldn’t doubt it), there are “outs” that let developers work around these limitations and still launch at different times on different platforms.

Ubi’s passing the buck.

Reblogged 3 months ago from krudman

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52 notes

Rayman Legends, Ubisoft, Xbox 360, Microsoft, The Escapist, reblog,

Dec 22

Youtube on the Wii is… lacking.

So it looks like in addition to commissioning a Youtube app for Wii U, Nintendo also made one for the regular Wii. I am sort of flabbergasted at how bad it is. Like I thought the Xbox 360 Youtube app was weird and dumb, but wooooow.

For example: Once you log in to your Youtube account on the Wii, as far as I can tell it completely removes your ability to access the Youtube “front page” where all the popular videos/genre listings live. You can only access your own personal uploads, favorite videos, and subscriptions. Anything beyond that must be discovered from the search bar, because there aren’t even any “related video” listings.

There’s no way to get to your “Watch Later” playlist, which seems sort of crazy to me, because that was Youtube’s big push last year where you had one special playlist of videos accessible from all devices that was quick and convenient to add content to and it is completely missing in action here.

Also, the player itself seems to possibly suffer from framerate problems - it was hard to tell, really. Some videos definitely did not seem 30fps.

I watched one of my video reviews with subtitles on for the hell of it (which, to be fair, is something I don’t think you can do on the Xbox) and the Wii couldn’t keep up with what was being said sometimes. Like, I wrote my own closed captioning/subtitles files for all my video reviews, but at one specific point in the Shenmue video I cycle through phrases apparently too fast for it to display them all.

And of course it does the thing that ALL Youtube apps do, where you are provided a list of channels you are subscribed to but must check each individual channel one at a time for videos they have posted. Why do they do this? Is this some kind of weirdo Youtube mandate? It makes the subscription center borderline worthless because of how tedious it is to check for new content, but this is the way it is on every Youtube app on every device. Give me a one-stop universal list of all subscribed content or you probably shouldn’t bother.

Since it was apparently paid for by Nintendo and is on a last gen piece of hardware it’s not going to be surprising if it is frozen at this level of poop forever.

Posted 4 months ago

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2 notes

youtube, nintendo, wii, google, xbox 360,

Dec 17

So it’s great that Blip.tv has an Xbox app now, but man you can really tell it’s early. For example: the “Videogames” genre only brings up Videogames Awesome’s Lets Play for Skyward Sword and nothing else, not even shows about videogames like Extra Credits.

The app also launches with a CRAZY vague “Do you want to opt in to make the experience better?” Like, I haven’t even used the app once, and you’re asking me what I think about it? I don’t even know what experience you’re expecting me to have, or what opting in will even do, but here you are all up in my face about it.

But look! There I am on the Xbox! Even though you can’t watch my show yet because it’s flagged as being “Blip.com Only”. I really hope that’s not a permanent thing; like, I don’t want them to go the Hulu direction where you load up the Xbox App and “oops sorry you can’t view this show on your Xbox, its only available on our website!” The entire library of everything should be watchable.

It also does this weird thing where it wants me to link my Blip account to my Facebook account for literally everything - I guess the website’s been nagging me about that lately too, but the Xbox App wants me to do it for core functionality like modifying player settings. That makes me almost as uneasy as the whole “HEY DO YOU WANT TO MAKE BETTER? YES/NO” option that comes up at first launch.

But you know what? Despite all this, the Blip app is still leagues more usable and better organized than the crummy Youtube Xbox app. Somebody oughta smack those guys up the head, because WOW they have no idea how anybody wants to use Youtube.

(Source: blip.tv)

Posted 5 months ago

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2 notes

Xbox 360, App, Blip, bltn, better late than never, video reviews, videogames,