Xbox 360 Games – Annual Review 2008 -Flops

The dark side of the Year of the Game

Obviously, 2008 didn’t just bring gems and power plays. There is always something that has angered the gaming community. Like games that just weren’t worth their price. If only they had listened to the guys and the ants in the game magazines! Position 3 of the most unwanted games is occupied by: warrior 2 orochi. Outdated graphics, blue screens, and “stop’n go” performance, just to name a few issues.

During the Xbox years, games like kingdom under fire they liked it very much and everyone was looking forward to the new releases for Xbox 360. But unfortunately Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom proven invalid from its predecessor. The lack of story, KI, unwanted features, and grueling levels helped the game reach #2 in the “Flips of the Year” category.

But there is something worse. The number one worst game of the year position is a holdover from a game that used to have a lot of fans a few years ago: Alone in the dark. The fifth part of the series had a big problem: control. Many gaming pads must have lost their lives and even the very good graphics couldn’t help it. The game felt unfinished and frustrated many players who had high expectations at launch. Very bad, really.

But let’s leave the topic of software for now. There are some things on the hardware front that, for example, Microsoft should try to improve. When it comes to “Tomato of the Year”, we must mention the console and online service “Xbox Live”. The top two positions are obvious, but number three is held by three issues that many players didn’t find funny in 2008. On the one hand, there was the Big Autumn Update called Next Xbox Experience (NXE). Added to the life of the game was a revamped board surface, cute little avatars, and a bunch of little gimmicks. Some loved it, others seemed to hate it. There is always a big controversy about the prices of the so-called “Download Contents”. A lot of people don’t like the way Microsoft keeps charging for small add-ons that are paid for with Microsoft-Points. Having paid full price for the game to start with, mind you. Are they worth it or is it money down the drain? You almost never know in advance, which is why a lot of people don’t like the idea, period. The warranty issue, even after three years of Xbox 360, still causes stress at times.

Speaking of the Xbox 360, you automatically think of the infamous “Red Ring of Death,” which means Game Over and sending your console to hardware support for a fix. This is the reason why the gaming community awarded the Xbox360 with their “Silver Tamato”.

One thing hit a community called coop-live.de very hard: A totally innocent user has been accused of Modding, the unfair manipulation of his console. For this particular guy the Community multiplayer games of his with Xbox Live are a thing of the past right now, he has been banned. Don’t get us wrong, this is the way to deal with players guilty of the “crime”, but in this case, and a few others we’ve heard about, it wasn’t. This guy could even prove his innocence, but Microsoft They still did not want to investigate the problem, their system is functional and therefore wrong accusations are impossible, they said. We all hope that Microsoft will take another unbiased look at the system so that cases like this will be a thing of the past very soon.