So this all started this past sunday. On saturday I finally got around to playing the Halo 3 beta (through Crackdown), and played it for a few hours, then stopped for the night.
Sunday, I decided I wanted to play some crackdown, then probably some more Halo 3 beta. But when I turned on my 360 and it got to the dashboard, at the bottom of the screen where it’d normally have the game name, it now read “Unplayable disc”. No matter how many times I ejected and reinserted the disc it would not load the game. Frustrated I stuck in another game (Smackdown Vs Raw), and proceeded to play that for that day.
Fast Forward to monday after a day at work I was going to wind down with my 360 and decided to try Crackdown again to see if the system had seen the light yet, but no, it had not. So I filled out the webform for support on the Xbox website and proceeded to get the same canned response twice (the disc is dirty, the disc is damaged, try the disc in another system, blah blah frakking blah). So I decided to privately say F’ You to their innanely canned email system and try the 800 number.
After a fairly long wait (which at my work would mean fines for the business) I got ahold of someone who helped me to clean the 360′s cache to see if that would fix the problem (it didn’t), so they gave me a reference number. After all that I hung up un-helped with a broken xbox (from the launch no-less), I then decided to see if any of my other (roughly 30) games would work. None of them worked at all. So I tried the fracked up email system once more and got the same canned response again when I explicitly stated the fact that no disc whatsoever worked in the system, let me say that again in case you didn’t comprehend it the first time, NO DISC WORKED AT ALL, and they sent me the same message saying the one disc is damaged or dirty.
Apparently all the people Microsoft hired for tech support failed reading comprehension in school. I guess I’ll have to waste another 20-30 minutes on the phone with them tomorrow to hopefully get this resolved once and for all.
God I *love* Canned Responses
Crackdown DLC
The first two real packs of downloadable content are now out (and no, the 4 new skins don’t count). Go grab it now!
The first one up is the “Free-for-All” download pack. First off is the Keys to the City mode, which basically is a mode where you can run around the city and spawn any of the cars in the game, exploding barrels and you can turn on God mode and the like as well. And one thing with the mode is that Achievements and the leaderboards are turned off for obvious reasons.
The other pack is the really good one (though it costs 800 points). The “Getting Busy Bonus Pack” is the one with all the real goods. Three new vehicles (the buggy, advanced racer, and armored vehicle), street racing over live, and some new weapons and game types.
Anywho, that’s my little summary and if you want more check Here.
Crackdown
Hot damn, this game is fun! Sure I played the demo already (in fact I have yet to delete it), but the full version is a million times better. I’ve only had it a few days but I’m already to the Shai-Gen (the most advanced of the 3 gangs). But Honestly it’s a lot of fun to run around the world just jumping from building to building and throwing crud around the world. And once you upgrade your driving skills the Agency vehicles get a huge bump in every way. One place this game definitely excels is with the achievements, not only are there a lot of them, but they are well integrated in the overall experience of the game. So in a lot of ways Crackdown raises the bar for future games not only in terms of achievements but also with the multiplayer co-op over Xbox Live. Go out and pick it up already!