Author: Nimgimli

Nintendo Customer Support FTW!

Posted on by Nimgimli

Somewhere around July 23rd, our Wii Fit Balance Board started acting wonky, giving crazy readings and drawing straight diagonal ‘COB traces’. I futzed with it for a couple of days, but on Friday, July 25th we called Nintendo to request service.

Later that day we were emailed a pre-paid FedEx Ground shipping label. On Saturday we packed up the Balance Board and on Monday, July 28th I dropped it off at a Kinko’s FedEx Center. It arrived on July 29th (a bit of luck there, we’re in MA and the repair center is in NY so it didn’t have far to travel). By July 30th there was a notice in the Repair System that they would replace the board but it was currently back-ordered.

In spite of this, a new board was shipped via UPS Blue (2nd day air) on July 31st, a Thursday. Today, Monday, August 4th, the new board arrived. It works perfectly. And cost us nothing beyond some packing tape (we sent it back in the original WiiFit box, wrapping it in flattened out brown-paper shopping bags).

I’ve been “fortunate” enough to have to pay to have both an XBox 360 and a PS3 repaired. It took Microsoft almost 5 weeks to turn around the XBox ($100) repair, and it took Sony 3 weeks to turn around the ($150) PS3 repair. And in neither case was anything repaired…the old unit was just swapped out for a refurb.

So I have to rate Nintendo as easily the best of the ‘big three’ when it comes to Customer Service. The exchange was handled swiftly and with no hassles whatsoever.

And we’ve got our little friend back. Oh, how we’ve missed our Balance Board Buddy!

Portal Sickness

Posted on by Nimgimli

So I’m probably the last gamer on earth to get around to playing Portal, which I did this weekend.

I’m prone to getting motion sickness while playing FPS and Portal does some really mind-bending things to you where ceilings become floors become walls. I was turning green really quickly. Which was really frustrating because, like everyone else, I was really grooving on the gameplay and on GLaDOS.

Then I had an idea and it worked, so I figured I’d share. Rather than play full screen, reduce the resolution a bit and play in a window. For me at least, that broke the ‘immersion’ enough that my eyes and inner ears got back in sync and my stomach was a LOT happier. It allowed me to finish the game pretty comfortably.

And the rat pellet of GLaDOS singing Jonathon Coulton’s Still Alive totally rocked.

I won’t even bother to ‘review’ the game because a zillion people have reviewed it, a zillion people have loved it, and I loved it too. Don’t have a lot to add, really. If you haven’t played it then I encourage you to do so. You can buy it off Steam for $20 direct download, or of course it comes in Valve’s “Orange Box” which is available for PC, XBox 360 & PS3.

Eureka!

Posted on by Nimgimli

I can’t in all honesty say that Eureka (Tuesday nights, Sci-Fi Channel) is a great show. But it’s just silly and geeky enough that I really enjoy it.

Running up to last Tuesday’s season opener, there was a campaign sponsored by Degree For Men, promoting Eureka via a bunch of crazy “new inventions” that might have been created by the denizens of the show. They were actually pretty amusing and had strong branding from both show and deodorant.

Now, in the past I’ve griped loudly about product placements in television shows. Smallville, for instance, is notorious for this, with some really cringe-worthy placements over the years. But a lot of shows do it. So when I was watching the first new Eureka of the new season, and the crew was walking through a room filled with boxes with “Degree for Men” labels plastered on the outside, I was drawing breath for a total, full-on rant about how horrible it was. And at that moment, main character Sheriff Carter pointed at the boxes and said “What’s all this?” and the new head of the research lab said brightly “Oh! It’s our first sponsor. It’s very exciting!!” and all the rant went out of me and I found myself laughing out loud. I mean, if you’re going to do a product placement, that seemed like the way to do it. It was funny, and broke the ‘4th wall’ enough to offer viewers a wink and a nod. Yeah, they know we hate this stuff, but they gotta pay the bills.

One other neat Eureka note. They had a banner advertising the Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/_S_A_R_A_H_. What’s fun is that whomever is monitoring that account is answering in the personal of the show’s “Smart House” SARAH. Pretty funny stuff, and another nice nod to us geeks who enjoy the show.

60 gig XBox 360 hits the streets

Posted on by Nimgimli

So according to a post at Engadget, the new 60 gig XBox 360 is hitting the streets, or more specifically, some Target stores. So far, no word on whether these units use the new (and presumably more reliable) “Jasper” motherboard.

I’m still trying to decide if I’m willing to give Microsoft another $350 in order to enjoy my XBox 360 games (once “Jasper” is confirmed to be in the pipeline). When I start to add up what I’ve spent already: the cost of the console, a $100 repair charge, a few years of XBox Live, Play & Charge kits… it might just add up to more than the $750 I spent on my 3DO all those years ago! Adding another $350 at this point definitely would push it way over that mark.

Worth it for the 360 exclusive titles? Tough call…

I might owe Harmonix an apology

Posted on by Nimgimli

A couple of weeks back I wrote a rant against Harmonix (Harmonix can kiss my behind) after I learned that Rock Band 2 was going to be a timed exclusive for the XBox 360 (and I happened to get it for the PS3 due to my love/hate relationship with the 360).

Well after doing some snooping around, I now get the feeling that Microsoft is just doing a spin job on this timed exclusive stuff. I think Harmonix is just taking a little bit longer to finish the PS3 version, which is a totally different thing from accepting a boatload of money from Microsoft in order to shaft PS3 owners.

I have a few reasons for this change of heart. First, if you look at release dates on Gamestop and Amazon (and I know these aren’t always, or even often, reliable), they have the XBox 360 version, game only, with a launch date of September 14th and the bundles (ie with instruments) for both PS3 & XBox360, as well as the PS3 game only, listed for October 19th.

Second, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb was on Leo Laporte’s “This Week in Tech” podcast talking about E3. During the conversation Hryb mentioned that Rock Band 2 was a limited time XBox 360 Exclusive and when Laporte asked him how long it was exclusive for, Hryb claimed he didn’t know.

So first of all, if Microsoft had purchased a “Timed Exclusive” window from Harmonix, I suspect Hryb would know exactly how long that exclusive was for (though I’ll grant you he might not have wanted to share that knowledge). Second, it seems almost silly to buy exclusivity for only a month (assuming the Amazon and Gamestop dates are accurate). And lastly, if it was a business deal you’d expect both the stand-alone game and the bundle to be exclusive, not just the game.

So now my suspicion is that Harmonix had the 360 version finished earlier and just figured they might as well ship it asap rather than wait for the instruments and the PS3 version to be completed. And when Microsoft learned about this, they started using it as a “timed exclusive” marketing point, with no money changing hands.

Wars and games and wargames

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m often accused of being thin-skinned or overly sensitive about certain topics, and gaming past wars is definitely one of them.

So I have to give a cheer to Ross Arbour’s article over at Nukoda:
Wii Aren’t Amused: Call of Duty World at War and Nintendo’s E3 Press Conference

Mr. Arbour takes exception to that portion of the Nintendo press conference where two friends were shown gleefully waggling their remotes to simulate hosing down Japanese soldiers with a flamethrower. I remember seeing that segment and having a definite “WTF?” moment. I thank Mr. Arbour for reminding me of it and bringing broader attention to the topic.