Good Games on the XBox 360

[GoSeahawks]

I had been looking for an Xbox360 for the past several months and eventually gave up hope of ever finding one. Then today I was shopping at Costco and saw they had like 30 premiums in stock. I guess once I stopped looking they started showing up in stores?!!? Anyway, I thought what the hell and I picked one up.

Now I need to know what games to buy. Are there any good sports games out there?

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by GoSeahawks

I had been looking for an Xbox360 for the past several months and eventually gave up hope of ever finding one. Then today I was shopping at Costco and saw they had like 30 premiums in stock. I guess once I stopped looking they started showing up in stores?!!? Anyway, I thought what the hell and I picked one up.

Now I need to know what games to buy. Are there any good sports games out there?

Major League Baseball 2k6 comes out next week. The other 2K games are supposed to be quite good, but I've not picked them up.

I'm partial to Project Gotham Racing 3 and Burnout Revenge, myself.

Been playing Oblivion - enjoying it more than Morrowind so far, but not in the "great game" crowd yet - and Ghost Recon is supposed to be very good as well.

[gstelmack]

I've played a lot of PGR3 as well. My wife really enjoys Kameo. My brother really enjoys NHL 2k6. And other people on this board have been foaming at the mouth over NBA 2k6, so I'm going to have to get that one one of these days.

[dubb93]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Major League Baseball 2k6 comes out next week. The other 2K games are supposed to be quite good, but I've not picked them up.

I'm partial to Project Gotham Racing 3 and Burnout Revenge, myself.

Been playing Oblivion - enjoying it more than Morrowind so far, but not in the "great game" crowd yet - and Ghost Recon is supposed to be very good as well.

Sack, have you heard anything about people getting kicked out of games while playing GRAW? I haven't had any problems but two of my best friends got the game to play with me online and they usually get kicked out of 3 out of every four(some nights they can't even get in a game period) games they get launched in. It makes it a pain in the butt to try to play.

[SackAttack]

dubb, I haven't, but then I don't personally have the game so I can't verify.

[MacroGuru]

Ghost Recon is a kick ass game, I am loving it....

[dubb93]

Originally Posted by MacroGuru

Ghost Recon is a kick ass game, I am loving it....

Agreed, as I said I've had no problems, but I would warn anyone that does look at it that those problems do exist. And I'm not sure how isolated a problem it is.

[WVUFAN]

For Sports games, Fight Night for the 360 is incredible.

[Eaglesfan27]

I'm one of those who foamed at the mouth for NBA 2k6. That and College Hoops are both very highly recommended. I'd also recommend Oblivion if you aren't going to get it for your PC.

[dubb93]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

For Sports games, Fight Night for the 360 is incredible.

I thought that untill I got around the title picture with my created guy. I honestly have no clue if I'm still the champ, since I've lost twice since I won it and they don't mention the title picture at ALL! Also, how is a guy I've knocked out 3 times, including taking his title a champ? Its all too confusing, and they ruined the single player this year. I can't believe anything going on in the game without a ranking system and without seeing who the champs are.

One thing I know is off, I lost to a guy called "bulldog". This was after I won the belt. I'm thinking I'll get a re-match. But no, the game builds up to me defending my title against a guy named Aziz. How can I defend this title when bulldog just beat me?

And then Aziz beats me, but it still shows me as the champ.

[rexallllsc]

Is Ghost Recon good for single-player? I don't plan on much online play.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by dubb93

Sack, have you heard anything about people getting kicked out of games while playing GRAW? I haven't had any problems but two of my best friends got the game to play with me online and they usually get kicked out of 3 out of every four(some nights they can't even get in a game period) games they get launched in. It makes it a pain in the butt to try to play.

What sort of a net connection do they have, and are they connecting to servers in the same region? Also check the type of servers they are connecting to: co-op servers eat a lot more bandwidth than adversarial servers (there are a lot more actors running around), so it is easier for someone to overextend their server playing co-op. But a lot can depend on the connection your friends have to those servers: if their machines are taking too long to respond to the server data, they will get bumped out of the game eventually.

I can say that lots and lots of people are playing just fine (check out the numbers on Live sometime), so the likelihood is that it is something in the net connection your friends have to these servers. I know, for example, that a lot of UK and European servers are up during the day, so if you play US during the day you may well be connecting to a European server, which can add delay and packet loss to the connection.

Also note that some servers are booting guys that beat them, so have them make sure they are dropping the connection as opposed to being kicked out.

They can also try Player Matches instead of Ranked Matches. Ranked Matches require a variety of arbitration bits between the machines and Live, so any little thing off can cause them to drop.

If none of that helps, try contacting tech support. I'm not very good at trouble-shooting network connection issues. All of the advice I've given above is pretty much generic "I keep getting dropped while connecting to servers in game X" no matter what game X is.

[AgustusM]

My buddy plays Ghost Recon single and really loves it. I don't play many shooter games but it looked incredible

We play alot of NHL2K6 and once you tweak the sliders it is pretty good. I have read alot about crashes, but we haven't had one in over 30 games played.

We also have EA: Madden, Fight Night, Tiger and NBA.

I would skip Madden and NBA - these games are not even remotely finished. Tiger and Fight Night are both good and a lot of fun to play.

[dubb93]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

What sort of a net connection do they have, and are they connecting to servers in the same region? Also check the type of servers they are connecting to: co-op servers eat a lot more bandwidth than adversarial servers (there are a lot more actors running around), so it is easier for someone to overextend their server playing co-op. But a lot can depend on the connection your friends have to those servers: if their machines are taking too long to respond to the server data, they will get bumped out of the game eventually.

One has comcast cable out of indianapolis, one has a small local DSL company like I do in a small town. Actually, they could play co-op, it was the adversarial games where they couldn't play.

Originally Posted by gstelmack

I can say that lots and lots of people are playing just fine (check out the numbers on Live sometime), so the likelihood is that it is something in the net connection your friends have to these servers. I know, for example, that a lot of UK and European servers are up during the day, so if you play US during the day you may well be connecting to a European server, which can add delay and packet loss to the connection.

I agree that lots of people are playing fine. I am one of them. The times in question was about 11PM-2AM EST.

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Also note that some servers are booting guys that beat them, so have them make sure they are dropping the connection as opposed to being kicked out.

I highly doubt this is the case. First off, neither of them are very good at the game online, and second the game would be ran, they would spawn the first time and then they would lose connection. After trying this a few times we would just all play Halo 2 online, which they could both play fine.

Originally Posted by gstelmack

They can also try Player Matches instead of Ranked Matches. Ranked Matches require a variety of arbitration bits between the machines and Live, so any little thing off can cause them to drop.

If none of that helps, try contacting tech support. I'm not very good at trouble-shooting network connection issues. All of the advice I've given above is pretty much generic "I keep getting dropped while connecting to servers in game X" no matter what game X is.

Actually, neither of them will play ranked matches with me. They would all adversarial player matches. I may have to have them try tech support. But I'm inclined to believe it is the game more than their connects based on what I have just told you.

And it may be isolated, as I think it is a great game and I have no problems playing it at all.

But just a quick read on the ubisoft board and I see a theard on the 1st page of the GRAW forum titled "disconect disconect disconect",

With quotes such as, "Is it possible to actually have a game of multiplayer? every bloody 2 mins somebodys gets disconnected, this game is unpayable online, am sorry but ubi need to sort this asap, i gave up trying tonight its a bloody joke and its runing a briliant game."

"i had 256k up and couldnt even host 1 person without him being dropped.. i just upgraded to 512k up and now he doesnt drop.. this game definelty is a bandwidth hog."

"Doesn't anyone find it odd you need a super-good connection to host only 16 people? I used to be able to host 16 on Lockdown on the xbox with the exact same connection for hours and hours without drops/disconnects. I have 8meg down / 768k up cable and I can't hold a 16 player GRAW room over several games. From what I've seen, anyone with a decent connection can host one 16 player game. The problem is returning to the lobby and re-launching. It's like there's a random number of games you can host before people get dropped. On PDZ I can host 24-32 people no problem all night. You know? It's just not adding up that "it's your connection" is the right answer here.

"My conclusion: it's the game. Just like COD2, there are obviously net code and/or Live compatibility issues with GRAW that need to be fixed."

"agree with MassiveTurd( NOTE A GUY ON THOSE FORUMS NAME IS ACTUALLY MASSIVETURD having horrible time we all tried taking turns 5 of us we can play 1 or 2 matches the booted again kinda funny how it only happens on GRAW? its a problem on their end call them up they will tell you as well Wink2"

"GRAW servers are horrible....."

....again, I have had no problems, but some people can find this game unplayable online. It is something that people need to be aware of before they buy this game.

[gstelmack]

Some notes on troubleshooting network connections:

There are a NUMBER of issues that can cause network connectivity issues that vary from game to game. Packet size, packet frequency, obscure bit patterns, any of a number of issues can expose problems along a connection path. One app using one set of parameters works fine, another app using a different set doesn't, and both apps can be legal with the actual issue lying in some obscure firmware bug along the network path, with both working fine along a different path.

Other issues can include misconfigured firewalls, problems at your ISP, problems at the server ISP, problems anywhere between those two, etc. These can be such that you can have all kinds of fits with a server while lots of other people aren't. And you can have a great connection to a different server that some of those other people can't get. Heck, the timeframe could be critical here: that might be the time everyone is jumping on their local ISP to eat bandwidth up, and 2 hours later there are no issues.

Another fun fact in this day and age are people who have other apps running and won't admit that they are eating their bandwidth. It used to be people would complain of lag or problems playing games online but would refuse to shut down their IRC or other chat program to see if it helped their connection out. Now you've got people trying to play console games while they've got a stack of Torrent downloads running on their PC. All of these can eat into your local bandwidth and impact the quality of your gameplay experience.

So I come back to my original point: your best bet is to have them contact support, and have them run through the checklist of likely culprits. The fun part is that there may not be an issue with your friends' connections: it could well be simply bad luck in finding servers who have problems with THEIR connections. And if there really does turn out to be some weird issue with the game, the more formal reports turned in, the more likely the culprit is to be identified and fixed.

Or to put it another way, troubleshooting network connections is FUN! There are so many places and ways for them to go bad it's not funny. Even when the game works PERFECTLY, people can still have issues.

[dubb93]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Or to put it another way, troubleshooting network connections is FUN! There are so many places and ways for them to go bad it's not funny. Even when the game works PERFECTLY, people can still have issues.

I understand that you can troubleshoot, but please don't tell me this game runs perfectly online.

http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums...3/m/3671069524
http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums...3/m/5841091524
http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums...3/m/4931081424
http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums...3/m/5991054424

"3. Multiplayer Disconnections. Im sure this will be fixed and for some/many its not even a problem. But there are many who sit in excess of time just to start playing a game only to be disconnected 30 seconds into. Then they have to go back to the server list, wait for it to refresh, join the game, wait for the game to end, wait for the game to start....15 minutes fly by and you finally get into the game........"sorry you have been disconnected from the server". This is ridiculous. You think that with all this NEXT GEN **** they could make a Server list that actually makes sense. Its horrible trying to find a MP game in here."

http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums...3/m/3181004324

=========================================================

That was all found on just the first 5 pages on the message board looking for obvious titles. The more I look at it the more I'm convinced that it is not their network connections. It is isolated to this game just like all the complaints in those threads and the quote I quoted in the middle. With that I appreciate the help, but it seems I found on my own that it is a problem with the game.

My best guess is if a host can't host as many people as he is trying it boots off the people with the slowest connection speeds. My connection is faster than my fiends so they always get the boot. Seems to be a problem isolated to this game in that it requires insane amounts of upload speed from the host in order for the game to be ran.

[dubb93]

gstelmack, you have a PM. Thanks for the advice and I have advised my friends to call ubisoft, but I really have a feeling this one is the game. Like you said, hopefully the more people that report it the quicker the fix.

[TroyF]

Call of Duty 2: Very solid FPS
Perfect Dark Zero: Great for Multi player, weak for single player
PGR3: Wonderful game
NBA2K6/NCAA2K6: MUST OWN games if you like basketball. None better.
Madden: forget it
Ghost Recon: Simply amazing.
Oblivion:Very sharp looking RPG

Burnout is also supposed to be very good. Fight Night I've heard is good, but the career mode is beyond broken.

[dubb93]

/\
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What he said.

[dervack]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Major League Baseball 2k6 comes out next week.

Actually, it doesn't come out till the end of April for the 360, early April for PS2 and Xbox.

[Icy]

Friday night round 3 is really great in the PS2 and i have read that the XBOX360 version is amazing graphics wise. If you like boxing sims i really recomend it, i'm having a blast with the career mode.

[Karlifornia]

How much is the xbox 360 going for nowadays? I don't have an HDTV, and I am a poor college student. Is it still worth getting, just for the purpose of "keeping up with technology"?

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by RadioFriendlyUnitShifter

How much is the xbox 360 going for nowadays? I don't have an HDTV, and I am a poor college student. Is it still worth getting, just for the purpose of "keeping up with technology"?

It is still the release price: 399 for a premium unit, 299 for a core unit. I wouldn't get it if you can't afford it or if it was just to "keep up with the technology." However, there are some very good games which have come out recently, and more on the way.

[Coder]

I'm really close to buying a machine in the next month or so, so this thread is gold for me.. My current list of games I'm interested in are:

1. Ghost Recon
2. Top Spin 2
3. Project Gotham Racing

in that order..

I'm still a bit on the fence because I want a machine from which I can watch AVI-files on my TV with.. I still haven't connected my HTPC to my TV yet (got some strange split-screen version when I tried last time), so unless I want to keep my old X-Box (which is on it's last breath), I have to get teh same functionality in the 360 as I have on the "classic" box.

[Doug5984]

Has anyone here tried that new Blazing Angels game (i think that is what it is called) the WWII flying game...looks similiar to ace combat, I am really wondering how the online play is.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by Doug5984

Has anyone here tried that new Blazing Angels game (i think that is what it is called) the WWII flying game...looks similiar to ace combat, I am really wondering how the online play is.

Gamespot gave it a rather mediocre review. I haven't tried it and I probably won't.

[Doug5984]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

Gamespot gave it a rather mediocre review. I haven't tried it and I probably won't.

When I first heard about it- I was pretty sure I was going to buy it, then after watching a video I'm not so sure...I think this will be a rent for me this week. I will post a short review once I have some time to play it.

Just to add to this thread:
Call of Duty 2- I like playing this online, but have barely played single player. Now with GRAW out I hardly ever play this.

Fight Night- It is a lot of fun, but a better ranking system would add to the game, a more realistic career mode would be cool- but it is fun building up your boxer and playing friends online.

GRAW- I love this game now. For me the multiplayer is great, I like being able to have friends play split screen multiplayer since people are always at my house. By far my favorite game so far.

NHL 2k6- Its ok, its not great, but not bad. With the other games I just really havent had time to play it much. Maybe once the playoffs start I will get in a hockey mood and try to start a career.

[Raiders Army]

Fight Night is cool.
NBA 2k6 is good, but the graphics are pretty disappointing (hey, why'd you buy that $400 machine?)
I really like PGR3, but I'm not that much into racing games.

I'm getting Rumble Roses on Tuesday. I'll let you know how it is next weekend.

[Glengoyne]

It's a console, there are no worthwhile games.

We're text based simmers damnit!!
Consoles are for graphics > gameplay losers.