Category: XBOX

XBOX

Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date November 14, 2025
3 Comments on Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge

Completed Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge.

This is the most inspiring game in a long time. Second episode boss is a giant mechanical centipede.

Then 3rd episode starts with a duel of two zeppelins between Chicago skyscrapers.

I like how Brigand plane, the heaviest yet, has a rear gunner that reminiscent of Lancaster bombers.

There are some pacing issues in the 4th episode, like mandatory bet with British tourists (?) who downs more Nazi zeppelins. And I’m not a big fan of flying through corridors, especially Aztec corridors with huge pendulums. But this level is much more forgiving than Ace Combat games.

I also stumbled upon the bug of getting stuck after escorting the first Sun Disc. What helped me was to tackle that mission first, then help the tourists.

The final mission is though, but fair. If only there were checkpoints between blowing different parts of the huge Nazi zeppelin.

But then I guess it would be too easy. That way, the boss does give some trouble, but also plenty of satisfaction once you fly through all the turbines and blow all the cores.

Tags Crimson Skies

XBOX

Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date November 11, 2025

Zeppelin is amazing. It’s there during all the missions, it actually engages enemies by itself, and you can also land on it at any time to shoot enemies using one of its guns. This kind of tackles the problem I have with most arcade sims: they are sims of one particular style: dogfight or foxfight, usually. While my favorite style is actual capital ships, like Rebel Galaxy did. Here, you kind of can pick between dogfights and capital ships. Kind of, because you don’t control the zeppelin.

The attention to small details is astonishing. Like the moving trains that you need to either rob or protect, and you can grab ammo from its open platforms. Later, there’s also a duel between two trains.
I also like how no-hands-holding new planes are. Nobody tells you there’s a plane you can find. You need to look for it, and usually you’ll find a new one in some bandit hideout.

I’m mindblown how bold this game is. First episode boss was a zeppeling transforming into mechanical spider.

Tags Crimson Skies

XBOX

Cold Fear

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date November 8, 2025

Completed Cold Fear.
One of the worst design decissions is the C4 episode, where after clearing two rooms, you need to fight an invisible enemy in a room full of explosive barrels. One wrong bullet, and you need to repeat the entire episode again. And if you thought of running away: there are laser mines, which you can avoid, but the enemy can’t.
There is exactly one boss, and it’s a strange one. While Anna plants bombs, you need to distract her mutated father. If he catches her, it’s game over. He can also knock you off the platform, game over. Or, if you get knocked down, he can stomp you. Game over. If you manage to survive, the second phase is waiting for him to grab you to perform a QTE counter three times.

I was expecting some kind of plot twist regarding CIA agent that guides you, but no, nothing. You blow the platform and that’s it.

Tags Cold Fear

XBOX

Cold Fear

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date October 28, 2025

There are two main problems with Cold Fear.
First is unintuitive navigation. While Resident Evil is a maze you need to learn, Cold Fear is maze you need to unlearn, because it would constantly block paths behind you, forcing you to find new paths. You can mock Resident Evil for its thematic locks and keys, but remembering which door can now be opened in Cold Fear is far more difficult task.
The second problem is… lack of inspiration. Your weapons are: pistol, AK, shotgun, and a speargun that shoots capsules that distract enemies. The enemies are: zombie with cleaver, mercenary with pistol/AK and spider-like parasite. There isn’t much to go on.
At some point you decide to crash the whaler back into the platform it sailed from. You loose all your weapons and get infected by the parasite, but both resolved in a matter of 10 minutes, I’m not even sure why they bothered.
On the platform, we finally get our first boss fight. And it’s just shooting a russian dude until he dies. Hansen also removes his eye from the corpse for retinal scanner. Those Coastal Guards are sure hardcore.
You find more weapons on the rig: MP5 (why, if we have AK?), M79 grenade launcher, flamethrower (useless, unfortunately). And more enemies: hunter-like enemies that take far too many shotgun blasts to die, and frog-like invisible enemies.
Hansen infected again, in a span of an hour. And Anna is first rescued, then purposefully infected by her now mutated father, which of course reminds of Birkin from Resident Evil 2.

Tags Cold Fear

XBOX

Cold Fear

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date October 27, 2025

I didn’t know what I expected from this game. Resident Evil 3? Resident Evil 4? Honestly, it’s quite distinct from both. Yes, over the shoulder aiming and laser pointer is very much Resident Evil 4. But there’s much less focus on ammo management. There’s actually an upper limit of how much ammo you can carry for your pistol.
Technologically, it’s very impressive what they tried to achieve here. Dinamic shadows, water phisics, the way your character adjusts his balance according to ship’s sway, raindrops on camera, splashes of water that act as hazard. Speaking of hazards, on the main deck there’s a cargo that swings like a pendulum, and if you get in its way: you’ll get bonked.
Save system is a mix of checkpoints and saves. At key points you are asked if you want to save or not. The only reason you wouldn’t, though, if you are very low on health, I guess. Enemies drop both health and ammo, so for a survival horror, it’s quite aggressive. Sometimes I would finish off a zombie and loot it in the middle of a fight.
Speaking of zombies, they only die permanently after a headshot. And even after a headshot they can edject the parasite, which ironically does even more damage than a zombie with a cleaver. Landing headshots on a swaying ship using a gamepad is not easy. Maybe I should have picked PC version after all.
Storywise, its”The Thing ” all over again. Cartel reopens old russian oil rig, with the help of some exSoviet military and researches. But instead of oil they discover those exocel parasites, that infect dogs, humans and even orcas. Of course they start experimenting on the parasites in order to produce bioweapons. And here we are.

Tags Cold Fear

XBOX

Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date October 25, 2025

I wasn’t sure what to expect of Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge. Another Ace Combat? As expected from its WW1 aircraft design, it’s much more a dogfight game than a foxfight. Although missiles are still a thing, you don’t get as many of them as in Ace Combat games, and they don’t home as much.
Visually, it’s surprisingly pleasant. It has this softness many Xbox games had, and they really make a point to showcase this with an endless sunset above the ocean.

Since it’s alternative post WW1, they also can immediately show of with huge zeppelins, which is impressive. And there are a few more cool details, like enemy pilots parachuting out of their planes.
There’s an arcade element to the gameplay: sometimes there are health pickups that you need to pick up.
Instead of just replacing your plane with a fancier one, you get upgrade system, albeit very basic and arcady. Basically a plane has three stats: armour, firepower and speed. I’m not a fan of how those upgrades are acquired , though. Instead of getting them by completing missions, you need to search for glinting tokens in the open world, usually performing some flights though tunnels to get them. Which wouldn’t be that bad if they would be marked on the map once you discover them, or if there was at least a count of how many there are in a mission.

Every plane has primary and secondary weapons, but they aren’t the same. First plane is pretty standard, with a machine gun and guided rockets. But the second plane you find has a slower firing cannon and a shotgun.

Instead of a mission, it’s more like a open world game on a smaller scale. You get missions by hailing other planes or stations. The problem though is there are no subtitles in this game, so you need to listen carefully what you ought to do.
Another impressive feature is that you can land into your zeppelin and control one of the three turrets, switching between them.

Tags Crimson Skies, High Road to Revenge

Hardware XBOX

Xbox HDD upgrade

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date September 18, 2025

I probably already mentioned that the original Xbox came with a meager 8GB HDD drive. I had 120GB SSD lying around, so I decided to upgrade it.
Needed IDE to SATA adapter, since all SSDs are SATA, and a 80 wires IDE cable, since SATA can’t work with the 40 wires one Xbox came with. But with enough patience, I got everything I needed.
Interesting that Xbox is a clamshell, that has very long screws that hold top and bottom parts together. Also, you need star screwdriver, not a cross one common to PCs. Luckily I had all the tools I needed.
Once you disassemble the console, you can see that similarly to Dreamcast, it’s basically a PC motherboard with an integrated nVidia graphics card.

The most common trick to upgrade the HDD is called a “hot swap”. There is a single cable that connects both CDROM and HDD to the motherboard. Xbox won’t boot without a CDROM. But if you let Xbox boot up, then disconnect CDROM and connect slave HDD instead, it will recognize the drive.
I didn’t want to perform that trick at first, so I tried to just connect original HDD to my PC, and copy C and E drives. But that didn’t work out, as the drive is locked, and you cannot unlock it with USB adapter, only when connected with IDE cable.
So I went back to the hotswap method. It went smoothly: you connect the drive, then use utility called Chimp that clones it to the slave, then just swap the two.
Now I have Xbox with space enough to store every game I’m interested in.

Tags Xbox

XBOX

Original Xbox

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date September 5, 2025

So I got myself original Xbox (I hate calling it OG Xbox) after scouring eBay for some time.
First impression: damn, it’s huge. Compared to PS2 Slim I have it’s eight times bigger.
Second impression: damn, the gamepad is also huge. I wasn’t sure if I want the original “Duke” gamepad or the more modern “Japanese” one, but in the end I lost the bid for the Japanese one, and got the Duke. It is not just wide, but also very thick. My hands are average, but I have to stretch my fingers to reach the buttons.
I didn’t remember it had two slots for memory cards in the controller. Just like Dreamcast. And in general, it reminds me of Dreamcast so much I wonder if they took an inspiration. But whereas the Dreamcast controller was bulky because of the VMU, here the huge Xbox logo doesn’t serve any purpose.
Of course I wanted the console softmoded. It is done with a USB drive, but there is a catch, or even two. First, Xbox doesn’t have USB ports, only proprietary gamepad ports and the memory slots inside a gamepad. So you need an adapter that plugs into gamepad port. Those are widely available, though, so getting one is not a problem. The problem is to get a USB stick it would recognize. I tried creating small partitions, I tried microSD card adapters, nothing worked, except a single no-name USB stick I got with my jailbroken PS4. So now I have a magic USB stick that jailbreaks both PS4 and Xbox. Although with Xbox, it’s a persistent softmod, so I don’t expect to repeat it.
After softmodding the console, the easiest way to get games on it is to connect it with a network cable to your router. Here’s a thing, though. The original Xbox had a HDD, but it was 8GB IDE, and if you know what that is, it’s time for your pills.
So the next project will be to install a larger SATA drive, possibly even SSD.

XBOX

XBLA: Soulcalibur, Virtua Figher 2

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 21, 2025
2 Comments on XBLA: Soulcalibur, Virtua Figher 2

I’ve been going through some games available on Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade.
One interesting sample is Soulcalibur. As far as I know that’s the only version available on consoles beside the original Dreamcast one. It is decent. All characters are unlocked from the start, and it seems that the internal resolution is a bit higher. It runs in this strange letterbox, though, maybe to preserve some original aspect ratio or integer scale.

Dreamcast with RetroTink 4K:

Xbox 360:

Dreamcast:

Xbox 360:

Then there’s Virtua Figher 2. As I wrote some time ago, PS3 and Xbox 360 got the superior arcade version instead of a meager port from Saturn. And it’s so good I even spent an evening beating the entire game with Sarah. Ok, not Dural, that’s a bit too much to ask from a first playthrough.

Tags Soulcalibur, Virtua Figher

XBOX

Original Xbox

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 18, 2025

It’s ironic that the original Xbox now sells for more than Xbox 360 or Xbox One. Maybe has to do with original Xbox selling 24M copies, while Xbox 360 sold 85M, so it’s much more available.

XBOX

Xbox 360 BadUpdate exploit

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 15, 2025

Depending on a viewpoint, one might say I picked the best or the worst time to be interested in Xbox 360. Because I suffered with trying BadUpdate to work, and now everyone is raving about BadUpdate 1.2

And okay, yeah, it’s amazing. What took me 20 tries now worked on the first attempt. So you can say that softmoding Xbox 360 is easier than PS4 now.

XBOX

Torchlight

Nice that you don’t descend into the dungeon alone. Besides the pet, you’ll also have a warrior join you for a few levels.

Something I haven’t considered is that a dual wielding rogue can mix between a ranged and a melee weapon. Shooting enemies with a pistol from afar, then smacking them with a club once they get close. Works surprisingly well.

Fifth level is catacombs. New theme every 4 levels, classic.

XBOX

Xbox 360

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 9, 2025

I was slightly wrong regarding connecting Xbox Series S gamepad to Xbox 360 through adapter. It works only on jailbroken Xbox 360. Before exploit kicks in, I still have to use the original disgusting controller.

XBOX

Kakuto Chojin

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 9, 2025

I understood that I don’t want to play Xbox360 games as much as I want to play some original Xbox games. So I did. It’s surprisingly easy, you use the same ISO2GOD to convert ISO to executable format, and that’s it, Aurora picks them up immediatelly.

The game itself surprised me. First, there are slowdown in some arenas. Not sure if it happened on original hardware, because technically Xbox360 running an emulator for Xbox games. But I do remember that Xemu had the same issues.

Then the fighting system itself is broken, and I’m not even a fighting expert to recognize it. There’s a term “negative on block”, which means that if you hit a blocking character hard, you get pushback, and may get punished.

But at least with Vittoria, which a picked randomly, kicks are safe on block. So you can kick, if it lands – great, if not, you have time to throw your blocking opponent.
Also, JD character is literally Brad Pitt from Fighting Club. I don’t know how he didn’t sue.

XBOX

Torchlight

Despite Torchlight 2 being my second most favourite ARPG ever (after Diablo 3, but before Diablo 2), I always ignored the first Torchlight, considering it inferior.
Having tried it on both PC and Xbox 360 now, I feel like I was right and wrong at the same time. It is more like Torchlight 2 is actually Torchlight 1.5.

Structure first. First Diablo game has a vertical structure. We descent deeper and deeper into the dungeon, but each level is pretty limited. Diablo 2 has a horizontal structure. The areas are wast, but if you ever find a dungeon, it rarely goes deeper than two levels. Every few levels in Diablo 1 dungeon have a common theme. And entire areas in Diablo 2 have themes as well: grasslands, desert, and so on. Torchlight 2 clearly follows Diablo 2, with even the same themes for the episodes. While Torchlight 1 is Diablo 1, where there is a single town, and you descend deeper into the mines.

What neither Diablo 1 nor Diablo 2 had from the start, though, is mana regeneration. Given the fact that skills are one of the fun parts of any ARPG, having mana regeneration is good, since you spend more time doing fun stuff.

There are three skill trees for each character, like Diablo 2. But those aren’t exactly “trees”, as you don’t have skill prerequisites. Something modern gamers criticize Diablo 2 for.

Tags Torchlight

XBOX

Xbox 360

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 6, 2025

When you buy any console second hand, chances are that the gamepad will be half borked. Sticky thumbsticks half falling apart, mushy buttons, you name it. And let’s agree, ergonomics have improved since 2005. All in all, I much prefer Xbox Series X gamepad over Xbox 360. Unfortunately, one cannot simply plug Xbox Series X gamepad into Xbox 360. Or can you?
Back in the day, when I was playing some fighting and beat’em’ups on Nintendo Switch, I bought a simple adapter to connect my Hori Fighting Stick to the Switch dock. I didn’t expect it to work, because why would it, but I decided to give it a try. And after playing with the settings, it just did!
Now I can play on Xbox 360 on the gamepad I like.

XBOX

Xbox 360 BadUpdate exploit

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 3, 2025
2 Comments on Xbox 360 BadUpdate exploit

I probably have already mentioned how selling my JTAGed Xbox 360 was a mistake in hindsight. Of course I could always buy another JTAGed Xbox, plenty of those are still available. But,I don’t like playing games on consoles as much as I like messing with consoles. So instead I got unmodded Xbox 360 and tried to put BadUpdate on it.
BadUpdate is a soft mod, similar to what you’re running on PS4. You don’t need Internet for it, but it takes much longer for it to work.

Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

How long? Took me an entire evening of restarting my Xbox until I got there.
Was it worth it? Not really. I mean, it was interesting as a proof of concept. But I struggled to find any games I’m still interested to play on Xbox360. I eneded up testing that the exploit worked on Samurai Shodown Sen, which I lamented in the past, and… Torchlight 1, out of all things.

Also, to copy games I had to use a very particular USB drive. Xbox wouldn’t read anything else, despite me formatting all to FAT32 and MBR.

XBOX

Samurai Shodown Sen

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date April 6, 2025

Samurai Shodown Sen (aka Edge of Destiny) is one of those weird 3D instalments of Samurai Shodown series that happened after SNK’s implosion. Officialy, it was ever released only in the arcades (Taito Type X) and on Xbox 360, making it one of the few games that still warrant having Xbox 360.

But recently I discovered that a PC version exists. At first I thought this is some kind of a scam. Then I thought that it’s some kind of wrapper around Xenia. Neither seem to be true. Some comments say that this might be a leaked prototype, put together by fans. Which may explain why it uses dgVoodoo to run.

After I managed to play it once, though, the game stopped booting, giving an error in what I suspect to be Japanese. And no matter how many times I tried to delete it and unpack it again (there’s no installation process), they game just wouldn’t start.
Speaking of Xenia, though, I discovered that it emulates the game perfectly well. And that’s the opportunity to finally discuss what it is. Because in essence, it’s not a Samurai Shodown game. It’s Soul Calibur with characters from Samurai Shodown. Instead of weak/medium/strong slashes, there are vertical and horizontal slashes. There’s a grab (throw) with a single button. There are very few special moves, but many combos. And the inputs are mostly chains of attacks, not QCF/QCB common to SNK games.

The characters are modelled and animated well (looking at you, Arika), no complains there. Visually, it’s an Xbox 360 game. I’m not sure what specifically prompted that style on Xbox, but it’s very dark, gray/brown in tone.

Tags Samurai Shodown

Emulation XBOX

Project Gotham Racing and Forza Motorsport

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 6, 2022

I already wrote that I tried out Forza Motorsport on Xemu emulator a few days ago. Now, I decided to compare it with Project Gotham Racing, another predecessor of my much beloved Forza Horizon. And I was surprised how a more realistic Forza Motorsport plays better than “arcadish” Project Gotham Racing.

Now, to be clear, I suck at racing games. The only two racing games I ever finished, I think, are Need For Speed: The Run and Forza Horizon. And that’s only because both had rewinds.
But still, Forza Motorsport feels so much better thanks to its guidelines mechanic.

It also is emulated better at the moment. Project Gotham Racing has some issues with either depth of render or transparency, but on one of the tracks I’ve seen trees disappearing and appearing again. And also it seems there’s an issue with shadows from the cars, so cars seem to hover, never touching the track.

An issue both games share, and that’s because it’s the same engine, I would guess, is that during replays there are strange black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Guess it’s some transparency issues again.

Tags Forza Motorsport

Emulation XBOX

Xbox Emulation

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date July 30, 2022

Discovered that there’s an alternative to Cxbx Reloaded emulator for the original Xbox. It’s called Xemu.

The annoying part is that Cxbx wants XBE files, while Xemu only accepts ISO. So if I’d want to keep testing both, I’ll need to have two version of each game.
Dead or Alive 3 is fully playable, and I even managed to beat the entire story mode, as it’s relatively short and easy.

Kakuto Chojin is also playable, although there are some minor slowdowns, and when fighting Ying FPS drops to single-digit values.

Tao Feng – doesn’t load at all.
Forza Motorsport – fully playable, although I think that are some glitches during replay.