One Happy Team…

Category: Microsoft

  • Halo 2

    I remember disliking Halo 2 back in the day. Back coming to it now, right after Halo 1, can see some major improvements.
    First, they’ve got rid of health system. Now there are only shields, so you don’t have medkits to manage. Also, the shields recharge faster, and they make sure to let you know that.
    The weapons make more sense as well. SMG acts like a former assault rifle, spraying bullets, while the new battle rifle fires in bursts and has a scope. Shotgun is still there, but slightly weaker, it seems, as it was a superweapon in Halo 1.

    20260914-041729-MOV-000239-050

    There are also stationary machine guns that you can man. In this level there are clear Iraq influences, which happened in 2003. Halo 2 was released a year later, in 2004.
    The Scorpion tank went from feeble to invincible, you can crush whole Covenant armies with it. It fires four times as fast, and the infantry also has homing rockets, if it wasn’t enough.

    20260914-044349-MOV-000137-050
    Covenant have their Beam gun, basically an energy sniper rifle. Considering how powerful the sniper was in the original Halo, that’s a welcome addition.

    20260914-045833-MOV-000103-050

    One episode that is still genuinely impressive is boarding of the Covenant walker, as it walks under the bridge. And that’s without any scripts.

    20260914-045833-MOV-000535-300

    20260914-050449-MOV-000703-398

    (more…)

  • Call of Duty 3

    Completed Call of Duty 3. I shouldn’t have bothered.
    My main problem with the game is the shooting. It’s very hard to figure out if you’re hitting anyone, and generally weapons are not fun at all.
    There’s a mission where you play Polish soldiers riding a Sherman Firefly tank, and of course blowing a King Tiger. But other than than, it’s a slog. I was relieved to get Gewehr 43, as I was getting tired of MP40 all the time.
    Since it’s a 2006 game, of course there are a lot of QTEs. You get to grapple a German at least 4 times, and I lost count how many explosives you need to plant. For some reason, the mortar is also a minigame, you rotate it by spinning the left thumbstick, and alter the arc by rotating the right thumbstick.
    Curious that they implement mount mechanic, but only for MG34, although Bren also has a bipod.

    (more…)

  • Call of Duty 3

    One of the few Call of Duty entries I haven’t played, because back in 2006 I didn’t have any consoles.
    The last Call of Duty where you can go prone.
    Very nice of them to give you FG42 in your second mission. Although it’s funny that the scoped version and the regular don’t share ammo. Most of the time, you’ll be with MP40, though, as it has infinite ammo supply.
    One interesting episode is where you ride a tank. But you don’t pilot it, because you’re an infantryman. Instead, you sit on the armor and spot targets with your binoculars. A distinction later games completely forgot.
    After two missions at St Lo and St Germains with US Infantry, we switch to British SAS for a surprisingly good jeep mission, to help French resistance. Then back to Americans to disarm bombs on a bridge.
    (more…)

  • Halo Anniversary

    Completed Halo Anniversary.
    One thing they didn’t fix, though, are zombies with rocket launchers. I don’t remember those in the Library at all. They still one-hit kill you. And are very difficult to identify from afar.
    Other than that, as I suspected, the final race in the jeep is much simpler, because it has more weight to it.
    So if anyone would decide to replay the original Halo, I’d recommend Anniversary over the Xbox original every time.
    (more…)

  • Halo Anniversary

    Halo remake for Xbox 360 is interesting, because it’s 10 years separated from the original, and 15 years separated from now. So it’s obviously an improvement, with more detailed textures, soft shadows, wide-screen support, and more effects, like the shields. But it also falls into an uncanny valley, with the characters looking more human and less so, like their lips are already moving, but not yet in sync with what they are saying kind of thing.
    One massive improvement is Warthog. It has much more mass, so easier to control, and the gunner is also far more accurate. If in the original it was the perfect way to get yourself killed in Reunion Tour (best mission in the entire campaign), now it makes the mission much easier. Scorpion tank was also improved. Now it is actually formidable.
    They’ve added terminals that play cutscenes from perspective of Guilty Spark, the bot that was left to watch Halo. Which is interesting, but also doesn’t make much sense, as he’s introduced only half way through the game.
    (more…)

  • Halo Combat Evolved

    Completed Halo.
    I remembered that Library episode was the worst one, with waves of Flood enemies. But it’s actually not that bad, although I did end up running past some of the encounters. The worst part comes later, when you need to backtrack to disable the generators, and the game throws at you zombies with rocket launchers. Those kill you in one shot, and one of them is placed just around the corner, just waiting to blow you away.

    20260905-004242-MOV-001403-799
    So Halo system was created as a way to combat parasytic Flood, by wiping out all lifeforms. But the only place where Flood had remained was… On Halo?
    Not sure who thought it’s a good idea to have you throw grenades into ventilation shafts under fire to detonate the reactor. But don’t fret about running out of grenades: you can pick them from infinite zombie enemies 🤡
    There was an anecdote that Halo was supposed to be an RTS, just like Bungie’s previous project, Myth. But then they tried to drive a Warthog, and decided it was so much fun they need to make a FPS out of that. Those people need to be put in an asylum. The final sequence in warthog isn’t that difficult, I made it on my 3rd try. But it certainly wasn’t “fun”, at all.

    20260905-202254-MOV-001010-032

    (more…)

  • Xbox 360

    It’s quite amazing that a year later, with BadUpdate 1.3 and BadAvatar it’s possible to boot directly into Aurora. Unmodded Xbox 360 is as good as a modded one now. And the best thing, I don’t need an USB drive to stick out of my console anymore.

  • Halo Combat Evolved

    Halo is probably one of the most remade games ever, with Anniversary / Master Chief Collection in 2012 and Campaign Evolved in 2026. But I decided to try the original on Xbox. I finished the PC port, but it was in 2004, so I barely remember anything. So far, it’s not very good.
    Lack of subtitles is a minor issue. But the first level, on Pillar of Autumn ship, is a maze of grey corridors that all look the same.
    Also, all that talk about how enemies in remasters are dumber: enemies in the original are extremely dumb.
    Outdoor episodes are fine. It’s often easier to drive past enemies than to try and fight them, as it seems even inside a tank, Master Chief has no extra protection and dies from a few shots.
    But the indoors missions seriously make me question if I’m not just going in circles. Especially the level where you need to cross three bridges. They all look the same, with similar enemy placements. It’s especially funny as the game does make you backtrack a few times, spawning new enemies on the way, so there is no good way of knowing.
    The arsenal and gunplay is not as bad as I remember. A pistol can zoom, but an assault rifle can’t, for some reason, and the assault rifle is insanely inaccurate. But the sniper rifle and rocker launcher are serviceable. The alien pistol is surprisingly good. You can’t reload most of alien weapons, but it’s very common, so easy to pick a new one once you start running low.
    Grenades, especially the sticky ones, are also plentiful. One interesting mechanic is that explosion also detonates dropped grenades. The common tactic is to shoot enemy a couple of times, then throw a grenade in hopes it would stick. Although sometimes they won’t run away anyway.
    From the visual effects, invisibility is surprisingly nice. And also the flashlights that marines have.
    There can also be ten enemies on screen at the same time, which is quite a lot. But frame rate does drop accordingly as well.
    (more…)

  • Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate

    Turns out, Dead or Alive once pulled Virtua Fighter Remix on the Xbox: a remake of Dead or Alive 2 on Dead or Alive 3 engine. The remake also makes Hitomi, introduced in Dead or Alive 3, playable.
    I can’t say I see a good reason to go back to it, but it’s a fun one.

    20260223-044259-MOV-000505-300

    Also, I don’t remember any other fighting offering analog control scheme: some moves, instead of taking directional input, like forward+punch, depend on how hard you press the punch button. At first I thought it doesn’t work because I’m playing with Xbox One controller through an adapter. But no, I tried the original controller and seems like analogn controls are just a stupid idea in general.

    20260223-043923-MOV-000231-132
    I wonder if the change of seasons on the Tengu boss stage is something that was added. Need to go back to the Dreamcast version, but I don’t remember this.

    20260223-044259-MOV-001122-183

    20260223-044259-MOV-001217-766

    (more…)

  • Dark Alliance

    Dark Alliance has always been my guilty pleasure. There is something to the simplicity of this game. And how sexualized every female character is.
    Turns out I even finished the first episode some 15 years ago in coop, but barely remember anything of it.

    The game is surprisingly brutal. Every ARPG can be viewed as economy game: you need to bring more money from the dungeon than you spend. In that sense, Dark Alliance is very close to break even. If you play as Archer, your weapons do very little damage. So you need flame arrows, which require mana, and the arrows themselves, which don’t drop in enough quantities. And you need healing potions, because despite having some regeneration, it’s not nearly enough. The drops aren’t very generous, I might have gotten a +1 gloves, but was better off with buying a leather armor from the vendor. There are “town portals” for shopping trips, but those aren’t cheap either. So you’re basically paying for the great privilege of cleaning the dungeons. At some point in the sewers the only way I managed to bean both the rat miniboss (of course there’s a rat miniboss) and the bugbear boss only by surrounding myself with some crates that they couldn’t navigate, and making a pincushion out of both.

    I started the game on original Xbox, then remembered it was ported to Switch, so I switched to it.

    Although I must say I probably prefer the low-res look of the original.

    The main problem with the game: it’s quite boring in single-player. You don’t get experience quickly enough, so you’re stuck with just one skill for a long, long time, and not enough motivation to continue.
    (more…)

  • 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.

    20251112-043107-MOV-001724-800

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

    20251113-020943-MOV-001213-300
    I like how Brigand plane, the heaviest yet, has a rear gunner that reminiscent of Lancaster bombers.

    20251113-024406-MOV-000549-800

    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.

    20251114-065111-MOV-000425-800
    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.

    20251115-043948-MOV-000922-440

    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.

    (more…)

  • Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge

    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.

    Crimson-Skies-20251026-042841-MOV-000144-550
    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.

    Crimson-Skies-20251026-042841-MOV-000538-300

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

  • Cold Fear

    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.

    20251109-041557-MOV-001102-906
    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.
    (more…)

  • Cold Fear

    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.

    (more…)

  • Cold Fear

    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.
    (more…)

  • Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge

    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.

    20251025-053636-MOV-000229-050

    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.

    20251025-053636-MOV-001101-550
    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.

    20251025-060005-MOV-000031-300
    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.

    20251025-060005-MOV-001443-300
    (more…)

  • Xbox HDD upgrade

    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.

  • Original Xbox

    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.

  • 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:

    20250818-041159-MOV-000716-091

    Xbox 360:

    Soulcalibur-XBLA-ts-001349-093

    Dreamcast:

    20250818-041159-MOV-000719-100

    Xbox 360:

    Soulcalibur-XBLA-ts-001351-952

    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.

     

    (more…)

  • Original Xbox

    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.