On November 1st my console fell prey to the latest ban hammer.

When I turned on my XBOX and I wasn’t automatically signed into Live I already had a feeling that I was banned, when I tried to manually connect my feeling was validated.  So as I sat there looking at the message, which I had made every effort to avoid through stealth checking, not playing games before release etc. , a feeling of calm came over me and a smile formed.  I can now play Modern Warefare 2 without fear of being banned!  Since then I’ve been able to play both L4D2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 without worrying about release dates or being banned.

The obvious downfall with my banned console is absolutely no Live game upadates or mulitplayer available.  This limitation, plus since my live account is prepaid, makes me want to buy a new XBOX 360.  Playing a game like Modern Warfare 2 online and owning your budies is too much fun to not buy a new xbox.  The plan is to keep the banned console for all predominantly single player games and buy the games I gotta play on Live for the non-modded console.

If you’ve recently been affected by the ban wave, what’s your plan?

I really like the idea of gaining points in 360 games after completing in-game tasks.  It’s only sweeter to harass your buddy about his lackluster score but some of these achievements are ridiculous!!

The companies make insane achievements to try to keep a player long after the game is stale.

How many people completed all 50 of Perfect Dark Zero’s achievements?  Did you get the 1,000 kills? Sure.  1,000 headshots? Maybe.  What about 1,000 melee kills or 1,000 explosive kills? No.  A gamer would have to waste so much time playing the game.  And now good luck finding online players to reach those achievements.

Gears of War 2 is a great multiplayer experience, but I’ll almost certainly never reach the “Seriously 2.0″ achievement, which calls for killing 100,000 enemies.  This is just a ridiculous achievement the developer puts in the game to keep people coming back.

What happened to the achievement styling of Call of Duty 2?  It was nice and simple, you beat a level – get points; complete the game in hardened/veteran – get more points.  That game was very easy to reach the full 1000 pts.

One of the easiest games was NBA 2k6.  In a single game I was able to unlock all the achievements.

I hope developers revert to achievements that made sense and are obtainable and stay away from current ridiculous trend in video games.

Am I just not committed?

Wow.

There are only a few things that can be more frustrating than shelling out $60 bucks for a game, only to be given an underdeveloped product.

Game Add-ons — more specifically, map packs and essential features to any game that you are required to pay for, are just great ways to piss off loyal fans.

When I purchase a game, I want to know that in two weeks, there isn’t going to be additional content available for the game.  In fact, I’d like to extend that to beyond two weeks. Make it at least a month.  Granted, this might make development one month longer, but I’d rather have the additional content.

Themes, avatar items – any “fluff” like that – I can understand being charged for.  That’s extra; if you want it, go for it.  It’s not required to play the game.  Map packs, on the other hand, can be frustrating.  I want to be able to play all the maps that everyone else is playing online without having to shell out more money than I already had to purchase the game.

Modern Warfare Map Pack

But that’s not how it seems to be.  For example, let’s look at Resident Evil 5.  Yes, I’m pulling out the big one already.  Capcom just really made myself, and probably many other fans, pretty angry over this.  They released Resident Evil 5, without multiplayer, and then had the audacity to charge for it when it was finally developed.

…Does this not piss anyone else off?!?

This is not just some add-on content, some extras that were added in, but what most people would definitely think as being a critical part of any game!  People are missing what many consider as half of the game content!  Granted, Resident Evil is known for its single player, but to develop a multiplayer, not finish it on time, and then charge for additional game functionality is just ridiculous.

I wanted to give some inspirational ending that will charge all gamers into keeping from paying for the content, but lets be real, that will never happen.  Hopefully developers will go back to the old way of giving us all the content we could ever want on the release of the game, and not look for more ways to drag the dollars out of us.

What do you guys think?

Welcome to the first “The State of…”

This section will be a section where we will give our thoughts on whatever random topic we feel like speaking out about.  You can expect for our discussions to focus mainly on gaming or any tech related stuff, but we might just throw in a wildcard with something off-topic in the future as well.

Anyway, enjoy our take…