Xbox 360 Arcade Jasper

So, I couldn't resist and bought the console in question, with the iXtreme LT firmware. I do want to play the new releases after all, and the toad of greed strangles me at the thought of spending a third or a quarter of my salary on a single game — exclusives like Heavy Rain don't count, those are rare, and for now I'm not even letting myself grab both Uncharted games and all the God of War ones. I also wanted to finish Dragon Age: Origin — my saves are still on the hard drive that didn't get banned. I had no desire to bother with repairing the dead Falcon; even if I re-soldered it, you can't get into Xbox Live from it anymore without a ban. A gaming PC is even more of a hassle and needs a lot of resources, so I wasn't really thinking about buying one, especially since publishers like Ubisoft have now started actively fighting against PC games.

On top of that, next month Splinter Cell: Conviction comes out, which I really want to play, and in May the exclusive Alan Wake. Dragon Age: Origin — Awekening and the reckless Just Cause 2 with its insane aerial battles across a huge open space, which is something GTA 4 lacks after SA, are already up on the torrents now.

Only it didn't all go smoothly with the console, even setting aside the delivery problems. After switching it on, the wireless gamepad wouldn't get detected, no matter what I did: I changed the batteries, pressed the sync buttons, tried different controllers, disconnected the hard drive. Already in despair, I gave the console a gentle shake — after that the original gamepad connected; I think if I don't touch it, it should keep working fine. There's no point sending it back to Kyiv for repair, no telling what'll happen after another round of shaking during transport. I found a video about fixing this problem without breaking the warranty seal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeG_IO5yyvk Might come in handy in the future.

Updated my LJ profile, put my XBL gamertag in there via Silverlight; I know most people don't have it installed, but it's convenient for me.