RRoD Club

At the start of February I joined the Xbox 360 RRoD club at last. I had bought my console back when it was launched in the UK in 2006, and part of me is glad it decided to go before the 3 year extended MS warranty ended. Fingers crossed the repaired version I get back might even sound less like a leaf blower sitting under my TV!

Due to the trauma of having my main console broken, I picked up a PS3 to console myself (pun intended, unfortunately) while I waited for it to be fixed. Burnout Paradise was bundled in, but quickly went the way of Ebay so I could pick up Uncharted. Now that was an entertaining game! It was finished in a pretty quick 6 hours, but the journey felt like playing an Indiana Jones movie. The jungle settings were lush, the characters forgettable but entertaining enough, and the plot just enough to keep it all tottering along from set piece to set piece.

Even more than plot heavy planned trilogies like Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed, this sort of game is the one that should be released with frequent installments. My concern with the games mentioned previously is that if a gamer hasn't played one episode, they will be lost if they try to skip to the next. With Uncharted's easy to pick up setting and characters (just think "Romancing the Stone"), there is a pretty low barrier to entry.