Viewing Thread:
"Why am I not interested in Xbox Live?"

I'm not bothered about it, but I'm beginning to question why not.

I truly don't like first person shooter frag fests - running around in circles blasting, blasting, blasting - gives me a headache.
I'm not that bothered about racing cars around circuits and coming first, coming last, whatever.

So I'm not interested. Should I be? Am I missing out?
Do I have a blinkered view of the whole online gaming thing?

I don't think I'll ever sign up. Maybe a massive online RPG will sway me like Star Wars Galaxies....? - but it probably won't.

Shooting and racing - that's all I see, and that's not enough to get me interested.

But think of the appeal of being able to tell pasty faced nobhead's to f**k off. THINK OF IT!

pasty faced nob: "U noob! U fooking sucks man! I am so 1337."
you: "Shut the f**k up you c*ck sucking mofo"

*pasty face nob leaves game*

Practical Magic wrote:
> For once, i'll agree with Goatboy.

*sniff*
And in my thread too... I feel honoured.

For once, i'll agree with Goatboy.

Online gaming is plagued by either uber-goobers that play 24/7 and you die instantly and continually. Boring.
Or cheats. People that suck so emply wallhacks, aim-bots etc so they never lose.
Boring.

I stopped playing online a couple of years ago, just doesn't appeal to me.

ÂLŠ†ÂÎR wrote:
> Either that or I go and play some idiotic
> American cheese face who thinks he is the most skilled nerd in the
> world.

I've been suprised at how few of those there are, you do find a few of them on Wolfenstein. I just tell them to shut the f**k up and that usually silences their inane warblings.

Most the people online are just normal gamers though, not geeks that spend all their time in front of a screen.

I got Broadband a few months a go now and I thought I would have rushed out to get a LIVE starter package straight away. However despite the complications of no Network Card and the fact that I am running Windows 98 SE I am not interested in LIVE at the moment.

I can imagine sitting there with a list of a couple of people waiting for them to come online. Either that or I go and play some idiotic American cheese face who thinks he is the most skilled nerd in the world.

I prefer to just play Counter Strike for about 1 hour a day and then just shut off. I don't have any subscritption, no need to bother about spending quite a bit of money on Network Card, LIVE starter pack, Cross over cable etc and I also don't need to worry about whether or not I could get it working using Windows 98 SE.

Its just too much hassle at the moment. When Project Gotham 2 and Operation Flashpoint are released then I will consier picking up LIVE. However for now I will stick with Counter Strike on my PC and I will wait until the Xbox, GameCube and PS2 gaming seasons open again in September. Its not that long to wait before the big blockbusters start arriving on the Cube and Xbox. For the PS2 though I still have a few games that I want to pick up from the back log of exclusives which I have missed out on in the last year.

Online gaming with the Xbox at the moment is too much hassle for what its worth to me.

Some games are like this, but as long as you're prepared to say your piece I've had some great games in Wolfenstein and SOF2. It just depends on how self conscious you are, at first I barely said anything but after a while you get used to it. If there's some gimp trying to boss people around, I tend to tell them to shut-up.

Practical Magic wrote: >
> At the moment I prefer offline gaming.

You're putting me off Practical, but maybe that's a good thing. I like deep one-player adventures [looking forward to Fable, Star Wars KOTOR, etc], so maybe I would be wasting my time...

Who doesn't prefer offline gaming?

Its like the discussion I had about Dolby Digital a few weeks back. A few thought I would prefer decent audio over decent gameplay. Hell no to that one. DD is very much like online gaming if its a bonus to an already well rounded package. When games like Halo, Amped, Project Gotham etc all have kick ass gameplay I like to rave on about how good the audio is in those games.

When it comes down to tiresome efforts like Enter the Matrix which is one of the most awful games I have played in a long time then I don't wish to talk about anything. The gameplay was poor and repetitive, the graphics were sub 2000 and the audio was one of the worst DD soudn tracks I have heard yet.

Gameplay is the main factor and as of yet aside from Counter Strike I am yet to find an online game which offers enough gameplay for me to want to choose it over an offline game. The same goes for graphics and audio.

It is VERY rare in my experience that tactic on Xbox Live extend much past a self appointed person shouting orders at everyone else, who, unless they really know him, ignore him. The most successful teams are those who know each other in real life and get together on Live. Hopefully the changes to introduce a voice chat in Live will change that, but I doubt it. Ghost Recon is the worst for this, IMO, on most game types some people will sit in one place for an eternity, hoping to get the other team to move out of cover because they are bored to death.

At the moment I prefer offline gaming.