• Go to xbox.com and sign in
• Go to support and click on the repair agent box (right side of the screen)
• Click on register a new device and enter your Xbox 360s serial number (found next to the USB ports, under the white falp on the front right of the console)
• Now click on your newly registered device (under manage devices) and click request a new repair
• Follow all the on screen instructions to “order” a repair from Microsoft
• Ignore the bit about being sent a shipping box as you will never be sent one (in the UK anyway). I confirmed with Xbox customer support that Microsoft doesn’t send out shipping boxes. You will only recieve an email containing the UPS pre-paid shipping labels



• Now check your email address (the one attached to the Xbox Live account)
• You should see an email called UPS delivery label. Click on the “retrieve UPS returns label” link and print it
• Also click on the “get the receipt” link and print it too (more about this later)
• Now find a box and pack your Xbox 360 inside it. Obviously use packing materials to protect your Xbox 360 during transit
• Attach the UPS delivery label printed earlier to the top of the box and make sure its either in a plastic pouch or covered to prevent damage. UPS need to scan it after all
• You can either request UPS to pick up your package, or you can go to a UPS drop off location
• Important: If you go to a UPS drop off location don’t forget to take the receipt that you printed out earlier. The UPS person will stamp this as proof that your Xbox 360 has been received by UPS
• Wait 2 weeks for the console to be repaired and sent back

Our repaired Xbox 360 came with a 1 month’s free Xbox Live gold membership and a letter identifying what the fault was and what they had done about it.

I hope that Microsoft has corrected the inaccurate and misleading information relating to sending you a shipping box. It caused a 2 week delay in getting our Xbox 360 fixed as I was waiting for a pesky box that was never going to arrive.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

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Now that I’m all out of Ace Attorney games, I have nothing to do on my commute. It’s about a 25 minute journey so I need to be able to save at short notice without losing much progress.

• I liked Trauma Centre but games like that are fiddly on a moving train.
• I loved the Ace Attorney games
• I hated Harvest Moon
• Animal Crossing was okay but ultimately leaves me feeling empty
• Same goes for Cooking Mama
• And Pokémon
• Don’t even bother with Brain Training
• I already have Tetris DS

What game should I buy next?

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We’re changing the way we review games.

You may have noticed that our reviews are a) not what you’d call timely and b) few and far between.

More often than not, I find that I want to discuss a particular aspect of a game, rather than the game itself. What normally happens is, I decide to save it for the review and then never get around to writing the review itself. Even worse, when I can’t find anything nice to say about a game, I simply don’t write anything. Instead of continuing this bad habit, we’re making a change.

The review category will still be there. Rather than writing full reviews in a single post, we’ll probably split a review up into a series of posts that explore the more interesting characteristics of each game, good or bad. This way, I don’t feel bad for absolutely slating the occasional free game that comes my way and you get more thoughtful content. Each post will be tagged with the game name, so you’ll have no trouble finding all our comments about a single title, should you want to.

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Infocom’s text adventures profoundly influenced my gaming style ever since my introduction to the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game. Even now, I have trouble with limited savegames because I spent so much time playing Cruel Unwinnable Spellcasting games. It took me a long time to get used to the crazy concept of NOT stealing objects that weren’t nailed down when I first played Morrowind.

As you can imagine, I was fascinated when I found that a blogger had got his hands on the drive holding emails, design docs and code for the never-completed sequel to the HHGTTG. There’s some really interesting stuff published, including a number of programmers outlining the conditions under which they would or wouldn’t work on the game. Clearly there was no controlling pointy-haired-boss culture at Infocom.

“I’ve found myself in possession of the “Infocom Drive” — a complete backup of Infocom’s shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I’ve ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.”

There’s also some remarkably civilised internet drama, for those who like that sort of thing. The staff involved weren’t contacted before their emails were published, and have turned up in the comments. Pop over to Waxy.org to see the whole thing. Milliways: Infocom’s Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [via Neil Gaiman’s Journal]

I did find one gem in the comments that I couldn’t put better myself.

I’d like to let all the Infocom people here know that, despite the obvious drama, anger, and disappointment that seems to have gone on with at least some aspects of the job, your output caused many *many* people to laugh, think, and eventually create.

Just for one aspect, I suspect you’ve singlehandedly raised the problem-solving techniques and skills of a whole generation of us. Thank you for that.

- Dave Rutledge

Problem-solving seems to have largely disappeared from gaming, except where the problem can be solved by using a large weapon or a suspiciously shiny object from the next room. I miss having to think during my games.

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Will you be in or around London on May 3rd? If so, sign up to GameCamp, an event organised by The Guardian to gather gamers and game developers together for an informal fun day of… well… anything goes.

It will be run along the lines of BarCamp - tickets are free and in return you agree to PARTICIPATE. No hanging around at the back absorbing information. You should come prepared to run your own 30 minute session on any topic you want or, at the very least, actively engage in other people’s sessions.

GameCamp is a one-day event for people interested in games, and for interesting people in gaming. That covers everything from computer and video gaming, ARGs, tabletop games, pervasive games, RPGs and more.

If none of that makes sense to you, then don’t worry – the objective is simple: to talk informally with like-minded people and get excited about stuff involving games and play…

…GameCamp is free to attend, and will be held between 11am and 5.30pm on Saturday May 3rd at 3Rooms in the Spitalfields area of London.

Tickets will be released on Monday, April 21st at EventWax. There is a strict limit of 120 attendees, so sign up early. Sony and Nintendo are supporting the event. I shall be there and as if that’s not enough of a draw ;) there will also be Rock Band!

More info on the Guardian’s Games Blog and the official GameCamp pages.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Popularity: 9% [?]

Usability is a theme dear to my heart. I’m a staunch believer that every game should have mappable control buttons and allow me to invert both the X and Y axis. Damn you Final Fantasy XII for ruining my ability to turn left and right correctly the first time!

In that vein, LevelUp’s Gaming Tidbits last week pointed me towards Improving Usability in Games. I fully agree with the points in part 1, with particular emphasis on point 5: Know what the f’k I’m doing.

A player should be able to put down a game for a period of months at a time and still be able to hop right back in. Anything else is self-defeating and counter-productive.

How to Make Games User-Friendly: Part 1 - James Portnow on Next-Gen

This problem is exactly the reason why I’m so passionate about journal systems in games. It applies to games as simple and linear as Army of Two or as complex and unwieldy as Deux Ex: Invisible War. I and so many other gamers, simply cannot afford to play every day or even every week. When we do find the time to get return to a game after a holiday, (or after a month of Guitar Hero 3 obsession ;) we need to be reminded of what the hell we were trying to achieve before RL got in the way. A simple log of what’s just happened and where we could go next would make our game experience so much happier.

I’m not quite as enamoured with part two of the series but James makes some good points about the advantage of an in-game manual and SD-TV compatibility. Read them yourself at How To Make Games User-Friendly: Part 2

What are your most reviled game design decisions?

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