I hate the new Xbox.com

You know how the saying goes: nobody likes change.

But the revamping of Xbox.com, a website I would frequent often to scan my list of earned and unearned Achievements, catch up on what my online friends were doing, and play around a bit in the forums, has not merely been changed. It’s been made, more or less, unnavigable.

It took me a good number of clicks to find the forums, and even more to scan my list of games played as well as their progress towards 100%. What’s more annoying is that even when under my section of games played, clicking the game’s name or cover art box no longer brings me to my Achievement list; instead I am rerouted to the game’s hub page so I can hand over hard-earned money for DLC and Avatar items. Er, no thanks. No…see, I was supposed to click the “view Achievements” button off to the side. I don’t know. It’s probably a small thing to some people, but I used to think that all the covers and game names were connected to me and my progress. It is also harder to see what Achievements have been earned versus not earned; they used to be grayed out, but are now tagged the same style except they have “- -” next to the Gamerscore icon.

New features include the ability to edit avatars via the website, a combined view for messages, friend requests, and game invites, improved account notification; family reports so you can keep tabs on your household, and the ability to play web games with friends via the website or Windows Phone 7. Nothing to really jump around over. Couldn’t figure out how to play a web game with a friend via the site either.

Also, the fact that the new site incorporates so much white space gives it a vapid, unprofessional feel to it.

In short, ughhhhh. And I’ll probably end up using the site a whole lot less. Good job, Microsoft!

Found my first bugs in Fallout: New Vegas, and I’m not talking about radroaches or bloatflies

Fallout: New Vegas was only released like two weeks ago, and the world mostly knows it for being an extremely buggy game. And we’re not talking about a wasteland full of mutated swarms of praying mantises or radroaches; no, these are programming bugs, wonky coding and scripting that can totally ruin one’s gameplay session. Or, in my case, help keep me alive for a few more minutes. More on that later. But yeah, bugs. LET ME SHOW YOU THEM, says LOLCAT.

How bad can it be? Well, the game shipped, and several players found a rather unsettling bug in the very first few minutes. Not a good start. Luckily, Doc Mitchell’s head stayed put for my first playthrough. Over the past few days, thanks to a patch, Obsidian Entertainment passed along 200 scripting and quest bug fixes for those connected to the Internet. Me? Nope, no Web yet. Still gotta call Comcast and get it all set up at the Leaky Cauldron, which means I’m playing vanilla Fallout: New Vegas, the true layer, broken and spotty, the way it was meant to be played because, well, the game shipped like this, and that’s actually a little sad. They had like two years to toy with that engine. But Fallout 3 prepared me for glitchy gameplay, and there’s nothing too terrible to really get me to put this game aside.

So, last night, while working on the quest My Kind of Town I came across three different bugs.

Buggy bug #1: I entered an NCR tent near Primm to find a trooper standing on top of a chair as if she was five years old and throwing a tantrum for a cookie before dinner. Tara and I laughed out loud and waited for her to walk off the chair back to the floor. Which she did quickly. Odd, all in all.

Buggy bug #2: Being chased by two radscorpions, which, if both hit me, would be certain death. Thankfully, one of the radscorpions walked into a rock…and got stuck there. Like…inside the rock. I could target it with V.A.T.S. and all, but it was not moving from that rock. Sweet. I took care of its brother and then left it to die a rocky death.

Buggy bug #3: Now, this is the one that worries me. Was in the NCRCF, taking out Powder Gangers left and right in search of a new sheriff when all of a sudden…my gun disappeared. Poof. Gone. No more 9mm pistol. Yet I could still fire and damage enemies. I just had no way of aiming, but V.A.T.S. still worked as well. I tried putting my weapon away and taking it back out so to speak, but nothing showed. So I hid in a corner, freaking out with a bunch of corpses and bent cans. Then, without reason or sound, the gun came back. Thankfully, the room was already cleared out by then. This kind of bug can be very damaging though, and I hope I don’t see it happen again.

But at least no quests have wonked out on me…yet. That would be the saddest thing ever, like not being able to finish one’s favorite meal. I love quests. I love starting them, following them, and finishing them. Especially Fallout quests; they are so inventive and open, and they can be done this way or that way or not even done at all.

So, yeah. Fallout: New Vegas is kind of a crappy game from a programming bird’s eye view. However, that won’t stop me from having a good time. Think I might even head to the strip soon…