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[Dtoid community blogger UsurpMyProse bids a fond farewell to his Xbox 360 for this month’sCommunity Assignment. Want to see your own blog appear on our front page?Go write something!–Mr Andy Dixon]
Dear Xbox 360 (aka My Sweet Red Eye),
I’m leaving you.
It’s over, baby. One-way ticket to Splitsville. Time to stuff your face with wine and ice cream andcrank up The Cure.
Look, don’t pretend like we didn’t both see this coming. We’ve been growing apart for a while now. I’ve been getting older, you’ve been getting older, and we’ve started to want different things out of life. I want next-gen graphics and gameplay. You want 50 more Kinect-compatible sequels toJust Dance. I want to experiment with new indie titles. You want to smother my creativity withoverly expensive certification processes.
It’s like all you want us to do anymore is sit on the couch and watch NFL highlights. When have I ever been a football guy, Xbox? I haven’t bought a sports game sinceNHL 11. Just because you love ESPN so much doesn’t mean you’re able to pretend like hockey doesn’t exist too.
Okay, I’ll admit, things have been good lately. I won’t pretendour time together in Los Santoswasn’t exciting. Cruising through the deserts of Blaine County on an ATV, the setting sun turning the sky blood red,“Night Moves” blaring on the radio.You never looked more beautiful.
But when’s the last time we felt that thrill?Halo 4? That was, what, a year ago? And you and I both know that was nothing more than a hollow echo of our college days. A blatant attempt to recreate sophomore year, staying up with my roommates until 3 AM playing Fiesta Slayer on Cold Storage. Maybe we fooled each other for a little while, but getting my ass kicked on Ragnarok for the zillionth time by a bunch of anonymous, foul-mouthed moppets just wasn’t the same.
And when’s the next time we’ll feel like our old selves?Super Time Force?Sure, a retro,Contra-style shoot-‘em-up with exquisite pixel art and a skateboarding dinosaur is like a delicious gumbo of all of my favorite things, but don’t you dare think you can gloss over your indie issues with one exclusive Capybara title. Besides, how long before I seeSuper Time Forceup on Steam, with bonus content and no sign of a game-breaking bug that took them eight months to patch over Live Arcade?
Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be. Let’s just attempt to remember all the good times we had together. Do you remember when we first met? 2008, freshman year of college. I had just won an academic writing award, and was thinking of the flashiest and most irresponsible way to spend the prize money.
And there you were.
We had flirted a few times before – some rounds ofFIFAandCall of Duty 4with the kids across the hall in the dorms. But then you promised me the one thing I couldn’t get anywhere else. The one game that told me you were the console I wanted to spend the rest of generation with.
Castle Crashers. Oh, sweet, sublimeCastle Crashers. It feels like only yesterday that I watched as acartoon deer rocketed itself on a steam of its own excrementand instantly knew that I had made the right decision.
Sure, paying so much money just to play a goofy throwback to classic brawlers likeTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in TimeandGolden Axewas a little ridiculous in retrospect, and the kind of suspect financial decision one would expect from a nineteen year old. But it wasn’t so much aboutCastle Crashersitself as it was about whatCastle Crashersrepresented. The game suggested that the seventh console generation didn’t have to be about gimmicky motion controls or triple-A titles that valued graphics over gameplay. Rather, the generation could take everything we loved about videogames growing up and expound and improve upon those cherished memories. That the DNA of classic platformers and puzzlers could be extracted and altered into something new and meaningful and fun.
It’s difficult to remember a time when Xbox Live Arcade was a thriving Mecca of $15 masterpieces, and not asmoldering ruinofburned bridges.But I can still recall eagerly poring overBraid‘s time-bending brain twisters and fragmented story of lost love. The Metroidvania charm ofShadow Complex. The gut punch ending ofLimbo. Thepixelated eye candyandchiptune magicofScott PilgrimandFez. Tearing my hair out trying to best the cruel challenges ofTrials HDandSuper Meat Boy.
If you would have told me that the seventh generation’s successor toCrimson Skieswas aPeanuts-licensed budget title calledSnoopy Flying Ace, I would have punched you in your blasphemous mouth. But for a few magical weeks in 2010, we took the fight to the Red Baron and came back heroes, damn it.
That’s not to say you were incapable of pulling off the occasional blockbuster. Your JRPG offerings may have amounted to little more than a couple dozenTalesgames and whatever the hellBlue Dragonwas, but you at least helped the Western RPG finally come into its own. TheMass Effecttrilogy was a certifiable sci-fi epic, and theFalloutandBorderlandseries showed us just how much fun irradiated, post-Apocalyptic wastelands could be.
Your big budget efforts always were at their best when it came to shooting things in the face. I’ll never forget my first trip through the Deco ruins of Rapture, taking down Big Daddies withthe Chemical Throwerthe closest I ever felt to being a Ghostbuster. If the next generation is as obsessed with zombies as this last one was, I’ll start chewing out people’s neck tendons myself, but the biggest hold-your-breath moments in these last eight years came from rushing headlong through hordes of infected inLeft 4 Dead. And as much guff asGrand Theft Auto IVgets for its grittiness and overbearing cousins, my first truly awed moments of the seventh generation came from driving through the streets of Liberty City, turning the metropolis’s Cluckin’ Bells into the scenes of grisly police standoffs.
Of course, all of those are games I bought again on PC for a handful of nickels and a smile, but let’s not rehashthatargument again.
Though I guess no matter how hard we try, we can’t completely ignore the rough patches. Because believe me, there were many, many rough patches. Lest we forget, you died on me.Twice. Relationships don’t usually survive that. Yet every time you froze or overheated or just generally got fucked temperature-wise, I sent you back to the magical worker elves at Microsoft HQ and patiently waited for you to get better. Sure, maybe I did it because of an extended warranty on older 360 models, but mostly I did it because I cared.
Because you know what? I’m done buying accessories to make up for the fact that I was naive enough to invest in you before they busted out a superior model. I’m done buying XBLA games that inevitably pop up cheaper on PC, and paying an additional fee to watch streaming services I already pay for, and wondering when you’re going to give out for the third time when I don’t have the money or the heart to fix you.
Please don’t be too upset. This is just how things have to be. Relationships with consoles are never meant to last, because something new will always come along. You’ve seenToy Story 3, haven’t you? I’m not saying I’m sending you off to a cataclysmic, fiery doom, but we all have to grow up sometime. You’ll be living out your days in storage with my Genesis, my Gamecube, my DS – the systems I’ve gone through this same song and dance with before. Yes, I know my PS2 is still hooked up, spinningPersona 4andDisgaeaevery once in a while. But – and I know this might be difficult for you to hear, Xbox 360 – you’re no PS2.
Maybe we’ll see each other again. There’s still so much we never got to do together.Bayonettalooked fun, if fetishized misogyny is your thing. And I heardLost Odysseywas moreFinal Fantasythan this generation’s actualFinal Fantasy. Maybe I’ll finally finishRed Dead Redemptionsometime. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Weep not, Xbox 360. When all is said and done, you were a good console. We had good times. We had bad times. We made memories together.
Forever yours (but not really),
