Return of the UK 360

Well it arrived the day I made the last blog entry (I would have written this then, but I was too tired =P). After spouting to a friend or two the day before that I hadn't heard anything, it came to my doorstep.

I got a free month of XBL Gold with it (again) for the inconvenience, plus it's a brand new console. Yup, they couldn't fix my other one, so I've got a new one. My old one had a serial date of September '06, this one was built 28th August 2007, technically a few days before they started making 360s with the HDMI built in - damn ;P. Not that I have much use for HDMI...

Well, it means that I now need to be logged into Live to play my Arcade games. Not much fuss from me really, as I'm always on Live. But what they have done is transfer my warranty over to my new console. So whereas a brand new console has a 12 month warranty, I only have around five months left on this one - which is around the time I first had to send mine back for the disk drive issue.

The benefit of having my console back is that I'm able to play those UK only region locked games, like PES6, and almost any driving game made (Test Drive, Full Auto, Forza 2 etc). I can also load up all the 2k sports games to show on my 360voice account (so tomorrows voice listing should be interesting).

I can now also play Two Worlds, and I'm really getting into it. I'm doing a few random quests at the minute, to get some exp and gold. One thing I've found, is that the price of skills, and demands from bandits, increases inline with your total gold - so buy the skills while you're still skint! Though my stats are now thus:

Level: 26
Vit: 70 + 6
Str: 48
Dex: 30 + 5
Will: 10
HP: 5178
MP: 479
Slashing dmg: 4344
Bludgeon dmg: 3436
Level 10 skills: Lock Picking, Strong Hand, Stone Skin. Alchemy is level 7.
18.6k gold
Kills: 526

Yay for Two Worlds! I will say this: If you like Diablo/Dungeon Siege, just imagine it more like Oblivion and that is Two Worlds. If you haven't got it, go get it!

Good News Part 2: My Call to UK 360 Support

I dialed the 0800 number, was on hold with a quite ghastly tune for around 7 minutes, then connected to what I assumed was a call centre in India. The person on the other end was a soft spoken female, could barely be made out - but very helpful, and acknowledged that I'd sent my *box in before (first time was CD issues, this time it's the three red lights) and thus didnt need to explain anything new to me. I was able to get them to send it back to my home here at university, rather than to my parents then send it on. Then she said something about confirmation/compensation - I couldnt make out which, but I was being transferred to a different department. After a couple of minutes on hold there, I got someone more easily understandable, who offered me the following as compensation:

One of:
Viva Pinata
Kameo
PGR3
Perfect Dark Zero
Wireless Controller
Wireless Headset

I was very surprised - last time I sent my box back I got a free month of Live, and wasnt even expecting that! As I have all those games, I asked for some MS Points, which I was declined, so I picked up a 3rd wireless controller. RRP is around 33 quid (DVD.co.uk do it new for 18 ), so a good result in my book! Hopefully it'll get back and work longer than three months (unless they update the game list with something I want