XBox 360 Rally

When the 360 was launched, Microsoft was big on promoting that the 360 was backwards compatible with “your favorite Xbox games.” Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed that some of the games on the LIST of games that are backwards compatible with the 360 just plain don’t work.

For instance, I am a huge Star Wars geek. I’m a huge sci-fi geek in general, but Star Wars ranks as… probably my #2, behind Trek. So when I discovered that the Knights of the Old Republic games would be BC with the 360, I was absolutely stoked. So when I finally get a chance to PLAY my Xbox 360 around August (I had been in Basic Training in Missouri for the five months prior), I bought both KotOR and KotOR II, along with Halo 2 and Fable to complete my Xbox line-up. Either way, I got home, popped in KotOR and… to say it was buggy beyond all hell would be an insult to buggy games.

When I say buggy, I don’t mean that the framerate chopped every once in a while. I mean that the game barely worked, period. The sound was horrendous, often going completely dead if you played the game for over an hour, there were animation glitches in your character’s movement (namely your guy seemingly transporting clear across a zone), and on more than a handful of occasions the game would just lock up on me, requiring me to go back to the dashboard and vent my frustrations on some Time Pilot. KotOR II did much the same thing, though I’ve yet to have it completely freeze up on me.

Now, as someone who had the games for the original Xbox before it met it’s gruesome fate (My brother tripped and snapped off the disc trey), and on the PC, I know these games work better than they do on the 360. I also know that KotOR and KotOR II aren’t the only games that have this problem: The Prince of Persia titles are equally broken, from what I have heard.

I’m not wanting to rag on the 360: It’s a great system, and out of all the consoles I own (All of them, sans PS3), the 360 is my absolute favorite. All I am saying is that if Microsoft can release an update that allows you to play Psychonauts, they can find a way to make all their games work. I think they owe us faithful gamers that much.