Episode 33: Maximum Bacon

This week we set our engines to Maximum Bacon! We talk June NPD numbers, the slim 360, Deathspank and ask about your favorite gaming beverage! Don’t miss a single minute..

Don’t forget to email us your questions, comments and reviews to info@polygamerous.com OR call in to our voicemail at 407-584-POLY (7659)

 Ep 33: Maximum Bacon [111:57m]: Play Now | Download

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Ep 32: Shut Up Mike, Get On My Horse

We’re back after a week break and we’ve got lots to say (as usual). We talk the news, releases, rumors and answer YOUR questions. That and drink some sweet, sweet lemonade..

Don’t forget to email us your questions, comments and reviews to info@polygamerous.com OR call in to our voicemail at 407-584-POLY (7659)

 Ep 32: Shut Up Mike, Get On My Horse [107:17m]: Play Now | Download

XBox on Satellite Internet

This post originally appeared on broadwayblues.wordpress.com. Please direct all complaints there.

I never thought that in today’s day of age that there were people out there that didn’t have broadband. I was pretty much always plugged in playing on Xbox Live or World of Warcraft at all hours of the day and night. Then I got married and moved out into the woods. So the long and short of it, is that I went from some pretty kick-butt broadband to dial-up. Then I bought a USB modem from Verizon, but being too far from the tower meant frequent drops in the data stream. Then I got Hughesnet, and that is what I am going to focus on here.

Does Hughesnet work on Xbox Live? Yes and no. If you have done kind of research on this subject, then you know that they say pretty specifically that “twitch gaming” isn’t supported by Hughesnet, and I can verify that. I can’t play any kind of multiplayer on satellite internet. No Modern Warfare 2, no Halo 3. Bummer ‘eh? Before you get all mad, keep in mind that there are things that are possible on Xbox Live that you might not realize.

Things that you can’t do on Xbox Live via Satellite Internet:

• Mulitplayer
• Chat

Things that you can do on Xbox Live via Satellite Internet:

• Title updates (The update that you get when you first play a game when connected to Live.)
• Sign In to your gamer profile
• Rate games
• Read your messages and compose voice and text messages to your friends
• Twitter and Facebook work fine
• Download demos, add-ons and themes*
• Stream movies on Netflix*

Now keep in mind that I have the plan that allows 450 MB of data. *Using Netflix and downloading demos eats up your allowance pretty freaking fast, so I recommend that you do these things at 2-7 AM, during the ‘free’ part of the night. My wife and I watched a couple of episodes of Lost on Netflix and I had to use our free monthly token to reset our usage. So, it is something that isn’t really practical but it’s good to know that you can use it.

Now, there are some technical things that I have discovered about the service. Navigating to http://www.systemcontrolcenter.com/ has become some sort of obsession of mine. This allows you to see all sorts of things about your modem, and your service.

Now when I first fired up the internet, the first thing that I did was see if Xbox Live worked on my brand-new 360 Slim. It picked up the wireless just fine and signed in to Live. This made me so happy. I was schlepping my 360 to work and getting updates and demos there. I did notice however that there were things that didn’t work. Just getting around wasn’t working. I couldn’t browse anything on Live. I was signed into Live, but opening the demos page returned an error. At this point, I was navigating to Xbox.com and putting items in my download queue. Then I found this: http://www.systemcontrolcenter.com/stlui/fs/advanced/turbo_page_config_frame.html

Turbo Page is a pre-fetching service that is on my default. It seems to make pages load faster by having the servers take some of the load off the modem. What this does is totally fruck up Live. Once I turned this option off, Live came alive. However, for some strange reason, title updates didn’t work. It is very easy to navigate to the link above and enable the turbo page option and download the updates that you need.

Overall, it is kinda nice being able to go online. After years of being offline it is nice to have some functionality on Live. While you can’t play multi-player MW2, you can keep up to date with things like ‘This Week in Xbox’ and game videos. Seeing your friend’s gamerscore and played games is nice too. It’s not perfect, but it is better than nothing.

Hope this helps. Leave me a comment if you have a specific question that isn’t covered!

Ep 31: Frat Podcast Games

We started late and had a last minute drop out so Andy, Mike and Kelly regale you with all that is new and exicting this week in gaming. Well, new anyway..  The rumors are back, the question is a little gruesome, but the conversation is all grade “A” gaming goodness. We’ve also got a review of Tower Madness Zero by John! Don’t miss it…

Don’t forget to email us your questions, comments and reviews to info@polygamerous.com OR call in to our voicemail at 407-584-POLY (7659)

 Ep 31: Frat Podcast Games [88:19m]: Play Now | Download

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Long Term Plan

I was recently asked by my girlfriend if I planned on playing videogames for the rest of my life. Without much thought I told her that I think I will play videogames for the rest of my life. She then informed me that we needed to evaluate our relationship(and possibly see other people). Now while she may be a heartless $*#@%! she does bring up a interesting point. Is it really all that realistic to think that I’m going to play videogames for the rest of my life? Maybe?

Videogames have been around since 1958,tennis for two being the first, so the logical step would be to first find someone who has been playing games since the beginning. Tennis for Two was a popular attraction at the Brookhaven National Laboratory October 18th 1958, so finding someone that had played that game  specifically might be to difficult. Instead we’ll start with the Magnavox Odyssey and our subject Steven.

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