I have signed up for a free 2-month trial of XBOX Live! which came with Halo 2 which I purchased over the weekend. I went to play online and my pre-owned XBOX kept telling me that the disc was dirty or damaged. This problem has been dogging this system since I bought it. At first it was not so bad but the more I play the more it seems to cause problems. Cut scenes and videos hesitate and occasionally there are sound and in-game video problems. Van Helsing seems to be the most reliable with Brute Force coming in second. Unreal Championship and Halo 2 seem to be the worst at evoking problems. Fortunately I purchased an extended warranty for the box so hopefully EB Games will take good care of me.

I did get further in Van Helsing. I beat Igor for the second time and opened the portal to Castle Dracula. For those of you reading this who might be playing this game keep in mind that to kill the werewolf, or Dracula the pistols seem to work very well as you can fire very rapidly. The werewolf was a real challenge for me as it seems that staying close to him is the best way to kill him. If you get too far away from him he has a high-speed charging attack that almost always causes me a great deal of damage. For one his charge damages me and then I have a hard time getting far enough away from him so as to evade his very long swipe attacks. I find if you maintain a reasonable distance and then continuously circle him keeping the distance constant that I was able to keep firing rapidly until he went down.

Unfortunately Van Helsing as well as my other saved games will most likely be lost when I resolve my system problems but that's OK better early in my ownership then not.

Well Thursday I leave for Las Vegas and the Consumer Electronics Show. I am certain I will have lot's of great information to share when I return!