Well i've had my Xbox 360 for about a fortnight now and i'm impressed with the system and it's games. I'm signed up with SwapGame which is the UK equivilent to Gamefly, basically an online rental place. I've rented Kameo and Perfect Dark, both of which i've completed and will likely buy, they also gave me a pretty clear example of how the 360 plays games, though of course they're launch titles that came out last year.

I got two games when i bought my 360: BFME2 and Oblivion. Both i've played quite a bit but in Oblivion's case "quite a bit" is 200 Hours, unfortunately £40 doesn't last very long and it's pretty much broke. Last week i noticed the disc wherred slightly when loading speech as wel as loading times changing and in some cases taking ten times longer then the same situation the day before. I figured it may be on it's way out but as it still played the game i keep at it.

My 360 is always horizontal, the disc is either in the 360 or in it's case all the time and the game's brand new so i'm still wondering what's caused the damage. For a game that boasts 200 hours of game time and delivers such with excellent quality the fact mine's screwing up 200 hours of my time is somewhat disheartening.

The main issue is that i'm chugging through the story for the first time with a 65 hours character and *SPOILER ALERT* i'm in "paradise" there's no way out without waiting for two people to finish talking, my game eiher freezes or says disc read error after a few seconds of them starting to converse which practically deletes the characters as there's nothing to do, completely stuck.

Okay i'm completely impressed with oblivion and the 360 but NO WAY IN HELL am i going to buy a £40-50 twice a month, being the same game. I suppose i'm expecting more quality then is readily available but having something break that happens to be one of if not my totally favourite game of all time with practical use. I've not done anything with the game that was not expected and intended by it's creators.

So yeah, i'm pissed i'll see how it turns out, i'm a big fan of TES4 Oblivion and would hate it to become unplayable without having to re-buy the game. What happended to the good old days when a nintendo 64 cartridge would work for a lifetime or so and doesn't get "scratched".

ZAXEX/MARK