Well I finally got a Xbox 360 and Dead Rising was my first choice for a game. All was well at first but holy shit once I started getting to the missions the text was unreadable on my Toshiba SDTV. I couldn’t read the text even moving within inches of the screen.
Unless there is some sort of workaround I won’t be able to get very far in the game. I’ve just been wandering around the mall hitting zombies with guitars, CDs, and benches. That is fun enough but it gets boring after a while. It figures that the first Xbox 360 game I get is FUBAR on my setup. Tremendous irony. I was hoping that hardware related issues which have plagued my PC gaming would be a thing of the past.
On the plus side with Xbox Live I’ve downloaded a zillion demos which have been a lot of fun. At least I will be able to see in advance what is going to work on my SDTV. Saints Row was a lot of fun and that will probably be my next purchase. I guess I’ll go through the demo again and wait until Capcom figures out that not everyone has a HDTV.
Question. Do I have to have Xbox Live Gold to download demos? I have it free for the first month but I would pay to keep getting the free demos.
No you don’t. You can do everything on Live with the free Silver level, except actually play multiplayer games against people. Download demos, themes and pics, videos, Live Arcade games, whatever. Gold only really gives you online multiplay.
Well, I only have time to briefly browse QT3 forms and I certainly would have picked up a different game if I knew. I saw everyone including Gary W. and Dave L. raving about the game so I figured it would be a winner. Caveat emptor but I would never have figured on not being able to the text from a game.
Thanks for your suggestion but my XBox is in my living room and my PC monitor is in my computer room. I’m not moving either item for the sake of one game.
It does suck, and it kinda surprises me, that such an obvious flaw got through testing, especially considering that SDTVs are the sets on which the vast majority of people are going to be playing this. Is it really unreadable, even on a large widescreen SDTV?
Maybe Capcom will issue some kind of patch for an SDTV/HDTV text toggle.
I finally did manage to get the text readable on my SDTV. It’s a wega so switching to the 16:9 optimized mode and setting the xbox to widescreen sdtv helped a little, as did using the “spots” mode (I had it on “vivid” initially which made the text impossible to read). Playing with the shaprness control (and picture and brightness a little too) helped the most.
I still have to squint or move closer to the screen often though.
Frankly I can’t believe there is only text in the first place. Everything should be voiced in this game and the text should just be optional subtitles. I miss half the text because I can’t read and dodge zombies at the same time.
Ah man, I’m really sorry. I meant Tom Chick who gave it 100%. I don’t know why I said Dave L. As I recall he hates the Xbox 360. No offense to either of you I hope.
There is a lot of hot air out there and I don’t have time to read it all so that is why I give a few regulars a lot more consideration. I don’t post often but I lurked for a long, long time before I even finally signed up. That reminds me…I need to change my profile…
I stand corrected. I remember reading about those issues so I bought one of those $20 fans that attach to the back of the unit. The fan definitely keeps it cooler but I don’t have an internal thermometer so I don’t know by how much. I’ve left it on for a long time while I was downloading demos and all seems well for now…
Not much louder. Since my unit is across the room I can’t really hear it above the noise from the game.
The tip to use widescreen mode was a good one. I can see the text better now. It is still hard to read but I can at least make some of it out. I wish there was a way to slow it down though. I have to bug the NPCs several times to get what they are saying.
I’m at level 2 now and it was fun doing the intro level again. This time I was able to fight my way through the zombie hoard and get back up stairs. Nothing like hitting a zombie in the head with a trash can after a long day at work!
I bought one of those Intercooler 360. From my informal testing it did push a lot more are through the 360 but also doubled the fan noise. I ended up keeping it for troubleshooting purposes but I have it disconnected most of the time. The good news is it drowns out the loud hitachi drives.
So far dead rising has only locked once on a load screen while I was power leveling. It hasn’t happened since then, and I’ve probably played it around 4 hrs or so.
