Things to do During LIVE Downtime

Hey you. Yes you, gamer. Did you power up your Xbox360 today to be greeted with a new message. A message that conveyed a meaning so potentially devastating to your pitiful and insignificant life that you had to physically stop yourself from gouging your own eyes out with a fork? It talked of scheduled downtime. A possible 24 hours in which you may have to go without any binary heroin flowing through the fire-optic veins of the internet (metaphor, heroin isn’t a LIVE enabled game I’m afraid).

I may be able to help you.

Pre-empting the mass hysteria and/or suicides that will definitely happen on June 16th, I used my superior problem solving skills (think Winston Wolf, but less well dressed) to come up with some activities that may be able to act as a substitute for your horrific addiction.

Customise your Avatar:

This is what your subscription fee is going into after all, so why not make the most of it? MS sure are. Never mind paying for maintenance that can be applied progressively during uptime. If you, the customer, don’t get your geek chic shoes and glasses or something there’d be an uproar. So why not spend an hour or five going through some shirts and hairstyles. Remember: your Avatar doesn’t have to represent you. Actually it shouldn’t represent you at all. You can get in bother for having your real name in your GamerTag. So you sure as shit shouldn’t look like the cross-dressing vampire Avatar you’ve somehow managed to make.

However, you can wear a top hat so that’s nice.

Clean out your hard drive or memory unit:

Do you really need those gamer pics? Are they really worth sacrificing a game save or an arcade game? Of course not, idiot. And as nice as those trailers are, they’re in HD and thus are drinking all of your bytes. And, since you’re poor you’re still managing off the 20G hard drive that came with the machine. That’s no good. You had better remove all of the installed games on it too. You can manage with the sound of the disk spinning. Just try and pretend it’s something quieter. Try imaging you’re playing Gears on a misfiring tractor engine. You need to make room to ensure the totally useful and awesome Avatar and NXE files can function properly. NEED to.

Play an offline game:

This may shock you, but there are games with literally no online multiplayer.

Don’t worry I’ll wait.

Finished screaming in awe at this abhorrent news? OK then. Yes it turns out that developers are still making the foolish mistake of making story modes for their videogames and completely forgetting to add a pointlesly tacked-on multiplayer mode. Why not re-play some Bioshock or some Mirror’s Edge? The latter can be finished in about half an hour. Ergo it’s perfect for the downtime.

Failing that, play one of the arcade games. Because that’s why you spent all that money on your machine, so you could play Worms again.

Cancel your subscription for a day:

Just to prove your point. MS makes a quadrillion pounds every second it’s charging for a service that it isn’t providing. So don’t let them take your money!

Burn it if you have to. Stuff it down a toilet. For God’s sake just don’t let MS get their grubby little fingers on it. You wouldn’t pay for a TV channel you aren’t getting would you? Why pay for LIVE services if you aren’t getting it?

Just think, that 10 pence you will have saved can go towards a nice bag of monster munch or a down-payment on your first home.

Throw your Xbox under a bus:

First you put it in a thick bag as this prevents flying shrapnel from embedding itself in your eyes. A burlap sack is the perfect choice but if you are unable to get your hands on one, a couple of black bin liners should suffice.

Now you need to go to a fairly busy road. Get a good swing going and wait for a bus (or other heavy vehicle) to approach. When the bus is well past its safe breaking distance: Throw. Make sure the vehicle doesn’t pass over the device, leaving it completely unharmed by aiming for the near side wheels.

If the bus swerves into a ravine as a result of your activities and kills its passengers in a hilarious ball of flames, just blame Microsoft. They’re the direct cause of this catastrophe. Just think: if they had kept services up you wouldn’t have even left your house at all that day. Which segues nicely onto the next suggestion.

Leave the house:

[Editor's note: don't ever leave the house. There are bears and hay fever.]

Why not go outside? Chances are you’re as pale as a new-born fish. So much that if the sun is behind you and you have your shirt off people can see your heart beating. It’s about time you built up an immunity to ultraviolet radiation. The absolute worst thing that an happen is you dying. And that’s not so bad. No one will miss you.

If you can’t think of any reason to go outside. Just go for a walk. Try not to imagine a giant blocky cursor floating in front of you telling you which way to go or a green crystal hovering atop your head. For the sake of your own mental well-being and social sensibilities.

Play on a Playstation 3:

Just kidding. Everyone knows the PS3 doesn’t have online games. Unless you count air humping female avatars in Home as a game (which you shouldn’t, weirdo.)

Play on a Wii:

See above. Replace “air humping female avatars in Home” with “horrific amounts of lag and dealing with shitty friend-code systems”.

That’s about all I can think of really. Personally I shall be doing a mixture of the third and fifth suggestion. Of course it all depends on personal preference and how dire the state of your sorry life has gotten. Please don’t top yourself. It’ll be all over the news and it’ll give gaming a bad name.