"Red-ring, Mrs. Torrance."

About three weeks ago my otherwise solid, completely reliable, quietly humming Xbox 360 Slim began acting up. First sign of trouble: the machine occasionally struggled to load games from discs. The word "Opening," followed by a repeating tail of ellipses, would hang up the screen for minutes at a time. The tiny green light in the center of the Slim's silver circle winked at me in this cadence:

winkwinkwinkwinkwinkwink

After that, the Slim began to behave as if it was haunted by the demon from Insidious. Games would begin to load up only to abruptly quit, booting me all the way back to the dashboard for no discernible reason. And once, near the conclusion of a particularly trying quest in Oblivion, the Slim just shut down completely, as if someone--the demon maybe?--had yanked the power cord from the wall at the worst possible moment.

The Slim's hiccups became such a handicap that trying to load F.E.A.R. 3 for review purposes a few weeks back required approximately between 10 and 12 load-up do-overs before the game would finally "take." F.E.A.R. 3 is not a great game. But having to endure hardware issues, while on deadline, certainly did not bolster my opinion of it.

I spent 45 minutes on the phone last Friday morning with a peppy, warm-voiced man named Wade. Wade works at Microsoft headquarters where he apparently fields calls from people like me on a daily basis. Wade walked me through a few troubleshooting routines over the phone. He had me remove the hard drive from the Slim--pop open the bottom; yank the drive out by its cloth cord, voila, etc.--his theory being that perhaps corrupted data on the drive was causing games to load improperly.

Yet, even sans hard drive, discs struggled to load. The green light on the front of the Slim feverishly winked at me like an insane asylum patient.

Wade was quiet when I informed him that the problem was persisting. I knew that he was gathering himself--I could feel it--getting ready to deliver THE NEWS--information that he no doubt had delivered to possibly hundreds of 360 owners before me, and would deliver again to many other 360 owners after I hung up the phone.

"Unfortunately, there's no other choice here," he said. "You'll have to send the 360 in for repair."

As Wade described the next steps in the repair process to me--an email would be sent to me which would contain shipping labels, which I will have to print out; the turnaround for the 360 would be two to four weeks, etc.--my anger bubbled to the surface.

"I'm sorry, Wade, so please don't take this personally, but this is the fourth f***ing time I've had a 360 fail on me," I said. "I'm beyond f***ing frustrated at this point. You know, as a consumer, I should hate the 360 as a console and Microsoft as a brand at this point. But the funny thing is, I don't. I don't, Wade. And I don't f***ing know why."

Wade cleared his throat, but otherwise remained silent, allowing me to continue with my diatribe.

"You know, maybe you guys worked some sort of voodoo on me. Maybe you people hypnotized me somehow. Whatever it is, despite the number of times I've been screwed over by Microsoft and its faulty hardware, the thought of having to live without my 360 for two to four weeks sends me plummeting downward into a panic spiral. No kidding. My chest tightens up just thinking about the weeks--weeks!--I'll spend without my 360, not to mention the fact that I also evaluate games as my job, which means that doing my job for the next two to four weeks will be a huge pain in the ass for me.

"If my PS3 or Wii should go down--which they never, ever have, for the record--I think I would be mostly OK with it. But I need the 360, Wade. I need it."

Wade, to his great credit, let me get it all off my chest. Who knows what he was doing on the other end of the line while I was gassing on? Maybe he was listening intently and feeling genuine empathy for me. Or, more likely, Wade had locked eyes with one of his fellow call center mates and was making mock jag-off motions in the air. (If I was Wade, that's definitely what I would have been doing.)

I did a little math this morning. Since the 360 launch in 2005 I've spent an unbelievable two to four months, in total, waiting for various incarnations of 360s to be either repaired or replaced. And here I am, seven motherf***ing years into the machine's lifecycle, and I'm doing it once again.

Another sad 360 story: I once purchased a 360 for a friend of mine a few years back. (He was about to get married, and I wanted him to play BioShock while he still had the time to do so.) While visiting him, the machine red-ringed right in front of us. Mortified, and not wanting to leave my friend 360-less or have him go through the whole Wade process, I simply went to the nearest Target and bought him a new 360 and personally ate the $400 cost.

And yet, after all of this, after all the failure and betrayal and disappointment, the 360 remains my console of choice, and I don't understand why anymore. Wouldn't a group of sane people, two or three hardware failures ago, decide to forego all Microsoft products altogether? If you buy a Chevy and it shits out on you every 75 miles, the next time you go to buy a car chances are most people wouldn't say, "Well, I'm interested in buying another Chevy, since the last one turned out to be such a huge piece of goat shit."

But gamers are a strange lot. We're very, very forgiving. We have an incredibly high tolerance for bullshit. Case in point: By the time Jack Tretton got around to apologizing at Sony's E3 press conference this year, you could feel the tidal shift of goodwill coming from the crowd, as if we were collectively saying, "Aw, come on, Jack. Pshaw. We forgive you for the security breach that may or may not have resulted in the pilfering of our personal banking information! Now show us Uncharted 3, you scamp! Woo!"

And so I sit, brow furrowed, gazing at the gaping hole which my Slim once occupied beneath my television, trying like hell to convince myself that Microsoft f***ing sucks, that the 360 sucks, that the stupid Master Chief eats bags of cocks, etc. and not even coming remotely close to succeeding.

The Great Milo Hoax Of 2009

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E3 2010: After hours...

There's always this sort of great moment at the end of any day at E3 when your appointments are finally finished. You get carried along with the outgoing tide of convention-goers all making their way towards the exits. And, suddenly, you emerge into the late day sun of L.A.

Ahhh.

There's something terribly primal about this moment. Everyone seems to slow down a bit. Some people pause for a second, stopping in their tracks, squinting up at the sky, and letting the sun fall on their faces and arms. Smokers pull over into the smoking lane and light up.

There's good will in this moment. Strangers strike up conversations. Friends stand a bit closer together, chewing over the day. After eight hours of being ushered in small groups into very small rooms filled with very large televisions, we are together again. Your life is your own again.

It feels really fucking good.

There are usually a great many end-of-day options at this point. One: you could head to a PR-sponsored gathering near the old swimming pool behind the Hotel Figueroa. Two: you could go to semi-quiet dinner at McCormick and Schmick's. Three: you could go to a Microsoft gathering at the Hotel Edison. There's also usually "a THQ thing," or "an Activision thing," and at least 20 or so other things that you most likely haven't even heard about yet.

It doesn't matter which thing, or things, one chooses. No one thing is better or worse than any other thing. More than anything, this moment is about being with other people.

So what you do is, you stand still. You feel the gravity of the night. It's all potential at this point, all possibility.

This is what I decided to do on Wednesday night, my final night in L.A.: I would go to the PR gathering by the old swimming pool at the the Hotel Figueroa. I said goodbye to my colleague Ben Silverman (from Yahoo Games and Reviews on the Run), took about 10 steps towards the Figueroa, then realized that I did not want to do this. I ran back to Ben, who I knew was waiting in the cab line outside the convention center.

"I'm going with you," I said.

He seemed happy to hear this.

We got a cab together. Ben was certain that after eight hours of stuffy game demos, his deodorant was no longer effective. He had a spare shirt in his backpack. "Mind if I change?" he said.

I assured him that his deodorant was still very much effective. He would not be swayed. He peeled off his shirt. Suddenly, I was in the back of a cab speeding down Flower Street with a topless Jewish man. In the name of giving Ben his privacy, I turned away. "I look like an upside-down mushroom," Ben said, allowing his nudity linger for an extra beat longer than he needed to. The two of us started laughing.

Ah, E3. Fuck, man.

A few minutes later, with Ben's fresh shirt covering his shame, we arrived at the Hotel Edison. I'd never been here before. It was a dark, cavernous place. A polished bar stretched into the distance. I noticed massive steel structures, long dormant, off in the shadows. (It was originally downtown L.A.'s first private power plant.) A woman wearing translucent angel wings for some inexplicable reason circulated around the bar with a tray filled with a salmon and dill appetizers. We both grabbed one.

I can't recall food ever tasting better than it did in this moment.

We watched the salmon-toting food angel disappear into the shadows. I wished with all my heart that she would come back.

The actor Nathan Fillion, Ben told me, had been here, at The Edison, the night before at a Halo: Reach gathering. I'd recently watched the entire season of Firefly for the first time. "Man, I hope he shows up again," I said. (There's more to the Ben-meets-Nathan Fillion story. But that's his story. So ask him to tell it to you.)

Then, out of the shadows emerged Felicia Day. I'd met her the day before at the Sony press conference. "There goes Felicia Day," I whispered to Ben. I considered saying hello to her--remember me from the Sony press conference?--when suddenly the Salmon Angel reappeared. By the time we'd finished eating our salmon things, Felicia Day was gone. "Oh well," I said.

I had a dinner to attend at the aforementioned McCormick and Schmick's. Now that I'm not drinking, I no longer want a tall, cold beer at the end of my days at E3; now I want a big meal, preferably on the early side of the night. So I said goodbye to Ben, promising to return later on in the evening and knowing full well that I would not. I made my way to the surface from the subterranean Edison and hailed a taxi.

The dinner at McCormick and Schmick's was less than satisfying. I sawed away at a miserly piece of over-seasoned meat. After dinner, still unsatisfied, still craving some sort of exclamation point at the end of my E3 experience, I decided to press on. I had the waiter call me a cab.

I'd been invited to a strange, pretentious-sounding party in a section of L.A. known as Los Feliz. My friend, Chris Jurney, who works for Double Fine, had told me about this party a couple of months ago. It was being held at a private home. There would be no music at the party. The emphasis would be on conversation. (See? Pretentious.) There would be good food at the party. It would be attended primarily by developers. The Escapist would be there filming the event for posterity.

My cab driver was an elderly Iraqi man wearing a pair of yellowed reading glasses. I told him where I was going, and he pulled away from the restaurant with a great deal of confidence, even making the tires squawk a little.

I rolled the window down and let the night air blow on my face. I was off on an exciting adventure. I was sure that I would find my exclamation point in Los Feliz. Suddenly, we stopped.

The cab had pulled over. The driver located a tattered atlas in his glove box. He switched on the cab's dirty interior light. "Don't worry, my friend, I will get you there!" he said cheerily. He then pulled out a huge, old magnifying glass and began using it to peer at his atlas.

Whatever momentum I had, whatever optimism I was feeling, was quickly escaping out of the rolled-down window of the cab.

How long did we sit there? Long enough for me to lean forward and say, "You know what? Forget this destination. I just want to go back to my hotel--"

"I'VE FOUND IT!" the driver said. He tossed his atlas aside and peeled away from the curb. "Ha, ha! I will get you there, sir! Don't worry, don't worry!"

I don't know L.A. At all. I had no fucking idea where we were heading. My entire existence in this moment depended on a nearsighted, magnifying glass-wielding Iraqi man.

To make matters worse, the man began to talk. "I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND ME TALKING IT HELPS ME PASS THE TIME HA, HA!" he said.

His name was Michael. He had been in L.A. for 20 years. He had worked as a limousine driver. He drove a lot of famous clients around, including Julio Iglesias and Farrah Fawcett. "Farrah Fawcett, she was so good to me," he said. "She was a beautiful person inside and out."

Each time Michael's cab slowed to under 30 miles per hour, I fantasized about hurling myself out the door and into the L.A. night. I would curl myself into a ball and hope that I would not suffer any permanent physical damage. The only thing that kept me from doing this is the fact that I had no idea where we were. We were moving away from downtown. The streets around us were dark and menacing.

I was at Michael's mercy. And he seemed to know it.

To his credit, Michael did get me to the house. The party had been going on for quite a few hours by the time I arrived, long enough for the rented security guards at the foot of the driveway to be enjoying plates of food. They seemed annoyed to have their chicken wing consumption interrupted by my appearance.

The driveway was very, very long. It was filled with a grade of expensive crushed stone that made it difficult to walk up. I trudged along, following a trail of flickering candles, towards the buzz of conversation and shadows. In retrospect, I think that perhaps those stones were trying to tell me something. They were saying, TURN BACK. THERE IS NOTHING HERE FOR YOU.

I did get to spend a bit of time with Chris Jurney. But at this point in the night, I had no energy left. Simple conversations with people were agonizing. I felt like their words were little stones--yes, stones from the very driveway that I had just traversed--being tossed at my forehead. Realizing that my night was over, that I had nothing good to offer these people, I expended my last bit of energy in saying goodbye. I headed back down the never-ending driveway, anxious to get back to my hotel.

This being a residential neighborhood, there was no street traffic, let alone a steady stream of fare-seeking cabs. I asked the sated security people if they could call a cab for me. "We don't have that kind of information," one of them said.

Finally, out of the dark, a taxi light appeared. It pulled up. People piled out. One of these people was Mark Rein from Epic. "I can't believe people are leaving already," Mark said, frowning in my direction as I got into his group's vacated cab.

The driver sped me to my motel in blissful silence. When I arrived, I realized that I didn't have any bottled water left in my room. So I crossed Sunset Boulevard at midnight and headed into the cool, over lit confines of the 24-hour Ralph's.

As I combed the aisles in search of the water section--L.A. supermarkets always have the biggest water sections--I felt something strange. My neck felt tingly. Yes, I was exhausted. Yes, I was completely drained from my day. Yet, I felt this sudden influx of adrenaline. I was suddenly, for unknown reasons, absolutely, ridiculously and absurdly elated.

I had no idea what was happening to me. I felt this was an important moment. I couldn't explain what was going on. Realizing that I had my camera in my bag, I dug it out and filmed about 15 seconds of the Ralph's aisles at midnight for posterity.

Here is that footage.