Goodbye Xbox 360, Goodbye Rock Band 3 (Endless Setlist)

Well, this is it.  I'm currently on my third Xbox 360 and I've taken good care of it...keep it vertical and well-ventiled.  I've had it for a couple of years (which is much longer than I expect) but now is starting to freeze up on me when I'm playing Rock Band 3, especially at the most inopportune times.  Such as when I'm going for a high score on Antibodies X-Pro Keys and IT FREEZES with just 15-20 seconds to go.  I was primed to beat my old score by 50,000+ points and it just FROZE!!!

WWWRRRRRYYYYYYYY!!!!!

I can't keep playing like this so now I must buy a new Xbox 360 if I'm going to continue with my RB3 career.  Oh and my XBL Gold runs out in September.  Micro$oft, take my money!!

Or I can always go through a litany of tests to see if there's any solutions to fix the 360.  Bulls***, I hate this crap.  For the record, I have RB3 installed to my HD plus I had the wireless adapter disconnected.  I'll be back to see if I can fix this bastard.

I'm going to tell you another fun story.  This was on my second Xbox.  In Rock Band 2, there was an achievement tied to a goal called the "Endless Setlist 2."  In this, you had to play 84 songs in one sitting.  From start to finish with no breaks, this would take over 6 hours.  Oh, and there's a special achievement for good players--finish the entire list without pausing or failing and you get an extra achievement, "Bladder of Steel."  I was going to do it on Expert Guitar to knock out these achievements for 125G.

I went through a bit of conditioning...make sure I could tolerate the 6+ hours and pass Visions on X-Tar without failing under duress.  Plus I had to find a good time to do this...during the weekend (I had college at the time, duh)

The first time I did it, and I'm not lying to you, I got to Song 80 (Shoulder to the Plow) without pausing or failing.  The XBOX FROZE DURING THIS SONG.  So basically, I was like, "Nooo, please work, please work," as I caressed the Xbox like that little kid who mourned over Old Yeller.  So six hours of work DOWN THE DRAIN.  Man, f*** the Xbox 360.  I proceeded to towel trick the 360 and mail it in to a repair center right afterwards.  The straw that broke my back...

But the second time I tried again and I did it flawlessly.  And I recorded it!!!



Oh yeah, one more fun story.  As soon as I beat the Endless Setlist 2, my Guitar controller ran out of batteries five minutes later.  Had they run out during the setlist, I wouldn't have unlocked the Bladder of Steel achievement.

Thankfully, there are no long-ass achievements like this in Rock Band 3.

EDIT: Here's how the 360's gone down since I posted this.  First, I tried cleaning out the system cache.  Then I started playing RB3 again and it froze about 20 minutes in.

Second, I backed up as many save files as possible to a USB drive and formatted the entire HD.  Now I'm in the process of getting everything back on the HD (means going thru my Purchase History and re-downloading EVERYTHING off XBL) and we'll see from here if it freezes again or not.  Before I began all the downloadin', I gave RB3 a spin for 10 minutes without any incidents so MAYBE this'll work.

It does beg the question whether or not I can still rely on this console a year or so down the road.  But that's a discussion for another day.

If this doesn't work, then I have few options left...perhaps I should just buy a new 360 and donate my old one to my family (since I'm going to Florida soon).

EDIT 2: Reformatted the whole hard drive and reinstalled all the post Rock Band 3-DLC (because doing the whole library would take AGES).  Xbox 360 freezes after 20 minutes of playing.  Wonderful, just erased my entire 360 HD for NOTHING.  That's it, gotta buy a new Xbox 360.  It's done.  I want to smash this thing with a hammer.