The Worst Purchase I’ve Ever Made…

I should hope Brucie and the Boys are ashamed of this ‘theme’

The fraction of a second for which I lost my judgement when I saw the words “Iron Maiden – Powerslave Theme” was enough for XboxLIVE to swallow up my 150 points, or my £1.28p.

“Shit” I thought for a moment as the realisation of what I had just done hit me like a ton of bricks hitting a combine soldier in one of the early Half-Life 2 trailers. I have always held the opinion that themes other than those that come free, are a complete waste of money for anyone dumb enough to purchase them. And you know what? I was right.

As the initial shock of “OMG Maiden!!” wore off, and I actually applied the theme, I was shockingly reminded of how much I am going to miss that £1.28p. 3 pics of Ed, and the Powerslave album cover art for the backing pics, layed out with no thought to functionality at all, making the text somewhat hard to read (although not quite as bad as what i’ve seen from various Capcom themes people have showed me) and in the case of 2 of the pictures, the scaling is not right and so they appear too big, or small for the screen.

But the biggest shock was the complete lack of thought that went into the dashboard trim and guide background. The guide trim is completely default, grey, and doesn’t invoke anything even remotely Maiden in imagary. I would’ve expected a basic black and blue at least. And for the guide background they simply plastered a generic “Iron Maiden” band logo sticker over the default background. But they tiled it!!! How tacky is that?!? It covers all the text on the guide, making it completely non functional. Even replacing that with a custom one leaves only a moderately acceptable theme that couldn’t have taken more than 5 minutes to scramble together.

I am ashamed of myself for having wasted the money.

So let me reiterate, now firm in the beleif that I am right, having experienced it first hand. Themes are a complete waste of your money.