Xbox 360 Impressions

[Bond]

I found this over at IGN and thought it was fairly informative:

Well, before I begin I guess I should say what games/TV I used "testing" the TV.

Games: Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo: Elements of Power, Project Gotham Racing 3, Condemned: Criminal Origins

TV: Philips 32" HDTV, 16:9, 1080i Native Resolution.

System itself runs smooth as silk. Like you all probably know, it's best to turn on with the controller b/c it turns on the console and the controller at the same time (and in the process detects the controller while it's booting up, and not at the load-in menu). The hardware is pretty loud, and the power brick, which I'm sure you've all seen, is big, it also has its own fans, IE more noise. The system is really light-weight, but the power brick weighs a crapload (that's why when you pick up the box it's hard to carry). It looks cool, the faceplate is hard to get off and you could easily own it if you pulled a little too hard. I have it laying horizontally, and after playing 9 hours yesterday (w/ 2 hour afk break in the middle of session, w/ the xbox on) the Xbox never got hot to the touch, in fact, it barely even got warm.

The Dashboard itself is really cool, you can change it up and pick from a ton of different themes and such, and if you have live you can download new ones, and also new gamer ID pictures. The Xbox live section is nice, you can track your friends every move, you can see if they're in the Dashboard, and even what section of the Dashboard they're in. If they're in a game you can see exactly where in the game they are in, just as with the Dashboard. Xbox Live marketplace is pretty neat, if not overpriced, however. You can get HD trailers and music videos for free, as well as game demos and such. However, there are other little bits and pieces of multimedia you have to pay "tokens" to use.

Tokens are the gayest thing ever invented. And they're freaking expensive.

Basically, MS makes you pay for cheezy little pictures and themes for your xbox, and you have to pay with these tokens. Not only do you have to buy tokens in bulk, but you don't get discounts on the tokens when you buy in bulk. So if I buy 500 tokens for $6.25, I'll have to pay the same rate per token if I buy 10,000,000 tokens.

L A M E. Especially when most arcade games cost 800 tokens. You can't just buy stuff too, you need to buy globs of the stupid things.

Also, if I'm paying SIXTY DOLLARS for a game, say Kameo, why in GODS NAME should I have to pay for the BACKGROUND THEMES!? They should be given to you when you purchase the game. Effing nubs.

Another problem, now that we are moving onto the Green "Games" tab of the dashboard, is that the text looks all retarded against the green background of the menu. In the rest of the Dashboard the test is clearly defined and easy to read. The games section is pretty much what it sounds like, you can play arcade games, Xbox 360 games, and everything from here game related. If you're in a game and quit out to go to the Dashboard you can click "Play Game" at the bottom to restart the game without even getting your fat butt out of the couch or chair.

The next tab is the Media tab, which is the coolest part of the whole 360, imo. You can check out music, photos, videos, and trailers on your X360's HD. You can also hook up external HDs and iPod/MP3 players and the 360 will play the music/display photos without any driver install at all.

However, the biggest letdowns come from the media center, which was supposed to be so "revolutionary." First, you can't play any protected content off of your HD/MP3 player. So, no iTunes music, no MP3 protected stuff. Of the 3,000 songs on my iPod, I can only play 125 of them, because those are the only ones in .wmp/.mp3 format.

Nice, Microsoft.

The next big trouble is that although Microsoft claims your 360 can hook up to any XP SP2/Windows Media Center PC, it cannot. If your PC is not the main computer in the house, IE the one that the Router goes through, your PC can't stream music directly to the 360. Even if it can, you can only stream Photos and Music if you have regular XP like 99.99999% of the civilized world.

The system tab of the Dashboard is just what it sounds like, nothing special.

The games look and run spectacular. They run smooth and efficiently. The biggest contribution these firstgen games make is that they show extremely high quality textures, compared to ANY previous game ever made. The AI is fantastic. Games like Kameo, PGR3, Condemned, and even PDZ demonstrate this amazingly.

In Kameo I can generate responses from NPCs just by acting a certain way or pressing buttons a certain way. In PGR3 the opponent racers quickly acclimate to your style of racing and the way you drive to beat you. PDZ demonstrates jaw-dropping AI in how adaptive the bots and NPCs are to your style of shooting, as in PGR3. If I'm using my shotty and getting headshots too much, the computers will drop back and pwn me with rifles instead of charging me like retards. If I setup a laptop gun (IE a stationary gun that shoots for you, like in Splinter Cell or Goldeneye) they won't just randomly charge into it, they'll try to figure out a way to destroy it and get to you. Condemned again has intelligent, adaptive enemies who make use of their environment in some new and innovative ways. Enemies drop through sagging floorboards, ply off pipes from the walls to use as weapons, they block your attacks, use their surroundings as cover, etc.

Graphically the 360 blows away anything on the market at the moment, and that includes PCs. Screenshots just don't do the games justice. (PS I'm running @ 1080i)

Kameo's graphics, in my opinion, are by far the most impressive. You can stand in a field by the World's castle and watch each and every single blade of grass reflect the sun's rays in a different and unique way. I can look at the shiny, cobblestone streets and watch the cobblestone reflect the sun the way the grass does. Clothing and facial expressions look realistic and impressive, even for a fairy-tale type of game. The different models Kameo becomes look perfect, you can even see Kameo inside of her warriors. Surrounding areas look absolutely gorgeous and as perfect as the area you are in. Even places you can't venture to are perfectly modeled and designed so you can't see the cheezy black holes you see in other games, or the highly aliased jaggy painted backgrounds you find. Like when you look into the sky or in the distance in CS for example.

Perfect Dark Zero's graphics are amazing, again, reflections blow me away. When you play on a day level you can see the reflection off your gun, off the cobblestone streets, off the buildings, etc. Game physics are extremely impressive, models highly detailed. My only complaint about this game is that sometimes Joanna's shadow is perfect, and other times you'll look at it and it's all blocky and aliased. Dunno what happened there.

More of the same from PGR3 and Condemned, I don't want to type out all the same junk again :P

Another odd little problem with the 360 is that when you load the dashboard ingame, sometimes it's soooo slow to comeup or load up, and you get visual lag while you jump from button to button.

As for the games, I give them these scores, in descending order of recomendation

1. Kameo, 9.5/10 - Amazing game, definitely a "killer app" in my opinion. Absolutely beautiful graphics, absorbing story line, and amazing and involving gameplay.

2. Perfect Dark Zero, 9.5/10 - Once again, an amazing game, a "killer app" in my opinion. I expected it to suck. It does anything but. Can't stop playing!

3. Project Gotham Racing, 8.25/10 - Good game, but the graphics for the trees are pathetic. Just your a-typical racer. Nothing new here.

4. Condemned, 7.5/10 - Extremely boring and slow paced. Not scary as others have said. Very predictable. Not a very good game, stay away or rent it.

As for the Xbox 360, overall, I'd recomend it.

Xbox 360 - 9.0/10 - Great graphics, sleek and sexy. The current James Bond of Machines imo :P. Dashboard is fun and intuitive, ingenius integration of Xbox Live and the Xbox Live marketplace. Extremely customizable and just an overable fun machine to have.

Sorry for the long post, hope you enjoy/can use the input.

Thanks for reading lawls.

[Typhoid]

Well, I got hit in the head by an Xbox once.


That left a pretty nice impression.

[Teuthida]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

Well, I got hit in the head by an Xbox once.


That left a pretty nice impression.

Hi-oh!

[gekko]

I agree, and disagree with a lot of what he said. The Xbox is heavy, I don't know what he considers light-weight. Barely lighter than Xbox is more like it, and then the power brick weighs just as much.

He missed a lot though, like game defaults allowing you to choose default difficulty levels and controller setups automatically when you insert a game for the first time. Best idea in years.

But he's wrong on PDZ. Although it's pretty, the game will put you to sleep. It's horrible, and I still don't think it's possible to die.

As for PGR3... amazing! Gotta get back to playing.

My impressions are all posted elsewhere, I don't feel like re-typing them.

[DeathsHand]

4. Condemned, 7.5/10 - Extremely boring and slow paced. Not scary as others have said. Very predictable. Not a very good game, stay away or rent it.

That's my favorite part... He does nothing but bash it, even going so far as to say "Stay away", yet he gives it a 7.5... :>

I'll bet he's one of those people who get mad when a game he likes receives "Only an 8.9" from IGN...

[DarkMaster]

Originally Posted by DeathsHand

That's my favorite part... He does nothing but bash it, even going so far as to say "Stay away", yet he gives it a 7.5... :>

I'll bet he's one of those people who get mad when a game he likes receives "Only an 8.9" from IGN...

I was just about to say that exact same thing.

"your a-typical racer. Nothing new here. 8.25/10"





"9.6 for the new Zelda game?!? The world is coming to its end!"

[Jonbo298]

9.6 means DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM for Zelda!





But the impressions were pretty decent. Sounds like what I may say (sans some of the scoring in terms of what I dislike versus the score). Sometime ill get an Xbox 360...probably before the REv or shortly thereafter. Maybe preorder the PS3 just to spite people when its sold out and I'm in line at Gamestop

[Typhoid]

Originally Posted by Teuthida

Hi-oh!

The sad thing is I'm not lying.

[thatmariolover]

The issue I have with the guy is his review of Perfect Dark and the fact that almost everybody else is saying the same thing except the ones brave enough to admit that there are problems with a game they just dropped 65 bucks on.


The graphics are pretty enough in a lot of areas but lacking in others. The multiplayer portion of the game is also plagued with framerate issues when there's a lot going on. Rare did a decent job covering it up with a motion-blur effect but the stutter is visible to anybody not trying to fool themselves. Dunno if they're splitting up processing tasks between the 3 processors but the stutter seems independent to one player if you're doing split-screen.

The controls are decent, but why-oh-why couldn't they learn from Halo and make it so your camera slows ever-so-slightly when it highlights an enemy? Shooting someone to death is slow when I can just roll past them, flip around and sword them to death without the tedium of trying to aim at someone with an ineffective targeting system that's unable to compensate for the lack of a mouse. Couple this with the absence of anything resembling an effective sniper weapon and you're in a world of hurt if you like to kill from a distance (there are several scoped weapons in the game, they all just suck).

And the Physics might be good but the multiplayer animations are just terrible. Everybody looks exactly the same, runs exactly the same, and upon death gains insta-rigor-mortis - freezing in their current position and bouncing like a knocked over mannequin - rendering the oh-so-pretty physics worthless.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the game but saying there aren't problems is just absurd.

[Neo]

Okay so who here actually owns a 360 now?

[thatmariolover]

Originally Posted by Neo

Okay so who here actually owns a 360 now?

I had the $400 bundle and sold it to a friend that offered me what I paid for it a few nights ago. I can think of other things I wanna spend $400 on after owning it for a few days.

I'm sure I'll get another one later but probably not until a price drop.

[GameMaster]

I don't have one but I could kick myself for not staying that night at Target to buy one so I could sell it for triple the price on eBay. Damn, I missed out.

[Crash]

got one, sold two

each one sold for over $1100 *evil laugh*

[MuGen]

I want one, I'll admit I've seen the games and they are looking beastly...

now............ let's talk about this power brick with it's own fan........


WTF is that? Come on....

[DeathsHand]

Originally Posted by Sony

now............ let's talk about this power brick with it's own fan........


WTF is that? Come on....

*fast forward to 2006 when Sony releases PS3 with a similar power brick*

Sony: "Look at this baby, the system's so powerful it's power supply needs it's own fan. I gotta hand it to Sony, they never fail to impress."