I’ve been pretty excited about getting an xbox 360 for a while now and when we got back from our little trip up the coast i popped into games rush and picked myself up a bundle that came with 2 games, the premium console, a crappy carry case for games, a discount card for future purchases and a headset. It’s been almost flawless so far.
The Xbox 360
The console itself is bigger than i thought it would be, with all the talk of how Microsoft wanted to be a bigger player in the japanese market and miniatureise their hardware, i figured it would be smaller than the pervious generation (at least). Alas, it’s almost exactly the same size, it might be a tiny bit thinner, but stacked on top of my xbox (1) it looks to be pretter much identical in size. It is white though, so i suppose that might make it look a bit smaller, it certainly makes it look a lot friendlier.
The size doesn’t worry me as it is just sitting in the wardrobe in the study next to the computer, but after recently seeing how small the new version of the PS2 is (it’s bloody tiny, mate), Microsoft really need to start thinking about how to get the size of their behemoth down in a future version.
I had played a demo version of the 360 in a Toys R Us store for a few minutes a couple of weeks back and was surprised at how unresponsive the guide button sidebar was during a game, I’d heard a lot about how awesome the new dashboard was supposed to be and felt that perhaps i had been duped and maybe it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The demo version was playing PGR3 and the sidebar flew across the screen with the performance of a Flash app on an Apple G3 running internet explorer, i was a little dubious.
I plugged the console into my Dell 24″ lcd and booted it up, to my pleasant surprise the dashboard when running outside of the game environment was quick and responsive, the graphics were super clean and fast and once i had cranked the display settings up to 1080i they looked even better. I piss-farted around for a while in the dash, configuring settings, getting my network set up and enableing my gamertag on the new machine. I then proceeded to checking out some of the media capabilities of the beast.
Connect 360
I purchased connect 360 which allows my mac to operate as if it’s running windows media connect and share my iPhoto and iTunes libraries with my xbox over the network. It costs about US$15 and it’s well worth it, as soon as i booted it up and switched over to my 360 it was recognised and streamed my entire library flawlessly. There is a demo version available which seems to only allow a selection of 100 songs, but it’s good to try out to see exactly how flawlessly it works. I believe there are other media server apps that can be used like the Twonky Media product (and i’m sure may others), but connect 360 suits me fine and works for photos and music, so i’m sticking with it. The only annoying thing about the media capabilities of the 360 are the fact that you can’t stream video to it unless you are running a Windows Media Centre PC, and even then, it won’t work with Divx or Xvid files anyway. I’m really hoping someone finds a way to enable this on non-media centre machines and just fakes a real-time encode to WMV to get around it. I’m sure Sony’s going to have this feature enabled and Microsoft would look way behind if they were still locking this feature out when the PS3 launches.
Controllers
The controllers are awesome, wireless freedom with excellent battery life, working flawlessly out of the box. All i’ve needed to do is turn them on and they now know everything they need to about my setup, they automatically paired to controller 1 and controller 2 locations which is indicated on the little quadrants of the logo on the guide button. The shoulder buttons are a welcome change from the difficult to get to black and white buttons of the Controller S and the guide button is a really great new feature allowing you to access all the stuff in the dash that you’d want in-game, as well as performing some other context sensitive actions such as looking up friend’s profiles when they come online.
The Games
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
I’d seen some gameplay movies of Ghost Recon and thought that it looked quite impressive. Upon sticking in the disc, setting up a campaign and jumping into the first training mission i was blown away. The textures are highly detailed and the lighting is amazing. I was a bit dissappointed by the training mission as a whole though, i got a bit confused and thought that the controls might be a bit hard to get used to. I fumbled my way through it and then started the first mission. This is where it started to really impress me. After a couple of minutes locating real enemies, scoping, shooting and learning to run between cover i really started to like this game. Command troops was intuitive and not too full-on. I’ve never really liked having to control too many allies in these types of games and giving them constant instructions, switching between actions and troops all the time just dilutes my game experience, Ghost Recon was different, it was very intuitive and you didn’t have to really order your troops around at all if you didn’t want to. After a couple of missions, you start to learn how you like to use them and they become awesome to have around, without really having to worry about where they are every 5 seconds.
I finished Ghost Recon within a couple of weeks and are now playing it through on a harder difficulty. It’s much harder, but just as fun. I haven’t started any multiplayer GRAW yet, but i’m keen to give it a try soon. It’s easily my favourite 360 game so far.
It goes without saying that the graphics are absolutely frigggen amazing. The best of them are stacked into the first mission or 2, but they hold up pretty solidly through to the end.
GameSpot Review
PGR3
I think if you’re buying a console you really need at least 1 racing game, and PGR# is really the premier title on the 360. It’s presentation is really good and the cars and tracks look awesome. There is an in-car view that just looks unreal, although i prefer to play in 3rd person car view. The Gotham TV feature is pretty cool although i don’t think i’ll really use it myself very much, it’s a pretty interesting implementation of the xbox live service. I reckon the menu’s are a bit hard to get used to and i would have thought it would be easier to start up a 2 player game on one console, although it was a bit of a head fuck trying to organise a single 2 player race. I haven’t really thouroughly been through it all so maybe i was overlooking something. I’m yet to get right into PGR3 yet as i’ve been a bit more devoted to GRAW and Top Spin, but it’s on the agenda.
GameSpot Review
Fight Night Round 3
I’d never played a boxing game, or at least not for many years, and i had read reviews of how good they were getting with thumbstick control of your fists and i just had to try one out. Fight Night is a great game so far. I’ve only had a few fights and a very limited look at the career mode, but for a multiplayer game against friends it’s hard to beat. Especially after a few beers. I’m not exactly a boxing fan, but this game is a blast.
Fight Night looks awesome, the player models and animations are second to none and it really shows off some of the power and capabilities of the 360. One trend that i am noticing with this generation of games is that if you can remove a Heads Up Display it prooves to be a much more immersive experience, Fight Night can be played with or without a HUD – but defaults to HUD off, and it’s really cool. The players are so detailed that you can tell by the way they look and move how they are going and you always get an injury breakdown between rounds. It’s an awesomely fun multiplayer game, but you do really need to spend a little bit of time with it to get used to the controls, especially if you’re not a seasoned boxing glame player, controlling movement, ducking, weaving and blocking is hard enough, without even getting into the total punch contyrol system. I’m not there yet, but i feel like i’m starting to become accustomed to them, and once i do – i’m gonna kick your ass!
GameSpot Review
Top Spin 2
Top Spin was one of my most played games on the original xbox console, it’s 4 player doubles mode was *the* best 4 player game i’ve ever played, and the graphics of Top Spin really shone on the Xbox. I was looking mighty forward to Top Spin 2 on the 360, with such a contained field of play i thought it was going to look bloody amazing…
I was disappointed. The players look good, the courts look good, but they just don’t look integrated eough for my liking, the shadows just don’t look right and although everything is highly detailed it just doesn’t seem like there is much integration between the player and the playing surface. The great cay slide marks that players left in Top Spin are gone and i’m a bit flat about that. The original game was a real show-piece for the xbox and this new version just doesn’t live up to that.
All that being said the gameplay is still really solid, it’s changed a bit with a heap of new shots to play, the triggers perform different actions that they used to and the general control of the shot selection has changed quite a bit. It feels a bit less forgiving and seems to have been designed with season pros of the original game in mind. Which i don’t mind at all, it’s a bit less pick up and play although the ‘a’ button will now never hit a ball that goes out, so in some respects it’s easier, as well as being more complex if you want ti to be.
The career mode now spans 3 seasons and you really have to play through into the 3rd season before you unlock any of the true power of your player, there’s no ‘train for a while then get to no. 1 in a hurry’ going on here, and while it’s a little fristrating, it really does get you used to playing against different styled players and you really learn the controls thouroughly during the course of the career. There are some fun mini training games that show off some cool physics and some others that are just plain frustrating. The player creator is enourmous, and i’m sure if you were really good at using it you could create almost anyone you want photorealistically, but it’s pretty hard to master all the flexibility that you have and my player turned out looking not much like me even after about an hours worth of fiddling with controls. It’s really easy to make awesome looking freaks though.
I’m only about 1/2 way through this game at the moment, but look forward to getting my custom player up to scratch and taking him online.
I did have the game freeze up on my this morning, which was most frustrating, although i think unfortunately it might have been more attributed to the drive itself than the game. I hope to buggary that this doesn’t start happenning regularly, but fear the rush that Microsoft had in getting this thing out the door could possibly rear it’s ugly head in the form of bad hardware at some stage. I’m remaining hopeful though, my fingers are crossed.
GameSpot Review
Xbox Live Arcade
Xbox live arcade is awesome, before i even booted up any of my retail games i got straight into downloading some arcade games. Geometry Wars Evolved was first on the agenda, i’d heard heaps about it and it did not dissappoint. Zuma, Outpost Kaloki and Bejeweled are also favorites and there’s a whole lot more to check out. Zuma is bloody addictive and really fun, but i’ll be stuffed if i can’t get past level 7.
What’s to come…
I’m pumped about Gears Of War, and Rockstar’s Table Tennis, I’m also keen to see what Bungie is doing with the Halo franchise. It seems as though Microsoft are looking forward to a much more broad appeal with this console and they’ve already talked about eye-toy like functions coming to the 360. Hopefully we will see some more peripheral gaming like Sing Star Karaoke and the Buzz quiz games. I’m sure we will. Imagine SingStar online against freinds interstate and overseas… cool!
I really like the xbox and the online capabilities really add the the whole experience, with every game being online aware at all times you feel much more connected than you did in the previous gen. It doesn’t look like the PS3 will be out until next year now so they’ve got plenty of time to kick out some awesome titles. Seeing as they’ll be up to 2nd and 3rd gen titles for the xbox by then i’m hoping they can rule whatever Sony is going to launch with for their cell processor. But who knows, by then it might be time for a new console anyway 
The characters in this game are just awesome. All of them seem to be the type of uber-nerds that take their table tennis just that bit too seriously. They strutt around with a lifelike camp-ness that makes their love of the game just that wierd. I’m sure it’s a game that you need to be a bit of a wierdo to get amazingly good at. This comes across perfectly.