Well, as many of you may know from the forum I have recently got an Xbxo 360, so after two days of eye bleeding playage, I think it right that i give some of my initial impressions.
Ok firstly, the thing looks alot better than the original xbox, but as i probably made apparent to those who know me, looks mean nothing to me as far as a console, what i want is a awesome gameing experience, and that dosnt include looking at the console. Anyway, to begin with I hooked the 360 up to my 32″ samsung widescreen tv via the compasite connector (you will be familiar with these as the yellow RCA) i fired it up and was greeted with the new look dash, its pretty flashy but nothing to really dampen ones pants at, anyway, I then proceeded to slap the Project Gotham 3 disc into the drive, sat back and let loading commence.
At this point it would be fair to say that i was worried about the amount of noise the thing was making, it did seem to be alot louder than my original xbox, which lets face it was hardly quiet, anyway, i thought sod it, lets give it a chace.
As the game loaded i was impressed with the wireless controller, it was very light and compact compared to comparable devices I have seen and looked ok too, the ‘ring of light’ was a nice touch, allowing you to see what control you have and weather it has paired to the xbox properly.
So, with the game loaded, it was time to check out the graphics that we have been hearing so much about, and yes, they did look awesome, however, not as awesome as i had invisaged, anyway, I thought I would give it a chance…
…ok, so the graphics really were not blowing my mind on the way that i had hoped, I mean yes, they were better than anything I had seen on a console before, but compared to some PC efforts? i dont know, this was rather worrying considering the outlay i had just splashed out on it, however my initial fears were soon laid to rest when I plugged it into the projector, which is higher definition than the TV and also is massive in comparison 150″ screen, the detial that wasnt apparent on the TV became clear and suddenly you could see where all that extra power was going. Also of note was the quality of the two player, the graphics looked amazing even on split screen, I am yet to try four player but i feel confident that it will look much better than that on the previous console.
After relishing the enjoyable fun of spanking my dad at PGR3 a few times I decided to look more at the console, its true to say that it comes with a good range of peripherals from the box, well at least the premium one does, with a head set, a media remote control, a 20gb hard drive, and a wireless controller, it also comes with a pleasingly long cable for xbox live, which is the next area I am going to comment on.
Having been an owner of a chipped xbox scince pretty well you could get a chipped xbox, I have never been privy to xbox live other than sparadic bursts of play at friends houses, none the less with a very much live centric feel to the 360 and no chip restrictions to worry about I thought i would fire it up, I was impressed, not with the play, cos I hadnt gotten to that yet, but with the fact I just plugged it in and it worked, I have heard reports from a few websites that others have experienced a reasonable amount of pain in connecting to live but for me it couldnt have been simpler… …actually filling in my life story to set up my gamertag could have been faster or bypassable, but thats a minor gripe. Once connected to live the 360 downloaded an update and restarted, then I was hooked up, once again I used PGR3 as my test bed, it worked a treat, finding me a race quickly and allowing me to chat away to the people who were about to slaughter me at racing. I cant explain to you how cool it is to be chatting away on a headset connected to your control pad that itself isnt connected to anything! Anyway, it was great fun and worked with no sign of lag or any annoying gameplay related problems, though the speach did go a bit echoy and was occasionally difficult to hear, I however assume that this is because bandwith is given to the gameplay above speech, if there is going to be an issue i would preffer it to be with speach rather than the gameplay.
Above is my gamertag, this is all part of microsoft trying to integrate the 360 into everything I do, its on my xbox, its on anyone who adds me as a friends xbox and its also next to everything I write on the xbox forums, this is both cool and a little disconcerting when you are not particularly sure you want Microsoft knowing any more about you than totaly necessary.
The Good Points :
Awesome graphics/sound
Wireless controllers are amazing
Looks greatly improved
Live
Ease of use
The Bad Points :
Noise
Mahoosive Power Pack
Controllers not rechargable out of the box
Not enough hours in the day to play it!
I am happy with my purchase, and will review the games futher at a later date, as to allow for a reasonable amount of play before I comment on them, I have Project Gotham Racing, Perfect Dark Zero and Quake 4, so look out for a review on them.
Chaz