My XBOX 360 Review
Well folks it's finally arrived. Funny thing about it is, I only ordered it about 2 weeks ago and it came yesterday. My nephew who ordered his back in October from the actual store has yet to receive his. I ordered mine from www.electronicboutique.com, he orded his from the store and mine only took 2 weeks???
Well it arrived yesterday it is the premium system and was a bundle and cost me $912.00 with Tax and Shipping. For the bundle it was rather nice, it came with 6 games, dvd case, extra controller, and play and charge kit. As for the games they are Project Gotham Racing 3, Quake 4, Gun, Call of Duty 2, Perfect Dark Zero, and Madden 06.
I gave each a test run just to see what everyone has been talking about and I do have a Sony HDTV XBR34. I'll give you a quick answer (Not totally impressed)!!!
First supposedly PGR3 graphically was to be the most incredible of all the release titles, at least from the game review sites. I personally don't see all the hype? Also from the game review sites all this hype about how incredible Call of Duty 2 is and how subpar Madden is. So I took everything for my own ride and mind you I'm a gaming addict and I take graphics seriously, I'll run down each game later in short detail because this about the box.
Once unboxed and yes everyone has heard about the POWER BRICK (this is really the size of a real brick), anyway it has little feet on it so I can't understand how anyone could get this overheated or lay it upside down? I had mine running for 6 hours without a single hicup or issue. It was placed in a very open area and I lay my Xbox 360 down flat instead of standing only because of my tv stand and it has plenty of room to breath, this should also eliminate the disk scratching problem that has been reported. I could feel air coming from all different locations around the box and the brick so at least it can breath and does circulate air considerably and no scratched disks either.
First thing getting everything connected then starting it up. Just hit the big Xbox logo Button in the middle of the controller for about 3 seconds and bingo everything fires up. Next is getting your subscription to Xbox Live transferred over to the new system. This was painless and I might add the wireless controllers are awesome especially with the rechargable battery pack you can purchase, one comes with the system and with the bundle you get another for the other controller which is included with the play and charge kit. So I have now two wireless controllers with rechargable battery packs (Nice)... What is weird for all the years of playing with Wired Controllers you have a tendancy to want to move the cable while playing, you know when you get up or move so that you don't get tangled but yet there is NO wire there, I caught myself doing this quite a bit. One issue I did have was getting my other controller to even work (The extra controller). Supposedly you just hit the middle button until it lights up and hitting a small button on the 360 and then this little button on the top of controller and they communicate and are supposed to just work. Well hitting my middle button did not light up (Bad Sign), what I did to fix this was remove the rechargable pack and replaced with normal battery pack and was able to get it working so for anyone with issues just do this. Luckily the batteries are included with the controller and in the box for the boxed controller. None of this was life threatning and now to move on.
Hitting the middle Xbox Lighted button brings up the GUIDE which is just a menu that pops in from the left of the screen. It will show you a little battery icon in upper left corner so you know how your controller battery health is - this goes by which ever controller you hit the button on which is really neat. Just wish it was colored (it's just gray and hard to even see). The other items here are like tabbed browsing and has different pages for doing different things which is also a nice touch. I'm not going to bore everyone with all the details here, the review sites have already done all of that. To see what I mean go here: Screens, this is also a good site for everything 360...
The first game I test ran was Project Gotham Racing 3. The game looked as if the cars were Cell Shaded (Car-Toony) pun intended (LOL)... I set up my Xbox 360 to the HD Component Connections (Cheap compared to what you can buy for the regular Xbox) but hey it's free (Included in the box), well included with the 912.00 price tag... It may be that I need to turn down settings on my tv or something because many of the games I tested seem too bright or not graphically smooth or glossed over like you'd think they should be. I do have my tv set for 1080i the max and I set all the games to play in 1080i as well via the Xbox 360 console itself. I just may need to play with graphics settings that are usually done within the game instead of doing them to the actual tv or how the console handles the games. The game was cool though, graphically (It's not the best) but it was a true racer (I want damage), I hate racing games that don't simulate damage because of the damn auto-makers but either way it's a great racer and one cool feature I'd like to mention is you can go on Xbox Live in game and watch someone elses current race as if watching racing on your TV this was an incredible addition. So when bored just watch someone else race online... LOL. I haven't looked but this would be an awesome feature for sports titles period. Watch someone else get corked in say Madden. I didn't dig deep enough but I don't think this feature is in any other game as of yet?
Next I checked out Gun, (Different!!!) and graphically (Ok). A Wild West game, who would have thought? Now just a heads up if you get any of the games that have been released for every known system on the planet then the Xbox 360 is only going to polish this game a bit but the gameplay and graphically it's not really much better than the Xbox graphics. This is due to the companies coding the games. The key is getting games that are ONLY for the Xbox 360 to see graphically what a game should look like or what they system can produce. So I only know of like 3 or 4 games that fall under this catagory, one being PGR3, Perfect Dark Zero, and Dead or Alive 4. There may be others, just not going into great depth.
I then of course tried all of the other games except Quake 4, only because I'm not really a big fan and I'm going to try and take it back and see if I can exchange it for another game (going for Condemned if possible)... Well first I want to say Call of Duty 2 is also another game that doesn't graphically stun anyone and the surprise for me was the one everyone says doesn't show anything, was that of Madden 06, the graphics are breath taking and I wish all the others I have and tested looked this good. The gameplay though is terribly HARD, this is going to take some time to master or figure out for that matter.
The biggest surprise overall though is the Market Place (This is one of the Tabs) here you can purchase POINTS for real money of course and I spent another $60.00 bucks real quick for like 5000 points or something like that. Anyway you can use these points toward online purchases and these include skins for your screen and even arcade games and (Demos and Trials are FREE), what is also cool is you can try before you buy. I purchased every arcade item the system had to offer and I've come to realize that I enjoy these games more than the big release titles and big named games. Seeing some of these games that were made for HDTV are incredible, although being a bit pricey for an older game (Equates to 5 dollars a game I think).
Also having all or most of them for FREE with MAME32 and emulated by ROMS. You can read about this in one of my earlier posts. Back to the subject.
I found myself getting addicted to Geometry Wars Evolved and Hexic. Of course there are Spades, Hearts and some of the classics such as Joust, Robotron 2084, Gauntlet, Smash Tv - the classics are HD compatible, but not fully, but still fill 27" of my HD Screen and have been done rather nicely, this is because they aren't stretched to fit wide screen but the HD ones are, Geometry Wars Evolved is breath taking for such a dated game and being brought to widescreen and HD. (The good old days are back???).
Funny how the olders games actually seem more fun than the high priced and million dollar productions? These games range from 400 points to 800 points and can eat up that $60+ bucks quick or 5000 points. Here you can see for yourself what they have currently Xbox Live Arcade
Strange thing though is some of these games are not listed yet within the Market Place. I can't wait to spend another $60.00 today... LOL. I almost forgot to mention some of these classics can be played ONLINE... Of course you can't leave out those arcade games and I'm sure a Chess game is coming soon as well. This thing is only going to grow. With the Hard Drive they can start to have other games direct to drive once the technology gets better. I did have another issue with the market place and this was the fact that I tried to buy a skin and it was 150 points but yet it will not let me download it, it constantly fails and says try again later and this has still not downloaded but yet they have my 150 points (Sounds like those with BF2 problems, huh?)... LOL.
I will say this though the SOUND in all the games is top notch and sound incredible for every single game I've played even for the old classics. So if you are an Audiophile then the Xbox 360 is for you, and the sounds in game are in my opinion a 8-9 rating, as I said I care more about Graphics in my games and then gameplay comes in a close second, sound is the lowest thing I really care for. I'm a guy that usually disables music in all my games and crank up the special effects.
So my review is this. Until the games graphically get better and are made ONLY for the Xbox 360 and push the system further. I only give the system a 7 out of 10. I only had two issues, the controller one mentioned and the market place purchase that I haven't received yet and that's it so far.
If I were to rate each game they all fall into this same catagory. As far as the classics and some of the arcade games I give those 8 out of 10 not all though, depends on your tastes.
I haven't seen anything spectacular with what I've gotten other than the Madden Graphics and PGR3 being next graphically and then Perfect Dark but with all this hype and lines and robberies etc. to get a hold of this thing I can say this, just wait, is your life really worth it? I have one game on my normal Xbox that plays in 1080i and it looks no different than the games running on my Xbox 360 at that same setting. So is this thing really graphically better. (In my Opinion, NO!!!). Only time will tell and if I see anything extraordinary in the coming months, you can be sure I'll be back to let you know my feelings on those. I'll post more if I come up with anything causing my lack of SUPERIOR GRAPHICS but it's time to go play some Geometry Wars Evolved in HD... Until next time.
Remeber these opinions are mine and solely mine and this was with only 6 hours of game play and most of that being on Hexic for about 4 of that, so the high budget prodcution games were only tested quickly and so that I could post this review. So here is what I give it with the current games including the Classics. Here is my current breakdown for the System and combining all current games as one if they were all one game.
Well it arrived yesterday it is the premium system and was a bundle and cost me $912.00 with Tax and Shipping. For the bundle it was rather nice, it came with 6 games, dvd case, extra controller, and play and charge kit. As for the games they are Project Gotham Racing 3, Quake 4, Gun, Call of Duty 2, Perfect Dark Zero, and Madden 06.
I gave each a test run just to see what everyone has been talking about and I do have a Sony HDTV XBR34. I'll give you a quick answer (Not totally impressed)!!!
First supposedly PGR3 graphically was to be the most incredible of all the release titles, at least from the game review sites. I personally don't see all the hype? Also from the game review sites all this hype about how incredible Call of Duty 2 is and how subpar Madden is. So I took everything for my own ride and mind you I'm a gaming addict and I take graphics seriously, I'll run down each game later in short detail because this about the box.
Once unboxed and yes everyone has heard about the POWER BRICK (this is really the size of a real brick), anyway it has little feet on it so I can't understand how anyone could get this overheated or lay it upside down? I had mine running for 6 hours without a single hicup or issue. It was placed in a very open area and I lay my Xbox 360 down flat instead of standing only because of my tv stand and it has plenty of room to breath, this should also eliminate the disk scratching problem that has been reported. I could feel air coming from all different locations around the box and the brick so at least it can breath and does circulate air considerably and no scratched disks either.
First thing getting everything connected then starting it up. Just hit the big Xbox logo Button in the middle of the controller for about 3 seconds and bingo everything fires up. Next is getting your subscription to Xbox Live transferred over to the new system. This was painless and I might add the wireless controllers are awesome especially with the rechargable battery pack you can purchase, one comes with the system and with the bundle you get another for the other controller which is included with the play and charge kit. So I have now two wireless controllers with rechargable battery packs (Nice)... What is weird for all the years of playing with Wired Controllers you have a tendancy to want to move the cable while playing, you know when you get up or move so that you don't get tangled but yet there is NO wire there, I caught myself doing this quite a bit. One issue I did have was getting my other controller to even work (The extra controller). Supposedly you just hit the middle button until it lights up and hitting a small button on the 360 and then this little button on the top of controller and they communicate and are supposed to just work. Well hitting my middle button did not light up (Bad Sign), what I did to fix this was remove the rechargable pack and replaced with normal battery pack and was able to get it working so for anyone with issues just do this. Luckily the batteries are included with the controller and in the box for the boxed controller. None of this was life threatning and now to move on.
Hitting the middle Xbox Lighted button brings up the GUIDE which is just a menu that pops in from the left of the screen. It will show you a little battery icon in upper left corner so you know how your controller battery health is - this goes by which ever controller you hit the button on which is really neat. Just wish it was colored (it's just gray and hard to even see). The other items here are like tabbed browsing and has different pages for doing different things which is also a nice touch. I'm not going to bore everyone with all the details here, the review sites have already done all of that. To see what I mean go here: Screens, this is also a good site for everything 360...
The first game I test ran was Project Gotham Racing 3. The game looked as if the cars were Cell Shaded (Car-Toony) pun intended (LOL)... I set up my Xbox 360 to the HD Component Connections (Cheap compared to what you can buy for the regular Xbox) but hey it's free (Included in the box), well included with the 912.00 price tag... It may be that I need to turn down settings on my tv or something because many of the games I tested seem too bright or not graphically smooth or glossed over like you'd think they should be. I do have my tv set for 1080i the max and I set all the games to play in 1080i as well via the Xbox 360 console itself. I just may need to play with graphics settings that are usually done within the game instead of doing them to the actual tv or how the console handles the games. The game was cool though, graphically (It's not the best) but it was a true racer (I want damage), I hate racing games that don't simulate damage because of the damn auto-makers but either way it's a great racer and one cool feature I'd like to mention is you can go on Xbox Live in game and watch someone elses current race as if watching racing on your TV this was an incredible addition. So when bored just watch someone else race online... LOL. I haven't looked but this would be an awesome feature for sports titles period. Watch someone else get corked in say Madden. I didn't dig deep enough but I don't think this feature is in any other game as of yet?
Next I checked out Gun, (Different!!!) and graphically (Ok). A Wild West game, who would have thought? Now just a heads up if you get any of the games that have been released for every known system on the planet then the Xbox 360 is only going to polish this game a bit but the gameplay and graphically it's not really much better than the Xbox graphics. This is due to the companies coding the games. The key is getting games that are ONLY for the Xbox 360 to see graphically what a game should look like or what they system can produce. So I only know of like 3 or 4 games that fall under this catagory, one being PGR3, Perfect Dark Zero, and Dead or Alive 4. There may be others, just not going into great depth.
I then of course tried all of the other games except Quake 4, only because I'm not really a big fan and I'm going to try and take it back and see if I can exchange it for another game (going for Condemned if possible)... Well first I want to say Call of Duty 2 is also another game that doesn't graphically stun anyone and the surprise for me was the one everyone says doesn't show anything, was that of Madden 06, the graphics are breath taking and I wish all the others I have and tested looked this good. The gameplay though is terribly HARD, this is going to take some time to master or figure out for that matter.
The biggest surprise overall though is the Market Place (This is one of the Tabs) here you can purchase POINTS for real money of course and I spent another $60.00 bucks real quick for like 5000 points or something like that. Anyway you can use these points toward online purchases and these include skins for your screen and even arcade games and (Demos and Trials are FREE), what is also cool is you can try before you buy. I purchased every arcade item the system had to offer and I've come to realize that I enjoy these games more than the big release titles and big named games. Seeing some of these games that were made for HDTV are incredible, although being a bit pricey for an older game (Equates to 5 dollars a game I think).
Also having all or most of them for FREE with MAME32 and emulated by ROMS. You can read about this in one of my earlier posts. Back to the subject.
I found myself getting addicted to Geometry Wars Evolved and Hexic. Of course there are Spades, Hearts and some of the classics such as Joust, Robotron 2084, Gauntlet, Smash Tv - the classics are HD compatible, but not fully, but still fill 27" of my HD Screen and have been done rather nicely, this is because they aren't stretched to fit wide screen but the HD ones are, Geometry Wars Evolved is breath taking for such a dated game and being brought to widescreen and HD. (The good old days are back???).
Funny how the olders games actually seem more fun than the high priced and million dollar productions? These games range from 400 points to 800 points and can eat up that $60+ bucks quick or 5000 points. Here you can see for yourself what they have currently Xbox Live Arcade
Strange thing though is some of these games are not listed yet within the Market Place. I can't wait to spend another $60.00 today... LOL. I almost forgot to mention some of these classics can be played ONLINE... Of course you can't leave out those arcade games and I'm sure a Chess game is coming soon as well. This thing is only going to grow. With the Hard Drive they can start to have other games direct to drive once the technology gets better. I did have another issue with the market place and this was the fact that I tried to buy a skin and it was 150 points but yet it will not let me download it, it constantly fails and says try again later and this has still not downloaded but yet they have my 150 points (Sounds like those with BF2 problems, huh?)... LOL.
I will say this though the SOUND in all the games is top notch and sound incredible for every single game I've played even for the old classics. So if you are an Audiophile then the Xbox 360 is for you, and the sounds in game are in my opinion a 8-9 rating, as I said I care more about Graphics in my games and then gameplay comes in a close second, sound is the lowest thing I really care for. I'm a guy that usually disables music in all my games and crank up the special effects.
So my review is this. Until the games graphically get better and are made ONLY for the Xbox 360 and push the system further. I only give the system a 7 out of 10. I only had two issues, the controller one mentioned and the market place purchase that I haven't received yet and that's it so far.
If I were to rate each game they all fall into this same catagory. As far as the classics and some of the arcade games I give those 8 out of 10 not all though, depends on your tastes.
I haven't seen anything spectacular with what I've gotten other than the Madden Graphics and PGR3 being next graphically and then Perfect Dark but with all this hype and lines and robberies etc. to get a hold of this thing I can say this, just wait, is your life really worth it? I have one game on my normal Xbox that plays in 1080i and it looks no different than the games running on my Xbox 360 at that same setting. So is this thing really graphically better. (In my Opinion, NO!!!). Only time will tell and if I see anything extraordinary in the coming months, you can be sure I'll be back to let you know my feelings on those. I'll post more if I come up with anything causing my lack of SUPERIOR GRAPHICS but it's time to go play some Geometry Wars Evolved in HD... Until next time.
Remeber these opinions are mine and solely mine and this was with only 6 hours of game play and most of that being on Hexic for about 4 of that, so the high budget prodcution games were only tested quickly and so that I could post this review. So here is what I give it with the current games including the Classics. Here is my current breakdown for the System and combining all current games as one if they were all one game.
Graphics
7
Sound
9
Current Games
7.5
Overall
7.5
7
Sound
9
Current Games
7.5
Overall
7.5
posted by Cellar Dweller at 12:26 PM
<< Home