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First Xbox 360 Reviews Hitting the Web
An anonymous reader writes "The first reviews for Xbox 360 games are starting to hit the web! 1UP has reviewed Kameo, Project Gotham Racing 3, FIFA Soccer 2006, NBA 2K6, and Amped 3, while IGN has reviewed Madden NFL 06, Kameo, and NBA 2K6. Judging from both sets of reviews, it looks like Project Gotham Racing 3 - which scored a 10/10 on 1UP - is the only sure winner of the 360 launch games thus far."
Where are the first person shooters and Adventure/RPG games? Or better yet something completely diffrent. Are there going to be any launch titles like that?
How good is it as a multimedia machine? What file formats and codecs does it play? Should I go for a chipped xbox, or wait for the xbox 360?
Slagborr
Does anyone else see what I see? All but one of these is a sequel! Where, O where, have the original fun-to-play games gone? :(
Well, since you've held off, you don't really have to make a decision til april./ 1724242&tid=211
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/12
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
From the Project Gotham Racing 3 review: "PGR3's use of motion blur is similarly effective. Every object in the environment blurs realistically as speeding vehicles tear through the tracks"
I've driven pretty fast. I once drove a Dodge Viper around a race track and got some pretty wicked speed, hitting about 150mph on the back straight. What didn't I see? Motion blur.
I understand that the designers want to give the player a better sense of speed, but real environments don't blur, they simply move by too quickly to see any detail. It's even worse when the reviewers start to declare unrealistic effects as very realistic. It's like in a movie when a car careens over an embankment and explodes. Sure, the explosion looked realistic *if cars actually exploded when they crashed* (even the Pinto didn't explode like that). Same thing here... I'm sure the bluring is very close to what it would actually look like *if environments actually did blur at high speeds*.
On an unrelated note, I loved the special effects in Star Wars Episode III. Those lightsabers looked very realistic.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I'm on the fence right now. I think I want a console. It'd be my fist console since the SNES, I've been a PC-only gamer for that long. However the 360 is tempting me. There's lots of titles that sound interesting, and I have a nice HDTV and surround setup now that I want to play on.
The deciding factor is going to be how good the games sound. If there's enough 360 games that sound really good, I think I'll take the plunge and get one. If not, I'll stick with my PC as my only game platform.
Who are they trying to convince then.
How about the millions of parents that only start their Christmas shopping after Thanksgiving is over? How about, oh I don't know, the 90% of their market share that didn't purchase an Xbox 360 through pre-ordering. Your idea that the market is basically dried up after the first run of consoles is so completely off base.
These reviews will be extremely useful for this Holiday shopping season. Oh and one more point - don't always believe the hype behind console shortages. With no next-gen console competition right now, Microsoft can effectively over produce this console and leak them into the market at a pace that makes sense for them. i, for one, don't buy the belief that their will be an Xbox 360 shortage come Christmas time.
Hagrin.com
Sure, all the hype is in place, and the X360 looks like a great platform... maybe I am just not paying attention, or have become jaded. But all my gaming friends are totally ambivalent on the X360. Some want to pick it up, most are going to wait and see what the PS3 is like, and in general there seems to be a collective shrug about the thing. Is it lack of Halo 3, or some really huge A-list title? Shouldn't be... the PS2 launched with basically SSX and Ridge Racer...
I dunno. There is some kind of elusive piece missing from the X360 launch to get me excited. I saw the posters for the pre-sale and thought Hey, I guess that IS out soon, huh.... I guess I'm just an old coot now. I play almost nothing but Warcraft these days, maybe that is it. :)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Interesting, all I hear online while in game lobbies between the games on XBC and KAI is how much people would run and buy it on the first day.
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I have only 2 consoles (ps/2 & xbox) and only play a few hours a week, however I decided that I had to wait for PS3, see their relase titles first as I'm absolutely unhappy what I see about the xbox, and the games list leaves me uninterested
there is only one title that would interest me: the new Ghost Recon, but I won't buy a console for one game, and I am really pissed about all the crap I have to buy again to have a usable console
AV pack (again), hdd, wireless (if you want), remote control
Games: OK, they look good, but these screenshots are not as nice compared to what I saw on the sony presentation... OK, now 100s jump on me that they weren't playable demos, etc
I was really about getting one on the first week, but I started looking at all that, and just stepped back
I wait at least half a year and see who wins, I really do not want to end-up with 2 consoles like now, because one will be just sitting there untouched, now it is my ps2, next time it might be my 360, and it is 2x as much $$ to waste
The truth is that there are always a majority of crappy games at launch for EVERY system, as no one really knows how to truly use the entirety of the new hardware (especially in this day and age, when every new system is radically increasing processing power and graphics capabilities). The truth however, is that this system does indeed have some games that (whether your style or not) do look pretty good, and are getting good reviews and previews. Not to mention, just the number of games being presented at launch is pretty encouraging. There's a lot of developer support for the 360, and I do expect it to have some quality games out within the first six months of launch. You can't always say that about many systems, regardless of where they end up, or how quality the hardware is... *cough*Dreamcast*cough*GameCube*cough*NintendoDS*c ough*
No, no love here either. But I'll go further and say I'm not feeling it from *any* of the consoles. The interest I have for the Revolution, based on its controller, is tempered by the fact that it seems the only other selling point is that it can play all the older games. Note to Nintendo: Retro gaming is cool, but not for very long. Yes it's fun to fire up Super Mario Brothers once in awhile, but I'm not going to slog through those games *again*.
But as far as the 360...PGR3 looks okay, I guess, but so does PGR2 and I'm not 1/3 of the way through that. To be fair, the same goes for GTA:SA...it's fun, but so was Vice City, and frankly I've moved on.
I'm beginning to think this new generation is the harbringer of some kind of gaming apocalypse...everybody, including nintendo, is pushing "more of the same" but with minor twists (better graphics, innovative controller). It's depressing when you look forward to the next systems for more of the same, but better!
Frankly, I see the only hope coming from giving away or making dev kits unbelievably cheap so that anyone and their dog can create a game and distribute it online (a la xbox live). Will a lot suck? Oh boy will they ever! But it's the only way any kind of innovation will happen, I think. But I guess as long as the big three get their royalties per disc, no one is going to care.
No one and I mean NO ONE has even the slightest interest in the 360.
Does anyone in the group you speak of own an HDTV? Very few comments on this article mention it, but for non HDTV owners, an Xbox 360 will be fairly unattractive. They have said they will release a VGA cable, so that may please you.
I don't know why they don't have native HDMI support, but they don't.
I did play a little of the 360 at Best Buy, King Kong looked *very* impressive. Jack Black was eerily realistic. A few weeks ago my interest in it was "I'll wait for a modchip" but now I'm on a "ooh eye candy for my HDTV!" kick.
I don't know how many of you have HD sets, but this may be the main source of sales for this thing in the first year.
--falz
For those geeks that need a reason to purchase this thing (outside the games), here's some stuff to note:
1.) Practically any hardware works with it. People have plugged USB keyboards, iPods, digital cameras, etc into the thing and everything has been recognized so far. Even some PC controllers and steering wheels work. It's a very Mac-like hardware experience.
2.) Like Windows Media Center, the Xbox 360 will play saved, unencrypted DVDs off a file server somewhere. The only catch is that Windows Media Center needs to be on that box (or connected to that box) to share out the movies. I have a "DVD jukebox" server with Windows Media Center that currently dishes out 50 movies on my TV. I can move that to the basement and just have my Xbox 360 now.
3.) MS has pulled off a seemingly impossible feat of emulation in getting Xbox games to run. Not only have they emulated Intel to Power PC, but nVidia assembly to ATI. Better yet, the software for that emulation is updated constantly and will be released on their website to burn to CD. Can anyone say "reverse engineering"?
4.) The 360 has some fairly cool gamer features that'll make people say "why hasn't this been done before"? For example: universal settings. You like your games set to Difficult mode and controller's Y-axis updown for shooters? Set it into the dashboard and it gets applied universally.
5.) Numerous other bits of geek happiness: VGA, an impressive fab of the boards to fit that "squeezed" shape, that power brick (well, maybe not the power brick -- that thing sucks).
All in all, I was waiting on buying this thing based on the Perfect Dark reviews. Now I'm considering getting one just based on the hardware. If nothing else, it'll be fun to rip apart a 3-core Power PC board.
Actually, ask a scientist and they will tell you a linear scale is most effective when you use the full range. That's the big problem people have with, for example, ice skating: the worst performance of the night will score 5/6 with glaring painful to watch errors, and the most perfect performance of the night will score 5.9/6.
Taken to a logical extreme, you should really never rate a game higher than 0/10, because surely the same game with significant graphics enhancements could be made 10 more times, and surely you would agree that each major step in graphics enhancement should deserve at least a one point improvement in score?
I take a 10/10 score on a game review to mean: reviewer didn't find anything he didn't like in the time he had to play it before the review came out. A reviewer with even a minor nit to pick will drop the perfect 10 and harp on his pet peeve, hoping to get the company to fix his pet peeve in the next version.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Well, I am a perfectionnist, then too I don't give perfect score. However, to answer your question, it doesn't always mean it will score a 10 always. Maybe we can say that review are time sensitive.
Of course if we interpret 10 like cannot improve, that is not good.
However, when I was searching for motherboard some years ago I stumbled across a site (I think it is motherboards.org). It was possible for a mobo to get 92 today, but in 3 months, they will score 82 with the same attribute. That is because their evaluation score was re-evaluated. i.e. 256kb cache mean +10, but 3 months lather it worth +5 and 512kb worth +10, etc.
The same for a game that score 9 on the NES or older console. The NES game (I am a major NES fan, in fact I don't yet play new console, not because I don't want... mostly because of time and the fact I just did not bought them! bleh) it mights score well, but still... if the same exact games was released today, of course it might score high for playability, etc. But the evaluation will probably not be as high as it was back then.
So maybe when the sequel is released, if the games is 100% the same (technically, gameplay, etc.) -- it mean not worth 10 on 10 for that game in 1 year, because he will compare it with what is available, possible, etc.
Of course it is subjective, for me I will evaluate a game for playability, etc. But for some people graphics advancement enhance way much the games (and it can do for gameplay too) -- and that is what they evaluate.
"Kameo is a game that will last players weeks but not months," as mentioned in the Closing Comments section.
And if you've got the time to play games for more than two hours a day, more power to you. I know that my lifestyle is different - I'm a college student with very little free time - but even then, I'd be perfectly content with a shorter game if the experience is a good one. Beyond Good and Evil and Max Payne come to mind...
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That's Methuselah, whipper-schnapper.
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man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Unfortunately, myself and many other gamers out there are disgusted to see this become a selling point You see, content that USED to be free and downloadable will now be charged for. Be prepared to be nickle and dimed on every single game element they can think of. I wouldn't be surprised if they introduced an "arcade" style function where you have to pay per play.
And if you think this hasn't started to happen yet, I invite you to take a look at what Valve's Steam has done to the modding community. Now every single mod that has a decent player base and used to be free is trying to charge about the price of a retail Expansion for their mod. And don't get me wrong...I'm happy to see the modding community rewarded for their effort, but I am not happy about the fact that it is at the expense of the players. I always thought it should come directly from the game company for causing more people to buy their game.
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I'm asking because I simply do not know.
Is the "motion blur" of 24fps movies added in post processing, inherent to the camera in original filming, or a combination of the two.
I'm also not a gamer, but being a geek I like the technology that goes into the newer games. I may very well buy a PS3 if I get unpissed at Sony. 2 HDTV outs, digital sound, absolutely sick looking screenshots, cell processors, looks neat. I'm curious about the blur in games. Why does that not exist? Would it take more processing to produce the blur than to just throw out more frames?
The motion blur in film is for the same reason that you would get a blur on any still picture of something that is moving fast - the amount of time the film is exposed is large enough to capture multiple locations of the object. This would lead to a blurred picture of the original object, as nothing moves in exact jumps to be captured by film without blurring.
The problem with blur in games is the fact that computers know the exact positions of the objects and do the calculations based on that. The general thinking for gaming used to be to get the most clarity, the most details that you can for an object from the hardware and do that at highest frame rate. However that results in very crisp, but as GP said unrealistic, pictures. Adding more frames doesn't really help because they are still too sharp. On the other hand, to create a blur in games requires calculations involving more than just positions of objects and their polygons in one frame, but the locations of them in previous frames. That means that your memory requirements have grown for something that used to be considered the anticedent of perfection - non-crispness.
Xbox360 looks cool and all, but if Sony will allow us to develop with 1-2 Cells in Linux on the PS3 unmodded, they just got one buyer.
I'm a pretty heavy gamer (8-12 hours a week), but would never buy a dedicated machine for it. But the specs on the PS3 are way to good to pass up. Seeing most of my programming work these days revolves around video editing, the PS3 sounds to good to pass up. Get a Cell machine and a killer gaming console, all in one for
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
Nice NDA's the review sites had to sign.. not a single actual gameplay screenshot! (from a sensible camera angle anyway) I suppose that's because from afar the graphics look exactly the same as they did on the old systems.. blocky and unsharp due to the low resolution.
Ok, find a WalMart... Yes they are almost everywhere, I can even give you directions to one in Germany.
Find the XBox 360 Kiosk that has been there for almost a month now, and play the games for yourself.
Trust me, at times, if you aren't the one playing you would swear it was a cut scene or a real film, when it is the actual game. Most people walking by think it is a film or at the very least a pre-rendered cut scene, when it is the actually game, running smooth with tons of AI and action surrounding you.
Even though us average SlashDot people don't want to hear this, but the reality is the real XBox 360 meets everything E3 promised, and since the boxes are faster and do nice anti-aliasing, the games are smoother and look even better than the E3 demos running on dual G5s with dual Video.
PS3 will have a hard time matching the game quality, not only does the 360 do graphics and sound right, but there is enough processing power left over for an intelligent game and lots of side and ambient action.
Especially considering the PS3 went from being a Cell only system, then to a Cell and NVidia system when the Cell couldn't be adapted fast enough to do the quality of video they wanted, and now we are finding out the PS3's NVidia subsystem is in the 6800 Class of PC Cards, not even the current 7800s.
The Video in the XBox 360 is based on ATI technologies we won't see in PC Video cards until at least the second Quarter of next year.
So you can basically match the processing and GPU power of PS3 with current PC hardware, where it would be hard to match processing and GPU power of the XBox 360 at this point without some serious coin and tweaking. Not bad for 300-400 US.