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."

Comments

Nothing but sports and racing?

[thekel]

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?

Re:I don't care about games

[grub]

A chipped xbox with Xbox Media Center is great. Supports almost any popular codec (even quicktime), works great with high-def TVs, does post-processing (deblocking, deringing, etc) of the video, etc. Personally I'm waiting for the 360 to come down in price and be chip-able before I buy one.

For geeks only

[SilentChris]

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.

Re:XB360 Better Than You Could Know

[Lord_Dweomer]

" micropayments so you can easily buy add-ons to your game"

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.