Impressions From A Second Shipment 360 Owner

I try to look for the best in every situation. In the grand scheme of things, getting bumped from the first shipment of pre-ordered Xbox 360s to the second wasn't the end of the world. Indeed, it allowed me to focus on launch news and information, posting stories for the games page and absorbing the mood of early adopters. The reports that came back were mixed, with occasional technical difficulties and tepid gameplay marring the first next-gen launch. Overall though, gamers seemed to be pleased with their purchases. When my local game store called to let me know my console was in, I bit the bullet and swiped the plastic. Today I have for you a rundown on what it's like to go where others have gone before. Read on for my impressions of the Xbox 360 experience after a month of retail sales and a week of gameplay. While I don't feel the need to bore you with pictures of the packaging, the out-of-the-box experience is attractive and intuitive. It only took a few moments to set things up before I was working with the setup wizard. As per the copious recommendations across the internet, I made sure that the console's power brick was not on the carpet once the system was in place. The bottom of my entertainment center has wire shelving, and the free flow of air around the brick has so far allowed my 360 to be glitch-free. It is, unfortunately, as large as everyone says it is. Pulling the massive thing out of the box, I had a flash of a bad bumper-sticker: "My second console is my 360 power brick." The cables are all surprisingly lengthy, with a nice long piece of cat5 cable making the trip to my router with more slack than the one I was using for my Xbox. One important consideration: If you're fortunate enough to be using your console with an HDTV, make sure and flip the switch on the component cable before you start up the console. It's set by default to 'TV', and if you want to experience the HD signal right away you're going to want that switch flipped. With everything plugged in and set properly I hit the large central button on the controller, and the console whirred to life.

The setup wizard asked for little more than the time zone and my Passport account. The Live account I had with the Xbox was still in good standing, putting me into the 'gold' version of the Live system. This apparently allows me the opportunity to get to some additional content, and make use of the Trueskill ranking system we reported on a while back. The only annoying part of the setup was the grueling process of entering my email address and password. Selecting letters from an on-screen keyboard seems like a good idea until you start entering your 32-character-long email address. As a final touch I was asked my preferences for controls in FPS and Driving titles. I don't know why, but I like inverted look on console games. It just works better for me. By entering the setting on my Live account, every FPS I play on the 360 will use that setting by default.

Setup completed, I had my first look at the 360 'blade' system. The interface for the console is a series of screens arranged in an interlocking pattern of tabs, or blades. Flipping between the different screens is as easy as moving the thumbstick. It's a remarkably intuitive and clean interface, and really hits home the 'next-gen' feel of the console. First thing, I hopped into the Live Marketplace and purchased some Microsoft Points. As much as I was looking forward to playing Call of Duty 2 and King Kong, I'd heard such good things about the downloadable game experience that I wanted to check them out right away. I also wanted to snag the Penny Arcade Skins and gamer portraits. These games and downloadables were purchased with the Points, which are Microsoft's way of putting an additional step between users and their credit cards. Parents who don't want their kids racking up bills via Live can purchase pre-paid Point cards in stores, ala the time cards for a MMOG. You can also buy them directly through Live if you have a credit card on file. They sound like more of a deal than they are, unfortunately. Game downloads range from about 400 to about 800 Points, and right now Live is offering 1000 Points for $12.50 (or $.05 for four points). You can buy about three games then, give or take, for $25.00. A steal compared to most console titles, but not as inexpensive as you might like. Theme packs that re-skin your blades run about 150 Points, and packs of icons for your GamerTag are about 50 Points. There are exceptions, of course. The Penny Arcade icon packs each have several icons to choose from, and cost 200 Points. Expensive, but Mr. Period was worth the $2.50.

The downloadable games are wide-ranging in playstyle, and offer something for just about everyone. Classic titles like SmashTV, and Joust sit beside modern hits like Zuma and Bejeweled. There are also brand new and indie titles, like Geometry Wars Retro Evolved and Wik: Fable of Souls. The console also comes with a shiny puzzle game already unlocked for you, called Hexic. Hexic has you rotating groups of three colored blocks, seeking to make groups of same-colored shapes. It's not the most brilliant puzzler ever, but it is good looking and is something to kill time with if you're not interested in downloading anything. Which would be a shame, because all of the games in the Live Marketplace offer up free trials. The cost is the time to download, and the reward is the chance to recall just how badly you played the original Gauntlet. The Live title I've gotten the most enjoyment out of is Geometry Wars Retro Evolved. Originally a simplistic little extra on Project Gotham Racing 2, Geometry Wars has been reinvisioned for the Live Marketplace. It's a beautiful old-school shooter in the style of Asteroids, with a lot of attitude. There are over a dozen enemy types, several blaster styles, and loads of extremely challenging gameplay. I've accomplished the 'get 100,000 points' Achievement, but only just. Even then, as of this writing I'm number 16,618 on the Geometry Wars leaderboard. Judging by the leaders on the leaderboard, the game is not only challenging but addictive as well.

That Geometry Wars Achievement is one of the easier ones to obtain for that title, most of them centering on surviving for prolonged periods of time. They're somewhat simplistic, given the nature of the game, but every game has their own style of Achievement. Xbox Live Achievements are 'Kilroy was here' moments in games made for the Xbox 360. Every title is required to have some, and it varies from game to game how many there are and how hard it is to obtain them. Call of Duty 2, for example, hands you one for completing Basic Training but then denies you additional kudos until you've beaten large parts of the game. Kameo, on the other hand, gives you an Achievement every time you obtain another Elemental Warrior (which happens relatively frequently). They're viewable through your GamerTag, and are an interesting way to check in and see how far your friend has made it through a given title.

One of the benefits of waiting a month before purchasing my 360 was knowing what games to get and what titles I could safely avoid. With PDZ mostly snagging 8/10s, I decided to pick up Call of Duty 2 instead as my launch-title FPS. Jack Black and Peter Jackson was just too appealing to me to pass up (not to mention the big monkey), so I grabbed King Kong as well. Kameo's colorful visuals and morphing gameplay also seemed very appealing, and I chose that as my third launch title.

Call of Duty 2 (CoD 2) has earned its reputation as the cream of the 360 launch title crop. The game powerfully recaptures the thrill of the original title, placing you in the shoes of a grunt on the Russian, British, or American fronts of World War II. Gameplay is fast-paced and finely honed, with a control scheme that for the first time feels effortless to this PC gamer. The 360 controller, overall, has a wonderful feel to it. It's not even as large as the S-type Xbox controller, and the thumbsticks are incredibly responsive. I've always had some 'user-related issues' playing FPS titles on the console, but the 360 controller feels extremely natural in my hands. Call of Duty 2 makes use of every button on the controller, and the schema feels very intuitive once you've gone through basic training. The game not only plays well, but looks terrific too. I wasn't sure what exactly to expect when I first began playing a 360 title (as still images just don't do next-gen games justice), but I have been extremely impressed. CoD 2 lives, breathes, and clips along at 60 frames per second without blinking. The snowy enivrons of Russia, the ice crusted to the fringe of my commander's longcoat, and the billowing emissions of a smoke grenade all come together to form an immersive experience. If I had to choose a 'best of' element for Call of Duty 2, it would be the AI. German soldiers dive for cover, snipe from afar, and use suppression fire to support their troop movements. Your Russian squad-mates call out enemy positions in simple and understandable terms. They have your back if you run out of ammo, and keep the baddies under cover as you sprint towards your next objective. Call of Duty 2 is easily the finest launch title the 360 has to offer.

The 360 version of King Kong has been in the news recently because of some darkness issues. While it is indeed very dark, on an HD screen the light is more than sufficient to make out the creepy-crawlies coming in your direction. King Kong plays mostly like an action-adventure FPS, with you in the role of writer Jack Driscoll. Driscoll and a motley crew of movie-makers make their way through the creepy enivrons of Skull Island. Originally on the island just for the scenery, the game quickly becomes a race after the giant ape Kong who has stolen leading lady Ann. The primitive environment plays a role in the game's story and gameplay. While ammo is plentiful in some FPS titles, Kong has you relying on periodic supply drops from a low flying plane. Once you're out of ammo, you're reduced to using spears as weapons against the giant centipedes, dinosaurs, and flying harpy-things that plague your every step. Kong has a lot of atmosphere, and even on normal mode is fairly challenging. My biggest complaint with the title is the occasional puzzle element. Doors must be opened via a pair of rotating gate mechanisms, and at various points in the game you're required to find the handle for one or both of these mechanisms. Looking for a small handle in a large outdoor space with variable lighting is, regrettably, not very fun and serves mostly as a way to add time to the game. The 'best of' element is definitely the infrequent sequences where you get to play as Kong. The sheer power he displays, compared to the squishiness of Jack Driscoll, makes for a refreshing change of pace as you progress through the game. Kong is only so-so as FPS titles go, but when at its best it offers some beautiful vistas , scary moments, and "omgdinosaurz" gameplay.

Kameo has gotten a lot of mixed reviews since the 360 launched, and with good reason. On one hand, it has beautiful cartoony graphics. The world evokes a sense of wonder, and the characters that inhabit the various realms are all kind of goofy-looking. On the other hand, it's a violent game with a decent amount of gore. Splattering bugs and plant-monsters tosses a green goo at the screen, which slides down the inside of your television screen. One elemental warrior has a move that impales enemies on his back, and then uses them as thrown weapons. A forgettable plot doesn't help things, either. Kameo was living a fulfilling life as a princess when her sister went black hat and released the evil Troll King. They capture your family and strip you of your powers, and you're off on a crusade to get everything back. There are some amusing story elements that complicate things a bit, like a conniving seer with aspirations of power, but for the most part the game plays out exactly as you'd imagine. You move from place to place in the game world, collecting warriors and freeing your family members. Each Elemental Warrior offers up specific abilities that can be used to circumvent obstacles. The plant-boxer can dive into the ground to move under gates, the dragon-form can light torches with his breath weapon, and the rolling armadillo-guy Major Ruin can use his rush attack to leap chasms. Despite the predictable plot, there is fun to be had, here. Once you have a few warriors under your belt gameplay gets switched up relatively often, requiring you to recognize what form will work best fairly frequently. Combat itself is quick and mostly satisfying, and each warrior has a bevy of upgradable powers to play with. The problem really boils down to who exactly this game is for, though. The graphics say young player, the violence says teenager, and the spine-gratingly annoying 'helper' says functional imbecile. Even halfway through the game your hand is still being held with regard to power use and puzzle-solving, and it gets more than a little annoying sometimes. Kameo is interesting from a uniqueness point of view, but probably isn't worth it unless the art style and morphing premise really appeal to you. Regrettably, they are about all the game has to offer.

My experiences with the 360, even disappointing moments with Kameo, have been overwhelmingly positive. Even while falling to my death because of a wonky camera in Kameo or getting eaten for the fifth time by a giant centipede in King Kong, there's a level of polish to these launch titles that surprised me. I'm not sure I'd agree with J. Allard when he claimed the 360 has the 'best launch lineup ever', but at least the titles that I chose to purchase all have elements worth exploring. The console itself has also surprised me. A slick interface and effortless simple online components make this the first box I've really enjoyed just futzing with. The Marketplace is a powerful selling point, and the games up for offer are well worth looking into. They're constantly adding content as well, ensuring that stopping in at the Live component is almost always a worthwhile sidetrip from whatever game you're playing. Just since the console's launch they've added a Mission Impossible 3 trailer, a Billiards game, and a great PSA from Red vs. Blue. I have been pleasantly surprised by the entire 360 experience, and I might even go so far as to say that I got my money's worth when I purchased the system last week. In these frustrating times of hype and shady customer service, it's hard for me to offer up higher praise than that.

As a final note, you may be interested to know that my Xbox Live GamerTag is 'whoisdialogue'. If you're looking for someone to kick around in CoD multiplayer, I will probably be able to oblige any deep-seated fantasies you may have of shooting a Slashdot editor in the brainpan. See you online.

Update: 12/21 19:55 GMT by Z : Fixed per-point price, because math is hard. Thanks AC.

Comments

What the fuck is this again?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oooh, look at me, I got an X-box 360. I'm going to post the same shit that was posted by blog writers everywhere, only a month later. But I'm special and write for slashdot, so my shit doesn't stink."

Seriously, no one cares you got a fucking X-box. Shove it.

What the hell?

[imag0]

Ok, so let me get it straight. Microsoft took a credit card machine, masked it as a game console and shoved it out the door.

I've boycotted Sony due to the CD debacle, and after reading this I'm sure I will not be picking up a 360 since I really don't like the idea of paying someone everytime I want to change something. Looks like my decision has been made for me. Here's hoping that the Nintendo Revolution does not suck all that bad.

Is this real or an advertisement?

[hackstraw]

I'm not trolling (this usually pads people from being modded as troll for some reason).

But the guy says "I bit the bullet and swiped the plastic." So it appears at first to be a fairly large and potentially risky purchase. I'm not sure of the timeframe here, but it appears as though in a short time this guy has bought every game available, has an HDTV, bought every accessory and online option. Detailed the price of everything. And this was posted by Zonk.

If I'm the only one who is skeptable, so be it mod me to -1 and this will be forgotten, but the sum of the parts don't seem to add up to be a review.

Also, who submitted this thing? Zonk himself? Or did it spontaneously generate from the meant-to-imply-an-in-drawn-breath department?

Re:crashes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You couldn't design it. It makes you look stupid to insult people's intelligence when those people are more intelligent than you.

PC Wins hands down.

[JackAxe]

Wake up buddy, you've bought into MS's marketing hype. You're singing praise to a console that barely breaks the double-performance-mark over its predecessor and by the time developers get used to its shortcomings and can squeese it for every ounce of power, its tech, which is already dated, will be sub-par when compared to an entry level POS Dell of that time.

I'm buying a Revolution for the love of great games and something completely new, and maybe a PS3 for "true" visual eye candy. But will eventualy be upgrading my PC again, since it's better across the board for the types of games that consoles like the X360 "try" to handle. The controls alone on a PC are vastly better. I'll skip the X360, since it's maybe on par wtih my last PC from a few years back, which I could only get about $100 for if I'm lucky and MS is well known for making mediocre products that never perform as promised.

I'm not a fan of shoddy frame-rate, muddy/stretched/blurry textures, and an extreme overuse of light blooms. This seems to be the norm with the X360 games that I've tried. 2X aliasing... Wow. That's pretty amazing if it were the turn of the century again.

Re:PC Wins hands down.

[JackAxe]

Nope, didn't buy into it, tis why I stated "maybe" on a purchase. But in comparisson to the X360, I have not doubt Sony will deliver something a step above that's more pleasing than light-blooms from hell. Afterall, they have more experience with consoles. But I do know from working in the game industry when I was younger, that they've always been full of it when it comes to their system's performance.

I'll show my bias towards mediocrity and if Sony doesn't live up to its hype, I'll show no restraint in expressing my opinions about them also. I left out Nintendo, because they've been pretty modest about their system, but until I get my hands on this new controller, I'll also have some doubts, but not as much since the DS was such a pleasant surprise.

And yes, a PC from a few years back. Don't tell me you fell for MS's hype? The X360 in its current state of mediocricy performs no better than my antiquated Athlon XP. Maybe in a few years once developers have figured out all the ins-and-outs it will live up to MS's hype, but I doubt it. They themselves stated it was 80 times faster than a XBox. Sure, maybe if I had mistaken my TS DVD for a game I would buy into that bull.

You get what you pay for when you buy a X360, a console that performs as well as a low-end PC.

Anyways, I own the deluxe edition of ToyStory and now that you menntion it, I've never been able to play it in my GameCube.

A PS2 can run COD2!!!

[JackAxe]

Also a GameCube and even a Xbox. Now doesn't your $1k notebook feel special. Now just like the X360 version of COD2, it has been "dumbed" down in detail to accommodate those console's shortcomings, so why don't you dumb down the detail on your notebook so that it will work well on it? The X360 version was optimized for 720p, if you hadn't noticed that's "lo-rez" compared to what PC games are generally optimized to work well with. Running it any higher stretches and blurs the textures and they look like shit and it also drops frame rate, which I also mentioned.

Now considering that the X360 is only about twice the performance of a 733Mhz Celeron/P3 hybrid, it doesn't take much to beat it out. I'll take my "old" (About 3 years now.) Athlon XP with a 9500 Pro (Can't get more than $100 for this, unless I rip off an ignorant peep.) over a X360 any day, since it runs games just fine. Oh, and if the CPU isn't fast enough to feed the GPU, which seems to be the case for your notebook, it doesn't matter what type of video card you have, and just like your notebook, the X360 with its unoptimized "weak" PPC variation doesn't have the throughput to feed a "real" x1800. This would be why it ships with a watered down derivative that doesn't hold up to its bigger brothers.

Now I've played COD2 on a X360 and it plays about the same as my old XP2500 with a 9500 Pro(Maybe they should've shoved this into a X360, since it does the job, but a X360 probably can't feed it fast enough either.) at 1024x768 (Works about the same at 1280x1024 also), which is what I run it on since I lug a 15" LCD to LAN parties. The difference though, is the PC version looks better, it doesn't look as jaggedy. Now if I weren't so cheap and replaced the Corsair DDR400 chip that deciced it no longer wanted to run at its native speed, I could jump my XP back up to XP3200, which makes a noticeable difference in performance, probably giving me better overal performance than X360 in its current state of pathetic-ness.

My friend has a Shuttle wiith a Athlon 64 running a 6600 and the game runs without hicccups, so maybe you should think aout investing in a standard PC next time. What did you buy, an older Pentium M, or is it a Celeron, and how much ram does your notebook have? Let me guess, your notebook only has 256 megs of RAM? Now if you won't spend $50 to bring it up, then you're just as cheap as me when it comes to my PCs. But I kind of figured that since you only paid a grand for your notebook. It's a Dell, isn't it?

You don't need to upgrade the X360? Well you shouldn't have to, because it's a "console." Of course if you don't buy its additional HDD, you'll be missing out. WTF is that, it's a console for Pete's sake!!!

A HDD is really needed if you want to take advantage of the X360. So $50 more to upgrade for your notebook is nothing, when it's $100 more for a X360, and if you weren't lucky enough to come buy a premium addition in this artificial shortage, then you'll be spending more than $500 after upgrades and accessories. Hey that's almost the price of a faster PC if you know what you're doing. Just imagine the idiots that paid more than a $1k for a X360 bundle, or paid more than $2k on eBay just to play a handful of second-rate games. Fuck, for that price I can assemble a fully decked out gaming rig with monitor that will floor an "optimized" X360.

I watched an infocomercial about it, I mean "Icon" on that shit-channel G4TV and they stated it has a PCI Express for future expansion. Now if this is true, just like the "shipping with bugs and then patching later" which MS introduced into the console market, (Thanks MS, just what we all wanted!!!) they'll probably introduce future games that will require a hardware upgrade to run, which is OK for PCs, but "not" for consoles! And I'm possitive that there will be several games in the future that will require the HDD option.

JFYI; My expensive PC is a G5 running a HD 30" (2560x1600), in some, (well mos