Weapons of Mass DistractionXbox 360 Impressions

I've had my xbox360 for a few weeks now and I figured this would be a good time to post my impressions.  To sum up the entire experience.. no other console comes anywhere close to what this thing is capable of, and it isn't just the hardware.  I believe this nice integration with your PC could only be pulled off by Microsoft.  Playing mp3s from your PC is extremely easy (which you can do while playing any game).  No more burning mp3s to CDRW then ripping them at the extremely painful speeds that the original xbox was capable of.  It will even find your existing playlists in any of the directories that your windows media connect system is sharing.  It can also do image slideshows of pictures on your PC or digital camera, which I haven't tried out very much.

Sound
Of course the sound is good... The A/V cable that comes with the premium kit has an optical audio output for dolby digital goodness.  The dashboard has a built in music player similar to the one in the original xbox dash, only good. It can load playlists and also has full screen visualisation support, which looks awesome in High Definition.

Video
The video capabilities of the hardware are better than anything else out there, if anything just because it is new.  Once the PS3 is released we will finally have something to compare it to.  All games are required to have at least 720p resolution, which means all the games will be High Definition.  One really cool thing which I didn't find out reading information on xbox.com or other places is that you can choose what resolution you want the games to be output to and it will scale all video output to this resolution.  This is nice if your TV doesn't support certain resolutions like mine, which doesn't support 720p.  Without this scaling feature any 720p game (which is almost all of them at this time) would fall back to 480p, which would render the high definition capabilities useless for many people.

Did I mention this thing plays dvds out of the box, whithout any upgrades necessary?  The premium system I got came with a remote control, which can even turn the box on and off.

So here's my list of kickass features which some people might not be aware of:

• Built in wireless controller support. Other consoles have add-on wireless controllers, but these ones actually work very well and are integrated into the hardware.  What this means: No ugly adaptors sticking out of the front of your system.  They dynamically get controller numbers when they are turned on.
• Play mp3s and playlists from your PC during games.  No more ripping cds and spending hours making custom soundtracks.
• Wireless controllers can turn the box on and off.  This means you don't have to get off the couch to get your game on.  Laziness++
• Built in dvd playback support.  I found this to be faster and more responsive to menu commands, skipping chapters, etc and have a friendlier looking UI than my $500+ standalone DVD player.  The only complaint I have is that the 360 is a lot louder than my normal player.
• The controller layout and feel is very nice.  I didn't realize it until a couple days ago when I picked up one of the original xbox "S" controllers and the first thing that came to mind was "eww"

The Games
Most consoles seem to be launched with a weak game lineup.  This is partially the case wiht the xbox360.  There are some good games in this lineup however.  It used to be that to get the best version of a game you needed to get the xbox one since that hardware was capable of more than the ps2 or gamecube..  This has now been changed to the xbox 360 version.  Need For Speed: Most Wanted for example, couldn't possibly look this good on a PS2 or GC.  The same thing goes for Call of Duty 2.  The only problem with those 2 titles (which are some of the best 360 titles available) is that the games are available for the other consoles you probably already own.  Project Gotham Racing 3 is a good racing game which is exclusive to the 360.  PGR3 seems to have been geared toward online play, as the single player career is fairly short and only took a couple days of casual play to finish with all silver medals.  I've been so busy with the handful of games I have now that I don't even know what else is in the release pipeline other than the new Dead or Alive (fighting game).

Live Arcade
They've added quite a bit of good stuff to xbox live including the ability to download video trailers, game demos, dashboard themes, and other things.  The coolest thing I think is Live Arcade.  It allows you to download arcade style "casual games".  My favorite of these games is Geometry Wars (from Project Gotham Racing).  There are a few retro games available, and some new puzzle games you'd recognize from MSN Zone.

A couple weeks ago I bought an ATI x850 XT video card for my PC, and I haven't even spent 15 minutes playing games on it.  I would much rather sit on my comfy couch with a wireless controller playing a game on a large widescreen TV with surround sound.  Like many people I used to be the opposite, one of the "give me a mouse and a keyboard" people.  Not any more.

Stop complaining about the price and go pick up an xbox 360. :)

Comments:

hi
xbox is good playing
klhtike () - 12-30-05 - 20:17