Wednesday, November 23, 2005

post://113296194273289531/

I just got back from Jay's house.

He got an XBox 360. He waited in line at Walmart near Worcester (Leicester?) for midnight, I think he said 6 hours? He was 1 away from the Platinum system, and thus in order to get all the pieces he wants, he's got to hunt all over, and pay a lot more then getting the entire package ready to go.

He has a 42" Hitachi HDTV, maybe 2 years old or so... and he had just gotten the HD cable when I got there. It really did look amazing, and the gameplay was nothing but tight. I had picked up Perfect Dark and NFS Most Wanted. Perfect Dark he paid me for and NFS was his XMas present. I wasn't really jonesin' for a 360, but really enjoyed playing it. I still don't think I'd want one. I'd much rather invest the money in a much better computer. However, I believe I said that about the first one too. I broke down eventually, but for the time being I think I'm good with the PC. I spent enough on that thing to buy 2 XBoxen.

The interface is probably where it's much more improved. You are on XBox live all the time, you can talk to anyone, see when your buddies are on, and interact with XBox live in the middle of any game, talk to anyone while playing whatever game, single player or otherwise, and easily meet up with friends who are also playing -- as long as the XBox is on, and they've got LIVE enabled you're good to go.

The power supply is huge, about 12" x 4" x 4", transformer, whatever it's called, and it makes a whole bunch of noise just sitting still. I wouldn't leave this one on. It's made of a PowerMac G5 processor, which is normally passively cooled but the additional components must generate a lot of heat. It's also got ATI video, some proprietary Hard Drive (optional with the base model, but you need it) and 802.11b built in.

So we never really got to Perfect Dark because NFS was so amazing. Jay never liked the Underground games because they were "in the dark" this was in the light. In addition the game is so well done, it keeps you in the game even between races. For instance: if you are racing and you attract the attention of some police, it ain't over just cause the race is. You need to get away from those cops whose attention you caught while racing. You can hit various objects that collapse, get in their way, or get enough distance and take a backway to avoid them. Avoid them long enough and they lose you. However they're all over the place, so it sounds a lot easier then it is - especially when they are lvl2+.

It's well done, I was very happy that he liked it. It also synched my future purchase of it for PC -- completely scalable in graphics with the same game. Ahhhh, choice.

So XBox got my approval. If you're lucky enough to have one, brag about it, make everyone jealous, and they won't really believe you how good it looks/plays until you invite them over to play it for themselves.
posted @ 02:25

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