So I got an Xbox 360, finally. Thanks to my lovely wife for buying it for me.
After playing with the Wii I'm not as impressed with the cordless pad as I might have been. The D-pad doesn't like to go DOWN, which I guess is a fairly common symptom of a prety shoddy design. I guess MS doesn't recognize the value of 2D, so the 2D-pad is an afterthought. MS has never made a decent d-pad, from the Sidewinder to the two original Xbox pads, they keep fucking it up. Nintendo nailed it - Hori nailed it - Sega totally nailed it with the Saturn pad. Learn from your ancestors, Microsoft. It ain't hard.
The system's huge, way huger than I thought, even after hearing everyone else say 'it's huge!' and seeing it in shops. The AV cable is massive! The PSU is massive! At least the pad is the right size... Stupid Microsoft, learning the wrong lessons from their ancestors: In the ~10 hours it took me to beat GoW the system reset twice as it was unable to read the disc in the middle of a game. My old Xbox did the same shit.
The drive tray feels cheap, that horrible chrome finish is just lame, a flaw on an otherwise good looking system.
Gears of War is fucking great, totally awesome, and the reason I wanted a 360 in the first place. It's also very short, which is disappointing, but not a surprise. Looking forward to the online play... Strangely I found the graphics to be only marginally better than Halo/2 on the original Xbox. Sure there's massive new texture detail courtesy of the extra VRAM, but except for the poly count and distance blurring it's not really any different, with the bump-maps and real-maps and mip-maps and whatever.
The levels in GoW are amazing to look at, but Epic never disappoints in this regard. If Cliffy B. ain't a god he's the nearest we've got, I reckon. Epic does such amazing stuff with so little it's amazing staff at other companies even come to work. Was I an UT2k3/4 fan? You bet I was.
Conclusions:
The system is well thought out, but I've had the same dashboard skin on my old xbox so that wasn't new, I've had a (arguably better) controller on the Wii, so that wasn't new either, and my old xbox had flaky hardware, so that wasn't new... In fact, the Xbox 360 is just more of the same shit, but better.
But sometimes that's all I want. Gears of War ain't no Kororinpa, and the Xbox360 ain't no Wii, but sometimes you want to sink to the level of the casual gamer and blow some shit up good, and the xbox delivers.
Much rather have this monstrosity in my house than the wretched PS3, that's for damned sure. Fuck Sony. <ptui!> At least I can touch the 360 without leaving massive fingerprints on it.
Now to order me a Ridge Racer 6! Booyah!
Gamertag? Mine is "Robivy64"
*100 mega shock*!!!
I'm 'MacEanruig' on the reasoning that 'Kendrick' is already in use by a bloody Silver user who's never logged on. Add me too!
-KKC
A3ndymion here.
And by the way how do you get a 360 "dashboard skin" on your original XBox? Never heard of that feature at all. o_O
A dashboard skin is a series of JPG flies in a proprietary archive format. When you browse between the various panes of the 360 Dashboard, a different image file is displayed depending on which pane you're viewing. In general, these are downloaded from the Xbox Live Marketplace for a small (but still unreasonable) fee.
If you insert USB or CD storage, it's also possible to use a garden variety JPG or GIF file as your Xbox dashboard skin, although this will have the effect of displaying the same image for all four panes. A couple of hackers have cobbled together custom skins based on the archive format, but these are generally disabled since Xbox Live applies some simple CRC check to make sure that the skin file is valid.
-KKC
I've not seen a single pane or layout for the original XBox anything at all like the 360 though. Got linkage to specifics on this?
Okay, I misunderstood your question earlier. As far as I know, the only way to get the 360 interface on an original Xbox is to add a custom dashboard to a modified unit. Avalaunch and XBMC are popular choices that support a level of customization that would lead to that. An unmodified, stock original Xbox won't give you the option to change the dashboard functionality in that way.
-KKC
I use XBMC on the old xbox. Greatest damned media player evar. Sure a hell of a lot better than the 360 player - I don't think I'll even install the Windows component that makes the 360 player work. It's skinnable, and the one I use is a clone of the 360. It's pretty slick, really.
my Live name is NFGman. Luckily I reg'd it like a year ago or I'd surely be disappointed today.
Lawrence, is your 360 an Asian-region unit? I ask because I'm trying to decide if it's worth being jealous that you'll have more RPG titles open to you than to us poor slobs in the States. I also can't remember if you actually enjoy RPG titles or not, which means that you may not even be in a position to appreciate that benefit. :)
-KKC, scrounging up old Sega CD games during the holiday...
Alas my system's PAL. I'm debating returning it to the shops and ordering another from a better country, 'cause I refuse to pay $105 for a USED Dead Rising (http://nfggames.com/games/grafx/deadrising.jpg).
QuoteIn the ~10 hours it took me to beat GoW the system reset twice as it was unable to read the disc in the middle of a game.
Prepare for the red lights...
...Of doom.
Edit: Just noticed. Happy birthday, hehe.
I bought a Wii and an Xbox 360 today, it was a bit of a mistake really. I'm going to have to sell one of them, I cant really afford to keep any to be honest.
I'm not sure which one to get rid of. I was really pro Wii at first, but gradually the 360 is winning me over. The final nail in the coffin is XNA on 360. What do you lot think of XNA? I think its going to be huge. But then again, the 360 is expensive enough, without having to pay another �65 for the XNA Creators Club.
The Wii went down in my chart when I read that the Virtual Console games on my UK PAL machine are like they used to be over here, about 17% slower and with borders :(
I havent actually played the consoles yet, I havent had a chance. But I dont want to open the Wii because it will loose value.
My favorite joypad is the Saturns as well. Closely followed by the Megadrive 2 ones.
O.Wilmot.
PS- Still cant register for some reason.
I have the same problem with the Dpad too, it just doesn't respond well. I bought a tiny mad catz controller (yeah they usually suck I know) at Gamestop though that is amazing. The quality is SUPER good, the plastic is like something Logitec would use, but best of all the Dpad works flawlessly.
This is the controller (http://cgi.ebay.com/XBOX-360-WIRED-GAMESTOP-CONTROLLER-GREAT-FOR-KIDS-NR_W0QQitemZ200064251946QQihZ010QQcategoryZ41017QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
Seriously I can't recommend this controller enough, it's the only third party controller I've ever actually liked.