Note to reader: I do not own a 360, nor do I plan to. This review is written with only a brief exposure (2-3hours) of a friend’s system.. So take at your own risk

One of the guys at the office, Tom, was priveledged enough to lay his hands on one of the local Wal Mart’s 18 XBox’s. He wasn’t, however, lucky enough to get one of the full systems. Still, his core system is better than nothing so he brought it in and we hooked it up to try out. He had gotten a few games: Quake 4, Call of Duty 2, Project Dark, & King Kong.

We pretty much just played Call of Duty 2. Some single player, but mostly split-screen multiplayer. I have to admit, it’s a neat system. I still think consoles suck for first-person shooters, but overall it was a decent system. The controller design was intuitive and comfortable, alot better than the travesty with the original XBox. The system and menus are sleek and stylish, conveying the “next generation” feel I’m sure someone in PR was aiming for.

But for all it’s nice looks, the system just isn’t worth the $$$. A few examples:

  • We were playing Call of Duty 2 Single-player while one of the other guys was rewiring to get us some surround audio. He gently moved the console to one side, and the entire thing shutdown, with the green light on the front suddenly blinking red. After alot of paniced looks and elevated blood pressure, we finally realized he had just loosened one of the controller cables. Where any reasonable system would have just paused the game & waited for it to be fixed, the Xbox 360 shut down, and required a HARD reboot (Eg: unplug it).
  • The graphics aren’t all that impressive given what I can get on a PC. Two of the launch titles (Quake 4 & Call of Duty 2) have been out for the PC for over a month now. I’ve played both of them on my PC (an Athlon 3000 @ 2.2Ghz, 1 Gig ram, and a NVidia Geforce 5900FX, hardly a “top of the line” gaming rig) at 1280×1024 with most of the bells and whistles turned on. On the Xbox, you’re limited to TV resolution ( a whopping 640×480, unless you’re lucky enough to have HD).
  • If you’ve read the reviews around the net, you’ve no doubt heard of the problems with them locking up or just melting down due to heat problems.

So in short, it seems the best bet is to just keep playing games on the PC. I haven’t heard of any real breakout hit coming to the 360 that would require a purchase. Seems they would have something along the lines of Halo exclusive to the 360, but it’s just not there.

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