Post by GhostRiderTGAC on Dec 2, 2005 13:12:36 GMT -5
Hi gang, as many of you know I am the proud owner of both an XBOX and an XBOX 360 Premium edition. Unfortunately the 360 is wrapped and under my Christmas tree and try as I might I cannot convince my family to let me open it early. So I am relegated to reading about other people's experiences as well as I did have an opportunity to join Metastat, Iceman183, and Danero as well took advantage of playing Metastat's 360 on Danero's 57" wide-screen HDTV.
As we were connecting the 360 up (we used the component cable included along with an optical audio cable for Dolby 5.1 surround sound) I made a few observations. First the cables that come with the system are very thick, high-grade cables. Second, the power supply is truly one of the largest external power supplies I have ever seen. I think it's actually bigger than the one I used to have on my old Commodore 64. The XBOX 360 console itself is small, elegant and when powered up it's quite quiet (at least compared with XBOX 1).
Once the system was powered up and the television turned on I was amazed at how nicely the GUI is put together. The "Blade" system is easy to navigate and the guide button on the controller is so nicely integrated into the GUI I got the hang of this right away. There is so much packed into the 360 that navigating around, though easy enough, I did get lost a few times.
I successfully added my gamer tag to Metastat's console by selecting account recovery. Now on the old XBOX this meant that I would have a lengthy task of entering in all of the information from my address to my credit card but on the new system all I had to do was enter my gamer tag, .NET Passport account information and viola I was in. If you haven't yet been to XBOX.COM and associated your gamer tag with your .NET Passport make sure you do so. Even if you don't have a 360 it will be much more convenient when the time comes that you do get one or if you intend to play on a friend's system.
Once I was signed in we popped in Call of Duty 2. Let me tell you I haven't seen any FPS games on any console that looked as good as this game (and we were playing 4-player split screen). The lighting, fog, weather and general environment looked so good. The controls of the game are just like the original from XBOX 1 but the convenience that is the new shoulder buttons makes lobbing grenades and other functions much more convenient. We played CoD2 for a while and then we decided to try Halo 2.
First of all when we put in Halo 2 we all noticed how the initial logo screen actually shows a cityscape in the background (we've never been able to make this out before). The colors appear more vivid and the edges are not so jaggy. The one thing we did observe in 4-player split screen, however is that objects in the distance (i.e. rocks and buildings) take on a weird textured look. This is obviously a glitch however it was minor and in no way affected the overall game play. I found again that the shoulder buttons made switching grenades much quicker and easier. I am going to have to play around further with button setups to take further advantage of these newly replaced buttons (formerly black and white).
Last but not least we played some Perfect Dark Zero. Well I must say, when I first heard about this game I wasn't too excited about it, but after playing it I am "jonesing" to play it more. It's very fast paced and with a huge number of weapon choices, nice maps, and multiplayer game variants I have a feeling this might just be the game to beat. We only had enough time to play a bot-match and a game of Infection but even though I had a great time. It's so nice to actually be able to play cooperatively in more than a standard campaign mode. This game really takes the multiplayer mode into very new directions.
Well anyway, now that I have my own extra controller and CoD2, I hope to get together with the guys at least once more before the holidays so we can play. This system is so cool and I think we have just brushed the surface of what it is capable of. Please post your experiences with your systems. We need to really jump start this forum as we head into 2006. There is so much going on locally and globally in the XBOX community and I don't want to miss a beat!
As we were connecting the 360 up (we used the component cable included along with an optical audio cable for Dolby 5.1 surround sound) I made a few observations. First the cables that come with the system are very thick, high-grade cables. Second, the power supply is truly one of the largest external power supplies I have ever seen. I think it's actually bigger than the one I used to have on my old Commodore 64. The XBOX 360 console itself is small, elegant and when powered up it's quite quiet (at least compared with XBOX 1).
Once the system was powered up and the television turned on I was amazed at how nicely the GUI is put together. The "Blade" system is easy to navigate and the guide button on the controller is so nicely integrated into the GUI I got the hang of this right away. There is so much packed into the 360 that navigating around, though easy enough, I did get lost a few times.
I successfully added my gamer tag to Metastat's console by selecting account recovery. Now on the old XBOX this meant that I would have a lengthy task of entering in all of the information from my address to my credit card but on the new system all I had to do was enter my gamer tag, .NET Passport account information and viola I was in. If you haven't yet been to XBOX.COM and associated your gamer tag with your .NET Passport make sure you do so. Even if you don't have a 360 it will be much more convenient when the time comes that you do get one or if you intend to play on a friend's system.
Once I was signed in we popped in Call of Duty 2. Let me tell you I haven't seen any FPS games on any console that looked as good as this game (and we were playing 4-player split screen). The lighting, fog, weather and general environment looked so good. The controls of the game are just like the original from XBOX 1 but the convenience that is the new shoulder buttons makes lobbing grenades and other functions much more convenient. We played CoD2 for a while and then we decided to try Halo 2.
First of all when we put in Halo 2 we all noticed how the initial logo screen actually shows a cityscape in the background (we've never been able to make this out before). The colors appear more vivid and the edges are not so jaggy. The one thing we did observe in 4-player split screen, however is that objects in the distance (i.e. rocks and buildings) take on a weird textured look. This is obviously a glitch however it was minor and in no way affected the overall game play. I found again that the shoulder buttons made switching grenades much quicker and easier. I am going to have to play around further with button setups to take further advantage of these newly replaced buttons (formerly black and white).
Last but not least we played some Perfect Dark Zero. Well I must say, when I first heard about this game I wasn't too excited about it, but after playing it I am "jonesing" to play it more. It's very fast paced and with a huge number of weapon choices, nice maps, and multiplayer game variants I have a feeling this might just be the game to beat. We only had enough time to play a bot-match and a game of Infection but even though I had a great time. It's so nice to actually be able to play cooperatively in more than a standard campaign mode. This game really takes the multiplayer mode into very new directions.
Well anyway, now that I have my own extra controller and CoD2, I hope to get together with the guys at least once more before the holidays so we can play. This system is so cool and I think we have just brushed the surface of what it is capable of. Please post your experiences with your systems. We need to really jump start this forum as we head into 2006. There is so much going on locally and globally in the XBOX community and I don't want to miss a beat!