Grant Gochnauer - Blog : Technology : Foundation

Thanks to my buddy Riyad for this AWESOME write-up about his experiences with the XBOX 360.

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Ok so I got this: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4213561

In the mail earlier this week and have had what I think is enough time with it to do a mini. The 4 games I got were Oblivion, Burnout Revenge or Revolution I forgot which, Fight Night 3 and DOA 4. Right off the bat I am going to say that not only does Fight Night 3 look f-ing AWESOME, it’s a blast to play if you take the time to learn the fight controls. Kelly and I beat the sh*t out of each other the first night for like 2 hours, she knocked me out twice and I only knocked her down once… I’m not a man aparently.

I went online the next day and fought a few people, that was awesome.
I have the headset so talking with them was fun and screaming profanities into their faces.

Overall the Operating System on the 360 is tight, it’s really smooth, good looking and all that stuff. I would say at first glance… like first 5min type glance it is information overload… but you learn how each section is laid out in like 1min and then you understand it.

XBox live is cool but the actual online play per game doesn’t seem iron clad. I had to reattempt connections to Fight Nights servers twice before getting in… it can also be really confusing. Lots of controls and you don’t realize that pressing the on/off button on the controller gets you back to the “Dashboard” at first.

I also installed Windows Media Connect on my PC so I could share over pictures and music, that’s tight but movies don’t share, I guess the fags want you to have a goddamn media center PC or some sh*t, oh well.

One thing I don’t like about the XBox OS is this whole concept of “sign in”… there are like 3 different kinds of sign in and I have no goddamn clue what they mean. You “sign in” when you turn on your controller, and that’s a separate name from the sign in you use when you login to Live, and then there is of course another type of sign in for each game, or preference loading… basically it means you can’t just turn the thing on and smash buttons until you are playing… there is this new level of “accounting” that you have to care about all the sudden. While I’m not fond of it, I don’t know of a way around it now that these console systems offer online play and accounts and sh*t.

Controls are easier to learn then I thought they were. Obvlivion is requiring the steepest learning curve right now, and I wish there was a gamma setting for dark dungeon scenes cause my TV isn’t HD, but that’s minor. The game rocks.

The console performs well, but you can hear it when it’s on. If you are used to fanless systems like Dream Casts, Nintendos and stuff like that, this will seem “strangely computeresque” to you. Is it loud? No way, but white noise doesn’t bother me. My computer tower is like 5x as loud as this. It just sounds like a little small form factor computer with a single PSU fan in it or something… it’s probably just as loud as a Shuttle. I don’t know HOW loud it can get though, some folks said it can get insanely loud, but then again microsoft will fix that I think under warrenty.

Over all, if you look at the package I got, I think the experience of all the hardware is worth about $400. So the package I got was $750, but that included a lot. So subtract $200 for the games, that gives you $550. So I think the bundle (minus the games, sinc eyou can get GameFly) is about $150 overpriced. This is comming from someone that likes games, plays casually and values money. If you are looking for something totally mind blowing and revolutionary to make you sit up and say “F*CK!”, wait for the revolution. If you are looking for your computer games on a controlled and integrated platform that is easy to use and sort of computery, get an XBox or a PS3.

After having this for a while, I *would* most likely not buy it myself if this hadn’t been a gift… if I could have gotten this entire pack plus the games for $400 I would have thought about it and probably gotten it, but really it’s just a computer with nice looking computer games when you boil it all down.

I’d give it a 9/10. If I missed anything ask away.