In House XBox 360 Impressions and Review

[bapenguin]

After a solid 4 days with an XBox 360, I've written up my impressions and review for the system itself. The article doesn't necessarily cover the games, which I'll go into later, but more of a review of the hardware, and software that comes with the system.

The centerpiece of the Xbox 360 is the gamer, and the new Gamercard functionality shows this. Your gamercard keeps track of your progress in everything you do, it provides a place for players to leave feedback about you. You can even see what players are saying about you, and why they did or didn't like playing with you. Every game on Xbox contains 1000 gamer points that can be earned by achieving certain goals in games. THIS IS INCREDIBLY ADDICTING! I constantly found myself brining up the dashboard overlay in games and looking at the possible achievements for the game, and then proceeding to try to unlock them. It's amazing what kind of replay ability this little feature adds. What's great then is you can compare gamer cards with anyone on Xbox live, you can see what achievements they have compared to you, what their score is, etc.
You can read the full article here. (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=139021)

[Dr.Finger]

Must..not..hate..bapenguin..for..having..360..must ..calm..rage

[Serapth]

Hey Bap, are those pics taken from an HD screen, or regular def? Im still curious to see how good the interface looks on a regular tv ( even though I own an HD ).

All the reviews ive read sofar, they always used an HD tv. I actually predict this is going to be a problem in the future, where games are rated on graphic quality using 50" LCD tvs, where the experience on an SDTV is pure arse. Kinda like PC reviews where the game reviewers always are using a PC that less then a month old.

[AniAko]

I got to play with the gamer "profile" and it looks like it will be incredibly addicting indeed.

[bapenguin]

Hey Bap, are those pics taken from an HD screen, or regular def? Im still curious to see how good the interface looks on a regular tv ( even though I own an HD ).


It's a snapshot off my HD projection screen. So the quality isn't the greatest.

[Serapth]

It's a snapshot off my HD projection screen. So the quality isn't the greatest.

You hooked it up to an SDTV yet? Im curious to know how bad the resampling looks

[MrWonderstuff]

Yea I'd be interested on the quality on a standard TV.

[falcon]

You hooked it up to an SDTV yet? Im curious to know how bad the resampling looks

I had it hooked up to my old 36" WEGA and it doesn't look bad. right here (http://www.gamingnexus.com/Default.aspx?Section=Article&I=935) w/pics) NHL2K6 didn't look much better than the standard Xbox version but Condemned looked pretty good. There's an article out there somewhere that mentioned that Halo 2 looks a bit better with the 360 but I can't seem to find it.

I did pickup a new HDTV yesterday and the difference is jaw dropping...

[BleedTheFreak]

Yea I'd be interested on the quality on a standard TV.

My guess? The difference between a SD and HD TV will be just like playing a low end card and a high end video card at the same resoultion on the PC: In that, you get cool special effects (fog, lighting, etc.) but it's still the same resolution. You need to bump that up a bit to really see how your new card looks.

So, it will probably look just about like the X Box did, but have much more interesting partical, etc. effects than the X Box did. So, better, but not as nice as it *can* look.

I'm just buying a VGA cable, I'll play on my monitor, that's good enough for now by far.

[Borys]

Yea I'd be interested on the quality on a standard TV.

I'd bet nothing more than dropping down the resolution in any PC game, that means better framerate with more aliasing.

Of course that is a wild guess, somebody try the 360 on some 1980 Sony set.

[ackbrack]

The way these impressions read I feel that, since I'm not terribly interested in what XBox Live has to offer because I prefer to play single player games, there isn't much else that the 360 brings to the table that would give me reason to get one at this point. It sounds like a great system for those people who want to take advantage of its capabilities, though.

[netcraazzy]

I've got a 27 inch 4:3 Toshiba TV that I'll be using with my 360 for the time being so I'll post some impressions tomorrow if nobody else has by then. I can see already that this is going to be the catalyst that drives me to get an HD TV.

[Heretic Machine]

The way these impressions read I feel that, since I'm not terribly interested in what XBox Live has to offer because I prefer to play single player games, there isn't much else that the 360 brings to the table that would give me reason to get one at this point. It sounds like a great system for those people who want to take advantage of its capabilities, though.

I agree that if you don't plan on playing Live, you don't need to bother with the 360 for a long while. The Live community is sort of the heart of what the 360 is as far as I can tell.

I've got a 27 inch 4:3 Toshiba TV that I'll be using with my 360 for the time being so I'll post some impressions tomorrow if nobody else has by then. I can see already that this is going to be the catalyst that drives me to get an HD TV.

I also have a similar television, and it looks just fine. Of course HD would be better, but this looks fine. No noticable graphics glitches, everything still looks hot.

[Spigot]

I've never bothered getting Live for my Xbox. It's too annoying and pricey to get it set up the way my home computer and game systems are arranged. That said, I could see how having certain goals in a game that could be completed for points on Live would send someone like me scurrying to try to find them all. Heck, that would be a minigame on its own.

But I'll hold off for now. I'm still a long way from having an HD setup anyway.