Sunday, April 02, 2006
Xbox Live, Downloads, Demos, and ES-IV:O
Okay… so what’s there to say about the Xbox 360? I’m not sure what people are expecting from this blog post, if anything at all. Anyway, I played with it a bit on Thursday and Friday, and a lot more on Saturday, so I’ll write a little sumthin sumthin about it.
I’m not going to blog about the differences between PGR2 and PGR3; nor continue the discussion about PC FPSes and Console FPSes… but I will briefly mention stuff about being a computer.
So, first, the negatives – When I first opened the box, I received a paper cut!
Then, the non-negatives; so far, no crashes, freezes, overheating, disc scratching, none of that. Seeing stuff in HD, Widescreen, with good sound, all that, good stuff. Xbox Live connects pretty hassle free, so that was great. The first thing I did, after reading the instructions, is do what I never did with a console before: I turned it on, using the controller.
It’s the nifty features that are fun to talk about. The next part is a bit awkward, and people like Ray probably wouldn’t care much about… but it’s nifty. In comparing console to console, it’s nifty; but comparing console to computer, it’s… very run-of-the-mill. After downloading some stuff to your computer, you can network from the 360 to the computer and stream music and pictures. You can then use the pictures as background themes for the xbox.
So, it’s something we’ve been doing for years between two computers, but then it’s nifty when you do it with a console. With the console, you can download game demos, and even movie trailers; the other day I downloaded the MI3 trailer to my xbox =) Again, something regular on the computer, becomes, well, nifty on the console.
Anyhoo, streaming video or copying video is a bit more complicated and I think it requires a Windows XP Media Center PC, which is a computer with the Media Center OS, which only comes on computers pre-installed with the OS. It would be cool, so we can finally have anime marathons on the TV without first doing some weird connections between the TV and the computer. But alas, that’s not the case yet. At least we can do stuff with picture slideshows.
Anyway, I got a free month of Xbox Live Gold, so on Friday night I played a few games of PGR3 online. Actually, the first thing I did was watch a bit of Gotham TV, where they broadcast the best PGR3 players in a race. That was fun! It’s like watching TV, except the people are just regular people and not famous drivers or something.
Then I played some matches, but didn’t do so well. Most people in class B drive Enzos, and I didn’t have an Enzo yet – just a Saleen S7. So I went back to single player, played for 20 minutes, made enough money for an Enzo, and bought one. Haven’t played more since though, but now with the Enzo I should do better =)
So yesterday, I spent a lot more time with xbox live. I downloaded about 5 xbox live arcade demos and about 4 real demos – which is pretty cool on the console – now we can see how well a game plays on the console, rather than seeing its equivalent on the computer. For example, NFS:MW on the computer looked amazing, but then I bought it for the xbox and it was quite crappy. On the 360 though, it looks really nice, so I might consider buying that one.
Ridge Racer 6 is still as silly as ever, with the drifting and turning complete 90 degrees and more… Fight Night 3 was a bit confusing, I’ll have to spend more time with that… and Call of Duty 2 was actually pretty good. The G.R.A.W. demo should be just about done now, so I’ll play that in a few seconds.
Lastly, on Friday I bought another game. I read so many reviews of this game, on Gamespy, IGN, and Gamefaqs, and they all say it’s perfect. Wen wants me to get it too, so I did – Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Two hours down, 98-398 hours to go, or so I hear. So far it’s pretty good. I was afraid I wouldn’t’ve liked it, but they put a lot of work into it and it shows.
That reminds me – another new feature of the xbox 360 is that every game now supports custom soundtracks, instead of only a few games. So while you’re in the game, you press a button and then turn off the music and put in your own music, from the hard drive or streaming from your computer or an iPod or whatever.
So first on the xbox, I would play racing games with racing (Initial D) music. So I tried it out for a few seconds today – I walked around the massive world in Oblivion with Initial D music. Actually I rode on a horse. But, it’ll probably take away from the RPG experience, so I’ll listen to ingame music for now.
So, am I supposed to say this is the best system ever and it’s so worth the money? Well, no I can’t say that yet. Especially about the money part. Then again, it’s really hard to measure that much money and say that it was worth it, or worth half, or less than that, or anything. It’s a somewhat new experience, and it’ll be here for many years. I hear there’s a few good RPGs coming out in a while… I saw a trailer for a game that’s coming out (ugh) Spring 2007 from Capcom, that looks pretty good… and if nothing else, Oblivion should keep me busy for a while.
Anyway, so now I have an xbox 360. A bunch of us will probably get the Revolution, and I expect someone other than us will be getting the PS3 first, and then we’ll have the triad-of-game-systems again. And now Isaque can start buying games for the 360 =)
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Okay… so what’s there to say about the Xbox 360? I’m not sure what people are expecting from this blog post, if anything at all. Anyway, I played with it a bit on Thursday and Friday, and a lot more on Saturday, so I’ll write a little sumthin sumthin about it. I’m not going to blog about the differences between PGR2 and PGR3; nor continue the discussion about PC FPSes and Console FPSes… but I will briefly mention stuff about being a computer. So, first, the negatives – When I first opened the box, I received a paper cut! Then, the non-negatives; so far, no crashes, freezes, overheating, disc scratching, none of that. Seeing stuff in HD, Widescreen, with good sound, all that, good stuff. Xbox Live connects pretty hassle free, so that was great. The first thing I did, after reading the instructions, is do what I never did with a console before: I turned it on, using the controller. It’s the nifty features that are fun to talk about. The next part is a bit awkward, and people like Ray probably wouldn’t care much about… but it’s nifty. In comparing console to console, it’s nifty; but comparing console to computer, it’s… very run-of-the-mill. After downloading some stuff to your computer, you can network from the 360 to the computer and stream music and pictures. You can then use the pictures as background themes for the xbox. So, it’s something we’ve been doing for years between two computers, but then it’s nifty when you do it with a console. With the console, you can download game demos, and even movie trailers; the other day I downloaded the MI3 trailer to my xbox =) Again, something regular on the computer, becomes, well, nifty on the console. Anyhoo, streaming video or copying video is a bit more complicated and I think it requires a Windows XP Media Center PC, which is a computer with the Media Center OS, which only comes on computers pre-installed with the OS. It would be cool, so we can finally have anime marathons on the TV without first doing some weird connections between the TV and the computer. But alas, that’s not the case yet. At least we can do stuff with picture slideshows. Anyway, I got a free month of Xbox Live Gold, so on Friday night I played a few games of PGR3 online. Actually, the first thing I did was watch a bit of Gotham TV, where they broadcast the best PGR3 players in a race. That was fun! It’s like watching TV, except the people are just regular people and not famous drivers or something. Then I played some matches, but didn’t do so well. Most people in class B drive Enzos, and I didn’t have an Enzo yet – just a Saleen S7. So I went back to single player, played for 20 minutes, made enough money for an Enzo, and bought one. Haven’t played more since though, but now with the Enzo I should do better =) So yesterday, I spent a lot more time with xbox live. I downloaded about 5 xbox live arcade demos and about 4 real demos – which is pretty cool on the console – now we can see how well a game plays on the console, rather than seeing its equivalent on the computer. For example, NFS:MW on the computer looked amazing, but then I bought it for the xbox and it was quite crappy. On the 360 though, it looks really nice, so I might consider buying that one. Ridge Racer 6 is still as silly as ever, with the drifting and turning complete 90 degrees and more… Fight Night 3 was a bit confusing, I’ll have to spend more time with that… and Call of Duty 2 was actually pretty good. The G.R.A.W. demo should be just about done now, so I’ll play that in a few seconds. Lastly, on Friday I bought another game. I read so many reviews of this game, on Gamespy, IGN, and Gamefaqs, and they all say it’s perfect. Wen wants me to get it too, so I did – Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Two hours down, 98-398 hours to go, or so I hear. So far it’s pretty good. I was afraid I wouldn’t’ve liked it, but they put a lot of work into it and it shows. That reminds me – another new feature of the xbox 360 is that every game now supports custom soundtracks, instead of only a few games. So while you’re in the game, you press a button and then turn off the music and put in your own music, from the hard drive or streaming from your computer or an iPod or whatever. So first on the xbox, I would play racing games with racing (Initial D) music. So I tried it out for a few seconds today – I walked around the massive world in Oblivion with Initial D music. Actually I rode on a horse. But, it’ll probably take away from the RPG experience, so I’ll listen to ingame music for now. So, am I supposed to say this is the best system ever and it’s so worth the money? Well, no I can’t say that yet. Especially about the money part. Then again, it’s really hard to measure that much money and say that it was worth it, or worth half, or less than that, or anything. It’s a somewhat new experience, and it’ll be here for many years. I hear there’s a few good RPGs coming out in a while… I saw a trailer for a game that’s coming out (ugh) Spring 2007 from Capcom, that looks pretty good… and if nothing else, Oblivion should keep me busy for a while. Anyway, so now I have an xbox 360. A bunch of us will probably get the Revolution, and I expect someone other than us will be getting the PS3 first, and then we’ll have the triad-of-game-systems again. And now Isaque can start buying games for the 360 =) |