Xbox 360 - Hands on

Did my usual patrol into Best Buy today, and was stopped in my tracks by a rather sneaky and cheeky installation of an Xbox 360. This is what I saw.

It had two wired controllers and a demo disk inside the machine. Someone was already playing Call of Duty 2 on it. He didn't actually seem to have any previous experience at playing anything like that before. Repeated attempts by his computer controlled buddies, to get him to take cover and stop inhaling bullets, only resulted in a closeup of someones bottom, which he tried to shoot. Needless to say he perished within moments of meeting the enemy. Not entirely sure if he was indeed shot by the other chaps, or his commanding officer, sort of had an accident his way? On his second attempt, something more sinister happened. The game froze, and most of it went blue. Major crash. A quick prod of the reset button and it was back to the demo selection screen.

It seemed to be running with all the features that you can expect to get with a take home Xbox 360, but I was pressed for time, and of course wanted to see the games a runnin'.

Trouble was, apart from Call of Duty 2, and Kameo (which looks like the twisted ramblings of a spoilt 7 year old child), all other games on show were merely video. And I don't mean the good kind that shows you real footage. It was all the flashy and expensive, trailer style of video. Got controller, play game, dur!
So I strolled into Call of Duty 2, which starts off with quite a long set piece you have to wait for, until you can get into hot man on man, blasting action. I got my head sploded. The controller was fine, as it is very similar to an Xbox one, but my PC heritage still yearns for a good ol keyboard and mouse set up for my first person shooters. Kameo....zzz.... this thing has been coming out for ever, and it just seemed so contrived and over designed to me. Snore central on the level they gave you to play.

All in all, the graphics were good, but nothing so far that I couldn't see on a high end PC. I was crushed, dismayed, saddened to see they only had stupid video of Need for Speed Most Wanted. I had seen and heard great things of it, and being more shallow than a puddle in the desert, it would have cheered me no end to get to play with shiny things like that.

Summary, so far, I ain't seen nothing a computer can do. I am really more excited about the PS3 than the Xbox 360. Actually from what I hear all round, I have the PS3 first, then the Nintendo Revolution, after which is the Xbox 360.

Don't forget kids, current Xbox games are going to be amazingly cheap once this thing launches. Some amazing deals to be had soon.



Xbox 360, I still don't know if it's any good or not, help me!