Okay? Can I please have one now please? You may ask yourself: Why the change of heart? Death threats from Microsoft? If I were that dangerous, I might have snagged an invite to Zero Hour. Bribes from Microsoft? AgainaO In your dreams, ye obscure blogger. It is a far simpler catalyst that effected the reversal on my position: I played on a 360 at FockaO™s house. That’s all it took. A little Quake 4 is all it takes to make the love flow, baby. Moral to the story #1: To play a 360 is to love the 360. Moral to the story #2: The devil will find work for idle hands to do. Had these fingers been wrapped around a shiny, new, white, wireless controller; they would have found no purchase on the keyboard of dissonance. In the end, I suppose it is easier to defer to the makers on this one. If they don’t want me to own a 360 until Q1, 2006, there is little I can do to effect change on that. They are gonna do what they do for reasons best left unknown. Their job is hard. They design and manufacture gaming consoles. They juggle fans and shareholders. They are confronted with deadlines, operating margins, glitches, FUBARS, launch windows, and plague.
My job is easy. I game. But enough about my personal agenda. I mentioned that Fock has a 360 of his very own. It doesnaO™t crash. It doesnaO™t lock up. It doesnaO™t even drop frame rate on Quake 4 aO” which rocks, by the way. Here is more from Fock aO” providing the first Tied The Leader review of the 360 by proxy…
Special Correspondent Fock here with the low down on the 360.
Is the Xbox 360 worth it? Yes. Was it worth waiting in line 3 hours for? Yes. Was it worth waiting in line 15 hours for? No. Nothing (short of hot sex with Angelina Jolie)* is worth waiting in line 15 hours for. Not even Star Wars. Especially not Star Wars. I am pleased to report that Microsoft got nearly everything right with the 360 right out of the gate. The few quibbles I have are barely worth mentioning but I will because I love the sound of my own voice. In fact, I sound a lot like Angelina Jolie* so I bet youaO™ll love my hot sexy voice on XBL.
Speaking of XBL (like that segue?) the integration of XBL with the 360 is so fuggin cool you may wet yourself. Twice. XBL connectivity and interface is now greatly expanded on the 360. The first thing you should check out when you get your 360 in July (hopefully kidding) is the Market Place. From here you can download free demos and movie trailers as well as games and themes for your 360 screen. Yup, the 360 is fully customizable inside and out. My wallpaper is the Master Chief (of course). Some downloads (like games) cost money. To do this is a simple transaction with your credit card and convert your hard earned galactic credits to Microsoft Points. You can use these points to buy classic arcade games like Joust and Smash TV (in all their coin-op glory) or you can even (drum roll please) buy a new gamer tag. ThataO™s right, sad you picked Horny Penguin for your tag? Well now for just 800 points (roughly 12 bucks) you can once and for all change your gamer tag to Horny Pink Rhino.
You also have a Gamer Card that lists if you are a casual gamer or consider yourself a pro. At the top of your Card is your community rating. Everyone starts out with 3 of 5 stars. You get more stars as you get positive feedback from gamers youaO™ve played against. And youaO™re likely to loose stars (in a big way) if you act like many of the obnoxious little Timmies that glut the XBL universe. Another nifty feature I should point out is that if you rank a player down with negative feedback, XBL will make it less likely that you will ever play against him again. It also lists a full gut busting lists of stats of all the games youaO™ve played on your 360. HereaO™s where it starts getting weird. Every game you play will give you aO~achievementsaO™ based on your game play. Some achievements unlock conceptual art and other Easter eggs in the game itself. But in XBL you can compare your Gamer Card with anyone else that youaO™ve played against in live and compare (side by side) your list of achievements and scores against theirs. These are also listed for you to access on Xbox.com. Total integration. The only down side is that this only pertains to new 360 games. Achievements and other bells and whistles will not work with your old Xbox games. (score: 5 out of 5)
The Hardware is pretty damn good in my opinion. The games look gorgeous and IaO™ve read in other reports that all the launch games so far are only using 1 of the 3 cores. Did you get that? These games look fuggin great NOW and they are only using 1/3 of the 360aO™s potential. A year from now (or less) we may be in Game Nirvana. Now the box does run a bit hot so you should be sure to give it plenty of room to vent, but IaO™ve not run into any of the crashes posted about on the net. From what I can tell, and IaO™ve looked at the threads with complaints, the number of crashes is very small aO” so the system is robust. I put mine through the paces over Thanksgiving logging more than 40 hours of game play between Halo 2, Kameo, Condemned, and Quake 4. In that time I ran into 3 instances that I should disclose.
I had an instance of frame rate jitter and slow down during a custom game of Halo 2. I jumped out of the room and went to another game and have not seen the problem since. I concluded that my box was not communicating with the host very well and was giving me the shimmies. A second time my box did freeze requiring a reboot when I was trying to access some game data on XBL. This was due to a problem with XBL not communicating with the 360. The third time was real honest to goodness Frame Rate slow down when I was playing Kameo.
But listen to thisaO it occurred when I was on a battle field with 1000+ Trolls and Elves, battle engines and a sky FILLED with DRAGONS! I fuggin kid you not. As far as the eye could see in all directions. I had flashbacks of the Pellinore Fields, Martin Sheen intoning aO~Minas TirithaO IaO™m still in Minas TirithaO . So yes, I got frame rate slow down with that many things beating each other senseless on one processor core aO” BUT the most impressive thing was that the frame rate was still smooth. Every 10-15 seconds my screen would be in slow motion for a second or two and then right back up to speed. So even though the rate dropped, it didnaO™t effect the game play at all. SWEET! ThataO™s the good. Now the bad.
The 360 does not support DVI or HDMI digital formats. Right now that means squat as most HDTVaO™s and such do not have these inputs yet. Sony has pledged to support these formats, but theyaO™ve broken pledges before now. This wont be an issue for another year or more, but it could be a downside to the 360 in the long run. The other thing which is bad though itaO™s not likely to effect most of us aO” the DVD player does not scan up to HDTV specs. Nor will it play the new HD-DVDS when they hit the market next year. Those are minor quibbles but could be a problem in the long run. (score 4 out of 5)
And here is where I come to the one real beef I have with the system: The (wireless) Controller. On the whole it is a very good controller that required me to re-educate my hands to the new layout. Seriously, if you play a lot of Halo 2 you will need at least 2 hours of solid game play to adjust. But the controller has two big weaknesses. The first is the comlink. It is a single 1/8 jack in the rear of the controller. ItaO™s a great location but you HAVE to use the new Headphones with it because your old sets volume and mute controls will not plug in there. And the new Headphones SUCK. They are uncomfortable and the volume and audio quality is LOW. You can still plug your other headset 1/8 jack in and it will work fine but you have no volume or mute controls. Major SUCKAGE that will hopefully be rectified fast by a 3rd party peripheral. The other problem I have with the unit is the location of the thumbsticks to the triggers. ItaO™s difficult to depress the left stick to crouch and NOT set off a grenade at the same time. This problem is not as bad as the sucky comlink, but it will take some getting used to. Other than that, the controller is pretty sweet. It fits well in the hand, it isnaO™t cumbersome, and you can boot up or shut down by pressing the home button in the middle. AND I played those 40+ hours on one set of Duracells. O and Deej, I figured out why the home button was flashing in a circle. It was telling us the batteries were low. (score 4 out of 5)
So thataO™s it. Out of a possible 15 points I give the system 13. When you finally get your gunslinger hands on one you will find it was worth the wait.
Fock OUT> ###
*The opinions expressed about Angelina Jolie are not necessarily those held by the happily married Editor and Vehicle Hog of Tied the Leader.
...damn you, Fock. DAMN. YOU.
But in a good way. This gunslinger felt the same way (Big whoop, sarcastic remarks and the like) until he set hands on one in his local (And by local I mean ‘one-hour-away’) Best Buy. From that moment on, I had been hooked. Is the new headset port really that bad? Man, that sucks…I don’t want to have to switch out my precious Halo 2 headset. It’s oh-so-comfortable.
Of course, we’ll end up waiting until July to get ours (Ours as in two. We’re hoping to buy one and sell it, thus making enough money so we can buy our own)...damn Microsoft..
The new phone jack has the mute and volume controll built into the it. So no adapter as with the Ol’Box.
Frogwart – that is entirely possible. The Core system comes with a wired controller and those may have better audio quality, but the new phones still suck major walrus dick.
Lupey – I still use my H2 headset but when I do I don’t have any volume or mute controlls. That is preferable to the new phones.
And as I said, I doubt it will be long before a third party offers us a better choice.
And there are a slew of other functionalities to the system I didn’t mention. Fer instance, you can set notification when a friend signs on to live. A pop up informs you of this in while you are in any 360 game or even if you are watching a DVD. This function can be turned on and off. There is more in the box I have yet to discover.
Oooo Weee!
My precious $50 Halo 2 headset broke a few weeks after I got it. The earbud actually broke off of the base unit rendering it useless. I went and bought a generic (but quality) $30 Plantronics headset with the standard 1/8 jack and have been using it ever since. It has inline volume and mute controls so I think that would be a viable solution to your dilemma.
Good to know G-Sauce. Thanks. I’ll do some looking.
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DATE: 11/30/2005 10:59:42 PM
Thanks for the review, Fock.
Could the headset problem be due to the controller being wireless? Would maybe a wired controller afford a better connection? Something to try, perhaps.