I spent roughly 4 hours playing the Xbox 360.
by Dijita
So I went out tonight to some event to promote the Xbox 360. It was in a very very small venue and there were not a lot of people that showed up. However, the result of that means that I had a lot of playing time on the new system. Here is a sum up of my thoughts:
The system and controllers:
Sexy looking. I love the look of the system. I'm a huge fan of "white is the new black". I've always liked white electronics even before the ipod came out. The controllers feel great. They only took me about 10 minutes of getting used too. For the first 10 minutes however, I continually pushed in the shoulder buttons by accident because of the way I rested my fingers on the trigger buttons. I also accidently hit the start button a few times when I was quickly trying to hit the blue button, since the four face buttons are a little closer together (Sorry, I only know the buttons by colour not letters). But like I said after 10 minutes the controller felt natural. I tried both the wired and the wireless controller. The wired controller is insanely light. The wireless controller is extremely comfortable even with the battery pack and is still lighter than the current generation Xbox controller.
Games:
There were only 3 games available for demo at the time that I went to the event. Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo, and NHL 2k6. I was told they were getting Project Gotham Racing for next weekand.
Perfect Dark Zero
First thing I would like to mention is that the version I played was a very early build, from the X05 event, I believe. That said, there were a lot of graphical glitches and certain textures that didn't look complete. I also believe the game was set on the easiest difficulty setting, so the AI didn't seem very bright. Playing the game on multiplayer, was a lot of fun! There were two maps available to play on, and I really liked the environments on both of them. One map was an urban type of setting and there were a lot of places to hide. The second map was a snowy map with a couple of towers which allowed for some prime sniping. The map was a lot larger so playing this map with anything less than 4 players would result in a lot of hunting and minimal shootouts. There was nothing terribly different about the mechanics; it's a pretty standard 1st person shooter. There is no jump button, which I actually kind of liked because I find the constant "jumping and shooting" in Halo a little bit annoying at times. One thing that I liked about the weapons in the game was that each weapon had some kind of ability. For example there was one weapon that allowed for an infared type of vision and it was helpful in making your opponents stick out, whereas another weapon would have a devestating grenade launcher attachment on it. Overall, I'm not sure how much mileage I might get out of this game playing the single player game. I believe it is too early to say. I may very well get much too distracted by the multiplayer component. Oh and just a note, the co-op mode wasn't available for play at this time so I couldn't tell you anything about that.
Kameo
This game was awesome! Probably the best looking game that I played at this event. The gameplay was addictive and even though it was a platformer it had a lot of thinking parts too it. With all of the different creatures you could morph into, there were a lot of possibilities in relation to level design and how to get through them. The character models were also fantastic and animated nicely. I thought it was comical in the way that you could deal with your enemies. I say this because the characters you morph into are all very cute, so to grab a goblin and impale him on the spikes on your back, then grab him from the spikes and use him as a bat was humourous. Kameo is a game that I am unfortunately not picking up at launch due to money constraints but it will hopefully be added to my collection later on down the road.
NHL2k6
I wasn't expecting much from this game. The graphics, overall, were poor. When they do closeups of the people in the crowd they looked very much like current generation technology. However, that's not to deter from the gameplay. I found the game pretty much behaved much like NHL2k5 with a lot of added features. I suppose it is hard for me to judge, because there are so many new playmaker type of moves that I wasn't able to memorize them all and try them out. I was able to play the game much the same way I would if I were playing 2k5, which is nice. I had an opportunity to try that whole "crease control" thing when playing the goalie manually. It's a very neat idea and I actually didn't mind it. This is essentially how it works. If the offense is creating some heavy heat in front of the net, you can push in the right thumbstick to take control of the goalie. While controlling the goalie the camera angle shifts behind the net and your other players are now controlled by the CPU. There is a highlighted cone emenating from the goalie to show you his coverage. When the cone is green, you're covering the net, if it's red... easy picking for the offense. Once the offense takes a shot at net and assuming you are covering your net, time will slow down. While the time is slowed down, you have to line up a green circle around the puck which is highlighted in red. It's harder than it sounds and it will take some practice time to get a feel for how that green circle will move. I think it's a neat system for those gamers who play against the CPU and want a harder challenge but I'm not sure I would want to use the system when playing another human opponent. Whether you like the system or not, you can always turn it off and just stick to the AI controlled goalie. This would be a game I would consider buying if it isn't overlly expensive and if my XBL friends also had copies off.