JamesWong's Full Review: Microsoft Xbox 360 Core System White Console
This year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was the most disappointing I have ever been to. Gamecube, Game Boy Advance and X-Box: three new consoles were unveiled, yet I walked away from the show floor with a bad taste in my mouth...
One of the worst things about the expo was, unfortunately, Microsoft's X-Box. They had many more titles showing than Nintendo did for their Gamecube, but they all seemed to me like ports of PC games we've seen before, or games that provide nothing in terms of a fresh experience.
The Console
Lately I've paid no attention to console specifications. Since the released X-Box specs have been changed more times than I'd like to notice, I've ignored them and waited to see an actual game running on the thing.
Specifications aside this console is HUGE. This isn't a console, it's a desktop computer! Maybe I'm exaggerating, but once I saw it I let out a rather loud "good god!". Fellow ePinionator Alkaiser can attest to seeing me say this.
The Controller
The X-Box controller may seem large, but it's very comfortable, with larger grips for your palms. It features analog shoulder triggers, a digital control pad on the left and an analog stick on the right for your right thumb. There are four colored buttons (red, yellow, blue and green) and two black buttons.
The controller is one of the few good things about the entire X-Box experience. During a trial run with Unreal Championship, the d-pad controlled walking and strafing while I used the right-thumb analog stick to aim and turn. The right shoulder trigger was used to shoot. A solid control scheme for a decent looking game.
Games?
I managed to test drive several games: The Simpsons: Road Rage, Unreal Championship and Munch's Oddyssey. I chose these three games to write about because they would be the only titles I'd consider buying.
Simpsons: Road Rage is a direct rip-off of Crazy Taxi. Drive around Springfield and stop at zones to pick up familiar Simpsons' characters, then drop them off for extra money. A lead tester from FOX Interactive went off on the fact that the levels loaded faster because they are copied to the X-Box's internal hard drive. The PS2 version would suffer from more load times, he said.
Unreal Championship surprised me. I hadn't read about it prior to the expo, and I wasn't sure if this was a UT spin off for the PC. Based on the volatile framerates, I assumed it was a PC game. As I got closer to the kiosk, I realized that people playing it were holding X-Box controllers. While the forest level shown was gorgeous, the weapons in the game were just Unreal Tournament weapons with different skins and slightly different firing characteristics.
I spent more time with Munch's Oddyssey. They should have kept the game on the PS2. The game's developer, Oddworld Inhabitants, will be dealing with a new X-Box user base rather than an already established Playstation 2 audience. Programmers may be complaining about development hassle with PS2, but what I saw for PS2 on the show floor beats out any game on the X-Box. Like I said before, specs are one thing and seeing an actual product is another.
Back to Halo: the game's single player mode was hogged by hungry attendees, and its four-player mode looked so choppy (I swore I saw around 10fps) that I didn't want to get close. I have less respect for Bungie. They had a great title readied for the PC, then the X-Box came around and butchered what I thought to be the main key for Halo: online, multiplayer action. More on this in a few paragraphs.
Other sights
The Nascar "one lap" demo was a bore. Bloodwake, a behind-the-craft ocean action game, showed intricate details....on the craft. The fact that they paid more attention to the detail on the pontoon-like battle craft (you can see a bunch of tiny pistons popping in and out) than the gameplay only reinforced my already dwindling impression of the X-Box.
More troubling things...
We've seen all sorts of interesting things happen prior to any console's launch. For instance, Bernie Stolar gets fired from Sega shortly before the Dreamcast launches. The X-Box pending launch is no exception: Kevin Bachus, manager of third-party relations, left the company just prior to E3 (which was May 17-19, 2001). In addition, X-Box games crashed at the expo, with familiar reboot screens showing up. That's right, they probably weren't running on the consoles. These little things add to my already high skepticism.
This just in: Fastest Game News online (www.fgnonline.com) has received the word from Bungie that their X-Box "killer app", Halo, will ship as an offline product. Yes, the game that was originally a PC title, intended for online play, has been design-butchered for the console.
Summary
Chances are you will see the X-Box on every billboard and magazine known to mankind in the coming months. The product awareness will be insane, so I certainly hope that even casual gamers don't jump onto the X-Box bandwagon.
Unless developers get their final dev. kits soon (note that the system launches in around six months), Microsoft is going to get some major criticism from both the gaming and development communities.
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