XBox 360
So I was up at Walmart last night getting some crap when I noticed that their XBox display unit has been replaced with an XBox 360. I was really caught off guard, but immediately grabbed the controller. The system itself is gorgeous. I really like the design, but it was difficult to get a feel for the controller due to the way it was mounted. It is also situated so you have to crank your head to about 120° to see the screen. Once my neck had snapped into position to play, I was ready to get my pants blown off. The system has a slick bootup sequence, which is vastly superior to the XBox’s ridiculous bubbling-slime-inside-a-cavern-of- futuristic-alien-technology, or whatever the hell that is. They had a demo disc inside mostly containing videos, but there were a couple playable demos. That’s what I wanted to see.
The first game I booted was Call of Duty 2, because I loved the original, but was immediately turned off by the graphics. I don’t know if the game is “done” at this point, but it basically looked as good as playing it on a PC with the texture quality turned all the way down. Rather than play another actual game, I decided to watch some videos. Amped 3 looked…exactly like any current-gen snowboarding game on the market, with the exception of a little longer draw distance. I decided racing games always look incredible on any system, so I checked out an upcoming Sega game. I already forgot the name, because the video was really underwhelming. I also watched the video for Top Spin 2 (tennis), which I figured would look NUTS since the environments are small, and there’s not much going onscreen at once. It looked about like Top Spin, and again, terrible texture work.
The entire time I was thinking “THIS is next-generation?” XBox 360 has no excuse for low-poly models and awful texture work…launch titles or not. Nothing was even as impressive as Resident Evil 4, which came out nearly a year ago on a system probably 1/3 as powerful as the 360. Nothing I saw couldn’t be done on current-gen systems, and nothing made me go “Holy shit, I need one of these.” At least now I’m a little relieved that I’m not missing out on anything for a while, since I can’t swing the $400 right this moment. If enough decent titles are out after Christmas, I’ll pick one up when the hype has died down a bit.
November 15th, 2005 at 8:08 pm
Dude, the only next gen i’m considering at all is the Nintendo. It actually has something interesting to bring to video games…