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Russ?s Top 10 cool things about the 360 you may not know:<?

 

Well, I finally got a 360 over the weekend thanks? to my awesome wife.  While I don?t own a glorious HDTV yet, I have mine hooked up to a 19? monitor running at the highest resolution the 360 supports (around 1376x768).  I was blown away by the system, and I was pleasantly surprised by a few things.

 

10. Kameo ?trolls? (bad guys) are CLEARLY based on GW orcs.  Right down to battle wagons, giant guns, and their teeth.  Don?t believe me? Check out the picture of the ?troll? in my sig.  The game rocks.   I know, I know, you?re playing a pansy elf chick, but I?m telling ya, the bad guys are worth it.  This game also really shows off the 360?s abilities, not just in gorgeous graphics but in raw polygon count.  There are levels with literally 100?s of orcs fighting 100?s of humans with battle wagons rolling around and me riding around on a horse dodging war machine shells.  The whole thing is running at 1376x768 at 60 fps without a hiccup with mad lighting and shadow effects. 

 

9. PDZ online is also pretty darn good.  Think Counter strike meets Battlefield meets Halo 2.  Play Dark Ops mode.  The single player game is good, but not great.  But multiplayer is worth the price of admission.

 

8. Game Designers can put some of your profile info in the game!   For example, in DOA4 a scrolling marquee in the background in Las Vagas said ?Waaagh!?, which is my gamer tag motto.  I almost fell over laughing when I saw that.

 

7. X-box <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:place w:st="on">Arcade</st1:place>: ?Classic? Gauntlet arcade game playable with 4 friends over live?!?  Demo is free, cost to buy game $6?!? Holy Crap sign me up.  ?Someone shot the food!?  Even if you got a 360 with NO games, you could spend days just downloading a playing the free demos in <st1:place w:st="on">Arcade</st1:place>.  Most of the games are quite good. 

 

6. Online Gamer Card and Achievements is hopelessly addictive.  This is a ?completionists? nightmare.   360 games each have some number of achievements you can earn while playing the games.  Each achievement is worth some number of Gamer Points that add to your profile score (see mine below).  Some games, like Call of Duty 2 have only a few achievements (13) with each being worth a decent number of points.  Other games, like DOA4 have a lot (45) but each is only worth a little.  Each achievement can be viewed online and friends can compare which achievements they have earned in each game.   

 

5. Individual player profiles on the same X-box, when you activate a controller the player ?signs in?.  Track your achievements even without live.  This is excellent in environments like college dorms.  Each time you pick up a controller you pick a gamer profile.  The achievements & save games of each profile are tracked separately.  Even without live.

 

4. You can ?theme? your 360 interface.  A bunch of them come with the system, and there are several free ones on live, plus others you can pay a buck or two for on live.

 

3. Player Rep ranking also helps pair you up with the same gamers again even when not using friends list.  Basically when you play someone in a game, you can review them and indicate that you liked playing them.  This gives them a positive score and also live will try to pair you up in future games if possible.  In this way, you can indicate a BUNCH of folks you?d like to play, without having to make a huge friends list.

 

2. Different Live ?Zones? & rep systems seem to really work.  I?ve yet to hear the annoying insults and singing that sometimes plagued the original live games.

 

1. You can chat with your friends in real time even if you are playing different games!  Tinman and I were playing Gauntlet together, then he switched to Outpost and I switched to Kameo, we were still chatting the whole time.  Simply press the center X button on the controller and you can access live functionality from within any game.

 

X-box live has gone to plaid with the 360, I don?t know how any other system has a prayer in hell without something similar. 

 

My only complaint: I miss my ?Duke? controller.  The new 360 controller feels very nice, and is about the same size as the ?Controller S? from the original X-box, but the old super large x-box controller was great for a big guy like me. 

Go outside Russ!
haha j/k!


Thanks for the run down. Does your 360 crash or over heat?

No problems so far.  Although I must admit after some of the rumors I was nervious and my 360 is set up vertically on a wired rack with at least 4" of space on all sides.  My local friend has one in a regular audio cabinet on its side running fine also. So I think I was probably a bit too careful. 

My guess is most of the overheating stories are coming from folks who slapped it down flat on a carpet and plugged it in.  I do know one kid who got one for X-mas, did that, and it died in 20 minutes.  You've got to treat it like the high end piece of electronics that it is.

I did have one scare when I first set it up. I powered it on and the little 'Circle of Light' flashed read and nothing happened.  After I calmed down I checked the wires to discover that I hadn't pushed the video/audio cable connector all the way in to the back of the 360.

Once I did that...presto!  Everything worked great.

 

Online is where it's at baby.

Now get out there and get a HDTV to plug that bad boy box into.  That will be the last we see of you for a while longer. 

Also, you got DOA4?  I've been looking all over the place for that.  :S  

 

The menu interface and online component of the 360 actually have impressed me more than either of the games I own (Project Gotham and CoD2).

Microsoft has really done a good job so far. The ability to download demos for new games is such an awesome concept it makes you surprised it has taken this long to appear on the consoles.

I will be mightily surprised if Sony can build in the same kind of internet functionality into the PS3.


I also really enjoy turning off the system without walking over to the console. Yes, I'm lazy.


I have suffered some of the reported issues when playing Halo2 on the 360, which sucks, but I'm confident that they will fix the emulator software along the way.

All-in-all playing my roomate's 360 has made it clear to me that it is a quality system that I will be happy to own.

My only other complaint is that the headset included is absolutely terrible, and the $50 custom halo headset I bought for my first Xbox is now incompatible. I'm hoping someone will make a little generic adapter that will allow any kind of headset to be used like the first Xbox.

Number 11: You can plug in a USB keyboard and it works!! This is very handy when updating stuff like billing info or sending text messages to other friends. Sure you can also send voice messages, but having any old USB keyboard work is just too cool. I'm it won't be long before some games take advantage of this, esp. some of the upcoming MMOG's.

DOA4: I got my 360 this past Sat (12/31) which was also the day DOA4 came out. The Best Buy had DOA n stock so I grabbed it. Easily the best fighter I've ever played, and I'm a big Soul Caliber fan. The in game graphics look like the cut scenes from DOA3, it is insane. The online play is great too, you can hang out and watch folks fight while waiting your go against the winner. The only 'strange' thing about the game are the online 'avatars'. They look like something out of animal crossing. Must be a Japanese thing.

Yak: Pick up this months OXM magazine. The demo disk has a demo of Full Auto on it. HOLY CRAP is it cool. I must have played it 10 or 20 times in a row, and the demo only has 2 cars and one track. It's basically Burnout meets Prince of Persia (rewind time) meets Car Wars. The real time damage is most impresive.

Nice.

Now get away from me before I spend 600 dollars of miniatures
money on this machine.

Now get away from me before I spend 600 dollars of miniatures
money on this machine.

Resistance is futile.

Well, you see, that $600 is entirely fictitious except in the minds
and hearts of my credit card lenders. But I won't give them the
satisfaction.

if i get this thing il never get stuff painted between that and my computer oh yeah and wife and kids.

So, Russ...any suggestions on specifically how to store the 360? Think if I put it into a ventiled bin or something with no bottom except wire it'd work well?

Russ... do you... umm... work for Microsoft or something? I don't think I've ever heard or someone pimping out the 360 so much other than in official publications.

That aside, I've always thought that the Number 1 think to know about the 360 is that it's not a PS3...

BYE

Kanluwen: My 360 is vertical on a rack next to my monitor, it never gets too hot. I think the key is to make sure there is a good bit of space around it like any high quality piece of stereo equiptment. Take crare of your X-box, and it will care for you.

HBMC: Dude, it is no suprise to me you don't like the 360. You don't like anything I like: 40k, Dawn of War, Xbox, 360. In fact, if I see you bash'n something I generally think I'll probably enjoy it! ;-) The reason you never hear anyone talking up the 360 is because you hang out with your PS2 buds trying to figure out why the graphics looks so meh on your ancient system.

You don't like anything I like: 40k

I love 40K. I think it has a great background story, vibrant (if a little cliche) races, cool stories, and the game is lots of fun. What I hate are high prices and 4th Ed.

Dawn of War

I love Dawn of War... before the patch that removed all of the options for Chaos and gave Marines five HW selections per squad. I don't like Winter Assault.

Xbox, 360.

Why would I like a console that is both flawed, nothing all that special, and has a bunch of games that I can play on a PC anyway?

In fact, if I see you bash'n something I generally think I'll probably enjoy it! ;-) The reason you never hear anyone talking up the 360 is because you hang out with your PS2 buds trying to figure out why the graphics looks so meh on your ancient system.

I bought a PS2 back in August last year. It was the first console I had ever bought. I own 4 games. I've never been a console person - I'll always play games on PC - but Tekken 5 was just too hard to resist. I probably won't buy a PS3 either, unless Tekken 6 turns out to be the greatest game on Earth. And as far as ancient systems go... well... MGS3 and Tekken 5 tend to disagree with your graphical assessment of the PS2.

But no, what I really don't like is normally rational human beings going nuts over a console that is neither revolutionary nor special in any way. Ditto goes for Halo, a mediocre FPS with exceptionally good online support (for a console FPS, that is).

BYE

Dude, you called me rational!

Sorry if I was a bit harsh, but you caught me in a snippy mood. My only point was sometimes you do seem a bit negative. ;-)

There is a lot that is exceptional about the 360, if it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. You are correct, really really next gen games like Oblivion can be played both on the 360 and on a PC. However you'd need a great (aka $400) vid card for it to look like it does on the 360.

And since this is the price of the entire 360 system, I'd say its a good value.

Historically I'm a pure PC game fan boy...until the x-box came out. That converted me. The 360 has brought me to the next level. I pop in Oblivion, I play, it rocks. Being an IT guy, I then begin fielding all the q's from my PC gaming friends "will it run on my system?" "its too slow" "I need a new vid card"

Screw all that, I'm too old to spend half a day tweaking my PC and getting the latest drivers just to run the latest game. The 360 gives me PC level (and better) games without the hassel.

Did I mention you can rent console titles?

Oh oh! Russ. I closed the first Oblivion Gate last night! All that getting lost and stuff...and I completed a mainline quest. Ahhh, accidents

Sweet. I'm still following that darn merchant around. Although I picked his key from his pocket and I'm currently ripping appart his house.

Fun isn't it? Found the Shrine of Dagon now, and about to go rip the Mythic Dawn a new one with Lightning Dawn