melbourne chapter

I went into EB on the weekend and saw the new XBox 360 on display, with a couple of minors playing a car racing game.. I have to say, I was very impressed. Once again, as I always seem to find, EB staff are very hard to catch on a Saturday, always answering random questions by kids about upcoming games, and they never really have the time for people considering purchasing equipment.

The XBox HD images look stunning, set in 720P mode is enough. Having two controllers that are both wireless is a great feature. We can sit out on my balcony looking through the window and play, which ads to the social atmosphere. The menu system works really cool, they have obviously spent quite a bit of time making the menu systems look really groovy. It can have a wireless upgrade or plug it into your network, and can easily load your media from a computer (works better with the windows mediacenter O/S). The hard disk is removable (the 20gb hard disk ends up with about 13gb free after the O/S(?) and I imagine there is a game demo in there somewhere (haven’t found it yet)). The controllers also indicate with an LED which player you are (eg, player 1,2 etc) which is pretty neat, and when you turn on the controller it pops up saying you have signed in. I am not 100% sure yet but I think your profiles stay with your controller, as it says “cameron” has signed in when I turn on mine . The controllers come with standard AA (Energiser) batteries (non lithium) but you can buy recharable AA’s or a XBox addon with allows it to charge the unit while playing via a cable to the box (into the USB2.0 ports).

I have been playing the Tom Clancy Ghost(?) game which is a shooter/strategy game (allowing you to switch between true first person or semi third person [like tomb raider]). The graphics look unbelievable, the Lighting is stunning all HDR and everything just looks so great. It looks superb on a 32″ LCD I must say. My friends aproved of it, and instead of playing poker saturday night as planned, the night ended up trying to control a team of guys with a blackhawk UH-60f trying to raid an enemy post.

So far I would have to say that the game is really enjoyable and is the kind of game you can chip away at the campaign quite happily. I am eager to have a look at Amped3 as I have liked all the other games in the series, and imagine the graphics would be stunning this time over.

Anyways all thumbs up, and would think the unit would be a big plus in a Home entertainment setup. Ethernet would probably be the go, and you can play all your DivX’s/Mp3’s etc at your tele. See you later Home Theatre PC’s (for the mean time, until the power of the system falls to far behind).