Hey lets see if we can’t make this two weeks in a row, if for no other reason then to appease Tom P. Sheesh, you put on the colours and suddenly they expect you to represent every week or some such.
So whats happening this week? Aside from my never ending computer problems of course. Well, for starters a 360 magically appeared in my house! So hurray for siblings with too much money. It’s a core system, he couldn’t be bothered with waiting for a premium, and was going to spend the difference in price between the two finding a premium. So now I’ve experienced the joys of the next generation and can’t be bothered with out of date technology. Or at least thats how I should feel. But of course I’m not. I’m distinctly underwhelmed. Part of this is my own fault. I don’t own an HDTV, and that’s not likely to happen for a little while yet. So I’m stuck playing on a standard (big screen standard mind you) TV. But the other thing that has me underwhelmed is the games. I know I know, this isn’t exactly news to those of you who got suckered into buying at launch. So far I’ve played 4 games, and of those only two have me entertained in any way at all. And one of those, Quake 4, won’t go past a certain point without crashing. But thats a disk issue. The other is a port, Burnout Revenge, and while its fun its boring after a while. It lacks the tension of Burnout 3, and the game suffers because of it.
But of course thats only 4 games, (The others being Perfect Dark Zero and Call of Duty 2). They don’t represent the entire launch lineup, nor are they really games that appeal all that much to me. PD0 would have appealed had I not been forewarned that it was less than stellar, and sadly this information was not incorrect. And having already played Call of Duty 2 all that was there to recommend it to me was the improved graphics, and I’m sorry but I don’t care how good the game looks it still looks like a World War 2 FPS. Of all the games that launched with the system I think the only one that would interest me for longer than a rental would be Need For Speed. I know this because I played the Xbox version for a while and loved it, and theres nothing different except the graphics. Port or no port, I enjoy a good game.
But the good news is the cool games for the 360 are only really starting to appear this month. Or at least the mediocre ones that I’m looking forward to. Whatever the case may be, March onwards is when things really get rolling.
Of course you have the big one, Oblivion, and the previously mentioned Burnout Revenge. But there are others. The game that got everyone all hyped about the launch…or should I say the OTHER game that got everyone all hyped for the launch was Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. It looked awesome. Then it looked blah when the first real developers pics popped out, and then it managed to work its way back up to awesome thanks to a delay. Well it’s already out, and if I gave a crap about squad shooters I’d be all over it. Still..it’s a high profile game, and it’s on the system as of last week. So rock on there. Next there’s the port of Battlefield 2 which is supposed to hit the system in the next couple of weeks, and that will certainly make Xbox live a more interesting place to be i’m guessing. Looking even farther beyond that we’ve got Far Cry and Rumble Roses XX, as well as The Outfit and Blazing Angels, which are both WW2 games, but not FPS games so they get a pass for now. The point I’m making is the drought is now over, games are finally being released, this is probably the time to pick yourself up a 360 if you’re going to bother getting one before the PS3 comes out. You won’t feel gipped like many of the initial buyers did, and you may even get a system with not too much effort.
Anyway, I think thats it for the week. I’d like to thank Eric S for probably quadrupling my hits last week with his linkage, and I’ll see you later. Who knows maybe we’ll make this a weekly thing.