Joining the Xbox generation
On June 30th of last year I was having a real dilemma. Do I get an Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii? As you recall shortly after Teaspoon was born I picked up a Wii and loved it, still do actually, but now I upgraded again and bought a Xbox 360 Elite Saturday night.
Lushie basically got tired of me bellyaching about it and a package deal at Best Buy made it too good to resist (for an additional $50 I got another controller, rechargeable pack, HDMI cable and some other jazz). I was sitting there yesterday being even more unproductive this weekend as I tried to get use to this funky controller (I’ve only played Playstation and wii. Serious. I only played an Xbox once in my life) and familiarize myself with the whole gaming unit.
Games
I’ve always been a sports game kinda guy. I did own Devil May Cry and some other shooter games for the PS2 but couldn’t really get into much more because not having online play capabilities made those games boring for me. I bought NHL 10 since that is an absolute must in this hockey house and the system came with Lego BatMan and Pure. There is also a deal with buy 2 games and get a 3rd for free ($30 or less value). I already dumped enough cash so I resisted another $59.99 title. That was the biggest punch to the gut for me was the price of games. The average price for games I want to play are $59.99 and after playing hockey for 10 minutes this was no longer an issue. the quality of play, overall entertainment and appreciation for the programming that went into making these games was justified.
- NHL 10
Oh my be-freaking lord this is the greatest sports game I have ever played. I wont talk about the controls because I am still a huge ball of suck with all of the options but a HUGE plus is old school NHL 94 controls. Pass, shoot and hit. What more do you really need. The graphics are tight, the fighting I thought was decent but overall enjoyment is high. I played a few practice games to get a feel for it and love that I can have a practice to work on plays and strategy. I haven’t played online yet but there are a few yinzer anxious to take me into the boards. - PURE
I’m not into racing outside Mario Kart because I can cause mass destruction so when I saw there was an ATV racing game I figured wtf, why not. Big thumbs up for including this! It’s a great game for learning the controller and also how intense graphics can get for the 1st timer. I thought the customizing your ride went into too much detail for someone not familiar with racing ATV’s but was appreciated. the tricks I’ve been able to do are impressive and I like that I can get a turbo boost to fire off jumps. The tutorial you get to start with is a huge help and that made slipping into this game much more comfy.
My brother’s kids are also on Xbox Live so I’m looking forward to shredding them all during online play. I was told by many on Facebook and Twitter that the new “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” could very well be the “end all-be all” of first person shooting when it hits shelves next week. Put that on the list.
Other Features
This is replacing the PS2 so the DVD player is a bonus. A pleasant surprise was watching my laptop sync with the Xbox. I wasn’t even aware that Vista and Xbox played together besides just sharing the Microsoft name. I’ll be honest, I havent had much time to mess around with it more but I’m off the next couple days so we’ll see how this pans out.
Do you have an Xbox? What’s your Live ID? Leave some comments and let me know what you think about the Xbox and some features I should check out.
