[15/6/12] Xbox 360 - First Impressions

Wednesday. That was the day I finally got my hands on an Xbox 360. As Darth Vader would say, the circle is now complete. Well, more like a pentagon, as I now have all five generation 5 consoles. DS, then Wii, then PSP, then PS3, and now Xbox 360. And so, the picture shows the version I bought. The 4GB Kinect Celebration Pack. Two games - Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures - came with it. And so, here I go.

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Setting up the console was easy enough, with it saying what you need to do at each section. Even connecting and setting up the Kinect was easy to do. The updates were installed quickly and the whole console and my account was set up in no time at all. The interface of the console I found interesting. Exploring for a bit, I found everything was where it could be easily accessed. A press of the Home button brings up a submenu. This I found cool as well, since the PS3 only opens the XMB and the Wii just has four buttons on its submenu.

Moving onto the two games for Kinect, I was impressed with the accuracy of it. Sports is enjoyable, and allows for player v CPU or player v player. This I also found rather cool as it allows multiple sign-ins, with each player able to get their own achievements. The five sports on offer in the game were good fun, and offered a good workout. The same with Adventures. The games on offer with Adventures were interesting and keep with the 'get a better score' game ethic to keep you coming back. And just with Sports, it gives a good workout.

The playtime over, it came to exploring the Marketplace and downloading something. A demo of Kinect Star Wars. The Marketplace is set out well with searching for something being easy. The download of the game demo was automatically put to background download, so I could get on with other stuff knowing that the download was still progressing. This is harder to consider with the Wii, where there's no such thing as background download, or the PS3 where it requires you to manually select download in background and even then will sometimes buffer. When the download was finished it alerted me with a notification which stated exactly what had been done in the bottom centre. This is more handy than something in the top right corner of the screen.

Enough comparing though. As the day after it was time to see how the controller handled with Forza Motorsport 4. The game is great, with a lot of modes, races and cars. I especially like Car Bowling. The controller I felt handled the game perfectly, and the game ran smooth, and was better than I expected it would be when I had a play of the Switzerland tracks at Toys R Us. And the controller is easy to hold also makes playing the game better.

The bad things are few and far between, but one thing I will mention is the fact that the Kinect doesn't always seem to work. While playing Kinect Sports with my sister it kept telling me to move right, even though if I moved any more right I would be right behind my sister and it wouldn't have seen me at all. Another thing is... well, its the Kinect again and how the voice recognition doesn't always seem to work.

Other good things are the automatic updates for the achievements and the easy integration between console and xbox.com. I added my sister as a friend from xbox.com and she added me straight back from the console. And with the news of integration with other Microsoft devices from E3, it's sure to better.

So, that concludes my Xbox 360 First Impressions blog. More better than the PS3 in some areas and a lot better than the Wii in others with good features and functionality.