Xbox 360 First Impressions

[toblix]

So, I just got an Xbox360 (and Double Agent and Dead Rising), and here's what I think:

• The D-pad on the controller is fucking useless. I couldn't navigate at all with it. Using the joy-thingie worked better.
  
• There's too much fucking typing to set it up. I had to write like a million letters and numbers to get me set up with an account and all that. Also, I just went ahead and bought a gold membership. What did I just buy?
  
• The interface seems pretty nice. I like the shards or whatever they're called. Also, Double Agent loaded really quickly (quicker than when I tried it on my computer).
  
• So it seems there's no RGB SCART-cable for this one, like I got for my Xbox. Seems I have to get me a new television.
  
• Also, do all the games assume I have a widescreen television? Double Agent seemed to think I had one.
  
• All the Live Arcade games looked tasty. Do I have to enter credit card details every time I buy those points?

Also: Is there a way to merge my Xbox360 messenger stuff with my Windows based Live Messenger account?

[ThunderPeel2001]

1. Um?

2. Gold membership allows you play games online with your chums.

3. Ah..

4. You can buy a SCART lead, and yes, it does look very nice with one!

5. No you set that yourself in the Settings.

6. No, once you've used a credit card it "helpfully" remembers it for you so you don't ever have to enter it again... Although you can't delete it either

[toblix]

I can't find the SCART cable anywhere. Is it 3rd party?

Oh, and about the D-pad, it's like it's oversensitive or something. Clicking right repeatedly always results in it registering some down clicks as well. Maybe it's just me.

It seems like it's time for me to just buy a LCD tv anyways. I'll be buying a place to live soon, so I have to get these things over with before I'm neck-deep in debt. It seems you get really good 32"-37" LCDs for almost nothing these days.

[Aussie Ben]

Yes, the 360's D-Pad is indeed clunky. What it is, is that the pad will often hit the white plastic ring before it hits the connections that indicate a button press. I did this controller mod to the pad I use most, and it helped quite a lot. Doesn't make it as good as, say, a Nintendo Control Pad, but it improves it quite a bit. But, yeah, you're probably just best off sticking to the Analog Stick.

[lobotomy42]

Well, you beat me to it. Since I *also* just got an Xbox 360, I'll post my initial thoughts here as well.

• FYI, I got the Core model, and the smallest memory card possible, because I'm cheap. And I don't feel like paying money for online service, so I'm not really worried about missing out on XBLA or anything like that. I'll deal. Also, I already had the component video cable.)
  
• The Dashboard, or whatever it's called, is ridiculous. It's like every bad stereotype of Microsoft UI's. I can honestly not tell what it supposed to be on each tab, nor why some information appears to be duplicated. And when my screen is in widescreen mode, it refuses to even take up the entire space, so it's also wasting real estate. I thought the Wii's internal UI was overly complicated, but this blows the Wii out of the water, and not in a good way.
  
• The controller is decent, though not as magnificent as I'd been led to believe. (IGN called this "the best traditional controller ever" or something.) I like how they differentiated the two sets of L/R buttons, and the joysticks really snap to the center. I do wish that, since they went with "XYAB" for the lettering, that they'd keep them in the same position as the SNES controller they stole them from, but that's a small issue since they're color-coded. I think I still prefer my GameCube controller, but this is nice.
  
• The console itself isn't too much bigger than the PS2. This is nice, since I was led to believe it was monstrously huge.
  
• What's up with that weird plug?
  
• It couldn't read my Kameo disc at first. Not a good sign.
  
• Graphics: Hard to tell, since I only have a few games. (Viva Pinata, Kameo, Eternal Sonata demo) But, all three are really pretty - the hi-res textures really make a difference. And they do look quite nice in 720p. (Kameo's wings are my favorite bit.) What's up with the framerates, though? They seem sort of...not so steady. (This could be the games) And the loading times! Yikes! (Again, the games maybe?) *sigh* I miss last-gen.
  
• It's a tad noisy.
  

In general, my feeling on the Xbox 360 is...I like the Wii a lot. Seriously, I was a bit underwhelmed by the Wii when I got it, but it compares pretty damn favorably to the Xbox 360. I wasn't totally convinced Nintendo was right when they said "Oh, graphics aren't so important anymore. Let's focus more on controls and the user experience." I mean, I was excited, but I secretly wished the Wii would have awesome next-gen visuals. But, seriously, I'm starting to think they were right.

Also, some specific thoughts on the games:

- Why do I suck at Kameo so much? I keep dying, no matter how hard I try to beat up these ogre guys. Maybe I should stop skipping the tutorials like a 6-year-old.

- Why do I suck at Viva Pinata so much? My whirlms keep getting attacked, and no one will mate except them. Maybe I should stop skipping the tutorials like a 6-year-old.

- Eternal Sonata is going to kick all kinds of ass.

[toblix]

• Yeah, the UI isn't that good. It's pretty, and I guess I'll get used to where everything is and what everything does, but yeah. I feel like there's at least ten menus that are called the same but have slight differences.
  
• This fucker is noisy. It's seriously the first console that I have to find some way of placing away from where I'm sitting, shielding me from the barrage of whirring and buzzing it emits.
  
• Carcassonne and Catan were really fun, but I still haven't bought anything.

[ThunderPeel2001]

The UI is fine...? Not sure what your problem with it is... You'll probably get used to it after some time, it's pretty straight forward.

Also, of course it changes for Widescreen TVs. You must have it set up wrong.

Scart lead

There's millions of them on Amazon, too (search for 360 SCART). There's an official one and loads of third party ones. I bet they're all pretty equal really.

[toblix]

About widescreen: I wasn't talking about the dashboard, I was talking about Splinter Cell, which displays in letterbox.

And my problem with the UI is that it isn't immediately obvious where stuff is. I haven't seen any other console UI that's this convoluted. There are, what, five or six shards, and the difference between them are not obvious. And the downloading is terrible. I downloaded some stuff from one of the shards (see, I can't even remember the names... Marketplace? Media? Downloads?) and it was placed in the queue, and then later it was gone and I had to find it in god knows where.

My point is that of course I'll get used to it. People get used to eating pieces of shit. They shouldn't have to, though, much like I shouldn't have to use such a pretty, but badly thought-out system. It's like they didn't even eat lunch in the same cafeteria as any of Microsoft's million UI experts.

[vimes]

These are not shards , these are blades. It should all become crystal clear now that you know that.

[eljay]

Marketplace is where you can download all the online content such as demos, videos and XBLA games.

Media is where you can view or use anything media related such as videos or music.

Arcade is where you can play anything you have downloaded.

System is where you shockingly change any system settings.

I thought it was all pretty self explanatory, there are some redundancies in menus for good reason, they are things you are most likely to want to do at any point, like playing the game that is in the disc tray....

The widescreen issue with SC, is probably to do with a bizarre thing many games do, which is cinematic borders. Most only do it during cutscenes though... You've set the xbox to widescreen in the system blade right?

[toblix]

These are not shards , these are blades. It should all become crystal clear now that you know that.

Yeah, of course. I knew that. I remember liking the blades concept when it was first released. Calling them shards doesn't even make any sense.

Marketplace is where you can download all the online content such as demos, videos and XBLA games.

Media is where you can view or use anything media related such as videos or music.

Arcade is--

What? Arcade? I've got Marketplace, Live, Game, Media and System. I've looked at it some more and my problems are these:

• There are multiple entry points to the marketplace (or at least a place that lets me download stuff). The blade itself, and the various links from the other sections, like the link from the Live Arcade section (no, not the one where I download new games, but the one where I see which games I've already downloaded) that leads directly to a sub-section of the marketplace without actually taking you there. So there are several different "UI places" for the same thing, which is stupid.
  
• Stuff you download from the marketplace is spread all around, which makes sense in that they're put in their respective blades (media for movies, game for demos... except live arcade games (those are in a separate section, right?), avatars and themes, which goes I don't know where), but as far as I know there's no way to look at all my downloads, which is what I'd prefer. If I've selected a couple of interesting things at random and queued them for download during the night, I have to go check all those lists for new stuff in the morning.
  
• I have to skip over ad buttons in the UI. Those are ad buttons, right? The buttons with game logos and stuff? Seriously, that's fucking terrible UI design right there.
  
• The photo shoot mode in Rumble Roses XX is hot. And I thought DoA was a bit too obvious.

[Lama Himself]

I agree that the interface of the Xbox 360 is not really clear.

It's not a bad one. We can navigate pretty easily, there is some sort of logic, but each time I want to do something, I have the feeling I search for it and not go for it.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I spend hours looking for something. But this is the few second of hesitation or sometimes a mistake by going in the wrong menu that said the interface could be easier.

In contrast the Channel menu of the Wii is a bit more chaotic but much more straightforward. And the user can organize the channels as he wants.

It's even suprising that the save menu, the preference and the message board are not channels.