Xbox 360 hands-on impressions of a train-wreck

[8 1/2]

Yo gang, been out for a while, but I've been really busy at work. I work at as a game tester and for the last few weeks I've been working on Amped 3 for the Xbox 360. I'll save my opinions on the game, but I wanted to share some 360 oddities for those that might be thinking about picking up the system next month when it launches.

Please note that these are impressions of current tech and practices. Microsoft may have revised these by the time the system launches, but I doubt it.

1. Music. No longer will you will be able to create a game-specific soundtrack. MS apparently wasn't too pleased with the weak support that custom soundtracks got on the original Xbox, and so they've taken matters into their own hands. Now, you create a "Playlist" that has songs you like on it. You can create as many Playlists as you like. This sounds fine until you consider event-specific music, such as that found in most sports games. Say you want a certain song to play when you hit a home run, or when you race on a certain course. NO LONGER. Now, you can only assign a playlist to these events and the 360 will pick a song at random from that list. So if you want to make a special soundtrack for a hockey game, you would have to make a new playlist for each event (Home Goal, Away Goal, ETC.) and then simply put one song in each list. To really make a good custom soundtrack for a sports game you might need 25 playlists, each containing one song each, to get the game to play what you want when you want. Again, it's all on the hardware side, so you're going to have to get creative to make it work for you.

2. Profiles. New to the 360 are acheivements. These are little game-specific goals that unlock as you play. They might be as simple as "Beat the game" or "Win 50 races." These are displayed on Xbox Live next to your profile, so you can showcase your skills. Obviously, it would be really easy to cheat as you could simply take a memory card from a friend that has 20 Halo 3 achievements and steal their achievements right? Microsoft thought of this, and so again they made things overly confusing to compensate. First, is that you save profiles and games SEPERATELY. This means that achievements do not transfer. If you take your memory card with half of Amped 3 beaten to your friend's house and beat the game, your friend will get the credit for the win on his profile, and not you. When you get home, you WILL NOT be able to update your own achievements unless you start over with a new game and beat the game on your machine. This gets even more confusing when you add in the fact that some people will have a hard-drive and some won't. You cannot transfer a save between a memory card and a HD during gameplay. All that has to be done from the Dashboard. You could transfer a save to let a friend play a later level, but neither of you will benefit from it.

3. The controller. So cheap. Remember the original Dreamcast pads and how faulty many of them were? The rubber on the analog sticks is so insanely soft that you can easily dig your fingernail in and scrape it right off. Every controller in the office has what looks like bits of eraser all over it because the analog stick is too close to the base of the controller itself and when it rubs it "sheds" little bits of eraser all over the thing. It's honestly just sort of filthy after a while.

4. The graphics. I've played 3 games now on the system and each of them are just barely above the Xbox. The big thing they're pushing is how many objects can be rendered. And it's true. The distances that the player can see into, and the masses of crowds in sporting events are really a genuine step-up. The trouble is frame-rates are generally quite bad, and an inter-developer memo from MS themselves says to try and lock down frame-rates at 30 or lower to maximize performance. 30 fps? I thought 60 was pretty much standard for high-production-value games since the days of the Dreamcast. Do not expect to be wowed.

I'll not go into the other details of the machine as those have been covered to death elsewhere. Just wanted to give a little peek to those interested before they lay down their money on the Omega Pack.

[The n00b]

As long as I can get my DOA4 arcade stick, a copy of DOA4, and an xbox360 port of virtuafighter 5; I am satisfied.

[Specineff]

About the graphics just above X-box quality, I noticed that when checking the pics for the latest Unreal. I kid you not. It could have passed for a regular Xbox game. The models don't look too different from say, Halo 2.

[MadSteelDarkness]

Many thanks for the impressions, 8 1/2.

This pretty much confirms my fears about the 360: that Microsoft were trying so hard to be the first out of the gate for the "next gen" that they would release substandard hardware.

That being said, I'm sure I'll get one at some point. But I'm thinking I'll be able to hold off on getting one for longer than I originally thought.

[system11]

The music sounds more comprehensive than I've ever seen before.

The profiles thing sounds needlessly confusing. People just skill by leaderboards.

The pad sounds like an accident waiting to happen - especially displeased about wireless being standard in the full option pack. I hate wireless. Do old X-box pads work?

Graphics - did anyone really expect an improvement this time around? This was always going to be the generation where there wasn't a real leap. Sucks to hear about the 60/30 thing - hopefully this is just developers being unfamiliar.

I'll still be getting one at some point - but the prices of games and initial lineup were not in the end tempting enough for me to preorder. The reason - even if it's really X-box 1.5, it's still where the decent online action will be.

[professor ganson]

Thanks for the info, 8.5. It's such a drag to think about having to import one of these just to play 4 or 5 decent new shmups. I'm definitely waiting a year or two at least.

[sethsez]

Eh, I don't judge any system until it's been out for a year or so and developers actually know what they're doing. Early games never show off a system's power, both due to time limitations and unfamiliarity with the hardware and what's possible.

Still, the pad sounds annoying.

[MadSteelDarkness]

Graphics - did anyone really expect an improvement this time around?

Well, yeah, kinda.

[TalkingOctopus]

Did you have a chance to try any xbox 1 games on it?

[beatifik]

Still, the pad sounds annoying.

the first xbox pad was horrible, but i think that the s-controller is awesome. m$ needs to get their acts together when it comes to first gen. pad design

[Specineff]

Eh, I don't judge any system until it's been out for a year or so and developers actually know what they're doing. Early games never show off a system's power, both due to time limitations and unfamiliarity with the hardware and what's possible.

Soul Calibur on DC, anyone?

[zer0eight]

8 - 1/2,

Hello. Have you had a chance to play around with the Virtual Light Machine? Ever since I heard that Jeff Minter was making a new version for the 360 I have been very intrested. I always wanted to check out the one that came with the Jaguar Cd-Rom unit. But this new looks awesome. If only he could make a Tempest for the 360...

zer0eight

[sethsez]

Eh, I don't judge any system until it's been out for a year or so and developers actually know what they're doing. Early games never show off a system's power, both due to time limitations and unfamiliarity with the hardware and what's possible.

Soul Calibur on DC, anyone?

Fair enough, but take a gander at some early Genesis, Saturn, PSOne, NES, and hell, even PS2 games, and compare them to games from later on. The difference is usually very noticeable. Even the Xbox didn't exactly get a running start... Halo looked damn impressive at the time, but most third party games looked like PC games from 2000.

The 360 doesn't have a Halo, Super Mario World or Soul Calibur to show everyone that THE NEXT GENERATION IS HERE, but that in and of itself isn't a sign that it's doomed. If things still look like crap in a year or so, I'll give up on it, but I'm not going to ignore previous generations in which graphics have steadily gotten better on the same hardware over the years just out of a natural inclination to be cynical.

I'd say "I'm not going to pick one up at launch" if it wasn't for the fact that Oblivion is coming out on it and I need my Elder Scrolls fix. Bah. I'll at least wait until that launches, though.

[supaT]

Hm. Regarding Frame rates, maybe it is better to buy Oblivion for PC then. Damn, it could´ve been so easy .

[joshschw]

Amped 3 is the worst looking Xbox360 game so far. so no surprises that you aren't impressed.

[theevilfunkster]

My friend was a tester on PGR 3 and he assures me the 360 is awesome. Amped 3 does look like shit though, it's hard to tell it's a 360 game.

The playlists sound like a pain in the ass though. One of the only things which made Raw 2 on the Xbox even slightly good was having your own custom tune playing on the ring entrances.

[Diabollokus]

The most important question of all.

Will it sit on its side?, I don't want a tower PC sticking up under me TV

In other words will it lay flat and work??

[system11]

Graphics - did anyone really expect an improvement this time around?

Well, yeah, kinda.

Nah, sorry - not anymore. You get some more detail in the polys, some better textures, and for the three people in the world who play games on them, high definition (resolution). There are no more quantum leaps to be had.

[MadSteelDarkness]

Graphics - did anyone really expect an improvement this time around?

Well, yeah, kinda.

Nah, sorry - not anymore. You get some more detail in the polys, some better textures, and for the three people in the world who play games on them, high definition (resolution). There are no more quantum leaps to be had.

I guess you're right, but a fella can hope, can't he?

Speaking of "next gen" graphics and all, anybody else see that MGS4 trailer? http://www.konami.jp/gs/kojima_pro/english/mgs4_04.html

That's the kind of graphics I'd like to see from games on the new consoles, although I know better than to think that's what MGS4's in-game visuals will ultimately look like.

[The n00b]

Graphics - did anyone really expect an improvement this time around?

Well, yeah, kinda.

Nah, sorry - not anymore. You get some more detail in the polys, some better textures, and for the three people in the world who play games on them, high definition (resolution). There are no more quantum leaps to be had.

3 people in the world? Damn you euros are behind the times. A ton of people have hd tv's here in the States. Even I have an hd tv....

[nZero]

Nah, sorry - not anymore. You get some more detail in the polys, some better textures, and for the three people in the world who play games on them, high definition (resolution). There are no more quantum leaps to be had.

I wasn't even hoping for that much. Games that look like today's better games would be fine. I say this because I was hoping a new generation would have the power to have such clean graphics running at 60fps full-time, with neat things like antialiasing, hi-res textures, advanced filtering, real shadowing and reflections, and such. In other words, same thing we've been getting already but with better framerate, no slowdown, no visible popup, no crappy texture detail level where it gets blurry 2 meters away from the camera.

Hopefully the Japanese do something interesting with this coming generation, I'm not so impressed with the western devs right now.

[The n00b]

Nah, sorry - not anymore. You get some more detail in the polys, some better textures, and for the three people in the world who play games on them, high definition (resolution). There are no more quantum leaps to be had.

I wasn't even hoping for that much. Games that look like today's better games would be fine. I say this because I was hoping a new generation would have the power to have such clean graphics running at 60fps full-time, with neat things like antialiasing, hi-res textures, advanced filtering, real shadowing and reflections, and such. In other words, same thing we've been getting already but with better framerate, no slowdown, no visible popup, no crappy texture detail level where it gets blurry 2 meters away from the camera.

Hopefully the Japanese do something interesting with this coming generation, I'm not so impressed with the western devs right now.

Were you hoping for a new dating sim or Final Fantasy:clone wars, maybe?

[magnum opus]

i'm willing to bet games will still be able to do their own software custom playlists

shame bout the stick though, hows the rest of the controller feel?

[dave4shmups]

About the graphics just above X-box quality, I noticed that when checking the pics for the latest Unreal. I kid you not. It could have passed for a regular Xbox game. The models don't look too different from say, Halo 2.

Plus many new XBOX games are also getting 360 ports. Just one more good reason to stick with the original.

[GaijinPunch]

I'm pretty pissed that I can't pop my Xbox games into a 360 (assuming I get one). I've got 2 Xbox games that I love. JSRF and Orta, and like two others I play. Reason enough to keep the big ass ugly box, but I'd rather not if I didn't have to.

[nZero]

Were you hoping for a new dating sim or Final Fantasy:clone wars, maybe?

I was hoping for Mahjong with 75,000 polygon tile models and fully realistic lighting and shading.

Or rather, when I wrote the post, I was thinking something like: "Man, I hope the new Shutokou Battle for X-Box 360 comes out well."

[sethsez]

Graphics - did anyone really expect an improvement this time around?

Well, yeah, kinda.

Nah, sorry - not anymore. You get some more detail in the polys, some better textures, and for the three people in the world who play games on them, high definition (resolution). There are no more quantum leaps to be had.

In the US, a good chunk of the population has HD by now. Poor college students living on ramen have it. And yeah, the increase in resolution is definitely worth it.

I hadn't noticed that this thread was based on Amped 3, though. That's kind of like judging the PS2 on the basis of Evergrace. I haven't seen a single kind word said about it in comparison to just about everything else coming out.

[Samudra]

... I've played 3 games now on the system and each of them are just barely above the Xbox ...

Not just Amped 3.

[judesalmon]

I played on the 360 at TGS, and the only game that impressed me was Chrome Hounds from Sega.

I played Call Of Duty 2, and then downloaded the PC demo recently, and it looks better on my PC, with an ATI 9800.

BTW Virtua Fighter 5 is more likely for PS3 than 360.

[The n00b]

I played on the 360 at TGS, and the only game that impressed me was Chrome Hounds from Sega.

I played Call Of Duty 2, and then downloaded the PC demo recently, and it looks better on my PC, with an ATI 9800.

BTW Virtua Fighter 5 is more likely for PS3 than 360.

Actually VF5 has been announced for the 360. I don't know if it's an exclusive though but probably not.

I'm also hoping for a Forza 2. If the 360 truly is a train wreck then I hope Forza 2 comes out before the console goes completely under.