Dont know how I feel about it. I am positive but cautious. I played Kameo and CoD2. The kiosk was very well designed, clean lines, and lit well. The controller is superb. I cannot imagine getting cramped fingers using it, and its very light. Buttons are spaced properly so that even my medium sized hands could reach everything easily and quickly with minimal effort.
The shoulder trigger buttons are just right. There are four shoulder buttons and two of those are actual triggers which I thought was weird at first, but the controller is very ergonomic and I was able to effectively use those buttons without thinking within the first two minutes.
I didnt spend that much time with the 360 honestly. I did notice that menu screen is layed out well (considerable improvement on xbox1's matrix like interface) with color keyed tabs for games, live, and system features.
I have never really seen 720P on a small monitor before but for some reason it didn't look that good. I say that because I watch 3/4 of my televisions in 32" of HD everyday and play my xbox and GC at 106" on the basement digital projector in HD whenever possible.
I am not sure whether the screen didnt do the games justice, or the games didnt do the screen justice, or the samsung was locked at 480P but it didnt look 720p to me and there was no way to either check or change the setting on the monitor.
That said, the games themselves at any resolution were fun to play and looked really good. I will say this based the games that were in the kiosk (which were all marked as pre-release demos BTW). People walked by and were like "Cool!" "I'm buying that" and "That's hot! Can I play?" But for me... the games looked exactly like they do in the videos we've been watching for last several months. Depending on how you feel about the videos... your reaction will either be "Great I love the video of such and such" or "Dang... they didnt improve it any?!?"
Kameo looks exactly like the video and so does CoD2. That said they both PLAYED great. I'm no good at platformers any more so I didnt fare too well at Kameo but the graphics are both rough and smooth at the same.
The x360 can obviously do INSANE textures. When I say INSANE I mean "Crazy Eddie, Silence of the Lambs, Beautiful Mind" insane. Textures in that game were better than any I have ever seen anywhere. Everything is rock solid- no blurred textures, no pixelated messes when up close, no popup, no slowdown- just a seriously colorful gameworld.
What was distracting was that while the Kameo world is deservedly hardboiled, cut-from-rock gritty, some edges did exhibit what I thought was unnecessary aliasing. The rock armadillo character I played with, had edges on him that was for lack of better word distracting. I know he's supposed to be a roughhewn boulder with spikes but there was not a single aliased edge to him!
A more evident episode is the ingame cuts scene with the three orcs that ride into the scene on the back of dragon. The background was properly rack focused drawing the user into the foreground action... buttera... the grit and edges on the orcs and dragon in the foreground while highly textured seem too edgy. I may not be explaining this well but youd have to see it to understand.
CoD2 was enjoyable but had the opposite problem... this game was FUN AS HELL and very immersive but its was visually not as detailed as I thought. It was very PCish. Now that isnt a badthing but I thing I would have preferred a cleaner look to Kameo and an edgier look to CoD2. Color was not the order of teh day when Activision made this level and lighting did not appear to be dynamic. That by no means means that it looked bad or even good - visually the game is aces for current Pc hardware, but certainly not what I would call nextgen... or least that level (which was set in Egypt, I forgot to mention) wasn't. The impression that I got from the demo was that CoD2 was developed for 6800 class maybe 7800 class GPUs and ported to 360. Textures are high quality (again no pixelated messes when up close) but not next gen. Clearly beyond the capabilities of any current console but well within the capabilites of a very very fast PC at the right resolution. Was it the monitor, the game or both ? dunno.
Now how does CoD2 play? Well I HATE FPS' but what I played had me so engrossed I played all fifteen minutes of the demo in the store - twice. If as with most great games the visuals increase in beauty the further you get in, it may turn my impression around about the visuals - gameplay here was spot on though, even if simplified for the purpose of a demo. Of course I will admit that I had watched the 720P video of this level so often, that I breezed through the demo with ease... so unfair advantage noted.
As an aside, a crowd came up behind me while I was playing and was very helpful in pointing out snipers outside of my engrossed vision. Everyone burst out laughing when I threw a frag grenade and all of the nazi "jerries" as they are called in the game scrambled for cover except one bugger, who promptly picked up the grenade and threw it back...! blew my ass up too. Oh well.
All told the x360 seems to be on the edge of being everything they said it would. I think that 2006 will have the x360 come into its own and provide us a real showcase of its power.
As I said, the graphics are FAST FAST FAST and INSANELY textured... that AA thing really needs to get worked out though. I'll probably go back to Best Buy to play them again and verify my really quick impressions and maybe provide a quick update.
It was fun while it lasted.
The shoulder trigger buttons are just right. There are four shoulder buttons and two of those are actual triggers which I thought was weird at first, but the controller is very ergonomic and I was able to effectively use those buttons without thinking within the first two minutes.
I didnt spend that much time with the 360 honestly. I did notice that menu screen is layed out well (considerable improvement on xbox1's matrix like interface) with color keyed tabs for games, live, and system features.
I have never really seen 720P on a small monitor before but for some reason it didn't look that good. I say that because I watch 3/4 of my televisions in 32" of HD everyday and play my xbox and GC at 106" on the basement digital projector in HD whenever possible.
I am not sure whether the screen didnt do the games justice, or the games didnt do the screen justice, or the samsung was locked at 480P but it didnt look 720p to me and there was no way to either check or change the setting on the monitor.
That said, the games themselves at any resolution were fun to play and looked really good. I will say this based the games that were in the kiosk (which were all marked as pre-release demos BTW). People walked by and were like "Cool!" "I'm buying that" and "That's hot! Can I play?" But for me... the games looked exactly like they do in the videos we've been watching for last several months. Depending on how you feel about the videos... your reaction will either be "Great I love the video of such and such" or "Dang... they didnt improve it any?!?"
Kameo looks exactly like the video and so does CoD2. That said they both PLAYED great. I'm no good at platformers any more so I didnt fare too well at Kameo but the graphics are both rough and smooth at the same.
The x360 can obviously do INSANE textures. When I say INSANE I mean "Crazy Eddie, Silence of the Lambs, Beautiful Mind" insane. Textures in that game were better than any I have ever seen anywhere. Everything is rock solid- no blurred textures, no pixelated messes when up close, no popup, no slowdown- just a seriously colorful gameworld.
What was distracting was that while the Kameo world is deservedly hardboiled, cut-from-rock gritty, some edges did exhibit what I thought was unnecessary aliasing. The rock armadillo character I played with, had edges on him that was for lack of better word distracting. I know he's supposed to be a roughhewn boulder with spikes but there was not a single aliased edge to him!
A more evident episode is the ingame cuts scene with the three orcs that ride into the scene on the back of dragon. The background was properly rack focused drawing the user into the foreground action... buttera... the grit and edges on the orcs and dragon in the foreground while highly textured seem too edgy. I may not be explaining this well but youd have to see it to understand.
CoD2 was enjoyable but had the opposite problem... this game was FUN AS HELL and very immersive but its was visually not as detailed as I thought. It was very PCish. Now that isnt a badthing but I thing I would have preferred a cleaner look to Kameo and an edgier look to CoD2. Color was not the order of teh day when Activision made this level and lighting did not appear to be dynamic. That by no means means that it looked bad or even good - visually the game is aces for current Pc hardware, but certainly not what I would call nextgen... or least that level (which was set in Egypt, I forgot to mention) wasn't. The impression that I got from the demo was that CoD2 was developed for 6800 class maybe 7800 class GPUs and ported to 360. Textures are high quality (again no pixelated messes when up close) but not next gen. Clearly beyond the capabilities of any current console but well within the capabilites of a very very fast PC at the right resolution. Was it the monitor, the game or both ? dunno.
Now how does CoD2 play? Well I HATE FPS' but what I played had me so engrossed I played all fifteen minutes of the demo in the store - twice. If as with most great games the visuals increase in beauty the further you get in, it may turn my impression around about the visuals - gameplay here was spot on though, even if simplified for the purpose of a demo. Of course I will admit that I had watched the 720P video of this level so often, that I breezed through the demo with ease... so unfair advantage noted.
As an aside, a crowd came up behind me while I was playing and was very helpful in pointing out snipers outside of my engrossed vision. Everyone burst out laughing when I threw a frag grenade and all of the nazi "jerries" as they are called in the game scrambled for cover except one bugger, who promptly picked up the grenade and threw it back...! blew my ass up too. Oh well.
All told the x360 seems to be on the edge of being everything they said it would. I think that 2006 will have the x360 come into its own and provide us a real showcase of its power.
As I said, the graphics are FAST FAST FAST and INSANELY textured... that AA thing really needs to get worked out though. I'll probably go back to Best Buy to play them again and verify my really quick impressions and maybe provide a quick update.
It was fun while it lasted.
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