There I was drooling on myself in front of other people, and I didn't care. It was right in front of me, gleaming a pearl white similar to the downy soft feathers of an angel's wings. An Xbox360 and it was all mine.
As I approached the intimidating beast with 500 MHz of custom ATI graphics processing power and 9 billion dot product operations per second, I sighed a breath of anxiety mixed with excitement. Would this system live up to my expectations? Or would I break down and cry under the realization that the system is nothing more than a slightly pumped-up version of its predecessor?
Luckily, there was very little that disappointed.
The console is sleek like an Italian-designed sports car meant for picking up hot women or disguising age. The console is 60 percent the size of the bulky black behemoth that is the original Xbox, and it comes with a sterile white case. From there the limits are endless with customizable faceplates that allow the individual gamer to express their own individual style
The smooth, futuristic style extends out to the controller, which is a slight adaptation of the existing Xbox controller. By adding an extra pair of shoulder buttons, raising the back triggers, shrinking the cross-space on the existing S-Controller model, Microsoft has managed to create a controller that not only plays well but feels like a dream while doing so.
The standard wireless option for the controllers allow gamers to play from anywhere in the room, making sure that teenage boys everywhere won't burn out their retinas by sitting too close to their daddy's 50-inch plasma HDTV. The controllers, like the console itself, also allow for interchangeable faceplates.
The demo disk came with playable demos and movies of upcoming Xbox360 titles, such as Call of Duty 2 and Perfect Dark Zero. I got a chance to play two games, the first of which is the adaptation of Peter Jackson's potential holiday blockbuster King Kong.
Developed by Ubisoft, the company behind hits such as Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and the Prince of Persia series, King Kong features a seamless storyline that lets the player become Adrien Brody's Jack Driscoll or Kong himself, basically creating two games for the price of one. The game felt extremely real, the individual hairs on Kong's knuckles moved independently of each other and the absence of the standard life bar puts the player right into the game.
The second game I got to lay my hands on was Rare's much delayed Kameo: Elements of Power. The game, which was supposed to release as a launch game for the first Xbox, but managerially problems forced the game to be pushed back to the next generation of consoles. The cute game allows you to play as the mystical maiden Kameo, who must save her family from the evil green-skinned Thorn by channeling her power of creature morphing. Gamers get to smash their way through hordes of orcs and dragons as a yeti, armadillo, venus fly trap and other critters. Reminiscent of N64's Banjo and Kazooie the game will sure be a hit among the young and the young at heart.
But buyers beware. Although the temptation may be high to pre order an Xbox360 immediately given all that the system has to offer, it does not offer anything innovative or new. It is a solid system and a worthy buy, but Sony and Nintendo both have systems that may rival Microsoft's Xbox360.
If deciding which system to buy becomes too difficult, fear not. The next generation of systems will be in development by 2008.
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