The last of the "big three", who's in a bit of a different situation than Nintendo and Sony since their next-gen effort is already on the market. I was curious to see what announcements would be made and if any new games would be announced for the Xbox 360. Not only did they pull through in the games department, but they also unveiled a whole slew of peripherals and gave 360 owners lots of things to get excited about.
Nearly a month ago (April 11, to be exact), Battlefield 2 Modern Combat was released for the Xbox 360. As I've mentioned a couple times before, I was a huge fan of the first couple Battlefield games but had major problems with Battlefield 2 for the PC. It seemed every time a patch was released, I would end up spending a couple hours trying to get the game running again which normally resulted in me abandoning the game out of frustration. Although Modern Combat is not the same game as the PC version, I was really hoping that I could catch up the time I missed out on and finally enjoy the Battlefield series again. Unfortunately, I'm lead down the same path of repeated disappointments.
It's kind of hard to recommend this game as it is very short. I'm actually a little embarrassed to say, but I finished it in less than 24 hours from the time I bought it. If you're big into achievement points and a fan of the action adventure genre, Tomb Raider Legend is at least worth a rent. It's just good, old-fashioned fun at it's best.
I picked the best time to buy an Xbox 360. The week I bought it, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Burnout 3 hit the shelves. Since then, there's been a steady flow of new content in the form of demos, trailers, themes and picture packages showing up in the Marketplace. It's been almost a month now, and there hasn't been a day gone by that I haven't at least turned on my 360 to see what's new in the Marketplace.
The day I picked up my Xbox 360, I spent a fair bit of time checking out all the accessories and deciding which ones to get. I was bummed to discover the only headset available was the standard Microsoft one that's big, ugly and cheap looking. I never had the original Xbox Live headset as I got my Xbox just before Halo 2 was released and some friends of mine at an Xbox PR company hooked me up with the limited edition Halo 2 headset. That little thing was great! It was small, sleek and comfortable. Lucky for us, the company behind the Halo 2 headset has done it again - this time for the Xbox 360.
G.R.A.W. was the system seller for me. I've been considering an Xbox 360 since it's release and with the PC version being pushed back a couple months and me hating on PC gaming these days, I just had to pick one up. It is, without a doubt, one of the best games I've played. Even though I beat it over a week ago, I've still been playing it pretty steady. I highly recommend you check this game out if you're a 360 owner - and if not, it might be time to seriously consider making that investment.
Over the past couple months, I've had a number of people ask how my 21" widescreen LCD performs with the Xbox 360. To be honest, I haven't really been using my monitor for gaming much since one my primary reasons for getting a 360 was to get myself away from this chair once in a while. I'm currently using my 27" Sony Trinitron television with the S-Video cable. It's the best resolution I can get on my standard definition television and it'll hold me over until I can drop the cash for an HDTV. Since I've already got 2 cables in my position, I went out and picked up the VGA cable for the 360 to do a little comparison. The results blew me away!
First off, GRAW is quite possibly the dumbest acronym ever. How about we just call it GR3? Sounds good... As I mentioned in my last post, I picked up an Xbox 360 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (yes, the full name is pretty dumb too) last weekend. I've been playing it quite a bit and have almost completed the single player campaign. I think I just wrapped up the eighth or ninth mission of eleven. Really enjoying the game, until this last mission. Let me quote the back of the GR3 box...
For as long as I've been a PC gamer, I've spent about equal time hating it as I have loving it. I really wish I could just let it go - pick up an Xbox 360 and never look back. That was me, 4 months ago. 2 nights ago - Thursday, March 9 2006, I kicked the habit. First thing Friday morning, I went out and bought a 360 and have been playing the shit out Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter all weekend and couldn't be happier!
I've tried to completely ignore the Xbox 360 until the pre-meditated hype dies down. But a friend of mine recently picked one up and has been showing me screenshots and bragging like a bastard, so I decided to drop the $750 deposit and rent one for a few days. The 'package' I got came with 2 wired controllers, a memory card (yuck!) and the standard cables - composite and component. I also had my choice of 2 games. Since the pickings are slim, I decided to go with 2 truly 'next gen' games... or rather, games that were developed specifically for the 360 - Project Gotham Racing 3 and Perfect Dark Zero. I didn't even bother hooking it up to my TV (a 27" Sony Trinitron) but instead, went straight to my new monitor. It has component inputs, which worked out lovely! The colours were great - super bright and vibrant and the picture was really crisp. So, it looks nice... but how does it play?
I'm not going to make a New Year's Resolution this year. Last year, for the first time, I made one. I didn't even come close to following it through. While I exceeded my expectations in other areas, the one I had promised myself to improve on was left hanging and has pretty much diminished. And as such, I broke a New Year's tradition this year. Instead of going over to a friend's - who has hosted a radass New Year's Eve party for the past 5 or 6 years, Deanna and I went and saw King Kong. We'll ring in the new year with our daughter Hannah at the stroke of midnight while sipping on our drinks of choice - a cool Keith's for this guy and Spumante Bambino for my lady. Sounds good to me! It's been quite a year. On the family front, we sorted out everything we needed to in regards to our daughter and Deanna's ex. All the paper work is done and things are great. We received the official government document verifying Hannah's name change on December 23, which was by far the best Christmas present we could have asked for. She's now an official Brett! When they moved here from BC nearly 4 years ago, we all had last names. Deanna used to call us a mutt family. Hah!
I've been using Mint for a few months now and am fully addicted to it. I've used other stat tracking software before, but I've never had so much fun! And just when I thought things couldn't get better for Mint, a dude by the name of Beau Collins released a great Pepper called Session Tracker. As you probably assume, Session Tracker records the path of your visitors... in real time. Not only where they've been on your site - but how they got there, how long they spent on each page and now thanks to Download Counter and Outclicks, what they downloaded while on your site and where they went when they left. It also shows you how many people are currently on your site. Seriously good stuff!