Two months of xbox 360

I ment to write some short blurb here about getting a xbox 360 and what my impressions has been so far. But instead, I haven’t written a thing here for a long time. Wonder if it’ll change or if this is one of those rare events on my blog.

Anyways, there are plenty of things about the xbox 360 to like. It was a breeze to setup, even the wlan worked instantly without a hitch although it was a pain to enter the encryption key. The image quality on my 32″ LCD TV is great, although sometimes I wish I could’ve afforded an even bigger TV. 😉 Connecting it to my computer to stream my music from it to the better speakers hooked up to my TV works great, but I do wish they added the ability to stream video as well in the future. It is possible today, but getting Windows Media Center just for that feature does not sound very appealing to me.

A somewhat meaningless but still fun addition to the new xbox is the achievement-system. You get awarded a little image as well as points, called gamerscore, that everyone online can view and compare themselves with. For some of the games it really feels like it has added to the replayability of the titles. Not that I have made much progress in unlocking achievements for my games. And I guess it could be fun competing with friends in unlocking difficult achievements but my friends list on xbox live is incredibly empty so far 🙂

I’ve bought four games and one live arcade game and I think they’ve been good choices.

Call of Duty 2

Essentially a simple linear FPS game, but with great environments and some interesting twists. Fun enough for me to play all the way through it. Haven’t tried it online at all though, read to much about how horrendous it is. But with the rumored patch that’ll fix most of the issues people have maybe I’ll try it some time.

Project Gotham Racing 3

Cool cars, environments where you can recognize most buildings from real life and a great sense of speed. Only thing missing is some more game modes for playing multiplayer locally. I mean, playing with brittish kids who scream profanities or racing alone is only fun for so long. It’s playing with friends where the fun is I think.

Kameo

Somewhat enjoyable singleplayer RPG-light. The action sequences where you use the different characters are fun, and it looks good. But it’s probably the game I’ve enjoyed the least of the ones I’ve bought so far.

Dead or Alive 4

Lots of fun, but as with Project Gotham 3 really needs some more game modes when playing locally with friends. Still fun both singleplayer and multiplayer though. I really do suck at it though, and regularely get my ass handed to me by both the computer and online opponents.

Zuma

The only live arcade game I have so far and it’s a great time-consumer. Simple and fun. I think Microsoft has a real winner with xbox live arcade. Downloading games like Zuma for a small amount of money is a great idea. It’ll be interesting to see how Sony and Nintendo respond to all the xbox live goodness 🙂