360 Enabled

I have now got my Xbox360 and "w00t!" - what a belter it is. I unpacked the console when I got home, connected it to the net, signed into XboxLIVE and took out my free 1 month gold trial account. The plan was to show the kids the awesome power of the new console before they went to bed (as they seemed more excited than I was). This "great unveiling" did not take place though as it clashed with the start of Eastenders and I was forced to send them to bed "empty eyed". During the next four hours of TV that my wife watches on a Thursday night (Eastenders, 10 Years Younger, Celebrity Big Brother and ER) I dipped in and out of LIVE during the ad-breaks to download demos of FIFA 2006 RTWC, Fight Night 3, Fully Loaded, NBA Live and Quake 4. Plus a few videos, Live Arcade games and stuff like that. I am really impressed with the content on there that is free. More to come I expect - and hopefully more gamercard pictures too that I don't have to pay for! Come 11pm, the wife went to bed and I settled down with a fresh cuppa, poised to beat hell out of a computer generated assailant on Fight Night 3. And wow! The graphics were amazing! So realistic and crisp and clean. Forget buying a HDTV! The image was perfect! The gameplay is a little sluggish - but seeing the ripples on the guys face when you upper-cut him to the canvas is excellent. Jolly good fisty-cuff fun! I then moved onto play Fully Loaded which is a racing game with guns, missiles and other assorted weapons. The console version of the old Car Wars game I used to play years ago. Again, the graphics impressed but the game play was limited (although this is a demo). Race and fire, jump, crash etc. Very good fun and probably best played on LIVE against some real opponents I would expect. Die muthafunker! Third down was Quake 4 which initially looked very "PC Graphics" during the intro sequence. When the real game started though I was impressed and reminded of Doom4. Looks very very good. I wonder if this was a straight port from the PC version with not much tweaking? I was expecting a first person shooter deathmatch though - maybe that was on one of the other menu options. FIFA 2006 RTWC is just fucking amazing. As you may have read in my previous posts I have recently got really into playing FIFA 2006 on my (old) Xbox and usually play every day. So when I saw how detailled the graphics, character modelling and environment was... well... I just kept on saying "oh my god! - there is grass! They rendered grass!!". This is definitely my next purchase and have already been investigating the prices on eBay in readiness for my Valentines present. I was totally blown away by this title. The demo is only one half though - Brazil vs France. And the annoying thing is that you have to re-load the whole demo to play again! Grrr! Tossers! I then played Project Gotham 3 - buying a white Skyline as my first car and completing a few races and goals. I also played one online game but got my ass well and truly kicked! I am well gonna have to "up my game" on this title. Definitely one to put some time into. As with the other games, the graphics are so smooth and detailled. Very very good. Something that I have been waiting for since I used to play REVS on my BBC Micro back in the 80s. So, to sum up - the console is everything that I was expecting and a whole load more. I am totally blown away by the graphics and do not regret buying one at all now! No anti-climax! WOW! It must be a first for me. Before I used one I was slightly sceptical about the wireless controller and had a feeling that I would play with the cable attached - but now... no way! Its a really nice controller. The only thing missing was the IR Remote which they have now excluded from the Premium pack. Well. I am not too fussed about that really. Unless the DivX streaming from my PC to the 360 can be sorted properly - the old Xbox will be the media player for now. The fan in the console is quite noisy though and when you are playing from a DVD rather than the hard disk - it's even worse! Then again, it was 1am and the house was deathly quiet. Whats next? Dead Or Alive 3, more FIFA, getting XP Media Center Edition onto my PC and getting back into online gaming. I have also got a disk with the Beta of Final Fantasy 8 to load on (better take a USB keyboard home too as I hear the registration stuff is immense) and a copy of the Xbox360 retailler demo disk with playable levels of King Kong and Call Of Duty 2 on. Oh - and I also have my retail copy of Halo2 to play too. Deathmatch fun - here we come. Here's my gamercard.. come say hello! Technorati Tags: xbox, xbox live, xbox 360, taoski, fifa, fight night, pgr, project gotham, revs, carwars, quake 4, w00t!