Lyris Lite :: Xbox 360 Elite day one

This is my first night of owning an Xbox 360. This sucker was supposed to arrive at the start of this month, but for various reasons, the retirement of my original Xbox was delayed by that little bit longer. Yep, believe it or not, I've held out and stopped myself from buying Microsoft's noisy, curvy box until now. I've had oodles of fun playing the Halo 3 beta, cackled at how laughably bad the DVD playback is, been surprised at how enjoyable some of the preloaded demos are, and am just about to have a look at Psychonauts in upscaled 1080p. (Speaking of video, get this - the HDMI cable actually has a Microsoft official hologram stuck on one end of it! Seriously, even if there was a Chinese black market trade in counterfeit Xbox-grey HDMI cables, who would even care?)

I really like it. My hands are still getting used to the controller, and I've spent a lot of today downloading updates and demos, but the Halo 3 multiplayer beta is so, so satisfying (my gamer tag is Lyr1s, by the way). I actually can't believe that some people said this game was nothing more than "Halo 2 in HD" - when was the last time these people played Halo 2? The graphics are one hell of an improvement.

Not only that, but one improvement I wasn't expecting was with the audio. Everything seems to have been tweaked to perfection, with those little touches that make you say "Wow, this feels neat!" - the noise the rocket launcher makes when you're reloading it, for example. This is the first game that's really made me think, "Wow, I'm SO glad I own a sub-woofer".

One thing that that surprises me is the presentation of some of the games. It seems to be of a lower standard than on other systems. This reads like a petty complaint, but seriously, the menus and HUD in Crackdown look more like placeholders with their basic appearance and Arial font. I strongly believe in final polish going a long way in games. I've also seen some nasty visual tearing in games, which sort of dampens the claims of High Def visual splendor.

Ditto for the frame rate on a lot of the games I've played. It's a shame that 30fps is the standard for next-gen gaming, because I'd actually rather see degraded visual quality with a faster frame rate some of the time. Don't get me wrong from these two paragraphs of complaints, I'm just objective by nature - the good far outweighs the bad.

Back to the good: Eternal Sonata (demo) looks stunning, again it's only 30 frames per second but that's not too huge a deal. It has a really nice visual style and proves that there are still modern games out there that aren't afraid to be colourful. The fight scenes also feel really good. A demo of Burnout Revenge also came pre-loaded on the Elite's 120gb hard drive, and I have to say I liked it a hell of a lot more than I was expecting. I don't care for the licensed music, but that won't be a problem with the 360's Custom Soundtracks. I've also downloaded a demo of Phantasy Star Universe but haven't been able to play yet because of server maintenance. Ah, it's like owning a Dreamcast all over again.

Well, back to re-downloading the rest of those Halo 2 maps. Someone add me on Xbox Live so we can kick buttocks at Halo 3.

Glad you're enjoying it Lyris.

Didn't really understand the interface complaint. Is it just Crackdown you're talking about or are there others? Surprised you haven't complained more about the noise on the sucker, and heaped prais on Live and it's integration into everything.

Oh yeah, and definitely consider Viva Pinata if you like your games to be a bit colourful. I think there's a demo on Live. I'd recommend other games, but I'm sure you've done your research.....

It would be really cool if you coulb perhaps borrow a standard Xbox 360 and do an image comparison between the two different outputs, or maybe three (component, VGA and HDMI) since nobody out there has any proof to show the difference between them. With your knowledge of imagequality you seem to be the right guy to do so ;)

Is the noise much improved at all compared to the standard 360. Do you reckon it's worth upgrading to the Elite if you already own a standard Premium v. I mean, is there a difference with the HDMI quality over component?

Andreas, it actually still comes with the Component AV cable so I can compare that (at 1080i). Don't have a VGA cable though.

Ask AndrewFee (www.sr-388.net) about info and pictures of the VGA output. He knows what he's talking about.

I never owned the original 360 but I think the noise is just the same, this is as far as I know a standard 360 only in black, HDMI out and bigger hard drive. I'd say if you already own one, it wouldn't be worth the upgrade. Unless your TV somehow mangles Component video signals but not HDMI ones (unlikely).

With regards to many games being 30fps, I think this may change over time.

Ridge Racer is 60fps. Now.. Forza2 is 60fps. Hopefully other devs will take note and give us 60fps, because no matter what anyone says, 60fps feels and looks far better.

I think a lot of devs have had major headaches trying to create games for this generation of hardware. With all the stupid things I've seen; such as tearing, aliasing problems etc... I think they were just first generation software blues.

I fully expect the next wave of 360 games to be far more solid and impressive. One thing's for sure; it's going to be fun finding-out. :D

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