[360] Xbox 360 Discussion. Thermal paste, the delicious and nutricious snack of the future.

Originally Posted by StarmanDX

Come on, he's not all bad.

I think that's exactly what he was talking about.

I really don't know. I liked very very few of the games on the first Xbox (Orta...yeah, that's about it, Orta.) and I really dislike the tendency toward having so many FPS or FPS variants (e.g. Gears of War) on the console.

Live, to me, is a mixed bag. For people who were/are into multiplayer over the Internet, I guess it's a good thing. Personally, I prefer to be in the same room as people I'm playing with, though. That is what "social gaming" refers to in my lexicon. I will credit Microsoft with doing a bang-up job of standardizing multiplayer with Live, though. As I understand it, all multiplayer-enabled games are required to adhere to Live's guidelines or they don't get licensed/published. That, to me, is good design.

It took XBMC for me to even be interested in the original Xbox. I still don't own one, though I'd be willing to spend 80 bucks or so to be able to tinker with it. I know it's to be expected that the "Media centre" features of the 360 will be DRMed up the wazoo, but that effectively kills it for me. All my files are in either open (FLAC, x264, XviD) or proprietary non-microsoft (mp3, DivX) formats and I don't want to re-encode everything to be able to use it on my 360, especially if it's just because Microsoft wants to push their WM format.

That said, however, I'd buy a 360 DECADES before I'd even touch a PS3. Fuck Sony and their system-rooting, overcharging, "Second coming of Ken Kutaragi" business practices.

Of course, if I could just get my hands on a Wii, this whole argument would be moot in my corner of the universe.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by StarmanDX

And I was obviously being completely serious.

Well that's good. Glad to hear we're not just all fun and games here on GFF.

Also, I remembered on the way home that I can at least vouch for one 360 game being decent: Ninety-Nine Nights. I still enjoy Drakengard a bit more (dragons FTW) but the ability to actually command a small army as opposed to going solo the whole time was a nice twist on the "one dude vs. OMGZ MILLIONZ GUYZ" premise.

If I didn't already have a gamepad, I'd consider the 360 controller for my emulators. It's damn comfortable. Not quite Gamecube comfortable, but damn comfortable nonetheless.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

N3 fell victim to the same sibling rivalry as Xenosaga saw between Shion and Jin, though at least Inphyy had 3x the balls her brother did and wasn't about to take crap from him. Otherwise, the plot was (as I recall) pretty shallow. Then again, one usually doesn't play games like that for the plot anyway. It did have a pretty badass orchestral soundtrack, perhaps more listenable than the tense, high-strung, deliberately repetitive Drakengard OST. I liked them both, but what do you expect? A VGM whore is me.

I'm going to give the 360 another year and see where it is in the way of available games and console price. HD-DVD doesn't interest me, so the add-on probably won't come into play at all. If there are more games out that are really interesting and unique (a la Katamari, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, etc.) and that do not involve micropayments (worst idea ever), I might seriously consider picking up a 360. Of course, this assumes I have the extra cash amidst paying off student loans and saving for a house or condo.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.