January 11, 2006

360 impressions (well, not really "impressions" . . .)

Well, I’ve had the 360 for 12 days now and I have not played Guitar Hero since. That’s both good and bad. Good, because it means I’m enjoying my 360. Bad, because . . . well, I haven’t played Guitar Hero in 12 days!!! That game rocks and I need to find some time to get back to it (I WILL beat it on Expert!!!)

So far, I have no complaints with the 360. I have not experienced any of the issues I have read about on forums. No over-heating (knock on wood), no disc scratching (knock on wood), no freezes . . . no wait, yes, I did experience one freeze!! It was with Madden.

What’s that?!?!?! Madden?!?!? After all the crap I talk about on this blog in regards to EA and Madden I went ahead and purchased Madden 360?!?!?

Yes I did. I am weak. I admit it. I am a weak, pathetic, no-will powered, sad excuse of a gamer. But football is my Achilles heel. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I NEED to play a football video game during the regular football season and ESPN 2K5 just wasn’t doing it for me anymore - as great as that game is. Neither was Madden 2006 for X-Box. Don’t know why, but I tried it for a while and then found myself playing ESPN again. So, after getting my 360 and playing Call of Duty 2 and Perfect Dark Zero for hours, I was worn out on 1st-person shooters and needed a change. The only other launch game that I am interested in is Condemned, but that’s another 1st-person game. So, it was Madden or nothing. And I have to admit, I was extremely curious to play the game.

But anyway, back to my freeze problem. It happened during the 4th game of my franchise (and 10th game of Madden 360). I noticed something was wrong with a few minutes left in he 4th quarter, when after every play the game would not go back to the play calling screen. It would just show fly-bys of the stadiums - which normally, these fly-bys appear in the top right of the screen while you are calling a play. At first I was ecstatic, since I HATE the fact that as soon as a play is over, you go to the play calling screen and can never see these great shots of the stadium full-screen, only in the small pic on the top right. But then I realized that the game didn’t let me go back to the play calling screen at all, I was stuck viewing the stadium until I got called for a delay of game penalty. After that, it would take me back to the play calling screen, I would run the play, and then need to repeat the whole process again (take the delay of game, call the play, repeat). Luckily it was the end of the game and I was winning decisively, so while I was annoyed, I just took in the stadium details and let it be. But then after the game ended and I tried to exit, bam, frozen game and I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t even exit to the dashboard, I had to turn the system off. Not fun, but so far that has been my only problem.

I should be writing up short reviews on Cod2, PDZ and Madden shortly, but I want to beat them all first.

My quick impression is that overall, Call of Duty 2 is the best game of the bunch. Perfect dark is the prettiest, but it does have its flaws, and Madden is . . . well, Madden is the game that I’ve been playing the most from all three. Doesn’t mean it’s my favorite, just that I’m a football junkie.

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