First impression of an Xbox 360

A friend of mine offered to borrowed me his Xbox 360 when he went away for a business trip. I decided to try the unit out, as I've been thinking for myself for the last few months if I should buy one. I got the unit with two wireless controllers and one headset. With the unit I also got the following games:

• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
• Amped 3
• Project Gotham Racing 3
• Hitman - blood money
• Perfect dark zero
• Lara Croft - Tomb Raider legend

My favorite is Ghost Recon. I've played that lots of times. Hitman is a game I probably will try several times. The other games are of no interest for me. They are not my kind of games.

The first thing I had to do was to go to the store and buy a 5 meter TOSLINK cable and the advanced SCART cable. This so I could get surround sound and better picture quality than the composite signal I got from the HDTV cable that came with. (I did not have the right connectors...)

Xbox 360 impression
First of all - the unit is noisy. Very noisy. The solution is to turn up the volume on the stereo :)

The menus are somewhat hard to figure out. When I downloaded content from Xbox Live I had to look several places to find the content. But this is of course solved after a day or three with navigation and searching...

The sound is good - but it's TOSLINK or analogue output. Not a big problem for me, but I miss RCA plugs as I only got one TOSLINK connector on my amplifier.

The picture quality is good - unless you play Xbox Live Arcade games. Then you get the same crappy resolution we had 10 years ago. Trust me, Pac Man is not worth playing on Xbox.

Xbox Live
The first thing I did was to make a profile and connect it to Xbox Live. As you all know the autumn update just got out.

I really wanted to see for myself what Xbox Live is. So I downloaded lots of demos, movies and the update from Microsoft. I even bought myself 500 Microsoft points just to have something to start out with. I have not yet found anything I want to spend the points on. I hope that change as the points are non-refundable...

Since my friend never connected his box to the Internet I also got with one month of Xbox Live Gold membership. I could not opt out on this one - I tried. As a result I have to buy my friend one month of Gold membership :)

I have played Ghost Recon several hours now - most of them online with other users. My impression of Live Gold is that it adds value to my gaming experience. It's much more fun to play with others than with the computer.

I usually have not had any problems finding someone to play against. A couple of times we've been 2-4 players. Some times 16 players. But most of the time 8-10 players.

But; I get disconnected all the time from the games. I'm not sure why not. Sometimes I play two or three matches in a row without any problems. Other times I get kicked out right after the game starts. I have to check out more on this issue. It does not seem to be a common problem (or a problem that many writes about).

Game availability
There are lots of games for Xbox 360. You can also play many original Xbox games - but check if the game you want can run before you buy it. Microsoft maintains two lists - one for PAL and one for NTSC units.

Most of the games are for adults. You can find a few titles that kids can play. But if you want to give a gift to your daughter go for a Nintendo.

Altogether
I am impressed. I like this box. I won't be too surprised if I find one of these under the christmas tree at the end of the year.

I posted an update because of messy HTML from Outlook