The 360 Effect

I've waited and watched, patiently sitting in the shadows while the rest of the Western world

enjoyed next generation gaming, courtesy of Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

I knew my day would come; only I didn’t think it would come this soon. It was just another routine day at work and I was sitting at my desk, staring intently at my PC (so not pretending to work*cough*) when I heard loud screams coming from below. At first I thought someone was getting fired (or murdered), but it wasn’t until I heard my name being shouted, did I bolt down two steps at a time; and there she was, packed all pretty sitting in front of my very own eyes; the 360 in the mother***** house. I know I may sound a bit dramatic, but I couldn’t help, I was as excited as Michael Jackson in a kindergarten class.

So we (and by we I mean the entire team) go into our studio and plug it in into our 42 inch HD TV (perks of working at CNBC). One small thing before I continue though; the 360 will work on your regular TVs but has been optimized to work best with high definition TVs so if you find your 360 games looking pretty similar to Xbox games, don't freak out, change your TV.

I’m not a big fan of fighters, but since I had no choice, I booted the game up. Now in all honesty, the game looks gorgeous (especially in High definition) and plays pretty well too (it’s damn tough though). Characters are well detailed and animate fluidly, while environments look just as awesome and in true DoA fashion, certain parts of the arena can be destroyed to take the fight to the another area. I’m sure the game would be truly appreciated by a connoisseur of the genre, but I sure as hell wouldn’t spend nearly 3000 bucks on that game.

I rummaged through the packaging once again, morale dwindling like a candle that’s about to go out, to see if there was something I had missed, when I glanced upon another game; Perfect Dark Zero (PDZ). Whoa! An FPS, now that’s what I’m talking about. I did manage to spend a significant amount of time with that game so I’ll be talking about it in detail in our PDZ review… soon.