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What’s in the box:
The standard fare holds true for the Xbox as it does with
all others consoles since the Saturn. Out of the box you have
the console, the wires (power and composite), a controller,
and that’s it.
Score: 5
A dead average score for sticking with the traditional packaging
practices.
Four controller ports:
Sony may have scrimped on the controller ports, but Microsoft
didn’t. Built right in is room for four controllers
to plug in and play. I guess Microsoft is assuming we have
friends…
Score: 8
Yeah, you can’t get better than four controller ports…
but realistically those third and fourth ports will hardly
ever be used. So, it gets a “nice to have but probably
won’t use much” score.
Built-in broadband adapter:
Right in the back of the mighty black box is a standard Ethernet
plug. This means that you can patch your Xbox into your home’s
hub or router and share that cable modem with your PC. Spiffy.
Score: 9
It’s great, but not perfect. Why not perfect? Well,
so far the only official support that it has is a hand full
of games that support multiplayer play over a LAN. Now, if
we had some Internet support, then it would be perfect.
(Update)
With the holy advent of Xbox Live, we now see the true glory
of the Xbox's online capabilities.
Revised Score: 10
Hard drive:
Gigs and gigs of lovely storage space in every Xbox opens
up a world of possibilities. Putting your own music into games,
saving games right to the hard drive, using the drive as a
cache to speed up load times, and downloading new levels and
stats are just a few of the uses we’ll see or are already
seeing with the Xbox’s hard drive.
Score: 8
I’m thrilled to death about the hard drive, but I’m
also gripped by a deep, burning fear that in three to five
years my Xbox will be dead due to a hard drive crash. I shudder
to think of all the Xboxes out there that are not even plugged
into a surge suppressor. The average console gamer isn’t
use to dealing with hard drives, and probably isn’t
familiar with their little nagging technical differences from
solid state memory. Such as, drop it even from just a couple
inches off the ground while it’s accessing, and say
goodbye to your console.
Aesthetics of the console itself:
It’s black, green, silver, and damn it’s big.
I like the look and the style… and I understand that
it has to be that big to fit its PC components. However, it’s
almost too big.
Score: 9
It gets a ten for being beautiful, but looses a point for
being large enough to require a warning that states that if
it falls onto the head of a small child it may cause serious
injury or death. No lie, it really has that warning…
that specific warning. Makes you wonder.
System’s user interface:
The Xbox user interface is slick, stylish, damned pretty,
and simple to understand. It’s all a sort of techno-skeletal
day-glow green LSD induced representation of the virtual guts
of the Xbox itself, and that’s fucking cool in my opinion.
Score: 10
No stupid symbols like the Dreamcast had, no confusing and
seemingly pointless menus like the PS2. This baby’s
got all its cards on the table, face up, and easy to understand.
Primary storage:
Hard mutha fuckin drive, bitch. Eat it, Nintendo.
Score: 10
I already covered the practical side of the hard drive. This
one is the ability to store saved games on it. For that, it
gets a big yummy ten.
The launch:
Eh, it was all right. I got my system and that’s what
matters, but there wasn’t the same bedlam that came
with the PS2 launch. I miss the tantrums, the screaming, the
threatening of EB employees, and of course I miss the CNN
coverage of people being mugged for their PS2. I won’t
even go into the glory that was Iraq’s attempt to buy
PS2s for use in intercontinental ballistic missiles. They
failed of course… I got one but Iraq couldn’t.
That made me so damned happy I nearly shat my pants. Then
there was the sale of a PS2 on eBay for over $30,000. The
launch of the PS2 reminded us all that everyday people are
capable of obsessing over a video game console, and that was
a good thing.
Score: 8
Like I said, I got my system and that’s good. I wish
there had been a few more attempts at international espionage
though.
The launch titles:
While there were a lot of launch titles, almost as many as
the PS2 had at launch, there was one thing truly odd about
the Xbox launch library. It was very, very good. Games such
as Halo, Dead or Alive 3, Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee,
NFL Fever, and Project Gotham Racing tipped the scale for
the Xbox launch library, offering something for just about
everyone in just those five titles. What was missing from
the lineup? Well, there wasn’t an RPG in the whole mix.
However, Azurik: Rise of Perathia is out now and Nightcaster
will be out shortly, so hopefully those will make up for it.
Even if it doesn’t, it’s not a very long wait
till The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind comes out.
Score: 10
Even without an RPG at launch, you can’t deny the gooey,
chocolaty center to the Xbox launch library that is Halo.
In my opinion, between Halo and Munch, the Xbox launch library
was a ten. Factor in the other games, and I would give it
a twenty if I could, but that would get me accused of playing
favorites.
Controller:
Much has been made about the Xbox controller’s…
well… muchness. That is, there’s rather a lot
of it there. Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s
quite big. Large in fact. One may go so far as to say “fucking
enormous”. However, be this as it may, I love it. It’s
comfortable, easy to use, and it’s the first console
controller I’ve held that works extremely well with
a first person shooter. The buttons are great, if just a little
too close together for some twitch intensive games, while
the analog triggers are excellently suited for racing games.
The analog sticks, in fact, have just the right amount of
height, mobility, sensitivity, and resistance… and are,
dare I say, just a hair nicer than the Dual Shock 2 analog
sticks.
One thing it lacks though is a name. The PS2 has, of course,
the Dual Shock 2. The Dreamcast’s controller was unceremoniously
nicknamed “The Encrampinator” because it was a
horror to use for extended periods of time. I’m sure
the N64 controller had a nickname too, but I usually referred
to it as “Devil Stick of Eternal Suffering” or
DSES for short. The Xbox controller needs a name, besides
“Big Mutha Fucka” or something similar. Because
it’s cool looking, big, and black, I considered suggesting
that it be referred to as Shaft from now on. However, I soon
realized that people everywhere would then be telling their
little brother, friends, and relatives things like, “Get
your hands off my Shaft!” Needless to say, this horrible
realization led me to decide beyond a shadow of a doubt that
that’s exactly what its nickname should be. Dual Shock
2, Encrampinator and DSES… meet Shaft.
Score: 8
So, with such praise, why an eight? Well, it’s not quite
up to par with the Dual Shock 2. It does take a little getting
use to at first, and people will small hands may never get
use to it. Also, while the analog triggers are far nicer than
the Dual Shock 2’s shoulder buttons for racing games
and whatnot, the black and white buttons are not nearly as
accessible as the Dual Shock 2’s second set of shoulder
buttons. Therefore, while it’s a wonderful controller
and far better than I ever dreamed it would be, it’s
not a Dual Shock 2. Interestingly enough though, It’s
really hard to go back to using a Dual Shock 2 after getting
use to holding this mammoth controller, to say nothing of
switching immediately from Shaft to the GameCube controller.
Personally, if I were rating Shaft on my personal preference
alone, it would be a 10. However, I must judge it against
the whole of gaming society. Many of those members are female
and/or young. Thus, small hands... not suited for grasping
Shaft.
Breakaway Controller Cables:
For everyone who has ever tripped over their controller wires
and nearly (or actually) yanked your dear system off its shelf
and onto the hard, cold, unforgiving floor… this is
for you. In other words, it’s for everyone because we
have all tripped over some wire or another in our lives. Essentially,
this is simply a plug integrated into the wire of the controller
itself just behind the main system interface plug. How does
it work? It’s only about half as snug of a fit as the
main plug, so if tripping occurs, this little plug will pop
and your system will remain in place. The best part is that
it fits back in place easily and has no problem staying connected
unless you deliberately pull on the cord.
Score: 10
I love simple innovations. This is a perfect example of something
that we’ve needed for a very long time but just finally
received. Say what you will about Microsoft, but sometimes
they come up with cool little touches that really count. Besides,
the Xbox is very heavy for a console and has a hard drive.
It’s essential that it not take a header off of a shelf.
Microsoft thought ahead, and that’s always worth big
points.
Memory Module:
So you have all these nifty saves on your hard drive, but
you want to take your character or whatever over to your friend’s
house and his (or her) Xbox without lugging your whole Xbox
with you. Never fear, Sparky… there is a solution and
it doesn’t even involve sacrificing a goat (because
I love my goat). Just pop a memory module into one of the
expansion ports of your Shaft and away you go.
Score: 8
The Xbox memory modules are just as big as the PS2 memory
cards in terms of storage space, and bigger in terms of bulk.
This is both good and bad. It's good because it makes them
a little harder to lose. It's bad because it makes them ever
so slightly harder to store. The real advantage over the PS2
memory cards, however, comes from the Xbox console interface
itself. Copying files from the hard drive to the memory module
and back again is all done using a particularly slick interface.
The transfers are also a little faster than with the PS2.
Plus, because you can put two memory cards in each controller,
and you have four ports, you can hook up a total of eight
memory modules if you wanted to. It's not really practical,
but if you ever needed to do it, you could.
For the record, no, you can't copy music files to the memory
cards. Piracy is bad. Remember that.
DVD playback:
True, you must buy a separate remote control unit before you
can use the Xbox to play DVD movies. True, you can't play
the DVD movies in 480p. Progressive scan mode is for games
only. However, the DVD playback is easily on par with the
PS2, and DVDs that I have had difficulty getting to work in
my PS2 play on the Xbox without a problem.
Score: 7
Sure, you have to buy a remote... but think about it,
you also have to buy a remote for the PS2 unless you want
to navigate through the DVD menus with a Dual Shock 2. Therefore,
it's really not that bad. Plus, so far, it's liked every DVD
I've tried in it. That's more than I can say for the PS2...
and of course, you can't even fit a regular DVD in a GameCube.
The Xbox is a game system after all, so DVD movie capabilities
are a bonus any way you cut it, even if is is pretty no frills.
The Final Word:
There are a few things that the Xbox could have done better.
Most notably, if it had packed a game in with the console,
even if it were Fusion Frenzy, it would have really helped
set itself ahead of the competition. What the Xbox does right,
however, it does very, very right. For the first effort of
a company that's never been in the console market before,
it's utterly amazing.
-K'Tok
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