XBox 360: January 2006 Archives

Oh my god, this is the greatest video game song ever made. If you remember the movie "Arthur" and the hit Christopher Cross song "Arthur's Theme", well, this fellow Archie has improved on it. Instead of the lyric "If you get caught between the moon and New York City" you get "If you get caught between me and my Xbox 360". The song really summarizes the first two months of the insane 360 launch. Another great line is: "I killed Peter Moore and took his new Xbox 360." Download it now, droogies, it just topped Pac Man Fever. I feel like getting drunk and playing Geometry Wars. Nuff said.

Archie's Theme: The 360 Song.
XBox 360 Crooner (from XBox360Fanboy.com).

Technorati : XBox 360
Del.icio.us : XBox 360
Ice Rocket : XBox 360

The XBox 360 finally arrived at my house last night. Last week I wrote about the 360 tracker at Ben's Bargains that tells you which sites have it in stock. As soon as I started using that, I found the 360 online. I ordered the mega-bundle from Wal-Mart, which contains the premium XBox package, six games, and various accessories. The price totaled over $900 with tax and shipping. It's outrageous, but I read on a message board that you can return the games and accessories that you don't want to any Wal-Mart store. This is true--I've already returned a number of items from the bundle. You don't get the shipping cost back, but paying an extra $25 doesn't seem so bad compared to people paying $100-$500 more on EBay.

I almost believe in karma, or maybe that everything in life has to be balanced. On the day the XBox came, a few minor things broke in my bathroom. Then I made the mistake of upgrading my Windows XP Pro computer to Windows Media Center. Various things went wrong with that and I spent a lot of time trying to repair it. As a result, I played only a couple of hours of 360 games.

Quick impressions: Project Gotham Racing 3 is fabulous in every way. Perfect Dark Zero has a terrific opening screen, like a James Bond movie, but the game itself is a big letdown. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved is like crack cocaine and Lays potato chips, you can't play just one round. My mission is to crack 100,000 points, the closest I came was 93,000.

I gotta tell you, when that box arrived, I felt like Link uncovering a magic ring in Zelda. Or Dr. Don Blake finding the cane that he would tap on the floor. Or Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, raising the sword: I Have The Power! Isn't it pathetically geeky? Maybe I can calm down now and stop whining about not having the latest toy. Nuff said.

Technorati : XBox 360
Del.icio.us : XBox 360
Ice Rocket : XBox 360

MTV's Stephen Totilo has crowned Geometry Wars as the Killer App of the XBox 360. In the vacuum of a Halo title, he might be right. CliffyB says "It's like an interactive version of those acid-trip musical visualization devices." A few weeks ago I posted a comment to Dean Takahashi on Mercury News, asking why anyone would want XBox Live Arcade games in the face of Project Gotham Racing 3 and Perfect Dark Zero. But it's obvious that games like Geometry Wars can be highly addictive for the consumer and highly profitable for the publisher. I thought the first Geometry Wars in Project Gotham Racing 2 was pretty cool, especially the fact that the leaderboards were integrated with XBox Live. Exposing that to everyone in the 360 world seems to have been a gold mine for Microsoft. Now everyone wants a piece of the XBox Live Arcade direct download pie. SiN, the new FPS game, may give gamers the basic game engine for free and make them pay for episodic downloads. I feel like we are back to the days of shareware games. Nuff said.

Technorati : Geometry Wars, XBox 360, XBox Live Arcade
Del.icio.us : Geometry Wars, XBox 360, XBox Live Arcade
Ice Rocket : Geometry Wars, XBox 360, XBox Live Arcade