I went down to EB this afternoon to purchase Devil May Cry, and they had a display set up with a working Xbox. On the way out, I stopped to give it a try.
There's been a lot of exageration on both sides of the fence. On the one hand, the Xbox itself isn't as big as everyone has made it out to be. It's almost exactly as tall as the PS2, about 3/4 as wide, and about 1 1/2 times as deep. As for the controller, it is bulky (it looks and feels a little like a Dreamcast controller that's been overeating), but it fit nicely in my hands. I didn't have any trouble reaching the buttons, at least no more trouble than I have with any other controller. All in all, it's not a bad setup.
However, the game was another matter. Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee was the game currently playing. With all the talk of the Xbox's fabulous graphical capabilities, and with Oddworld developer, Oddworld Inhabitants, boasting that only on the Xbox could they truly realize the game's full potential, I was dissapointed with what I was presented. The graphics were nice and crisp, I'll give it that, but the landscapes and draw distances were nothing that the PS2 couldn't do (or hasn't done already, for that matter). The character models were nicely detailed, but the terrain left something to be desired, and the texture work was blurry and indistinct. There also seemed to be a number of graphical glitches, but I'll chalk that up to it being a demonstration version. The game itself wasn't very entertaining either. All I did was run around for about ten minutes, collecting green orbs, flipping switches, and swimming around the many pools of water. When it comes right down to it, I think they should've chosen a different game to demonstrate the system's capabilities, like Halo or Dead or Alive 3. I've never been much of a fan of the Oddworld series, and Munch's Oddysee is no different. I just can't see myself having fun with it. I've heard that there are non-interactive demos of both Halo and Dead or Alive 3 on the demonstration disc, but when I pressed the reset button to return to the main menu, all I got was a black screen with the words INPUT: VIDEO printed in the upper-left-hand corner. I waited around for 30 seconds or so, but nothing else happened so I just left.
In the end, I left the store feeling very much like when I entered. I'm neither dissapointed with the Xbox, nor am I excited about it. It's just another console, as far as I'm concerned.
-Keiichi
There's been a lot of exageration on both sides of the fence. On the one hand, the Xbox itself isn't as big as everyone has made it out to be. It's almost exactly as tall as the PS2, about 3/4 as wide, and about 1 1/2 times as deep. As for the controller, it is bulky (it looks and feels a little like a Dreamcast controller that's been overeating), but it fit nicely in my hands. I didn't have any trouble reaching the buttons, at least no more trouble than I have with any other controller. All in all, it's not a bad setup.
However, the game was another matter. Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee was the game currently playing. With all the talk of the Xbox's fabulous graphical capabilities, and with Oddworld developer, Oddworld Inhabitants, boasting that only on the Xbox could they truly realize the game's full potential, I was dissapointed with what I was presented. The graphics were nice and crisp, I'll give it that, but the landscapes and draw distances were nothing that the PS2 couldn't do (or hasn't done already, for that matter). The character models were nicely detailed, but the terrain left something to be desired, and the texture work was blurry and indistinct. There also seemed to be a number of graphical glitches, but I'll chalk that up to it being a demonstration version. The game itself wasn't very entertaining either. All I did was run around for about ten minutes, collecting green orbs, flipping switches, and swimming around the many pools of water. When it comes right down to it, I think they should've chosen a different game to demonstrate the system's capabilities, like Halo or Dead or Alive 3. I've never been much of a fan of the Oddworld series, and Munch's Oddysee is no different. I just can't see myself having fun with it. I've heard that there are non-interactive demos of both Halo and Dead or Alive 3 on the demonstration disc, but when I pressed the reset button to return to the main menu, all I got was a black screen with the words INPUT: VIDEO printed in the upper-left-hand corner. I waited around for 30 seconds or so, but nothing else happened so I just left.
In the end, I left the store feeling very much like when I entered. I'm neither dissapointed with the Xbox, nor am I excited about it. It's just another console, as far as I'm concerned.
-Keiichi
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