I decided to do two things recently which I've contemplated for a while: I bought an XBox 360 and after 2 or 3 years of lurking, I've joined Gamespot to blog about my experiences using it. 

I've been sitting on the sidelines of this whole "next-gen" thing waiting for something to make me want to take the plunge on one of those shiny new boxes. All three new consoles have intriguing aspects about them, but nothing about them moved me to open my wallet until Gears of War.

After reading all the glowing reviews, hearing all the praise on various podcasts and seeing it in motion in game videos and On The Spot, I decided the potential of this new hardware has begun to be realized and I wanted to be a part of it.

I left work last Wednesday on a hard target search for a Premium 360 and Gears of War. Unfortunately, every electronics store I visited in Manhattan was out of Gears, so my dream of spending the four day holiday weekend chainsawing Locusts was dashed. Instead I came home and hit the internet looking for the best deal possible. I decided to go with Amazon since they were bundling Burnout Revenge with the premium console for free, so even though I didn't get to play during the break, I got a free game and saved on the sales tax. Also ordered was Project Gotham Racing 3, Gears of War, an extra wireless controller, the charge kit, and they had the XBox Live bundle for $40. Since a year of Live alone is more than that, I jumped on it. Even if I never use the camera it was worth it.

It felt like Christmas Eve for the last week while I "patiently" waited for Amazon to ship me my box of goodness. I can't remember how many times I visited my Order Summary page to track the packages. Yesterday, at 3:53 PM EDT it arrived.....at least the console did. The games, extra controller and charge kit are still in transit. That didn't discourage me from diving right in. I figured last night would be all about the Arcade. I activated my Gold account, redeemed my codes for Uno, Robotron & the 200 points which came with the camera and started downloading things.

When I opened up the box my roommate seemed more excited than I was. We have a 62" HDTV in the living room, but we've never done much gaming on it. There wasn't much incentive to hook up the PS2 to it since there weren't many widescreen games or games that would look good blown up that large. That's all changed now.

We tried to download the demos to the racing games that are coming, but those files were taking forever. After 4 or 5 games of single player Uno, Burnout was still only at 18%. So we grabbed a bunch of arcade demos instead. Dig Dug & Lumines Live! were decent but didn't make us pull the trigger. Geometry Wars was a completely different story. What a great game. The controls are smooth and easy, the action is frantic and the visuals are amazing. Those sparking black holes, the wave effects on some of the heavy weapons, the explosions when you use a bomb....we were impressed. Buying the full version was a no brainer. My roommate lit up when he saw they had Doom so he had to have that too. He spent a good while with it last night, looking for all the secret areas he remembered.

Needless to say, it was a really fun night. The best part is it's only going to get better. Sometimes you get "buyer's remorse" after buying an expensive thing you don't really need, but I don't anticipate ever regretting my purchase. I'm glad I waited for the hardware issues to be worked out and for the software catalogue to build up, but I'm glad it's now sitting in my living room.

Thanks to everyone in the Gamespot community for sharing your experiences with your XBox and video games in general. I really have enjoyed reading your blogs, watching your videos and hearing your stories. My friends list is currently empty, but I hope to have a bunch of the fine Gamespot folks on there soon. If anyone is up for some online action in any of the games I have, please hit me up on Live!

Thanks for reading...now I have to go to work.