Alright, I'll admit it. In the midst of the holiday rush when the 360 first came out and the shortages that follow through until even now, I still haven't been able to secure a 360 to call my own. Neither have a spent any more than a few seconds with one until tonight. Tonight, I went to a friend's Easter party, and I found out that one of the hosts there in fact had a 360, and was willing to have me spend some time with it. So, I went to his den downstairs where he had it hooked up to a 32 inch LCD HDTV, and played it for about 3 hours, or so. The only real game I tried out was CoD2 and its SP, which I had already played through a bit on PC, so most of that was pretty redundant. But in any case, I got a chance to see how it compared to the PC version. The control itself was noticely inferior to the kb/m control in the PC version, and I found myself to be checking my aim or pressin the wrong buttons more than once (due in part to some poor button layout). I will admit that it ran noticebly better than it could on my already monster PC, which either speaks for its superior power, or optimization. But all that aside, I also got some analysis of the hardware itself to go with this. The controller, in my opinion, is not at all cracked up what it is to be. The controller is similar to controller S with some minor tweaks and such, but the overall controller feels a lot differently in many aspects. However, I did not find it to be the most comfortable controller or the controller I've seen with the best button best placement, which lead to some of the said difficulties with control in CoD2. Nevertheless, it's still a nice controller, but not the nicest controller I've yet to hold and play with. I also had some analysis of the 360's interface out of game. It seems to be well organized, functional, and has most of the functions needed for an effective playing environment in my opinion. I haven't tried any of the live features, so I cannot comment on those yet. The console itself, I noticed, seemingly generated a lot of heat and noise while while running games, which might lead to some difficulties if run for very long and extended periods of time, or if the hardware is stressed too much.
Overall, the 360 seems to be a solid console and a solid contender for next-gen. It's not the best console I've ever played, but it still is promising and I hope its future turns out good.
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