Got myself a box.

Hey. So its time for me to spread my influence on this forum beyond the OT and Linux sections.

Mid Last week I ordered a 360 and it should be here in a few days. Will start posting stuff as it comes up.

The Deal: 360 Pro w/HDMI Holiday Bundle (includes Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Forza 2) for $335 + no tax + free shipping. Not the greatest deal out there, but beats paying $380 @ bestbuy and not getting the 2 freebie games. To it I added a 50ft lan cable ($20) to stretch from my office where the router is to the tv room. Also bought a 2nd wireless controller for when I have friends over / when my bro is home from college.

The Screen: 36" Toshiba flat CRT 480p (will get a 40+ LCD or 50" DLP 1080p within a year).

The Games: I work @ blockbuster, and as one of the benefits I get free rentals. The only rule is that it must be 21 days after street date when I pick it up. The 21day mark is only about a week away for Halo3, already there for GoW, and 2 more weeks for Orange Box...so i am fine. I might actually buy Halo 3 when it starts showing up used (cheaper ) for the purpose of online play. I might buy Orange Box too if TF2 on XBL goes anywhere. Otherwise I can sample pretty much anything available @ my "home store". Several of my good friends ahve 360s too so game swapping is a possiblity there as well.


to avoid any famewars: I have been a Sony fan for the life of PS1 and PS2. PS3 is simply not an option because of the $600 price tag + (currently) limited library of games. Also since my friends have 360s, it makes more sense for me to get one for the purpose of playing them via XBL and do game-swaps. And I think Wii is pretty awesome...but I am more attracted to the game options (such as GTA4..coming in march) which will not be available on Wii.

i'll do that duke if you tell me how its done .

status update: fedex tracking site reports the box is out for delivery right now thats a whole day earlier than originally scheduled. fedex rocks my socks.

stupid fedex! i came home from school and found a door tag. thinking it was business as usual, wait till 9pm then go to local location to pick it up. WRONG. It was not Fedex Express, it was Ground. Tag really didn't say anything in respect to the "now what" department. Called up tech support and they said that they have lack of communication w/ the hub and ground hubs are not customer-contact locations. Basically...can't pick it up tonight. They will attempt to redeliver again tomorrow and thursday. great... except for the situation does not change at all, my parents will still be @ work, and i will still be at school. Nobody to sign for it. Of course an option is to sign the door tag and have them leave the box...but that means a xbox is sitting on my porch for about 2 hrs until i come home (today fedex guy came @ 12.30...i usually come home by 2) fantastic! :-\ why must fedex ground fail so much.

my neighbors are all assholes / busy people.

guy to left : old guy that sleeps during day, works out at night. kinda crazy
to far left : no houses
to right : always at work
to far right: crack house.... always stoners hanging around there.
across the street : asshole + has little kid who would want to open boxes

i had them leave it in the back....figured about 2 hours of an unmarked brown box sitting outside in the middle of the day wasn't all to bad.

so far i got 3 games to play: marvel ultimate, forza 2, and dirt. forza being my favorite thus far. will get my hands on bioshock and halo soon.

so far i am sampling the games available to me to see which ones i will wanna play more later (or not). Here is a sample mini-review rundown.

Dirt -- Good rally racer if you like rally racers. I prefer Forza2 (actually a big GranTurismo fan) personally. The multiplayer features in this game are lacking at best. Multiplayer is really really bad. No split screen, limited game type options, no voice, very bad text chat. Gameplay does get repetitive after a little while. With lack of mods or other fun things after the first 10 races you lose your reason for racing.

Bioshock -- better on PC. Then again i said that for all FPS. I only played it for a little while and it just didn't do it for me.

Crackdown -- interesting GTA-esque game. Graphics are cartoonish and physics are interesting but that works well in this game. Reasonably big free roaming city to explore, quite a few cars to choose from, and lots of targets to shoot. I am enjoying this game. I haven't tried the online yet... but it looks promising.

PGR3 -- very poorly designed racer. its more arcade-ish than simulation. Car choice is limited, and there is a HUGE difference in AI between Easy and Medium.

Enchanted Arms -- enough to say that its the worst RPG ever.

Monsters : Fight for Suburbia -- stupid but somewhat fun multiplayer run around and fight monsters kind of game. cartoonish, kid (somewhat) friendly. Not something you would wanna play by yourself but up to 4 players per system can join the party... which is nice because selection of fun multiplayer (on 1 console) games is really lacking on the box.