Xbox 360 Glasgow Exhibition: Hands-on Impressions Xbox 360

Here is our exclusive report, direct from the Microsoft Xbox 360 exhibition in Glasgow. In case anyone else is able to attend one of the 360 roadshow events here’s a quite bit of useful info: once you go in you have half an hour to play the consoles before they throw you out and make way for the next group (but you can go in multiple times in 1 day if you wish). These are quite brief impressions but we wanted to get them to you as soon as possible.

First of all, the console is probably about the same size as its older brother, but ALOT better looking! It looks very sleek and well made.

The controller is really quite small, but very comfortable. It does look a bit cheap though. The only problem i had with it was accidently pressing the 360 logo instead of the pause button. The buttons are quite close together but my thumbs may lack some fine motor functions

The following games were available to play:
- Perfect dark zero
- Project Gotham Racing 3
- Condemned
- Kameo: Elements of Power
- GUN
- King Kong
- Dead or Alive 4
- NBA Live 2006
.. and possibly more that I didn’t see.

I only had time to play Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero and Condemned. Unfortunately I can’t comment on the music or sounds from any of the games because there was so much noise with people chatting and a DJ playing records. This is a pity as the sounds and music in a game are very important to me, so it would be unfair of me to write any game off at the moment. I only had about 10 minutes on each game, so if i don’t sound too excited it may be because of the time restriction!

Kameo

Kameo looked really nice, and overall it seems extremely good! At first I found the controls a bit difficult to get to grips with; it was a bit awkard when changing between the different personalities of Kameo, until I realised that the HUD at the top of the screen told you which personality was mapped to which button. It looks as if the puzzles could be quite fun – integrating wall climbing (when you’re the monkey), rolling around metroid style when you’re the armadillo thingy, and doing something else if you’re the vine/ivy thing! (It’s obviously clear that i don’t know their names). Once selected, moving each of the personalities around seems fluid and staright forward. So if anyone at RARE is reading – you have the best game of the show! Congratulations!

Condemned

Condemned is a game I had never heard of, but during the short time I played it, it seems to be a first person shooter. It was very dark and atmospheric looking (not sure about sounding because of prior statement). The graphics on this game looked very nice too, except for people’s faces. But actually I find peoples faces look poor in all of the trailers for next-gen console games i’ve seen.

Project Gotham Racing 3

PGR3 is very nice to look at and play. The graphics are very smooth and the crowd looks a lot better than the usual cardboard cutouts from previous driving games. But I do have one small issue with it. When you play in the cockpit view of the car, the drivers hands have chips for fingers (french fries if you are northern american). And the cockpit of the car looks like it was designed for Gran Turismo for PSone!! However they have definetly took a lot of time over the rest of the game, but not inside the car.

King Kong

Looks exactly like the trailers. Plays well and runs smoothly. You can’t move very fast in the game, which is a bit of a pain since you’re being chased by a T-rex! There is a really nice blurring effect when the T-rex is screaming at you.

Dead or Alive 4

Plays very fast and smooth. Graphics look extremely nice and the gravity of the female characters is exactly how i would expect/demand from the programmers!

Call of Duty 2

I usually don’t like WW1/2 games as i think they are a bit clichéd, however i really enjoyed this one. The controls are easy and the sound was nice (could actually hear this sound on this game). There was nice AI in the game too, so i was shot at like the heroic make-a-run-for-it, take no prisoners alive idiot I am! Oh and I shot some of my own men too which is always fun!

And now for the moment everyone has been waiting for.. my first reactions on..

Perfect Dark Zero

It seems ok, graphics are up to high standards as always with these games, and it doesn’t look as shiny as other people have made out. The game play is smooth, the vibrations in the controller seem accurate. But i do have one MAJOR gripe with this game though – FRAME RATE ISSUES!!! I couldn’t believe it and on a machine that powerful! I was fighting the boss that you see in all trailers (you know the one, kind of looks like a flying machine out of Terminator 2 or something very similar) and when i was shooting it, and it shooting me and also bombing me – when the fire started to spread from the bombs – everything went sssssslllllllloooooowwwwww (this has to be said in slow motion to get the full effect! . That really really disappointed me! Some people may say that “oh it’s a first title of a new console and you have to expect some sort of issues…” blah blah blah… not with the hype of this game you can’t afford to have ANY issues! However it should be noted that we were told that these were unfinished versions of the game. We can only hope it is corrected in time for release! Other than that the game was rather impressive.

They also had a nice display of new facia’s for the console:

Here is another picture I took:

Yes, it was very very green inside the exhibition!

P.S. There was NO FREE STUFF! – But there was a prize draw to win a 360. I entered it obviously!