Played an Xbox One tonight at Mup's place.
I'm really impressed by the entire thing. Microsoft successfully delivered on their goal of making a personalized media/entertainment console. I was wow'ed by many of its features, particularly the new Kinect.
As a preface, I'd say that I watched the Giant Bomb livestream on Thursday and was not impressed by the tech in any shape or form. Drop outs, kinect wouldn't understand half of the commands registered, the snap featured seemed pretty unwieldy. But doing it in person, in the comfort of someone's home, we had no issues. The kinect could register almost all of our commands. The only time it got weird on us was when we tried to search on Bing to try out the snap feature.
"Search for penis", "Dude, I don't see any penis." So the Xbox suggested Superman and we did,"search for Superman," and we still didn't get Superman.
In a long night of game playing and fiddling with the UI and console that was the only time the Kinect fucked up for us.
I'll separate this into sections:
Hardware
When I first got to Mups' place, he was playing NBA2k14, and the game was installing. I knew that ps4 allowed you to play games while games downloaded, but I'm not sure about installation. I wasn't knowledgeable about Xbox One's capabilities in this area, but I was more than impressed. Instead of waiting for the game to install, he was just playing the game in the middle of installation. As someone who is far too used to downloading games on Steam and installing games on ps3 and having to wait, wait, wait, I thought this was beyond fucking incredible. The installation itself took almost 40 minutes to an hour - fuck, that's a long time, how many gigs IS that game? - but the simple fact you COULD still play never stopped impressing. Being the first thing to witness as I walked in to demo a next generation console really made a huge impression on me, as it is something I REALLY don't see either the 360 or ps3 being capable of. Steam needs this NOW. IMMEDIATELY.
What's also impressive is how the game ties into the interface. We'd say,"xbox, home, in the middle of play - mind you, it was still installing - to go to the home menu and we'd get a little screen cap of the action. It was still installing in the background. COOL. You know what's cooler? He showed me a little trick and went,"Xbox off" to cut the systems power. We rebooted it and the system still kept his place on where we put the game in the background by going into the menu, and we resumed play. That feature should be required in all consoles going forward. Fuck yes.
Speaking of booting the system up, I like how personalized it is. Say "xbox off" and the second he picks up the controller, it says,"Hello _______" which I think is a nice touch. However, the system expands upon such personalization within its friend list features. We saw that Mojo had been playing Dead Rising 3. We could instantly see a clip of him playing the game. Like the PS4, Xbox One has a really good way of allowing players to be social and share videos of themselves playing games, for tips, or maybe just to show how awesome a one particular game is.
Even when you go to the store page of a game, for example Ryse - which we looked at - you can see uploaded user videos of the game. This is a great feature because now, you don't have to go to game trailers or youtube to see if a game is for you. You can just go to the games individual store page and watch someone playing it. Another blow against the ever irrelevant gaming press. Convenience is the main feature and attribute of the Xbox One, and it embodies this into every facet of its user interface.
Xbox One, is a very impressive piece of technology. For all the arguments that it is weaker, it is still a marvel at some of the things it is capable of doing.
Software
NBA2k14 - This game is fucking hilarious. The mo cap technology for the players would be great with weed. They'd make these stupid, unnatural faces, that had me dying. We'd mimic them and that game is a great party game for that alone. I didn't play it because, unfortunately, no two controllers, but hey, it's NBA2k, the only basketball game in town, and for a reason.
Look at that fucking face.
Dead Rising 3 - Fuck yes. When I picked up my Xbox 360 in fall 2007, I did so with the intent on picking up two games: Dead Rising and Blue Dragon. I didn't come away disappointed with either of these titles. I have very fond memories of pre-Kinect Xbox 360 and its early titles, and Dead Rising is the king of them all. I ended up playing it 6-7 times, and still never came close to a 1000/1000. As the first game of that generation I owned, Dead Rising has a lot of sentimental value for me. Dead Rising 2, while good, was a step back in practically every regard, but Dead Rising 3 is a complete return to form.
The main issues that lie with DR2 are its difficulty. It was easy, no matter what I tried. In DR1, I loved micromanaging events. Most games teach us to savor winning, Dead Rising taught me to savor losing. You would lose - a lot. Certain missions had strict time limits, and you couldn't possibly be in three, four, or five places at once. You had to decide what you valued at any given time, with an entire shopping mall to organize your onslaught. Gamers traded tips on how best to do this, or how to do that, and it was a very social game experience due to its difficulty. Dead Rising had tension. Dead Rising 2, by comparison, never had a hint of the word. Dead Rising 3 fixes this.
Missions aren't just the only way DR3 makes the game tense. Just traveling the games landscape is challenging. In DR1 and 2, zombies were mostly just fodder. There were specific enemies that WERE tougher, like the troops in DR1, or the prisoner psychopaths, or the cultists, but for the most part, killing zombies was easy and breezy. DR3 though? The first thing I did was try to grab an axe. I swung it a few times and pretty soon I was overwhelmed by a zombie horde. Not only do weapons NOT do the same amount of damage they did in the past - an axe would take 1-2 chops to net you some PP - but they have a VERY short life as well. This axe lasted me less than 30 seconds before it started blinking red. Zombie hordes are also much, much larger.
So that means you're already handicapped in DR3. Another handicap? Zombies just don't fuck around. In past games, you could dodge them easily. You could literally go in to a zombie horde with a baseball bat and turn them all into jelly without a scratch. You cannot do this shit in DR3. Not only are your weapons weaker and last shorter amount of time, but zombies are harder to evade. If they get close, they WILL grab you. So if you see a large swarm of zombies, your best bet is to use cars as a defense. The game then turns into an odd platformer, as you're jumping from car to car, trying to escape the grasp of a horde.
The map is so much bigger as well. Dead Rising 1 and 2 take place in confined areas: a mall and a casino/hotel. DR3 takes place in a city, and the map reflects this. We were struggling to get to places while rushing to complete side mission tasks. This makes the game even more tense, because the map is so fucking huge, with short cuts, and high ways, and long paths, and huge zombie hordes. Dead Rising 3 is a nice modern revamp on an old classic that expands up on what worked in both previous games.
I played maybe an hour of Dead Rising 3. We traded controllers and gave each other turns, and damn, was it fucking fun and a complete return to form after the - slightly - disappointing Dead Rising 2. I am actually mad that Capcom made this game exclusive because everyone - pc, ps4 - deserve to play this gem, based on my limited time with it.
Final thoughts:
Xbox One isn't a perfect system, it has a few kinks. But when it works, it works really well. As a mass media consumption device, this thing is great at what it does, and I won't blame anyone for wanting one after my time with it. Micorsoft have had a rocky year. What, with rumors plaguing their new system for months before reveal, to the actual lukewarm reveal, to the arrogant quotes by MS mouthpieces after the fact, to the PR about face. This hasn't been Microsoft's year. But damn if they didn't put out a quality product and an AMAZING piece of tech. If you want a console that do an all in one thing, the One would no doubt suit your needs. I haven't played a PS4 yet, but after tonight, I really can't wait to see how it compares.
