We have that demo station at the store I work at....I even got to put the thing up, as they did not seem to have a Microsoft rep coming to do it.
My impressions are kind of mixed. The controller is the only real up side I can see so far. It feels really good to me, just as good as the DC\'s or PS2\'s. I don\'t like the spacing (or lack there of...) in between the buttons on the right hand of the controller. to hard to hit multiple buttons without hitting others you do not want.
The system is HEAVY! I thought I was picking up my 2 year old laptop up when I placed it into the stand.
The startup screen is pretty weak as X-Box just flashes on the screen....followed by the microsoft logo when it reads the game.
However if you just mash the reset button on the display setup about 20 times really fast, you can sometimes get an alternate screen with green floating goo that molds into that same logo. It\'s kind of random I guess...
The Demo (for those of you interested in playing) is IMO horrible. If Microsoft wanted to show off something with this system in the form of impressing people they did a really bad job. There are like 15 games on the disk with only ONE, you heard right ONE, being playable, that being Oddworld. All the other games on the disk are just movies...low quality movies at that. It looks like they took 320x280 MPEG\'s and streched them to 640x480 (maybe a little exaggeration), but in other words not something to show off.
Im just going to ramble all the ones I can remember
Dead Or Alive 3
Halo
NFL Fever
Madden 2002
Nightcaster
Cel Damage
Bloodwake
Gotham Street Racer
Nascar Thunder 2002
Oddworld (Video Form)
EVO Off-Road 2
Shrek
NHL Hitz 2002
Amped
Out of all those games the only videos that were worth my time were Halo, Cel damage (that game just looks neat), Bloodwake, and Nascar Thunder 2002 (only because they play Sweet Home Alabama in the backround
). The Dead or Alive movie just looked horrible IMO. The way they shook the camara around made that game look like it was at 20 fps.
The actual demo of Oddworld is ok, but involves going around and picking up green orbs....thats it! no fighting bad guys, no doing really cool jumps and tricks....just collect goo. Sure you get to drink soda or something to make your guy go faster and climb hills, but that is really nothing special. You can also switch to Munch the hopping frog and collect the goo around the water pond! WOW! To add to all this joy you have a demo that really needed some graphic polish. I hope this is just an early demo....like demo from 4 monthes ago because this build doesnt come close to GT3/Metal Gear Solid graphics that they are promising. Hell, with the exception of the nice looking particle effects, this demo doesn\'t even beat Sonic Adventure
ONE! (I\'m not saying that Sonic 1 looked bad, it\'s just that I expected more from a system with a modified GeForce 3 in it and roughly 4 times the processing power of the Dreamcast....)
However I know you guys are all tired of reading so I will digress...
I\'m disappointed
