The XBOX 360 and the Landlord
As planned I saw the landlord yesterday and got to play with his brand new toy: the xbox360.
I did my part of the deal and showed up with some beers, FOUR burgers patties, and some cheese and a bag of buns. His parents were in town having fun with the baby, so we sat on the deck and sip beer and chat while he flipped the burgers. My master plan was ruined because his mom wanted a burger too (his dad decline maybe because he knew about my appetite) so I end up eating only one and half burgers (I split the other one with the landlord. . . I'm such a nice guy).
So the time came to go and check out the xbox but instead of jumping into the action right away, I had to endure a fifteen-minute presentation of WHAT the xbox is all about. He works for MSoft so of course he had to give me the whole introduction and all the tired lines about how great MSoft is and how they're gona rule the world for ever.
Summarizing his presentation in a couple of lines, the xbox is really not a game platform: is a complete entertainment center (whatever). As it is wireless, it connects to every other wireless stuff in the house and allows you to do whatever you want through the xbox: play videos, see pictures, download games/trailers/demos from the Inet, and so on and so forth (whatever). You can do so many things with that console that it sounds like a Swiss Army Knife, but plugged to the wall and wireless (whatever). He went on and on saying that in order to "entertain" yourself, everyone in the planet will eventually have an xbox or something on those very same lines in their living room (whatever dude, let's play the fucking games!).
It was actually very interesting to ear him talk about that because he's perhaps one of the most intelligent person I've ever met in my life. His capacity to absorb information, memorize it and explain it to you making you exited about it is amazing. And if your house looks like a BestBuy store like his, and if you sit in front of the TV/computer for many hours a day, it makes a lot of sense. I know that he could've end up running MSoft one day, but as I told him yesterday, he's too much of a "plain-speaker dude" and smokes "too much weed" to realize it. He smiled to me like saying "who told you I want start wearing neck ties motherfucker?".
His "you should buy an xbox360 too" presentation was cut short because the baby was crying, the wife was somewhere shopping and the parents couldn't find the pacifier and didn't know what to do with the baby. So I got to dive into the action and play!
The big fuzz about this new console is the graphics, which are pretty cool and everything looks shiny and new and more real; but PC games have been at that level many-many years ago. I got to play Perfect Dark Zero (a FPS -first person shooter game) which looks nice, but for me is impossible to play that kind of games with a comptroller, it has to be done with a mouse and a keyboard. And again, PC games look as good as that if not better (think that just a kick-ass video card for a PC can cost three times as much as the xbox, so you get the idea).
The other game I played was Project Gotham (racing) where I had a ton of fun. The game itself is pretty decent and the cars look super-fancy and realistic and blah blah blah. The game itself is fun but is not AWESOME, it doesn't rise your heart rate and definitely you don't get that adrenaline rush going through your body that you experience with a game like Burnout 3 Revenge. In PGotham the speedometer may say that you're going at 160 mph, but you don't really feel it; and if you hit the wall of an L shape turn at that speed, as I did, and the car gets some minor scratches, you know that they still have to work on it. In other words, sit behind the steering wheel of a Burnout 3 car, and you'll never look back.
But the funniest part of the xbox it is the LIVE mode, where you can play against people in the real world. You just select LIVE and different options appear of how you want to play (this console was designed for mentally challenged people, so it is soooo easy to operate). I choose a random race, put a little ear plug that comes together with a microphone, and started racing other people around "the world". That was a ton of fun because you can even talk to people! It may sound like if I'm a geek locked in a basement, but is the kind of things that you have to experience to really understand and enjoy.
Several hours later I got hungry again, got cramps on my hands from holding and operating the comptroller, and just got tired of racing people, smashing against walls, and being rammed by people that just don't know how to drive and how to respect traffic signs! A couple of brawls erupted over the little "intercom" due to someone either crashing someone else or me driving on the opposite direction of the track hitting people head-on. . . hahaha! Hey, the goal is to have fun, isn't it?
I don't want to say that I've out grown a gaming console, but a more rational explanation is that I don't have the patience to sit for hours and hours at a time practicing and perfectioning my skills in a game like I used to do -once upon a time. I just like to play maybe once in a while for the fun of it.
I did my part of the deal and showed up with some beers, FOUR burgers patties, and some cheese and a bag of buns. His parents were in town having fun with the baby, so we sat on the deck and sip beer and chat while he flipped the burgers. My master plan was ruined because his mom wanted a burger too (his dad decline maybe because he knew about my appetite) so I end up eating only one and half burgers (I split the other one with the landlord. . . I'm such a nice guy).
So the time came to go and check out the xbox but instead of jumping into the action right away, I had to endure a fifteen-minute presentation of WHAT the xbox is all about. He works for MSoft so of course he had to give me the whole introduction and all the tired lines about how great MSoft is and how they're gona rule the world for ever.
Summarizing his presentation in a couple of lines, the xbox is really not a game platform: is a complete entertainment center (whatever). As it is wireless, it connects to every other wireless stuff in the house and allows you to do whatever you want through the xbox: play videos, see pictures, download games/trailers/demos from the Inet, and so on and so forth (whatever). You can do so many things with that console that it sounds like a Swiss Army Knife, but plugged to the wall and wireless (whatever). He went on and on saying that in order to "entertain" yourself, everyone in the planet will eventually have an xbox or something on those very same lines in their living room (whatever dude, let's play the fucking games!).
It was actually very interesting to ear him talk about that because he's perhaps one of the most intelligent person I've ever met in my life. His capacity to absorb information, memorize it and explain it to you making you exited about it is amazing. And if your house looks like a BestBuy store like his, and if you sit in front of the TV/computer for many hours a day, it makes a lot of sense. I know that he could've end up running MSoft one day, but as I told him yesterday, he's too much of a "plain-speaker dude" and smokes "too much weed" to realize it. He smiled to me like saying "who told you I want start wearing neck ties motherfucker?".
His "you should buy an xbox360 too" presentation was cut short because the baby was crying, the wife was somewhere shopping and the parents couldn't find the pacifier and didn't know what to do with the baby. So I got to dive into the action and play!
The big fuzz about this new console is the graphics, which are pretty cool and everything looks shiny and new and more real; but PC games have been at that level many-many years ago. I got to play Perfect Dark Zero (a FPS -first person shooter game) which looks nice, but for me is impossible to play that kind of games with a comptroller, it has to be done with a mouse and a keyboard. And again, PC games look as good as that if not better (think that just a kick-ass video card for a PC can cost three times as much as the xbox, so you get the idea).
The other game I played was Project Gotham (racing) where I had a ton of fun. The game itself is pretty decent and the cars look super-fancy and realistic and blah blah blah. The game itself is fun but is not AWESOME, it doesn't rise your heart rate and definitely you don't get that adrenaline rush going through your body that you experience with a game like Burnout 3 Revenge. In PGotham the speedometer may say that you're going at 160 mph, but you don't really feel it; and if you hit the wall of an L shape turn at that speed, as I did, and the car gets some minor scratches, you know that they still have to work on it. In other words, sit behind the steering wheel of a Burnout 3 car, and you'll never look back.
But the funniest part of the xbox it is the LIVE mode, where you can play against people in the real world. You just select LIVE and different options appear of how you want to play (this console was designed for mentally challenged people, so it is soooo easy to operate). I choose a random race, put a little ear plug that comes together with a microphone, and started racing other people around "the world". That was a ton of fun because you can even talk to people! It may sound like if I'm a geek locked in a basement, but is the kind of things that you have to experience to really understand and enjoy.
Several hours later I got hungry again, got cramps on my hands from holding and operating the comptroller, and just got tired of racing people, smashing against walls, and being rammed by people that just don't know how to drive and how to respect traffic signs! A couple of brawls erupted over the little "intercom" due to someone either crashing someone else or me driving on the opposite direction of the track hitting people head-on. . . hahaha! Hey, the goal is to have fun, isn't it?
I don't want to say that I've out grown a gaming console, but a more rational explanation is that I don't have the patience to sit for hours and hours at a time practicing and perfectioning my skills in a game like I used to do -once upon a time. I just like to play maybe once in a while for the fun of it.
Jean-Francois was drunk at 10:49 PM
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