Long ago in the mists of time where lies the year 2002, I
happened to be at a relative’s house for a Christmas family get together. My
cousins were all upstairs, playing four player on Halo: Combat Evolved on the
Microsoft Xbox. Being a PC player living in the middle of nowhere with terrible
internet access, I rarely got the chance to play with more than one other
person (and that was only if the network between our two computers was in a
good mood).
I’d played console multiplayer plenty of times in before
on Nintendo 64s, Playstations, SNES’ and NES’, but never owned one as parental
logic dictated I didn’t need one as I had a computer. At 16 as I was that year,
I had my own money to buy a games console and took advantage of the slightly
clueless Woolworths to get an Xbox with three games (Blinx: The Time Sweeper
(which was rubbish), Sega GT 2002 (which was ok) and Jet Set Radio Future
(which was awesome)).
Through Halo, Crimson Skies, Ninja Gaiden, Project Gotham
Racing, Rallisport Challenge, Amped, Conker Live & Reloaded (a good port if
you only play the single player), Dead or Alive Ultimate, Jade Empire,
MechAssault, Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus (a pretty cool beat ‘em up), Splinter
Cell and Unreal Championship 2, I came to love Microsoft’s black block and with
the Xbox 360 bringing fantastic games such as Kameo: Elements of Power, Lost
Odyssey, Mass Effect, Gears of War and Shadow Complex to name but a few, it
seemed the X marked the spot for greatness.
Fast forward to 2013 with the release of the Xbox One and
I’ve only got one major thought in my mind: What on earth happened?
The Xbox One is Microsoft’s third video game system,
which sounds confusing enough after the original Xbox and the Xbox 360. Since
it’s reveal in March 2013, plenty of things have changed and we could spend hours
going over it all, but for now we’ll just look at the system as it is.
And bloody hell, anything good they learnt from the Xbox
360 seems to have been thrown to the wind. While it’s not a terrible system, it
seems Microsoft made a misstep on pretty much every element of it, starting
with its size.
The original Xbox wasn’t small, though the people
laughing like idiots over the fact were usually oblivious to the fact the
Playstation 2 wasn’t that much smaller or any more appealing to look at (not
that you stare at the system while playing like Sony Fanboys seem to). The Xbox
360 was a decent looking machine that was well designed to fit into plenty of
spaces, even if the power brick was ridiculous.
The Xbox One, on the other hand, seems to have gone back
to its roots with a pretty big black block that can only be placed
horizontally. The front sports touch sensitive On and Eject buttons and disc
slot, with a single USB hidden on the side for some weird reason, as if the
sight of a USB port is horrible and unsightly on the minimalist front.
Around the back is a different story with plenty of
ports, including the usual power, HDMI out, Ethernet if you want to wire it to
the internet and a dedicated port for the Kinect, which is the Xbox One’s
biggest feature.
I didn’t bother with the Kinect for Xbox 360, but I could
see some benefit in bundling it with the Xbox One. After all, with the device
included with every system there’s more reason for game developers to utilise
it, even though there aren’t many at launch.
The camera and microphones in the Kinect can be used to
navigate around much of the main system, including quickly going to particular
apps and even turning the system on if it’s only in standby (the feature
doesn’t work if you turn it fully off at the wall). The camera can also sign a
user in through facial recognition and, if several players are logged in,
determine who’s playing as you pass the controller around. Fortunately, you don’t
need the Kinect to be plugged in, unlike how the system was originally
announced.
The Xbox One’s regular control has undergone a few
updates to attempt to improve upon the pretty much best controller there is in
the Xbox 360 controller. It’s noticeably different and is a slight improvement,
which isn’t noticeable until you go back to the Xbox 360 controller after a
while. The triggers are wider and have a built in rumble which works well on
games such as Forza 5 and the d-pad has undergone a much needed improvement,
though I’m not as much of a fan of the shoulder buttons which now feel overly
stiff in comparison, but don’t require as much finger movement to hit them.
The system also comes with a Blu-ray drive built in, so
if you really must you can watch films on the Xbox One as well, giving it voice
commands to pause, play, fast forwards and so on. The design works but I still
find it easier to reach for a remote control.
Once the system is turned on, you see how much of an odd
step backwards Microsoft has taken with the system’s main user interface. The overabundance
of adverts is gone, which is a relief, but the pages are as ‘generalized’ as
possible. Opening the ‘Games’ part of the store pretty much lumps all the most
recent content in front of you in no real logical order, which made it
difficult for me to find something as simple as the ‘Demoes’ page on the first
look.
To start with, the ‘Games and Apps’ page had all the
games and applications you have installed on your system in one long list, but
has since been updated to at least separate the two, as well as including a
welcome download/install queue.
Speaking of a download/install queue, the concept of
simply inserting a disc and playing a game immediately seems to have been
pushed under the carpet. Likely as part of the now removed DRM system the Xbox
One originally had when it was announced, the system has to install the game to
its 500gb hard drive, but not just a portion of the game to make it load
faster, it installs the entire thing. The annoyance of waiting is elevated
slightly as you can start playing at roughly the 30% point of the installation,
but with these games coming on Blu-ray it means your 500gb hard drive could be
filled up very quickly.
What’s more disappointing then annoying is the Xbox Guide
menu’s gone. Previously, you’d press the ‘guide’ button in the centre of the
control to get a number of quick options and windows. But on the Xbox One, when
you press the guide button, the game or ‘app’ you’re using sinks into the main
page of the User Interface. So if you want to look at any Achievements you
unlock, the system ‘shrinks’ the game you’re playing and then opens what seems
to be another app to show your Achievements, which needs to load the
information for a few moments before telling you what you just achieved, a
considerably step back next to a simple window opening up and telling you
pretty much straight away.
The final major disappointment is that, besides your
existing Gamertag and Achievement score, nothing from the Xbox 360 can be transferred
or played on the Xbox One. Other annoyances from the Xbox 360 that do carry
over, however, include the requirement to be subscribed to Xbox Live to use
applications like Skype and Lovefilm, which is completely pointless when every
other system that uses those lets you do so without an additional cost.
One of the features Microsoft went on about for ages was
the non-descript ‘power of the cloud’, which is apparently amazing but can’t be
comprehended by mortal men or even Microsoft who never had a description for
it. Out of the few games I’ve played on the system so far, Forza Motorsport 5’s
the only one that made use of it and I have to say, it was pretty cool.
Rather than regular AI drivers, the game uses something
called Drivertars to determine how offline opponents behaves, making them drive
more erratically, smoothly, aggressively or cunningly depending on how the
player the Drivertar was generated by drives. This generation is automatic as
the system watches how you drive and tailors the Drivertar accordingly, which
is pretty cool as it means you have a set of opponents who aren’t easily
predictable and don’t stick to silly predetermined driving rules or brake on
corners the driving line insists should be slowed for but don’t need to be.
The heavy use of online continues in games such as Killer
Instinct and Titanfall. Killer Instinct is, in theory, a ‘free to play’ game
with a single playable fighter available when you first download the game
(which changes from time to time). You can buy additional fights individually
or pay £15 for all six current fighters and two more in future, as well as a
story mode.
Titanfall is a six versus six shoot ‘em up designed by
the guys who created Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (the only one in the series
I actually enjoyed). Set in the future, the teams do battle while wall jumping
around the surprisingly spacious and fun to explore maps while utilising
slightly futurised modern weapons and huge robots called ‘Titans’. It’s similar
to Mechassault, if on a smaller scale with a tilt towards twitch shooting but
has no traditional single player. To my knowledge, there’s a story behind the
game but if you don’t want to play online, then Titanfall has little to offer
you.
The other games I’ve tried include Dead Rising 3, which
is as insane as its predecessors, and Crimson Dragon, which is a spiritual
successor to Sega’s Panzar Dragoon series, with aiming and dragon movement separated
onto different control sticks and quite a lot of grinding in order to get a
good enough dragon to progress through the game.
So there’s the Xbox One. It’s odd as there’s nothing that
really grabs me about the Xbox One now I have the thing. It’s not a massive
step forwards and feels like it wants to cover every possible entertainment
base, rather than be the best games console it can be. There’s good and
interesting things about the system, but for now (especially with its price
point of £425) it’s not really worth it. Best really to get a Wii U to sit
beside your existing Xbox 360 or PS3.
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