Well, I guess that it all now starts becoming a question of trade-offs.
Kinect/no Kinect? Do I get the 250 GB before the Kinect, or can I squeak by on 4 GB? What accessories should I be buying? Heck, what GAMES should I be buying? …And, of course: thank you, for everybody who has participated, or is planning to. It means a lot.
do NOT GET THE 4GB. You will *want* the 250GB – if for no other reason than installing the games to HDD will speed up performance a lot.
Kinect *might* be a nice to have but ONLY if you have the living room space for it to work correctly. Check the support docs on xbox.com for guidance.
When it comes to games, do you only want games that aren’t on PC?
HBR: I heard that Fable 3 is a lot more playable on the Xbox than the PC: that’s more or less what my criteria are going to be.
I *adored* Fable 2, but Fable 3? A disappointment.
Take a look at Red Dead Redemption (kind of like a Western GTA, but even better), Borderlands 2 (out tomorrow, a crazy, funny coop shooter), and I think the entire Halo series is worth it just for the story, characters & lore.
oh, and if you want to play any coop games, or even dabble in MP, you’ll need a Xbox Live Gold card. Theoretically $60/yr, you can with patience find it on sale for $35-40 sooner or later.
Kinect? Really? Have you seen yourself lately? Or is that for the kids?
BG5: Hey, man, maybe I’d like to lose some weight. 🙂 I’m already walking an hour a day, ferrying the kid to and from school.
The Kinect is good for party games. Simple to learn, fun to play, no real intellectual or emotional involvement. My kids love ours, but I don’t use it much. (I do occasionally get sucked in to a game of Fruit Ninja, and really have to get around to finishing Gunstringer.)
I don’t do co-op games, and I get netflix through Roku, so XBox gold has no value to me. As you ignore the option longer and longer, MS tries bigger and bigger carrots to try and lure you in. They’re currently offering it to me at $2/month for “the first three months, cancel any time”.
All the available DLC makes a larger HD useful. On the flipside, flash drives are dirt cheap and easily configured to be used instead of the larger HD.
I’ll write about games when I have time.
You’ll blow through 4GB of DLC with just a couple of games. You can always get the kinect later.
Also, you get a free month of Gold membership, and they regularly offer another month for $1, so that’s not something you have to decide right away.
Games to get (assuming you don’t have a gamer PC mind): Dragon Age Origins (Ultimate Edition), Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect, Fable 3 (note: Fable: The Lost Chapters for XBOX is still worth playing if you have never done so). Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Note: All of the above come in under $20 each, sometimes much less.
I obviously have a love of RPGs and like to do more than Run & Gun through levels. If you want nothing but a shooter, the above will not satisfy.
from what I have heard, Kinect has some good fitness “games” for exercise purposes, but finding good *games* is much harder. Voice control for Skyrim is pretty cool, though.
Games… At the beginning, you’re going to have to learn muscle memory for the controller. The more complicated the game, the steeper the learning curve is going to be. Assassin’s Creed or Batman:AA are good entry points because their basic controls.
Of those mentioned by others…
Red Dead Redemption is good. I liked it. That said, the game does have have some issues. The control scheme is wonky (for example, engaging bullet-time aiming involves pulling the left trigger and then clicking the right joystick). There were some things about the story and characterizations (especially towards the end) that I didn’t especially like. Elaborating verges on spoilers, though. I don’t see it as having much replay potential.
Dragon Age: Origins is a PC game. It’s meant to be played with a mouse. The console port was somewhat less than completely successful. I’d highly recommend for the PC. For the XBox… Not so much. Great setting, though.
Batman:AA It’s one of the better games for the XBox. Play it, you’ll like it. The only downside is one “just kill him already!” moment early in the game that would have spared a great deal of death and destruction if you’d have been able to act on it. But Batman doesn’t do that. (At least, most versions of Batman don’t, including this one.) Batman:AC isn’t nearly as good. It has some great moments, but isn’t very cohesive. The central plot has gaping holes. Lots of the game is filler.
You’re already a fan of Mass Effect, so I don’t need to gush.
Bioshock is a must. Sure, it’s a linear FPS, but great world, great atmosphere, great moments, good story. (Avoid Bioshock 2.)
Left 4 Dead. Not much story (actually 4 separate stories, more if you count DLC) but lots of fun. Good atmosphere. Good mechanics. Fight zombies.
Dead Space, horror in space. It’s very good. Great atmosphere. Don’t play it when the kids are around.
Brutal Legend. It’s part fighting game, part rhythm game, part strategy game, part cart racer, and does none of them particularly well. But it still somehow works. It runs on distilled Rule of Cool and is unadulterated fun. (Not to mention a great soundtrack.)
Pure. Race ATVs and preform physics-defying stunts. It’s unusually addictive.
Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing is a good cart racer. My kids love it.
Fallout 3/Fallout New Vegas. NV is the better game with the better story. 3 has more going on that’s not related to the central story. NV has tough moral decisions. (3 has a morality meter, but difficult moral quandaries are few and far between.)
Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed 2 are both good. (2 is the better game.) I’m not so much a fan of Brotherhood and Revelations.
Alpha Protocol is a cult classic. Great setting. Great story. Tough moral decisions. Glitches galore. Quirky mechanics. (The best combat skill is Pistol. By far.) Your handlers and informants are unreliable, and don’t necessarily have your best interests at heart. Bosses and situations that are not even remotely fair. Practically mandatory replayability (to have a solid handle on all the NPCs and their agendas really takes three playthroughs–and if you aren’t paranoid, you may never find out that “secrets” you’ve painstakingly uncovered are just another false front being used to gain your confidence).
I like Conan. Yes, it’s cheesy. It’s also lots of fun. It’s one of several God of War knockoffs for the XBox. (The most famous one is Darksiders, which I did not at all like.)