I finally touched the 360 controller. I read on the net that the Smyrna Walmart had a demo unit so I went to check it out and sure enough there it was all by it's lonesome. I don't know if you guys have ever paid in attention to the walmart demo units but they put the tv above your head so you have to look up the entire time. This led to neck strain which is part of the reason I didn't stick around too long playing. The other reason I didn't stay was because I had already played two of the demos on my PC.
Kameo, Call of Duty 2, King King and Hexic HD were the playable demos, they also had a lot of movies but the ones I watched (PGR3 and NFSMW) were the old E3 trailers. I played Kameo first, it looked good, not great but some aspects of it were pretty impressive like the textures. No matter how close you got to an object the texture detail held up, non of the blurry texture crap from this gen. What really hindered the games looks was the aliasing. This was a problem in all games, it was not as bad in Kameo as it was in King Kong but it was definitely noticable. You could switch between 3 forms, the fuzzy guy with the spikes on his back, the armadillo dude, and the boxing plant. I'd say the fuzzy guy was the most fun to play, picking up the trolls and sticking them on back, impaling them with the spikes was very satisfying. Once they are on your back you can throw or use them as weapons, beating other trolls with them. I had as many as 3 trolls on my back at one point. The armadillo guy could roll up into a ball which was useful for getting up ramps and traveling through corridors metroid style. He could also launch himself into enemies and perform a cyclone move, basically moving in a circle very fast. The plant was cool too though I didn't use him much. I didn't finsh the demo because I died and didn't want to start all over so I went to the next game, Call of Duty 2.
Right of the bat I can tell you that this game looked better on my PC, again the main thing that was holding it back was the aliasing. The textures were not up to Kameo standards either. I didn't play much of this since I've already played through the whole thing three times. Play the PC demo, add a little aliasing and you have the 360 version.
Then I played King Kong. I wasn't all that impressed with it on the PC so I wasn't expecting much from the 360 version and I was right. I guess the light and fog looked a little better as well as King Kong himself but the difference was minor.
The last thing I played was Hexic HD (internet explorer only). It was just hexic on a console but I can see my self spending some time with this and other arcade games, kicking back listening to my custom soundtracks and playing casual games. The achievements should add to the replay value too.
The controller itself felt great, I couldn't get to the upper shoulder buttons like I wanted to because of the thing Walmart was using to hold it. That white conroller thing is going to be filthy in a few weeks.The console looks just as great in person as it does in pics. It was laying horizontally behind the glass with the games. Even though they didn't have the stand alone kiosk they still have the memory unit port for downloading content. You couldn't really check out any of the multimedia features. You would think they'd have some music, pictures and movies on the system to see how it all works but all you get is a summary of the features.
Even though I wasn't all that impressed with what I saw I still can't wait to get one. Maybe it was hooked up to a crappy monitor? I was too close to the monitor? Anti-aliasing wasn't enabled in the demo? I don't know but I was expecting more visually. I have no doubt that the final games will look great but the setup at Walmart needed some work.