Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Xbox (one)

I've been meaning to write about my initial impressions of the Xbox One for some time now. It has taken me a while to get my thoughts about the console together. Part of this was really the lack of software available for the machine and getting enough seat time with it to form any sort of coherent opinion. Keep in mind that it is still early days for this current generation of consoles, and my opinions are more than likely to change, but I, like everyone else on the Internet, am prone to hyperbole and rash decisions that I will not admit to after six months. Some of my gadget lust got the better of me and I purchased the Xbox at launch rather than waiting until now when a savvy buyer can get the console for $50 less than I did with a game (arguably the one I was most excited to play on the system in the launch window) thrown in.

All that said I during the days before launch I did debate between getting the One and the PS4. I'm not sure what got me to make the decision I did. I've owned a PS1, 2 and 3 over the years, I got the PS1 midway ('97 or '98) through its cycle after having gone away from consoles for a while, and I got a PS2 as close to launch as I could which was very difficult to find at the time, but most of the game playing went to the original Xbox as soon as most games started coming out on both platforms. During this last generation my leaning was far more 360 than PS3. I did end up getting the PS3 when the slim came out but I've only played a handful of games on it and I've used it primarily as a Blu-Ray player then to play Uncharted, Demon's Souls, and Borderlands. Not a screaming endorsement, plus I vastly preferred the 360 controller to the Dualshock 3, I realize that the Dualshock 4 is an improvement but I really think I prefer the offset analog sticks to the ones next to each other. I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of the One's controller but I've really not played enough games on it tell if the differences are in any way significant. With all this preamble I'm going to get on to my observations to date:

Television Viewing Redefined(?):

I used this like twice just to play with it, also Bob's Burgers is awesome you should watch it.

So far the thing I've used my Xbox One the most for is to watch TV. I've only 4 HDMI inputs on my home theater receiver, and at the time I purchased the Xbox One, HDMI 1 was the TiVo, 2 was the 360, 3 was the PS3, and 4 was my HTPC (I'll get more into the HTPC later). So with all my receiver ports taken I figured the One would be much easier to integrate into my setup than the PS4 for which I would have to take something out. The TiVo went into the One and I "programmed" them to talk to each other. This did a bunch of things but only a few of them were of significance to me with the positives being:

• I can say "Xbox Pause" and "Xbox Play" while I'm watching shows. I'm not sure how much other people get up and do things while they're watching a show but I might a lot. I might be watching TV while doing the dishes or laundry want to get up and do things, the ability to issue these commands with my voice is kind of cool, saying "Xbox Pause," is easier than grabbing the remote while wandering off to the mirror, I know its stupid, but honestly that's the most I've used this feature.
• Again the voice commands being able to switch through other viewing apps. Being able to say "Xbox go to Netflix" or "Xbox go to Amazon Instant Video" is pretty cool then being able to navigate those programs through voice is pretty handy, or unhandy, har har har.
• I guess the idea of being able to see when a friend is playing a game I want to play or get an invite to a game is kind of cool, the only time it has happened for me I had company over otherwise I would have joined in.

There are some negatives to the whole Xbox as an entertainment portal:

• It makes using the entertainment system that much more complicated. I'm usually the only one who uses it but showing the folks how to use it. ("Ummm... how do you turn the TV on") took a little bit but after that they thought the voice control was awesome, so I'm not sure where that falls.
• You have to have the Xbox on to watch television, which means to watch TV I've got my TiVo, receiver, Xbox and screen on. I'm usually not a super greeny when it comes to stuff like this but when I type it out like that it does maybe seem a bit excessive.
• The voice and guide options aren't useful other than what I've already pointed out. My TiVo already has a guide built into it which works better than the one in the Xbox. The voice commands would be a lot more useful if they were able to select and play recorded videos but it can't. It also keeps hearing "resume TV" as "Watch MTV," and thus thinks MTV is one of my favorite stations. I wasn't that into MTV when I was part of their target demographic.

The Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu Plus apps all seem to work pretty well and are pretty easily navigable by voice. Worth noting Netflix is probably the worst as far as the voice controls are concerned. Instead of saying the name of the show you want to see, it wants inputs like "Xbox Select Item 1," I'm sure they will patch it to get better at some point. Also worth pointing out is that there are 0G achievements associated with all these apps which is kind of... weird.

In Search of the Killer App:

I would recommend against this. Unless it's free, and even then it isn't necessarily a good deal.

So win any new video game platform the biggest and most important question is what games are on it that you want to play. This is perhaps where my early purchase was far too hasty. So far I've bought 5 games for the system,Forza Motorsport 5,Battlefield 4, Halo: Spartan Assault,Titanfall, and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. None of them are the killer app that you absolutely need to go get a One for. So I'll go through my quick thoughts on each one.

Forza Motorsport 5:

Always love the inclusion of cool rally cars.

I've always liked driving games. The whole reason I got a PS1 was for the first Gran Turismo. I enjoy the ones that have a simulator bend but not necessarily whole on simulators like iDriving though I haven't tried that so I shouldn't say that I wouldn't like it. Previously the Forza series has seemed to get a nice blend of fun and simishness with the ratio getting closest to the entertainment ideal in Forza Horizon. I figured I would like the latest installment and it would be a good launch title to get. True I did like the game and it did some cool stuff with the rumble triggers which I do think got me some better lap times but it falls apart as I get to the higher end cars for me where the limits of the car probably exceed my driving ability. I got my Caterham 7 souped it up and was not able to control it. I kind of stopped playing shortly after that. Other drawbacks is that the game was kind of lousy with micro-transactions, the menus took forever to load in and you were forced to go through way too many of them to get to where you wanted to go (to get to the main menu after a race you have to go to the next race then exit to the menu which means two load screens). The drivatars kind of suck by which I mean they drive like assholes constantly crashing into you making it impossible to pass unless you do the same. Though it is kind of cool seeing your friends list even when playing single player. There also don't seem to be as many cars as previous games. I remember that they did have the Porsche liscense in at least one previous iteration that I had which meant I couldn't build my firebreathing undriveable 914 in this version. All in all okay but could be a lot better, and hopefully the next title in the series will hew closer to previous versions than what they came out with this time which feels largely rushed and unfinished. Oh yea and the lack of any licensed music kind of sucked. I'm not against orchestral music at all but in driving games I need something to rock out to.

Battlefield 4:

This is what BF4 is supposed to be like.

So my fun with Forza running out I figured I could Battlefield might be kind of fun. It is, however the broken state in which the game shipped did diminish some of my fun with it. Frequent crashes, single player progress not saving, not being able to find matches. I'm also not terribly good at these games the last time I played battlefield was during the original and everyone else has gotten better at them than I have.

A cool feature of the game is that it makes a little recording every time you rank up which you can then upload to your Microsoft Skydrive and then do what you want with. Sometimes these moments might even be something you're proud of.

Again, my excitement for the game which I was never too excited about waned and I was looking for other stuff. It could probably have held my attention longer had there been fewer bugs and it were easier to get into matches.

Halo: Spartan Assault:

I thought this would be a fun dual joystick shooter set in the Halo universe. It is a dual joystick shooter.

Titanfall:

This is probably the game that I've gotten the most excited about on the One. It was originally meant to be an exclusive but they decided to release it on PC as well. My online gaming skills are not at the point where I want to be playing against other people with mouse and keyboard. I'm much more comfortable doing my competitive (a term I use loosely when it comes to my playing) FPS action. I also don't like using the Origin service. I've had a lot of fun with it and it looks great. I'm not great at it but the traversal mechanics make you feel pretty awesome doing all the parkour moves with the jetpack. Also who doesn't love giant robots?

I used Titanfall to test out the Xbox Ones built in Twitch streaming which launched around the same time. It's super easy to set up and it looks pretty decent, I'm not sure why but I think the transfer to YouTube didn't fare so well.

I'm probably going to play some more of this but I am more excited about Dark Souls, which I'm going to get back to I swear.

Next Generation?

With how far PC gaming has come during the previous generation of gaming systems with the universality of controller support, the Steam marketplace and ease of integration into a home theater setup I hadn't really used my 360 or PS3 for much of anything except platform exclusives for the past couple years. When it comes for upcoming games I'll still keep getting the PC version if it is available there unless of course that version is horribly optimized or takes too long to come out.

Games currently on the horizon that I'm excited about and the platforms I'll probably play them on

• Star Citizen - PC (I'm probably going to have a post or two about this soon)
• Witcher 3 - PC
• Watch Dogs - PC
• Destiny - One (I'm a big Bungie fan and would love to stream out some Aleph One especially if some internet multiplayer could be had).
• The Division - One (The concept behind this seems really cool as far as I can tell but it's too far out to tell for sure).

Those are the big ones I can think of at the moment. I'm sure there will be others out, I'm also super hyped for the Oculus Rift which is only going to be on the PC.

So was the purchase worth it? Maybe, but probably not at this point unless you really want to play Titanfall or Dead Rising 3 it might be worth it to wait for a good deal. There have already been a few one the system and I'm sure there will be more to come.