I’ve been with my new, shiny Xbox One for a couple of days now and I still can’t get over how massive it is. I was forced to add new furniture just so the Xbox One can sit comfortably; this of course has made my PlayStation 4 incessantly jealous.
I find the design of the hardware to be quite puzzling. There are vents virtually everywhere and a really big one right smack on top that can probably fry an egg or two, effectively.
The controller is as bulky as the original Xbox 360 pad but it’s much sleeker and fits comfortably in my hands. Although after a few days of playing, I must say the Dualshock 4 remains far superior. Booting up the Xbox One for the first time made it feel like Christmas morning. I say this because I used to own an Xbox 360 long before I ever ventured into Sony’s impossibly expensive hardware last generation, so I feel a sense of kinship with the Xbox brand and the games it had.
I threw away my old gamertag and started anew (you can find my gamertag at the end of this piece), an experience I quite enjoyed that involved customizing backgrounds and making an avatar.
Since I had gotten the ubiquitous Master Chief Collection, Halo was the first game that graced my console.
I am not a fan of the Windows 8 style tile design on the Xbox One’s dashboard, it’s super cluttered and unnecessarily busy which makes me appreciate even more the simplicity and immediacy of the PlayStation 4’s interface. I do like the option of pinning certain apps that I often use and the snap option is really neat but there are a lot of folders within folders within folders that can get really annoying.
The Master Chief Collection would probably make a lot of people’s list for “Worst Performing Remastered Award” because of its horrid launch and its continuing issues, but I’ve fortunately haven’t run into many hiccups. I’ve been having a blast with Halo 4’s multiplayer and its frenetically-paced shootouts. I used to play a lot of Halo 3 multiplayer back when I owned an Xbox 360 so this felt like a natural progression for me and I felt right at home with the sticks.
I’ve had some really memorable matches already in the few days I’ve had the game and it’s making me want Halo 5: Guardians more and more every day. The thing is, I wish I could uninstall the other Halo games and keep Halo 4 as it’s a massive 60 gig install which is ridiculous if I’m only playing one of the four games. I instantly purchased 3-months of Xbox Live Gold and downloaded some of the free offerings on Games with Gold. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag and Massive Chalice were the ones available to me. Massive Chalice was a relentless bore and we all know how great AC4 was, so I’ve been jumping in and out of that pirate world just for kicks.
I’m really stoked for Gears of War: Ultimate Edition which launches on August 25th. I have the feeling that it’ll rekindle memories of playing the first Gears game on Xbox 360. At the time of this writing, Gears of War 3 has been offered as a free game for Xbox 360 so here’s to hoping Microsoft adds it to the growing list of backward compatible games.
But so far, my experience with the Xbox One has been fairly positive and I don’t regret the purchase one bit.
The best way to experience this generation of gaming is by having both of these consoles – PlayStation 4 and Xbox One – and it’s only going to get better from here on out.
(Gamertag: King Victorian)
