I’ve had the Xbox for a week now and it’s been taking up way too much of my time. Most of that time is spent playing GTAIV, slowly going through story mode while playing a bit of online along the way. The game still impresses the hell out of me. I did my first chopper mission the other day and the city just looks incredible from up high. It’s so much more atmospheric than previous versions, and much less repetative, if you repeat a mission, you don’t get the same dialog on the drive over if you are with a character and I’m yet to hear repetative speak from random pedestrians.

The Xbox community stuff is pretty cool, it connects to MSN messenger, you have a gamercard that you can view online showing your games played and acheivements gained from the game. The voice chat in online games is fun but of course you get lots of assholes and brat kids. The one thing I’m really looking forward to is the streaming media from my PC. At this point I can’t get it to work since my Xbox connects using a seperate subnet created by my Macbook. Next week I will be just sucking it up and getting a wireless adapter for it, since I’ve sussed out that with my Netgear DG834G ADSL Modem Router does not support the WDS settings that my Airport Express uses, which is very disappointing.

So the next step is to call up EB Games and see if I can trade in my double pack Wii Guitar Hero 3 setup for the Xbox equivalent, I assume I’ll have to pay a bit extra, if it’s too much I’ll sell it on ebay and then buy it, apparently the double pack is limited edition and it’s selling for a decent price on ebay. We’ll see.

I did that impulse thing today and bought myself an Xbox 360 along with a copy of GTAIV, I couldn’t resist any longer, I had to play it. Sure I’ll be poor for a fortnight but meh, I can handle it. I’ve never laid my hands on a 360 till I bought this thing tonight, never even held a controller, and was surprised at how good the controller felt, much better than the Playstation ones, moulds to your hands better.

Stupid me assumed the Xbox had built in WiFi, nope, it doesn’t, I wasn’t fussed, I’ve got an airport express just sitting beside it with an ethernet port just waiting to be used. Not quite as easy as it sounds, or should be. Apple are missing out on a very wanted feature out there and I can’t understand why it can’t function that way easily. I’m sure I’ll get it eventually, but for now, I’m using my laptop as a ethernet to wireless bridge, it will do for now.

The online features of the Xbox are impressive, lots of game demos etc, it had some demos and stuff preinstalled which I may get rid of, I eventually want to get some good arcade games and whatnot, along with GH3 downloadables when I eventually get it.

GTAIV is awesome, of course, I love the controls for driving, using the triggers for forwards and backwards, works like a charm. There’s so many little things in this game that make it awesome, I’m not going to bother to get into it, it’s just awesome, and I’m stoked with it. Online play is just amazing, I played just deathmatch and it’s complete nuts, being a noob I naturally got my ass kicked but I didn’t care, it’s just too much fun. One thing I noticed, even before I got the Xbox was that people seem to talk a hell of a lot more when playing online with it, with the PC people rarely talk, CSS they do a bit but no where near as much. I feel kinda weird talking on it, I haven’t talked that much on it since I was mainly playing some European guys and I couldn’t understand a single word they were saying, I’m sure I’ll get use to it in the future.

Anyhoo, my gamertag is Sebconn, so add me if you’re keen, I could probably keep playing another 6 hours but I do have to go to work unfortunately.

I’ve been playing a good chunk of Assassin’s Creed for the PC lately, great game, a bit repetitive but still good. If you like GTA, Parkhour and badass sword fights, you’ll like this game. One of the other cool things about it is the historical accuracy of it, a lot of the people you assassinate are real, the different armies are apparently accurate along with other things, I won’t babble on about it. Thankfully Chris Stubbs has written up a nice blog post on it, interesting read.

The setting for this game would make a great movie I reckon, although I think hollywood has issues with religious themed movies, which is disappointing.

I’ve been looking at GTAIV for a while now, half debating whether or not I should actually invest in an XBOX360 just for one game. The answer in my head has always been pffft, nah, you’ve already got a Wii console, plus it’ll be on the PC in a year. But I just read the IGN game review, it got a 10. IGN has not given a game a 10, in a full decade, that’s pretty insane. The video review got me pretty psyched too, the multiplayer just looks incredible.

So I’m fairly certain, in a fortnight or so once I’ve fixed my still broken Macbook, I will invest in a 360, just for this game, of course I will buy other games as well, can’t think of any right now though.

After a long wait I’ve finally bought myself Guitar Hero III. It’s been a tough one to get before christmas, sold out pretty much everywhere. But I was in a store last night and I saw it sitting there in a 2 guitar package for AU$169, which is a damn good price for 2 guitars, so I took the plunge. I’ve only played it for a couple of hours but I’m petty stoked with it. I’ve only ever played guitar hero once before at a mates place, and I’ve been playing Frets on Fire quite a bit. I’m playing through the career mode at the moment on Medium, which is fairly easy, although I just unlocked the Japan tour series of songs and Muse’s Knights of Cydonia was the first one I failed on, much to my dismay, it’s one of my favourite songs. I’m trying to unlock all the songs nice and quick so that when my mates want to play we can choose any song, I’m looking forward to doing a multiplayer battle, which is fun during the Slash and Morello challenges. I guess the only drawback for the Wii version is, I don’t think it will ever have the downloadable content that the 360 and PS3 versions have, which would be nice and add to the longevity of the game, but ahh well, at least it has online multiplayer. The guitars are pretty cool, and a lot more solid than I was expecting, but no matter what, any adult looks pretty damn stupid with a little toy guitar, there’s no trying to look cool with it, even Slash on the advert looks like a douche.