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Microsoft Xbox 360

Right... I might be going to get a(nother) 360 tonight. I've already sold 3 in the past!

I have a bit of spare cash and to my surprise, my missus was trying hard to make me buy one there and then! I have come home to have a think.

Is it worth paying the extra for an Elite? I was thinking of an Arcade as most cross-platform releases I will get on the PS3.

Do you need a HD for the new Dashboard upgrade? And what else is it worth having the HD for (wont be using it for music/vids).

They have the Premium too, which is what I'd probably go for, but just weighing it all up.

Trying to think of exclusives on the 360 ... I liked Poker Smash, Lips looks ok, Forza 2 was only £7 in BB too.

Anything else good on the Arcade store nowadays?

Help me peeps!
 
The Elite is only worth having for the hard drive. Remember you can install games now, with most of my game installs being around 8gb each. So with the standard 20gb HDD you'll only be able to fit one or two games on; I paid £60 for the 120gb HDD, well worth it IMO, I've got a drawer full of great games and they're all installed with bags of room left over.

If you get the Arcade version you wouldn't get a hard drive anyway so I would do that and then save up for the 120gb drive, unless you're happy enough playing games off the disc in which case I'd get the 20gb/60gb drive (it's only for loading times, e.g. FIFA offline loads within 5-6 seconds now, when running off the disc it's two or three times that).

The update requires a storage device, yes. You could always get a 256mb/512mb memory unit for now; worth having if you're ever going to play at a friend's house and you want to make sure you get all of the achievements, but if you wouldn't be playing elsewhere then you'd probably be best off saving for a drive.

The best exclusives IMO are Gears of War 2 (which is great offline but online you get hordes of kids pwning you over and over again), Forza 2 (still the best racing game out IMO, there's Race Pro too but the occasional framerate drops ruin it for me) and of course the Grand Theft Auto IV DLC (which is excellent). Halo Wars has just come out and that's good as well, very very hard, but only worth a look if you're into those kinds of games (e.g. Command & Conquer).

There's some good Arcade games out there but I'm not hugely into them. Boogie Bunnies is a great game to play with the missus (think co-op Tetris with cute fuzzy animals), N+ is an incredibly addictive old-school game (and co-op too but hugely frustrating sometimes, extremely difficult), and then you've got all the remakes - Sonic, Pac-Man etc...
 
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Left 4 Dead is pretty good as well, as is Fable II and Mass Effect.

I definately wouldn't bother with an Arcade anymore, the Pro (Premium as it used to be known) is the one to get I'd say.

The HDD does come into it more nowadays, as Chris has said, with being able to install games to the drive. It doesn't really improve speeds much but it stops the DVD drive spinning up and cuts out a lot of the 360's noise.

I say go for it :)
 
Oh yeah I forgot about that, installing to the hard drive is supposed to seriously prolong the life of the console (with the drive only ever being used to verify that the right disc is in).

I've had very few crashes since the update so I would say it's true, and as Dags said it's nice to be able to hear games now that you don't have that constant "jet taking off" sound.
 
Cheers guys - think I'm going to go for the Elite :)

just noticed Peggle came out last week - never played it, but sounds good.

Is the new dashboard good too?
 
I DL Peggle today, and ended up playing it for about 3hours! It will suck your life away, it has the 'Just one more go' killer vibe.

I would suggest you get one of these :
10440_red360.jpg


They are an Elite, but look a little different, only from Game though, come with RE5, but I think they look snazzy.

The ripping games to the HDD rocks, though the new Pro has got a 60Gb I would still spend the extra on an Elite if I had the money.

I will post more later if you need anymore info.
 
Peggle is pretty good, yep.

I like the NXE a lot more than the old dash (even though I thought it looked awful from the pre-release screens). It flows much nicer and is easier to get to places.

Apparantly Braid is a cracking game on XBL as well.
 
Holio said:
I DL Peggle today, and ended up playing it for about 3hours! It will suck your life away, it has the 'Just one more go' killer vibe.

I would suggest you get one of these :
10440_red360.jpg


They are an Elite, but look a little different, only from Game though, come with RE5, but I think they look snazzy.

The ripping games to the HDD rocks, though the new Pro has got a 60Gb I would still spend the extra on an Elite if I had the money.

I will post more later if you need anymore info.
Click to expand...

Yea, as much as you can please - thanks Holio...

Anyone got RacePro? Thought it was generally considered to be poo, but reading some threads on Gamefaqs and supposed hardcore race fans are really rating it against Forza...
 
Regards Race Pro, I would wait for NFS: Shift, they are the real Simbin people, they done GTR and GTR2 and then left to create their own company and EA got involved and stuck the NFS sticker on it, but it's got a NFS front end and thats about it. RacePro has it's fans, but tis defo a smaller user base, you could probably pick it up for around 20-25 quid on a few forums. Back later, gotta go work!

Oh yeah, Braid is a great game, I got it when it was reduced to 800 points there a couple of weeks ago, but it's back up to 1200 now. :(

I think it looks cool, not my pics.

http://i44.tinypic.com/i3eyjl.jpg

http://i42.tinypic.com/14jq2h0.jpg

http://i40.tinypic.com/10dv4tx.jpg

And remember the new Jasper have a 150W power supply, which means they use less electricity than the older 175W and 203W original machines.
 
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Race Pro...

It's a good game, I'd say it's very slightly more realistic than Forza, it's a lot more varied (a lot less repetitive) and you can have a lot more cars on the track at the same time. But, as far as I'm concerned a racing game needs to have a good framerate and any drops spoil the flow of the game. If it was any other kind of game you could excuse it but not a racing game IMO, and Race Pro can suffer awful framerate drops when all the cars come together. That alone ruins it for me. Especially when you consider just how poor the graphics are in comparison with anything else...
 
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Work colleague of mine loves driving games and loves GTR on the PC. He thought Race Pro was shit, basically. The physics don't feel right, graphics are awful and framerate not too good either.

Forza 2 is still the best according to him.
 
Ouch... frame rate drops are no good, will probably pick that up on a cheapie then, thanks. Forza 2 for £7 is a good price - its not the most exciting game, but its a good racer.

PGR3 was probably my fave 360 racer - 4 was good, but 3 had that bit of magic.
 
I bought PGR4 back a few weeks ago, only traded it in at the time because there were so many good games coming out. I'd forgotten how good it was, I'm actually really enjoying it; the only thing I hate is the whole Kudos thing, I can't stand the idea of finishing a race in first place but losing because some knobhead does a 360-degree turn around every corner. So I'll only play "normal" races.

My two favourite racers without a doubt are Forza 2 and (wait for it)... GRID.

(Hated the demo, somebody let me borrow it a few weeks ago and since then I've been amazed, it's actually really good. Should have listened to you all those months ago when you were enjoying it. :D)
 
:LOL: Grid is superb, though I HAVE to use a wheel to play it.

Dug it out again the other day for a quick go with the pad and got really annoyed with it!
 
Got an Elite and just doing a NXE update :0)

Got 'Lips' and Forza 2 for now and I got Resi 5 and a free controller, but they are awaiting stock, so will get those in the next week or so.

Not interested in Resi, so will sell that.

I'll go through and add all your XBL's tonight.
 
Peggle is addictive. I downloaded it last night after getting back from a night out at around 2am. Stayed on it for a good while - got in trouble from the wife for not coming to bed :))
 
:LOL:yea I know - I always succumb to the dark side once every couple of years!

I've recovered my account, just waiting for a Gold code to come through - did you say you havent got a gold account Dags?

Looking forward having a go of Poker Smash again later, but I'm waiting now while my missus makes her avatar! Damn MS and their new cutesy front end :LOL:
 
Nope, no Gold for me although will get it next month or next week if I get money beforehand.

My missus spent ages on the avatars too :LOL:
 
Nice to be back in the land of the 360!

Had a great time on Peggle, Lips is approaching what SingStar *should* be (and with an update coming soon to add online leaderboards - sorely missing from SS) and a bit of Forza 2.

Re-downloaded all my old games, so got a bit of Poker Smash in too and looking forward to playing through the others.

Might pop into town later and see if I can pick up some old classics at budget prices!
 
DagsJT said:
I heard Lips was rubbish compared to SingStar?
Click to expand...

Yea, not sure why it got such average ratings as its basically the same as Singstar - but with a few extras that spice things up...

1) Wireless mics - work really well and shows Sony up a bit that they've taken so long.

2) Mics have motion detection, which means in the songs you can 'strike a pose' for big bonus points (following on screen prompt).

3) The scoring system is really good - lots more chances for bonuses, medals and of course achievments/GPs.

4) Jukebox mode - you can just play the songs back and if you want, join in by shaking a mic.

5) Mics have coloured lights that pulse on them - gimmicky, but its an extra!

6) Though I've not tried it yet, the chance to import your own music is interesting.

7) Other modes in multiplayer - not just straight singing. Things like "Pass the bomb" and a few other game modes.

Some of the things that mark it down...

1) Maybe not *quite* as accurate as SS, but it is more strict in pitch/syllables etc so could be why it doesnt register on the bars. It didnt trouble me too much as I wasnt singing that well, so it felt fair.

2) Lack of song choice. 40 songs on disk, mixed bag too be fair. DLC is getting there, but its got a long way to go to catch SS for quality and quantity.

3) Stats breakdown and generally online not as good as SS, BUT, update is coming very soon that adds online leaderboards which I've wanted in SS and cannot believe they haven't done it on the PS3 versions.

I like it :)
 
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