I recently went into Kmart, a store I really dislike, to buy some Nyquil for my ongoing congestion and coughing. While there I decided to go back to the electronics section “just to see.” As I walked through the sloppy game section, seeing games and consoles tossed every which way on the shelves, the likelyhood of me finding a 360 here seemed nill. When there it was, a 360 sitting on the shelf alone! I quickly purchased the system, along with my Nyquil and went to the Gamestop in the same shopping plaza to buy PGR3, since Kmart didn’t have any 360 games.

Since then Glen, and my co-worker Tom found their own 360s and purchased Live accounts.

I have been playing a ton of PGR3, Hexic, Marble Blast Ultra and just bought Condemed this weekend. My initial thoughts on the system is simply awesome. This is one of the most complete gaming experiences you can find. From buying arcade games, downloading trailers and demos at the Marketplace. to hosting private chats, seeing what your friends are playing and leaderboards for every game you play. Even the simple Live Arcade game Hexic has a leaderboard.

You can plug in your media player of choice and access all your music from anywhere in the system. Network your PC and do the same. You can even use a photo from your PC as your background for the Xbox dashboard. Its all very good and was well worth the steep price tag of $399. Now if they can just get the price of 3d party games in line I will be one happy gamer.

Are you playing on Live? Leave your gamertag!

I finished F.E.A.R. a couple of months ago and have had this review in the queue since then. I really want to play it again, but I am afraid of how it will perform on my Radeon 9800 and brand new Dell 20.1 widescreen monitor.

Positives

• Great enemy artificial intelligence, the enemy ai in F.E.A.R. was probably the best in any PC FPS I have played. The enemies continually surprised me by flanking, hiding, retreating and owning me when appropriate.
• Great story, and a great payoff at the end. The story is told through phone messages, downloaded PC information and telekenetic flashbacks and all comes together in the end. There was a point where I started to doubt the game, but the end became one of the best single player experiences I have ever had. Wow.
• Good looking engine, lighting, debris from gun shots.
• Animation, and location based injuries from gun shots.
• Awesome melee attacks.

Negatives

• You are always on your own, your teammates appear for a story break, but then you are usually off on your own again.
• Big time system requirements.
• The automatic guns didn’t feel too much different from one another, and didn’t have a single shot setting.
• What you do leading up to the ending made no sense, I was just pushing buttons, and pulling levers because they were there.