"LOL XBARGE! .. Just kidding."

Yeah, so I caved in - I went out and actually bought an Xbox. I didn’t really intend to, I actually went out to Bromley (local shopping centre area) to pick up a Gameboy Advance game - I played Pokémon to death when I was in the alps last week, and if I hear that battle music ONE MORE GODDAMNED TIME I’m going to flip out and kill everyone in the office, ninja style.
This is hopefully going to be an unbiased review - I hate the reviews that are so obviously fanboy spew it’s almost painful to read them. I’m not going to go into homebrew, chipping or other modification in any detail here, since while I think it’s a great idea, I want to keep my X vanilla.

So, there I was - in GAME in Bromley having a little look around post return trip home. The PAL PS2 was looking quite inviting, having Devil May Cry, FFX, Ico, etc. - but in the end, I’ve had two japanese PS2’s since they first came out in the land of dirty-panty vending machines - and I was getting a little , well, bored. I haven’t had any other same system for 4 years. So, I wandered further into the back of the shop - Gamecube, N-Gage and Xbox. The former holds no sway with me whatsoever - there simply aren’t any games on it that I want to play, the N-Gage is, I think, the industries idea of a practical joke, and that leaves none other than the gargantuan Xbox.

The deal I eventually purchased was for a crystal Xbox (2 S-type controllers) with Project Gotham, Splinter Cell 2 and Halo for £174.98 - I got Robotech:BattleCry and Metal Gear Solid 2 for an extra £24.98.

LOOKS AND APPEARANCE
The first thing that struck me, rather unsurprisingly considering it’s reputation was the sheer weight of the Xbox - I was actually genuinely surprised at how heavy it was. Having seen one in person before, the size didn’t really bother me (despite my technophilliac tendancies, I’m not hung up on everything looking like some millionaire’s bauhaus-style apartment)

Having it all set up my first impressions were neither good nor dissapointed - looking at it, the clear box looked amazing from where most people would see it, the top and front - with acres of polished steel and light-refractive plastic, but having a dirty brown PCB right in the center by the flashing LEDs means that if you stack your consoles in shelves or a custom built unit like I do, you’re not going to see anything but a mishmash of white, metal and brown and bright green lights. Admittedly not something that most people are going to have a problem with, but I did think that buying a "limited edition crystal xbox", Presentation would be high on the priorities of the designers, and this brain fart is pretty darn obvious.

The controllers are also clear, with jewelled buttons, and black sticks and cables. They look pretty nice - I must admit it’s nice to have something a little different from the utility grey or matt black.

The hard drive is obviously well enclosed because I can’t hear any disk access (most, if not all games cache their data onto the various partitions on the Xbox’s HDD to facilitate faster load times - though personally I can’t see any difference to regular CD/DVD based load times) and the various fans inside are not noticeable with average ambience or any sort of game music or effects.

CONNECTIVITY
The Xbox’s rear is rather spartan, with one port for AV, one for an RJ-45 and one two-pin power connector. I was assuming, with the ridicolous amounts of hype the hardware of this machine had, it would have 5.1, Digital Out, VGA out, S-Video and the works, but some of those features daisy chain off of the AV plug, while others simply aren’t there.

The AV connector is a large non-standard plug. The regular cable supplied with my version of the Xbox had Video Composite RCA cables which you can plug in directly to your TV, and it comes with a SCART adapter so you can plug the Xbox into your TV’s SCART port if you don’t have composite. In addition, it’s important to note that the connector is around 4" long if you use the adapter, so if your TV is on a shelf or against a wall, you might need to take that into consideration.

There are many third party peripherals for the Xbox that are widely available thanks to the thriving homebrew and third party scene - so you can get VGA adapters (for connection to monitors), Dolby DTS adapters, LCD flip-up screens a whole host of other things.

FEATURES
There was a day when you plugged your little NES into the wall, and into the TV through the aerial port and a little game cart and that was your lot. In the best part of 20 years (has it really been that long? eesh) has changed gaming a lot, mostly in games, but the hardware has changed more subtly.

For example, you need to set up the internal clock and date when you first set up the X, you can choose 50 or 60hz refresh rate (depending on your TV’s capability, it will give you a smoother gaming experience) for your TV, you can choose letterbox, widescreen or 4:3 aspect depending on your TV too - which is, as far as I know, a unique feature on consoles, as well as the option for Dolby Digital if you have the correct AV cable.

You can insert Audio CDs and rip them to the Xbox’s internal HDD. Once they’re ripped (assumedly to mp3 since the X’s drive is only around 10gb, with 2/5 of that taken up already) and play them whenever you want, and some games even have the ability to play the tracks from the X’s hd instead of the game soundtrack. Pretty nice!

XBOX LIVE Xbox Live is another thing that I was unsure of. Basically, you need to have a broadband connection xDSL, Cable, etc. and a way of connecting the X to it. Your X cannot initiate the connection itself, so you need to have a PC to do it for you. For more info, check out Xbox.com . Luckily, I just hooked up the ‘box to my Hub and it was able to access the Xbox Live servers as soon as I set up the IP address, Gateway, Subnet, DNS and Hostname (not neccesary, but good enough).

I’m recieving my "Starter Pack" in the post in a couple of days, so I’ll be able to access Live properly.

CONTROLLERS
Many people have a bone to pick with the X’s controllers, when I first saw the regular controller I was actually quite staggered at how un-ergonomic and chunky the thing was - the massive jewelled ‘X’ in the middle, which is so obviously the cover-up for the fact they ommited a dreamcast VMS-style LCD screen it’s silly.

On the S-type this has been remedied slightly with a smaller controller with a more conventional shape, it does seem like they are really trying to make strange shapes and layouts just for the sake of it, though.

The button layout seems rather awkward too, two buttons on the left below the main analogue stick mean that they’re covered by the base of your thumb during gameplay, so they’re useful only for situations where you dont’ need to use the stick at the same time, like accessing sub-menus once the game is paused, etc.

The other six buttons (white, black, A,B,X,Y) are arranged in 3 rows of 2, unlike the Saturn’s 2 rows of 3 - this again means that while A and B in the middle row are comfortable, you either need to stretch your thumb to get X and Y or scrunch it up to get white and black - not ideal by any means. The trigger buttons work well, it must be said, however.

The D-pad is easily accessable with your left thumb, but has quite hard edges and prolonged use at the strange angle will eventually get awkward. The right hand analogue stick means you need to shift your grip slightly to get a comfortable position, but overall not bad.

I feel that while the control pad works, Microsoft (and most other "next generation console" developers) are simply throwing out wierdly shaped and designed controllers for the sake of it with no actual reason. Realistically, six buttons, two triggers, two auxiliary buttons, a D-pad and two thumbsticks can’t and shouldn’t fit comfortably on a single pad, so I guess a compromise needed to be made if the ‘spec’ was set in stone.

OVERALL
I do feel that while the Xbox's controller leaves a little to be desired (this is a large factor since it is the most used mode of communication with the machine) the versatile IBM architecture of the console combined with the advantage of set devices means that it can get the best of both worlds. The fact that you can rip MP3s to play during games, go online against other opponents, and install a million peripherals really helps it along too. I think that while it may be a case of ''love it'' or ''hate it'', the XBOX pulls it off nicely.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/19/04