I was very lucky to get hold of a 360 on the UK launch day – I did cheat slightly as I managed to get one via my job as a game developer. If it makes you feel any better I did pay full price, and they had still run out of Scart cables so I’m using a (surprisingly good) composite video cable instead. Oh well.

First Impressions

• The WiFi connection works, hooray! Note to security-concious home users: the WPA networking does work, but set a long passkey that’s made up of words or numbers you can cope with entering from scratch about a dozen times to get the 360 to work. That wasted a good 90 minutes.
• Xbox Live Arcade just rocks and I’d have to say that Geometry Wars is my current favourite game (but then the rest are ‘on order’ from work so that’s perhaps not saying that much)
• Wireless controllers seem to work very well, better than previous 3rd party PS2 controllers I’ve used. Impressive. No news on battery life yet, but I can see a “Play and Charge” kit being purchased in the future I’m sure.
• Perfect Dark Zero: clearly rushed to get it out the door, it’s unfocussed and the plot is nonsensical. It’s too easy to break the missions by going in the wrong place at the wrong time, and combat is unsatisfying. Having said that it’s still quite shiny in places and is ok as a launch title. But it doesn’t stand up to Halo 2 or the forthcoming Black from Criterion Games (blatant plug for my company’s work, sorry, but its true)

P.S. If anyone out there in internet-land wants to grab me via Xbox Live, I’m sure you can probably guess my gamertag…