Xbox360 impressions about two years too late

Was the Xbox black or white?

Everything is wrong with this. First of all I agree there has to be something wrong with this guy’s set-up, either in the way he has it hooked up or with the equipment itself. On a proper HD set-up all the games you mentioned look stunning. Gears of War is the best-looking game ever on any console.

And unintuitive controls? WTF? That game controls like butter.

The only difficulty I had was getting the spatial thing going in my brain with move on the left stick and look on the right. But it didn’t take long to get the hang of it. Crackdown has the same camera/move controls as Gears doesn’t it? In Gears the A BUTTON in cover/out of cover/hop over the wall thing can take some getting used to, but the basic moving and looking controls are the same.

There must be some standardization going on among shooter devs, because I just snagged Call of Duty 2 for my 360 (yay for cheap, used games!) and played it for an hour before realising I’d not even cracked the manual open to look anything up.

Yes, I believe the name of that standardization is “Halo: Combat Evolved”.

And unintuitive controls? WTF? That game controls like butter.

So, everyone in the thread says “Yeah, Gears of War controls unlike any other FPS out there”.

That, in and of itself, makes the controls unintuitive. I’m not saying that doesn’t make sense in the context of the type of game they are trying to create - just that if you sit down with expectations based on playing hours of other console shooters (i.e. Halo) and try to play Gears, it’s gonna seem wonky, and your guy isn’t going to do what you expect him to - that’s kind of the textbook definition of unintuitive.
(Edit: I’m not talking about the camera controls - those are just like any other xbox shooter - just the concept of cover and the inability to move in the 3rd dimension via jumping or climbing on top of things).

It’s no big deal - as I said above, I’m sure as you progress in the game you get used to the controls. But for now it can get frustrating as my guy sticks in cover when I want him to leave it, or sits there standing in front of cover when I want him to enter it, and after a couple hours of gameplay I would’ve hoped that my hands would’ve figured it out by now.

Again, might just be my Bad Brain, but the controls aren’t intuitive to me.

I don’t agree with that at all. A game in a certain genre can control unlike all the other games in that same genre but still be perfectly intuitive in its own right. The only real test is how quickly you pick it up regardless of your experience with other games, and I picked it up very quickly. YMMV.

I have a Sony LCD Rear Projection 55". As much as I dislike GoW, the game looks amazing. I didn’t find the control confusing either.

Is this a case of a bad configuration or Brendan’s strange taste in graphics? I have a PS3 too and the two FPS that I played on PS3 look laughable compared to GoW graphics. Ask your friend to get Dirt and see how ugly that looks.

Ah. Well, there you are. The 360 is my first console, so that piece of game lore is beyond my ken.

Maybe it controls unlike an FPS because it isnt an FPS? I dunno about best graphics on consoles today, fight night could give gears a good run for its money.

It doesn’t control like crackdown/saints row/gta either, though.

It’s undoubtedly their implementation of cover, which is novel and requires some adaptation on the part of the user (which is fine). But to say it’s intuitive implies that you could plunk the controller in the hands of your average console player and they’d be easily transitioning from cover/out-of-cover/running (there’s that weird lag between holding A and starting to run too) within a couple of minutes, which simply isn’t so.

I say thank god for no jumping. I’m so glad it’s not in this or Rainbow Six Vegas. And you can vault up/over stuff in both games. Bunny hopping is long standing pet peeve of mine in these types of games.

Can you vault in GoW without entering cover first? Because I haven’t figured out how to do this.

No, but you can enter cover and then go over it pretty quickly.

I’ll agree that what you said is a good definition of intuitive in this case. I’ll disagree with your “simply isn’t so” comment.

I’m a 42 year old guy with the slowing reflexes to prove it. All it took was one run through the tutorial and I was popping around the landscape getting shot in the ass like I do in most shooters. Our friends’ 17 year old son picked up on the control scheme quicker than I did. We did the split screen co-op on the first night that I had it, and we finished 2/3 of game that night. The controls were incredibly intuitive, and the context sensitive graphics are there for the times when you don’t know what button to push. I actually read the manual AFTER I’d finished the game once.

Ditto on the bunny hopping. That is a mechanic that should be eliminated from shooters forever!!

Then it’s just my bad brain. Sigh, I suspected as much.

Crackdown has to control differently because of the difference of the actions in the game. If you had gears style controls while jumping roof to roof i guarantee you would quit out of frustration. Same goes for crackdown/gta, which feel alot more over the top rather than the more tactical feel from the gears controls.