Ok, so i went to the Trafford Centre last night as i said i would, primarily to play CoD3. Oh how pissed i was to find that it wasn' t there!
On the website it claims that Gears wouldn' t be available at Manchester but i found that several other games were missing too. I spoke at length to the event staff (who don' t work for Microsoft, they work for a promotions company) who explained that due to size constraints at the location, some games had to be left out. What i wasn' t impressed with was that while they
did have Lego Star Wars II, NBA Live 07, and Disneys Cars, they had left out Crackdown and CoD3. The two games i wanted to check out.
The event staff while polite enough but they didn' t really know what they were talking about. I was told that Playstation 3 was delayed until next November and that Microsoft had sold 17 million 360' s already. Not cool! They were basically blagging their way through the questions asked by other podgoers (hehe!) and there was an obvious lack of training.
After turning up to play CoD3 and being annoyed by it' s absence i consoled myself and played some Rainbow Six: Vegas instead as i haven' t been able to download the demo from XBLM yet and won' t be able to do so until Saturday. I was impressed to say the least. It' s like GRAW on tactical steroids and i was blown away by the visuals, framerate (which was solid) and gameplay. The controls will take a little getting used to as they don' t quite flow at first, but i spent an hour playing it and managed to get to grips with the change from GRAW.
I played Viva Pinata which is actually really cool. I might not buy it, but i' m definitely considering it more now than i was previously.
Superman Returns is dreadful. That' s obviously a no brainer for most people, but after watching some trailers and seeing some impressive enough screens, i thought that at the very least i might rent it. I won' t be doing that now as it' s
REALLY bad! It looks like an Xbox game and plays horribly.
Erago wasn' t on the list but was there anyway and it' s the most pathetic 360 game i' ve seen yet. It looks like a PS2 game running in 720p. The character modelling, texture detail and gameplay mechanics are all uber-sub-par and so it' s another game i will not even consider playing.
I played the retail version of Sonic and it' s better than the demo but the camera issue hasn' t been resolved. I played a couple of levels with Silver and Shadow and it' s a must buy for me. It' s no Sonic Adventure but it' s cooler than any Sonic game since the Dreamcast killer app.
Need for Speed: Carbon is utter trash. How it can manage to look, handle and have a worse framerate than Most wanted it beyond me. No daylight and more of an Underground feel make this a game to avoid like the plague!
I played PES6 and Fifa 2007 and i was surprised to see that Fifa 2007 stomps all over PES6. Pro Evo offers more of the same with a higher resolution while Fifa looks born again. Fifa bleeds quality and everything has been completely overhalled and so when it' s released on Friday i' ll be picking it up.
There were a couple of Live Arcade games available but i didn' t bother to play any of them and a couple of other titles that i didn' t recognise/bother with and i didn' t see the wireless headset or the vision camera anywhere.
They did not show the best of what 360 offers and so i don' t see quite what the point of the tour is, although it
WAS really busy and the guys in GAME (owned by EB Games) claim that their 360 sales are up 170% because of the event.
Personally i wasn' t impressed, but i will be going to the Sheffield event on the 11th and 12th to take part in the Gears multiplayer tournament. What i did discover is that play time with Gears (solo) and CoD3 will be limited to 15 minutes per person. That sucks but i guess it' s kind of understandable.
I think the tour will be responsible for a large number of 360 sales but for me it was pretty useless. I didn' t get to play what was advertised and the staff were full of shit, even if the girls were really hot. The only reason to bother going to one of the other events is to play Gears (which will be playable by over 18' s only)...
If i was to have chosen the games for the tour i would have gone for; Lost Planet, GRAW, DoA4, CoD3, Gears, Viva Pinata, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Crackdown, PES6, Fifa 2007, Sonic, Fight Night, Burnout, Moto GP etc... rather than shit like Eragon.
Photo' s of the pods...
< Message edited by MAJIKDRA6ON -- 25 Oct 06 11:06:02 >