One foot in the world of consoles

Hmm, this entry was going to be called 'One foot in the world of next-gen consoles', but seeing as all three major devices are now available (well, somewhat) I guess we can't really use that moniker any more.

Anyway, yesterday I traded five crisp, shiny £20 notes with a guy at work, and in return I lugged home a brand-spanking new Xbox 360. Twenty minutes or so after getting home, the beast was unpacked, plugged in and ready to go. Hurrah!

Thus far my only real gaming time has been with Gears of War (the only title I actually own right now - I'm very much open for suggestions as to what to buy/beg/borrow/steal next), and I'm beginning to understand what the fuss is about - For starters, the game looks beautiful, although I have to take out my PC gaming eyes somewhat and try and ignore the abject lack of anti-aliasing and decent texture filtering. The aliasing isn't too pronounced thanks to smart world design and High Dynamic Range rendering, but the lack of full-on anisotropic filtering is really poor considering the horsepower on offer in Xenos - The obvious mip-map boundaries and shimmering is awful. Ah well... More importantly, the game has been great to play once I overcame my phobia/ineptitude with game pads, and the layout of the controller is not far short of spot on, so kudos to Epic for that. My only worry is that the whole 'duck and cover' game play that is fascinating me right now is going to wear thin after a few hours of gaming.

Apart from Gears of War, I've messed around with a couple of demos a little - Sonic The Hedgehog, just to see if they ruined the franchise again (they have), and Dead or Alive 4, which doesn't look as pretty as I might have hoped. I've also downloaded the demo for Rainbow Six: Vegas (mainly because I'm a pixel whore and I remember hearing that it looks pretty somewhere), but I haven't checked that out yet.

Aside from my console gaming fun, my return to work in my 'real' job has been insanely busy, and I've also had further confirmation that my ex is a completely unhinged psychopath after calling me out of the blue to have some weird, rambling imaginary conversation so that her boyfriend thinks that something she can't be arsed to do is actually all my fault. Err, okay....

Oh, and if anyone wants to know my Xbox Live gamer tag, it's Hanners. Imaginative, huh? I don't see myself going for a Gold subscription any time soon, but you never know, and I still have a one-month trial to burn once I've got a few more games to actually use it with so feel free to add me.