Have you gotten your [Xbox One] preordered?

So, I saw KI was free and downloaded it, but I guess the only available character is Jago, and you can't earn achievements on the free version? Debating getting either the $20 or $40 version, but I'm not sure how down I am for a console game that's pretty much following the microtransaction model.

Forza 5 is pretty neat, but it kind of comes off as a console tech demo and a proof of concept on how awesome Forza Motorsport 6 will be. The Drivatar system is really awesome, physics are WAY improved, the paint system has got some neat new options, and it's awful pretty, but it feels a little lacking in certain areas, especially coming off of Forza 4 and how robust it was. I'm debating on buying the season pass for the first time ever for the series. $50 is pretty steep considering a lot of the cars are just re-issues from the previous generation, at least in terms of make and model even if they are totally redone model wise. Maybe if I get a nice end-of-year bonus at work i'll splurge.

Call of Duty is Call of Duty. It's fun, but nothing earth shaking. I am enjoying it more than the Black Ops series, but I miss some of the multiplayer game modes they yanked from the old Modern Warfares. It's $50 season pass is laughable, particularly since I practically guarantee this game will get shelved as soon as Titanfall comes out.

The hardware itself is probably the best part of the whole launch. I have the cable box routed through the Xbox and it's basically turned my TV into a smart TV and given me picture in picture capabilities. Voice control is pretty robust, but it does have the occasional trouble in hearing or understanding us. Every once in a while I still go back to navigating the UI with a controller, and that's when things get rough. It might just be because I'm not used to the whole Windows 8/Metro paradigm, but I have a hard time finding things buried in the menus some times. For instance, I still haven't figured out a way to see my download queue or purchase history. Had a download flake out on me last night and couldn't figure out how to restart it. Ended up going into the store and just hitting the "Install" option again.

Some of the apps seem a little busted, I figure due to launch issues. I had to punch Skype for about a half hour before I could even log into it. Avatars kept crashing on me the entire first day and well into the next. I downloaded the NFL and Twitch apps but haven't had a chance to try them yet. Also, Xbox wins this generations console war since it can play audio CD's and Playstation 4 can't. PWNED.

Speaking of Playstation, I ran out of outlets on my surge strip and HDMI inputs on my TV. My PS3 ended up drawing the short straw and got voted off the island.

saying you don't have to buy tokens is as silly as saying Farmville or games like that are free to play. Yea, you can grind for 30 hours get some $2 item, but it's absurd. Forza and games like that make it worse because the cost of a car is like $7-15 but the ENTIRE game is $60?

Killer Instinct does this for stuff that's not important like costumes.

except unlocking isn't how it use to be. If you played Farmville or my lame ass butterfly game you'd get it what I'm saying. It's not meant for you really to unlock anything. I would love to know the amount of hours of grinding it would cost to unlock everything versus the cost of buying it.

That and it's a game with half the stuff of Forza 4 for the same price with a bunch of stuff "unlock".

Does the new Forza reward you with free cars, free parts, and part discounts like the old ones? Do you get DLC cars you purchase with real money for free?



Pretty sure they changed this.

Also it seems like you can't turn Drivitar off, which is a hilarious decision.

I wasn't bitching but go ahead and correct whatever was wrong

If you see a black BMW 1 series M bearing down on your ass ready to bump you of the track, yup, thats me.

Edit:  I have seen Kestrel, Stauburst, Stupornaut, and Sinjis' Drivatars so far.  Sinjis' dude gives me a run for my money every single time. :shakefist:

Nevermind I tried my first disc just now. I have the grinding issue

so it's literally exactly like Forza 4, which also had car tokens, etc?
ok then

YUP!

I think i spend about 2 minutes every time you post just watching your avatar...

My 72 hours of owning a Xbox One commentary... first thing that greeted me was XBOX ONE on a screen. It sat there. Doing something. For a while. A good 90 seconds. Is it locked up? Shipped dead? I wait. Eventually it comes up with a setup screen... it needs to patch. I read about this. Seems like before they left the factory MS basically just put a tiny OS on it... enough to download the real one. Get it on wireless... it asks me for the SSID instead of listing what it sees. A little jarring, but whatever, I know what it is. Get it on wireless, download.

It says about 550MB and it goes as fast as my cable allows. (about 3MB/sec) Quicker than the PS4 at downloading. US servers versus Japan? I dunno. Could be? Or just MS resources versus Sony. Either way, it's quicker. It reboots to install. Back to the XBOX ONE on a screen. It sits there again... doing something. A couple 3 minutes this time. I'm wondering the same things. Bricked? Stuck? I wonder how many impatient people will brick their Ones by rebooting it here? I wait. It finishes. Sum total about the same length as the PS4 experience. Quicker to download, but longer to install... with the extra odd complete lack of feedback while it works. Strange experience, I dislike it. But whatever, it's done with.

The console itself. Big, but not montrous. Feels more like a piece of video equipment than a console. Hooked everything up. Shipped with an HDMI cable, yay. Shipped with a proper headset with a nice little control block that has mute and + / - buttons. Headset is universal and can be worn left or right ear. The mic arm is inflexible sticking straight out. This should prevent the mouth and nose breathing from other people somewhat. Controller feels slightly... smaller? Right analog stick seems... slightly in the wrong place? I dunno I haven't used it in a game yet but somehow it feels more out of reach to my thumb. Could be my imagination. The new Kinect is massive... and on a hinge. No motor. Drop that below my TV and face it up.

During when teaching the Kinect who I am... I notice... holy fuck the thing can see my entire living room. They aren't kidding on the wide range for this thing. I let it run through the audio setup where it attempts to auto-tune itself to your background noise as well as the placement of your speakers. While it's doing this I look at the back of the controller where I see two blinking IR LEDs. Aha! That's how they know who has what control. They match the Kinect recognized face... with the blink pattern of each controller. That way I can hand a controller to someone else and it will auto tie the user to the controller. Just via some simple lights. Clever!

I try to look at the Avatar, bombs out, server is down. Just like the PSN day 1 issues I guess. Some things are just overloaded. I click download on all the other apps... Hulu, Netflix, Skype, NFL... all of those kick into the background just fine. MS still handles that experience well. I throw in the first disk... Forza 5! It has to install. Boo. Okay so I guess this is just a generation thing here. No more popping in a disk and playing on either system. While it's installing I play with the voice commands a bit. I hunt down into the settings... and oh look there is a whole video calibration thing to run through. I do that... adjusting my contrast and brightness on my TV to all the test patterns. Very cool. Usually takes me a couple days of fiddling to nail that stuff for a new source based on feel... but now I'm done all scientific like. In that process I find out that my TV HDMI needs to be set to "just scan" rather than "16x9" for the aspect ratio for the Xbox One. Strange. After adjusting, things on the picture look great... and Forza says it's ready to play!

Forza 5 is great. But as other have mentioned, it's a launch title. Graphically amped up, sounds and physics massively improved, but the number of modes, cars and tracks is down compared to Forza 4. Some of this is because all this new shit takes more work. Car models have way more polys yet again. EVERY car has Vista mode, not just a select few. And part of it is because ... they needed this game to hit at launch. I run a few races, enough to upload my first Driveatar. OMG are there a lot of motors in the One controller. It's vibrating around, triggers are rumbling. What a shock from the lack of feedback in the PS4 controller. And then... my box grabs the first Driveatars from the cloud. Wow. This is great. They talked about the AI in a lot of videos... and they weren't lying. It plays like a human. It makes mistakes, it gets aggressive, it gets timid, it tries to fake you out. And you can do the same back to it and it reacts. I have the driveatars on the 2nd to top setting... and I'm not getting first place all the time for the first time... in Forza game history. I'm fighting for top 3. Usually getting 2nd or 3rd. This is great. In F3 and F4 I can put the AI on the top setting... and win by half a lap on a 3 lap race. Fun for setting leaderboard clean laps, terrible for actually being fun. Forza 5 is fun.

I pop that out... and pop in Dead Rising 3. The Xbox One then tells me that the Forza 5 installation has stopped! About 5 times. Neat. So it wasn't DONE installing... it was still installing but it let me play. This has to be a relic from their original licensing model where they wanted the games to download from their cloud to play. It clearly installs enough to play... and lets you play while it continues working in the background. This is a great thing for online download games. But the system really is upset with me about the Forza 5 disk being gone. It notifies me once per message that the Forza 5 installation has stopped. Netflix has finished downloading! forza 5 has stopped. NFL has finished downloading! forza 5 has stopped. Etc etc. Pretty funny. Anyways, Dead Rising 3 takes about 15 minutes to install to playable state. In the meantime I chat party with Tremor and we talk while I hunt through my stuff.

This is why I notice the QR codes with the games. Instead of putting in those stupid long codes with the on screen keyboard for your silly pre-order combat hat for Dead Rising 3... you say... "Xbox use code" and hold up the QR code. The kinect finds it... and in like... a second... recognizes it. This is a code for your silly hat, apply to this account? Yes! Done! This is so so so much better than entering the codes. I HATE those codes and it's taken some of the joy out of the whole console experience. Just like these install times are going to do actually. And in that respect the code thing is TOO quick. It will only consume like 2-3 minutes while the installation will take 15-30 heh. Oh well. Still, the QR thing is super neat.

Dead Rising 3 is ready to play! I load that. Try to select multiplayer to join Tremor, but no. That's only available when it's a full install. Fine fine, I'll chat with him and start a single player while you keep installing. Boy is the lead character for Dead Rising 3 dumb. Anyways, the game is fun and very actiony. Sure it's not next gen pretty... but there is a lot of shit on screen, more than any 360 or PS3 game I saw and it's easy to control and it's fun. I like it. Framerate seems around 30 and steady. Maybe I haven't gotten to those dreaded slow down areas I've seen in some of the early reviews. I poke at this for a while until I see that it has finished installing... and I'm notified again that Forza 5 stopped installing. Thanks Xbox. I eject Dead Rising 3 and switch back to Forza 5 to let it finish installing. After that's done, "Xbox turn off" "yes" and good night.

The next morning I get up and turn on the Xbox one. Kinect doesn't recognize me. Hmm. Then I realize I have my glasses on, when I had contacts on last night. I choose sign in... and there is an option for "Kinect didn't recognize me" ... the Xbox very nicely apologizes for this... shows the Kinect again and shows where it thinks I am. It asks, is this you? "Yes". Okay in the future I will recognize you better. So it seems like the biometric sign on has some ability to learn built in. Nice. As a note, this is the last time it didn't recognize me. It's gotten me every time since... and never misidentified any of my friends who have visited. Seems pretty good.

The voice controls are also pretty good although still not perfect. You have to learn the Xbox's phrasing, "Xbox Netflix" ... yields nothing... "Xbox go to Netflix" ... ba dink... off it goes. It's something I'll have to adjust to. Voice support in the apps varies. Netflix's first revision is less voice friendly than the current 360 version. But Hulu Plus is way way way improved.

For example, "Xbox go to hulu plus" .. loads... "TV" ... "Popular"... "New Girl" ... "Most Recent". No controller. No "select 1" from on screen shit that it labels after I say "Xbox". Just say the proper names of things on the screen and it works. Brilliant. Way to go Hulu Plus programmers. As more apps like this show up, I look forward to a more natural voice interaction with the One.

I tried Ryse as well. Very pretty, but an arcade simple fight engine will discourage some people. It feels something like God of War and Dynasty Warriors mashed up. To sum up the game, what if Assasin's Creed only had combat... with no real other stuff in between. Just that counter and parry system with context sensitive executions. That's certainly not everyone's cup of tea. But graphically... yes... this is the prettiest of the PS4 and Xbox One games that I've played. Very very very pretty. And it certainly is fun when you get a long combo going without making any mistakes. I'll enjoy it, but this probably a 19.99$ title in the future.

This is also when I opened up the 2nd controller I got... and the play and charge kit. Only to find that the controller I bought SHIPPED with a battery and charge cable in the box already. Which is great for me since now I have 2 controls, two battery packs and 2 charge cables. Standard USB, just like the PS4. In fact, I charged it off the PS4 since it has front USB ports that stay on in standby. Hahaha.

So that's it for my first impressions... Sum total...

The good:
Slick OS, flips between as fast as they say
Ships with hdmi cable
QR code reading and visual recognition works very well.
Voice control is good but not perfect
Headset included works
Cloud stuff (as used in Forza 5 AI) certainly appears like it may add to the gaming experience here
All the live party chat stuff is still there, but it's easier to use with the snap features
Snap ... running two apps at once is pretty god damned awesome.

The bad:
500GB hard drive again, I need to check the install sizes but I expect them to be as huge as the PS4
No recharge pack or charge cord ships with the console. No one is going to use AA for long with all these motors in the control
Launch software titles limited features. Yep yep
Based on hard specs, It's the less powerful of the two consoles graphically, no arguments there
They certainly have switched to allowing "whales" to microtransaction their way to glory. I'll never use it, but its presence is noted.
Forza 5 has stopped installing, for the hundreth time user, GIVE ME BACK THE DISK. The Xbox One is nagging.