While it is still too early for a formal system review, I spent all of the first  weekend with the Xbox One (aside for some diversions to sort out a major cable issue) and have some initial thoughts. Over the course of the weekend I put it through its paces with four retail games and one downloadable title as well as the various other media applications. With no major glitches and everything working mostly as advertised I am happy to say that my initial impressions are very good and I do not feel like I threw my $500 away which is always nice after saving and then forking over.

Unboxing/Set Up

From the outset I was a bit concerned with set up, day one patch and transfer of my profile from the 360. There was no real reason to worry that it wasn’t going to pan out but launches in general scare me as I was really hoping that my system wouldn’t be a brick after the day one update. Everything was very smooth here if you will ignore the various configuration changes I had to deal with in my entertainment center. In a time when consoles are getting smaller and more streamlined the One really gave convention the finger and decided it was going to be a huge box that would take up a ton of real estate on the shelf. Ultimately this was okay as all that really had to  be terribly inconvenienced was my PS3 but I am not sure how much longer that guy is going to be around. My 360 is a Star Wars Xbox so it is not in much danger of being traded in but the PS3 has about until I come up with the scratch for a PS4 and then it is taking a car ride.

Set up was easy once I rearranged what went where with the HDMI inputs. I did not run my cable through my One because as mention my cable was being a bastard of the highest order. The PS3 is currently routed through the One but I haven’t tried it out because I haven’t had much reason to turn it on. I may switch things up again and try out the cable through the One now that it looks like it is no longer possessed of the devil but I am not really looking forward to crawling back there to deal with that mess of snakes at this point.

The day one patch went down very fast and easy. It helped that UPS didn’t bring my system util 6:30pm on launch day so I missed a lot of server bloat from the midnight launch. That is my silver lining for having to watch friends post pictures of their systems on Facebook all day. Anyway, the patch went down smooth and it asked me for my login information for MSN/Xbox. I put it in and that was that.

It calls me by my real name instead of my gamer tag and recognizes my face to log me in and it is both super convenient and creepy. It isn’t as if we were really bound by the tyranny of button presses or anything but there is something really cool about sitting down, telling your Xbox to turn on and then having it recognize your face without really doing anything. Of course, when your cat sits in front of the Kinect and it can’t see through furry cat ass to sign you in the illusion is kind of destroyed.

UI/Dashboard

Anyone who has used Windows 8 will feel fairly at home with the new dashboard for the Xbox one. This set up is far less annoying on a console than it is on a computer because it just makes more organizational sense. On my lap top I spend all my time in desktop mode because the tiles of 8 annoy me. On the Xbox One the tiles make a lot more sense and are a lot better than the 360 dashboard with its blades. The One dashboard is simple and easy to navigate for the most part and the use of pins put everything you want right there so you don’t have to hunt around for it.

I said for the most part, however, because there are some things, like the settings for instance, that are kind of tough to find if you don’t remember where it was. Sitting here now away from my One I can’t actually remember where the hell it is to even write about it. So that isn’t so good. Also, I have noticed that when you download stuff from the store it occasionally gets hung up on the download screen so when you are looking for something like entering a code, which is in the store, you can’t get to it because the store is stuck on that one screen. There are voice commands that should help but in this case they don’t. I am sure this will be patched but it is kind of annoying if you want to enter a code.

Entering codes is pretty fantastic when you can get to the option.  While you still have the option to manually dial the codes in if you want or if the game only offers that (I am looking at you Assassin’s Creed IV), the Kinect can scan the codes and the whole process is enormously fast. With the day one edition codes for Dead Rising 3 and Ryse all I had to do was hold the card about two feet in front of the camera and it scanned the code and I was done inputting the code. So much better than having to dial those ridiculously long codes in.

Xbox One comes with the major applications one would expect like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant, Youtube and so on. It was weird that HBO Go is absent given it is on the 360 but I suspect that will be along eventually. FX has a streaming service now which offers FX and FXX programming if your cable or satellite provider doesn’t hate you. Sadly mine very clearly does and the death of my DVR with most of this season of the League is made much more devastating. These services are simple to download, easy to pin and work very well. One thing that I really dug was that when I opened Netflix all my information was already there and it was ready to go. So when you transfer your account over it doesn’t just bring over your avatar, gamer tag and friends list but it also brings your log in information for your apps.

One weird thing, and I guess the PS4 is like this to some degree too,  is that you have to download an app to play blu-rays. This is no big deal and it is obviously free but it is just strange to me to have to download that function. Same goes for CDs I believe but I have not tried it and I don’t care enough to look it up. The blu-ray functionality here is very good. Nothing super flashy or anything but it works just fine and being able to pause, fast forward, rewind, play and stop with voice commands works great. Again, this is something I never thought I wanted but it is pretty great especially for those moments when you are festooned with cats on your lap and you realize that you left your controller out of arms reach on the coffee table and you really need to rewind but you don’t want to risk the potential for razor sharp injury for disrupting kitty nap time. I realize that is an oddly specific scenario but you can probably just replace that with a girlfriend. Maybe that isn’t how that works. Maybe that is why I am single.

Controller

Lets talk about the controller. Very little is different about it on the surface when you put it next to the 360 controller. There is a fair amount of debate regarding which system has the best controller and while I think the Dual Shock is a great design, especially the new controller which feels great in the hand, I am partial to the Xbox controller. A lot of this has to do with the analog stick placement which remains unchanged here. The sticks themselves are taller and the cups are a fairly deep concave. These feel great on the thumbs and are more comfortable than the 360 sticks because they accept your thumbs in an ergonomic way. It isn’t like the 360 sticks were uncomfortable but these are more comfortable.

The D-pad, the Achilles heel of the 360 controller,  has been improved and is now much more viable an option for 2D fighters although I find it a bit smaller and the placement of it is a little awkward to use as a regular control method. I ended up using the analog stick for Killer Instinct more often than not. It is still a better D-pad than the 360 but Microsoft still hasn’t quite nailed it.

The triggers and bumpers are fairly standard but feel nice and responsive. The bumpers are a bit easier to get to than last gen and the addition of the rumble motors in the triggers is pretty cool. Not many of the games I played implement it yet but in Need for Speed Rivals it does a good job of giving you the feel of driving with the controller by managing acceleration through the button. This might not seem like a big deal but it really is. I am looking forward to what this can be used for in the future.

The face buttons are large and comfy and easy to reach. The home button is flush against the surface and makes for fewer accidental exists to the dashboard than the previous controller. Start and Select are smaller and not called that anymore but they are pretty standard and their placement is pretty much the same as the 360 controller.

Probably the thing I like the most about this controller, and the most surprising, is how light it is. It feels like the Sixaxis before they through rumble back in. Unlike that controller, however, the rubberized grip helps you not drop the controller or have it flip out of your hands because it lacks the weight to sit there and take the ridiculous overdoing it of intense gameplay. It is light and comfy and the lower profile battery housing makes it feel sleek and streamlined.

Games

Alright so now to the games and gameplay. Sure it has taken me almost 2000 words to get here but don’t think that it is because the Xbox One isn’t serious about games. The storyline that has been going around for awhile now is that PS4 is the system to go to if you want to play games and that the One is more of a media machine that incidentally plays games. While on a surface level it is true that the One offers up a lot more than just games (the PS4 does too…this kind of stuff is going to be ubiquitous on devices from here on out), the One is a gaming machine and I found their launch selection to be more attractive than the competition.

I don’t want to turn this into a competitive article about the One’s superiority to the PS4. I have not spent as much time with the PS4 (only a bit at E3) but I have no beef with the system and if I could have afforded it I would have gotten both at launch. What made me choose the One at launch is that I prefer the exclusives the One offered. I am sure that Killzone is awesome if you are into that series but I never have been so I went with the system that had games I want to play right now. Uncharted 4 is happening and I will be there day one with a system to play it on so understand I don’t give a shit about which is better or brand loyalty. I go where the games I want to play are and right now that is the One.  So, because I prefer the launch lineup, I am a little confused when people say the One isn’t a system for games.

I will review each of these individually but the launch games I went with were Ryse, Dead Rising 3, Assassin’s Creed 4 and Need for Speed Rivals. I also downloaded the free version of Killer Instinct. So I picked up two exclusives and two multi-platform games. I am kind of surprised about which ones I have spent the most time with so far but I will get to them all eventually.

Download is required to play games and because of the outcry from people who want to trade in games you still have to have the disc in even after download. Not a big deal, it is a little deal. The download process takes a minute and is kind of annoying but you can jump into playing fairly quickly and while you are waiting for that piece you can play something downloaded or watch something. This works really well and I would jump into Killer Instinct, which looks very pretty, while I waited for my download and then hop over to the game I was waiting for. When you jump between games like this, your progress is ‘saved’ and you can come back to the same spot you were when you bounced. This isn’t as reliable as, say, the same feature on the PS Vita but it is nifty and I am sure it will be refined through patches.

I started off with Ryse, a game that is getting a lukewarm reception due to its shallow combat. I haven’t spent a ton of time with this one because of the combat but it was less because it was shallow and more because the broad strokes of the combat are similar to the Arkham series and given that I just came off playing Arkham Origins I was not jazzed on that sort of combat. Especially when the commands are mapped differently and generally feel like the Batman combat system has been hit in the head with a flagstone brick (to be fair that is how the Arkham Origins combat feels too). Ryse looks very pretty and the story is straight forward and engaging enough so far. I am not chomping at the bit to get back to it but I am not upset I bought it or anything.

Next up I tried out Dead Rising 3. I have always really dug the Dead Rising series conceptually but I have never really liked the execution because I don’t like games that have a model of forced replay and to take a playground as potentially fun and exciting as this one and then hamstring it with a timer that forces you not to screw around is just crazy. Thankfully for the third outing Capcom has abandoned the timer (it is still available in higher difficulties) and you can do pretty much whatever you want. The story seems cool so far and I have been following that but I have also done plenty of just ruining zombies’ shit while wearing a full luchador costume or nothing but a speedo and  horse head mask. This is pretty awesome. The game looks fucking gorgeous as well and really shows what the next gen means with intricate details and textures while rendering hundreds of zombies in real time. If you ever wanted to know what it would be like to have to deal with a pants shitting number of zombies at once you can find out here. Zombie games have always been limited in terms of processing power when it comes to how many zombies to throw at you. Dead Rising 3 is not and you will be dealing with a crazy number of them and it is intense and fun all at the same time.

 

After that I went to Need for Speed Rivals. I am not a big racing game fan and I tend to get bored. The only one I have ever loved is Burnout because it puts focus on crashing and wreaking havoc on other racers. Developed by the same  company, Need for Speed has always played it a bit straighter but this time around it feels a bit closer to Burnout with the rivalry between the cops and the racers. When you are playing a cop the way you arrest a racer is to just basically attack the car until it crashes. You get a bunch of weapons to help with this and it is both ridiculous and awesome. The weather effects and amount of detail here are incredible and the addition of the rumble motors in the triggers give more visceral feeling to the driving. This multi-platform and word is that it looks prettier on PS4 but it looks plenty gorgeous here so it is worth checking out.

Finally I put in Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag. Now, anyone who has read this site or listened to the Gentlemen Radio podcast knows that we are passionate about Assassin’s Creed and we HATED Assassin’s Creed III. I almost didn’t go with ACIV at all and when I switched my pre-order to the One version I did it feeling like it was going to be an also ran that I would likely trade in right away. This thing hasn’t left my system since I put it in. Maybe it is the pirate angle or Ubisoft realizing that they made a horrible mistake last time around but pretty much everything I hated about III is gone or fixed and IV feels great. The story is more engaging, the lead character isn’t a whiny douche bag and the naval combat is just so much fun. I am so glad that this one is panning out and it has made me excited about this series again.

As mentioned I played some Killer Instinct and while I can’t really say much since I don’t have the full experience but what I have played of it is pretty fun and I want to get the full release once I recover from how much money I spent on this system and initial spate of content.

Conclusion

Overall, the One delivers on the promise of a cool new system with a lot of future potential and a lot more complete of an experience than I was really expecting at launch. New consoles are like politicians lately. They make a lot of promises on the campaign trail and then it takes years to address those promises. The One is no different but they got a lot more done upfront than I was expecting. There is room for improvement for sure and some rough edges to smooth over but the day one experience felt a lot more complete than I was expecting. There is still plenty of great material coming out for the PS3 and 360 so if you weren’t able to make the jump you are still being well cared for but this seems like a worthwhile system to jump over to especially if you dig the exclusives.