Xbox One

So, I was able to log a few hours on the Xbox one today and I have to say, despite what I expected, it's actually a decent console. I'm not going to get one any time soon though, I'm gonna wait for the prices on used ones to go down past fifty. The controller surpasses the Xbox 360's with it's excellence, and it's just barely behind my PC controller in comfort. It feels like what it's been billed at, a controller that has been tested for perfection. The triggers are great and all the buttons as well. The sticks feel like they'd last longer than the 360's and the D-pad could easily be called one of the best. Out of the launch titles, I've only played two. Madden 25 and Dead Rising 3.
Out of the two, I'd have to say that DR3 was the one that I enjoyed the most. By which I mean I actually ENJOYED it.

A quick review of Madden 25 would have you know that there's too many functions for every interface command and that they change from second to second. The cut-scenes are glitchy in that sometimes players clip right through others while running and the player models look like they were ripped from a PS2 game.
That's not to say the game doesn't look good. When not zoomed in on the players it actually looks quite nice. The field looks the best looking ground texturing I've seen (Although I suspect if you were to hug the camera to the ground and point it straight down it'd look as blurry as the ground textures in CoD4 and MW2 do when you do the above) and the GUI looks quite nice. My problem is that unlike a lot of games you can't just pick it up and go if you've never played it before. The complexity of the commands makes it impenetrable for a beginner and it's killed my interest in sports games. I wouldn't recommend it. 3.4* Moving on.

Unlike with Madden 25, I have played sandbox games before. As well as survival-horror games, third-person brawlers, and third-person shooters. I didn't even start off at the beginning, I was using the save file a friend had already beaten the game on because the XONE didn't want to let me sign in with my XBL account. I love it, I'm gonna have to play the first two Dead Rising games one of these days, and if I ever get an Xbox One this is gonna have to be on my list. Despite me randomly getting bored with sandbox games occasionally, when I want to play them, I usually have a lot of fun. The ability to fashion makeshift weapons is awesome, if a bit illogical (Like '90s adventure-game illogical) at times. I like everything about DR3 except that the games GUI sometimes make it hard to tell where to go.
Also, according to the Wikipedia page the game doesn't have load-times. HA! What they should say is that it has one BIG loading time every time you load up a save. Other than that it's a great game. 9.3*
All in all, I'd say that the Xbox ONE really needs some time to get more games and for the price to go down. Also for them to work out all the kinks in it. It's a good console. It's better than the way I thought it would be, but it's not perfect. Then again, no console is. Well, maybe the DS.
Who am I kidding? No console is perfect, everything's got its own special brand of problems, and it's still early in the eighth generation of gaming, so those problems are yet to present themselves long term. There are the obvious hardware and software kinks in the Xbox One and PS4, but they're probably going to be worked out over the next year (At least I hope so.)
I'd like to apologize for my lack of content over the past month, I've been busy cleaning the house, prepping for the Christmas special, working on next October's Halloween special, prepping the new campaign storyline for the DnD group I'm DMing for, working on a project with my dev group, and although I've had the content, I just haven't had the energy to put that content into writing. Took me two days to write all this up, and I wasn't able to devote a whole lot of time to it. I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, a happy New Year, and happy holidays for all. See you on Youtube at noon for the next 24 days!