New 360 Owner! Impressions, questions

[liamtoh669]

Barozi - Thanks for the list! I'll check next time I'm downtown. Yes I should definitely give Amped a try, since I love SSX 1-3 (On Tour and the Wii version didn't impress me as much). In fact I recently bought SSX Tricky for the Gamecube and it brought back some good memories (I originally had it for PS2 years ago).

Oh, I have another question about the 360. Is it better to put it on its side or leave it upright? Right now I have it on its side, and it's on a table, not tucked away in a cabinet or anything so it should have lots of ventilation. My Wii is horizontally laid on top of it but it's not blocking any vents or anything. And then my GameCube (with GBA player) is perched on top of the Wii.

Uberkiffer - My 360 is too far from my router to hook it up to the internet, but I was able to just plug my iPod shuffle into the USB port and listen to my tunes. The system is smart enough to turn off the game music while my MP3s are playing! That's actually a very nice feature for me. One of my favorite things about Zen pinball on the PS3 is that I could 'zone out' and listen to my tunes while I played. Same for Excite Truck on the Wii. Now I can do that with all kinds of games! Very nice!

I also noticed that the "OS" of the system is very snappy and responsive. Sometimes on the PS3, when I try to access the XMB and it's busy loading something, it just gives me a "do not enter" symbol on the top left. But it doesn't matter what the 360 is doing, every time I push that big button in the center, the menu (I think it's called the blades menu?) comes up right away.

I'm also getting more used to the controller. I'm used to Playstation/Gamecube style controllers where the bottom of the 'handle' goes into my palm. But with the 360 controller I find I just need to grip it a bit higher up on the side, so that my index finger can touch the battery pack. Then my thumb is in a good position to play Pac Man CE and not suffer any undue stress.