Review: Xbox provides plenty of eye candy, but will games hold up?

By DAVE GUSSOW
© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 19, 2001

Microsoft Xbox Price: $299 Dimensions: 3.5 by 12.75 by 10.25 inches Weight: 8 pounds Processor speed: 733 megahertz Number of games to be available at release: 15 to 20, including Halo, Dead or Alive 3, Surf and Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee Special features: 8-gigabyte hard drive; Ethernet adapter to support high speed DSL and cable-modem connections, although those capabilities will not be supported until next year; plays DVD movies with additional $30 kit. -- New York Times

The sun reflects off a car window. Squealing tires leave skid marks. A crash sends debris flying, and the damage shows on the car. And it's all in a video game.

From the moment you turn it on, Microsoft's new Xbox video game console grabs your attention with remarkable graphics that outshine its competitors.

Even if not all the games turn out to be winners -- and that's a crucial question -- Microsoft's first game console seems likely to be a heavyweight challenger for Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's new GameCube in the video game market.

The system offers a blend of power and potential that quickly thrilled my 16-year-old son. His only quibble was the bulbous controller, which he thought could have been streamlined for better handling.

From a mostly nongamer's perspective, I don't find any controller particularly friendly. A minor annoyance came from having to shut down and power up the unit a couple of times because it has no reset button. But the graphics lived up to the promise of quality on the level of the Toy Story movies.

Battle for No. 2 Newcomers Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube will battle it out for second place behind game console champ Sony PlayStation 2 this holiday season. Review: GameCube offers great graphics and controlle Mario the plumber has a new home, a tidy blue cube that packs a lot of power inside. Review: Xbox provides plenty of eye candy, but will games hold up? The sun reflects off a car window. Squealing tires leave skid marks. A crash sends debris flying, and the damage shows on the car. And it's all in a video game.

Revving up EA's NASCAR Thunder 2002, my son marveled at the detail in the cars and the realistic race action. It even has streaks of light like the lens flare a camera picks up on a sunny day. He picked out the stitching and NFL logo on uniforms in Madden 2002. And game play was more sophisticated than on his PlayStation 1.

EA's Cel Damage is a demolition derby game with lots of crashes and noise, which didn't interest him (nor a parent still yearning for the return of Pong), yet he still talked about the quality of the animation. Dead or Alive 3 was another installment in one of the fighting games that has lots of moves, grunts and flashy graphics.

The test for Microsoft, which expects to have 15 to 20 titles available this holiday season, will be whether the quality of the games keeps players as interested down the road as the novelty and eye candy do at the beginning.

Because we received the Xbox on Microsoft time -- just in time to get a basic review -- we couldn't check out all the features, such as adding our own music to a game's soundtrack. And to use the built-in DVD player to view a movie, we would have to buy a special remote control for about $30.

The console has a built-in hard drive that makes saving games easy, and the Ethernet card for Internet connections clearly shows that Microsoft thinks online gaming will be a killer app, at least for those with high-speed access.

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