So that means you’re gonna have to wait for the next shipment anyway, so hunker down. Lucky for you, here at CraveOnline we got our box last week so we could play it all Thanksgiving weekend and give you the low down. Aren’t you happy for us? Ok, so here’s the juice:

To answer your question easily: yes, you should buy it. Whew, Microsoft’s PR department wipes forehead after sending us the expensive thing and a couple games to boot. But there are a lot of ifs, ands, and buts about the 360. We got the $400 model with remote control, a wireless controller, and detachable hard drive, and let me just say that you might as well go for the gold. For one thing, this is 2006 (almost) and who wants to buy a separate memory card just to save your game? In our book, a hard drive is pretty much a prereq for any next generation console but MS is shipping consoles without it to cut down on manufacturing cost. If this were the only downgrade in the cheaper package a memory card might be an easy sell, but the truth of the matter is if you really want to feel like you’ve got your hands on the next generation machine, you’ve got to it all. The remote isn’t part of the normal deal so only some packages may come with it, but you will get an Ethernet cable and heavy duty HD AV cable, which even though I have yet to get an HDTV, is nice. And what’s another $100 really?

It’s about time the controls go wireless and this perk really makes it feel like an upgrade. No more messy wires and if you’re like me (that is, not a kid living in a messy bachelor pad) that’s saying a whole lot. Now you can stand the Xbox on its side next to your TV and turn it on and off from the couch. No more connecting wires every time you want to play the thing or putting away controllers. Don’t worry, if you’re still in college and can afford the thing (go in with your dorm mate and worry over who gets it when you move out later), you’ll find the convenience of the wireless controller just as alluring; especially when you’re sniping some bastards from the kitchen over a plate of cold pizza.

If you’re worried about battery life, MS is kind enough to supply you with the initial duce of AAs and after several days and probably upwards of 30 hours of play time there is no sign of a slowdown yet. It even vibrates, although it might be nice to find a way to turn that off to save power as it’s surely got to suck the batts (hmm, that manual’s got to be around here somewhere…). Anyway, ours is white and it looks nice with the console but I wonder how long it’ll stay shiny in the face of pizza hands or Cheeto-fingers. No matter, if you’re griming it up you probably don’t care about such considerations. The black and white buttons have been replaced with a left and right secondary trigger, much easier to get to in a pinch, and offering a lot of new weapon combinations. It’s also smaller so you’re palm doesn’t get sore from clutching the thing all day, err I mean the couple hours you can eke out to play it.

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Some people have complained about the warmth or noise of the box and truth be told, it’s a hummer. But this is quickly drowned out by the sound of machine gun fire, exploding spike shells, or that custom track you’re playing from your desktop computer. In fact, the 360 comes with a few shameless promo tracks from various bands (they’ve grown beyond Moby) and you can tap into your Windows Media Center PC to get music or pictures through your home network. It’s supposed to work with Windows XP Service Pack 2 running the Windows Media Connect software (a quick download from xbox.com/pcsetup) but I’ve yet to get the box to detect my home computer. Tech support… There’s also a USB plug in the front to stick in your iPod or other portable media device and play tunage from there.

The menus are easy to navigate and Xbox Live has a prominent position. Marketplace is where you go to buy things like theme packs for games or download free goodies like game trailers or demos. Right now you can get a playable demo of Kameo: Elements of Power but that’s about it. The box comes with a single arcade game to keep you busy, Bejeweled, and you can download a couple other freebies from the Marketplace. The controller’s X button lets you browse the hard drive for music while playing a game as well as handle Xbox Live stuff. There’s been no time to delve into multiplayer via Xbox live at this point, so suffice it to say this version of the console comes with the headset and a free month trial subscription and if you want to setup some capture the flag or other trash-talking madness, have at it.

The real meat of the console is in what it delivers for gaming. It’s got a triplet of 3 ghz processors and a fat 512 MB of system ram, and a bunch of onboard video ram. This means graphics are faster and the games themselves are quicker. I notice a significant speed improvement over the original Xbox, which might take 60 seconds to start a Halo 2 level. But each game is somewhat different. Kameo loads very quickly and has a lot of in-game cinematic integration that plays seamlessly and without hiccups. Perfect Dark Zero takes a few seconds to load that first level but after that it’s smooth sailing, while Call of Duty 2 similarly is ready to go in only a few seconds. Great for that nervous trigger finger waiting to storm the beach at Normandy.

The graphics represent a huge leap for the console and nowhere is this more apparent than in Call of Duty 2. The three games we tested (also Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero) all demonstrated a big leap in graphics but CoD takes the cake. Take a gander at the ocean after you make it to the top of the bluffs at Point Du Hoc and you’ll see what I mean. People are also surprisingly lifelike, but what really gives CoD an impressive visual hook is the frame rate of the game, which seems a lot higher than either of the other two. You know that smooth, soft movement indicative of computer animated characters? Gone in CoD2. The motion is very fast, jerky, and realistic. From a game play perspective, CoD2 is like a simulator for WWII and it almost sickens your stomach taking fire and experiencing what it must have been like for those guys – or even soldiers today. Just remember it’s a game and you’ll be fine, recruit. Of course if you’re looking for cool gadgets and lots of gun scopes, CoD2 may not be your bag. The game is ultra realistic with weaponry and most guns have just a sight to shoot with, no better than the real D-Day troops had.

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Perfect Dark Zero is a mature-rated shooter set in the near future. When you’re tired of blasting polygonal aliens in Halo, PDZ offers a nice modern-day feel with thugs and bad guys deserving of your long range snipe. The graphics are phenomenal, even if lacking the sophistication of CoD2, and you’ll see an occasional graphic hiccup in an animation or when walking around a corner. It’s a minor distraction but might explain why the standard version of the game falls into the “normal” $49.99 price category compared with Activision’s $59.99 price tag for CoD2. What makes PDZ fun, though, is a good rock-based soundtrack and a few perks that shooters like Halo have long needed (note to savvy audience: this reviewer hasn’t played every FPS ever produced so I’m sorry if this generalization slights one of your favorite games). A big one is the boredom effect I often experience while playing Halo. You kill everybody, the music stops, and then you are walking around the map for an hour trying to figure out where to go. Maybe I just suck, but friends have had similar complaints so I was thrilled to see PDZ’s blue arrows appearing on the ground in front of me after only a few seconds of impatient confusion. This keeps the game flowing and keeps me interested. What can I say? A short attention span is a hallmark of the video game era. Some other cool aspects of PDZ include a “cover” feature that lets you hide up against a wall or object and target from a protected vantage point, and the occasional gadgetry puzzle in need of solving.

For the more general audience comes Kameo: Elements of Power, an adventure title in the tradition of Blinkx or Fable and a host of others. It’s the family-friendly game with a cute female heroine who can really kick some ass, and a bunch of fantasy mumbo jumbo to keep you interested. The premise of the game is your standard girl-must-save-her-father’s-kingdom-from-the-army-of-trolls but the hook is the ability to morph your character into different “warriors”, each with unique special abilities. You have to combine abilities and characters to accomplish tasks and there’s a good mix of puzzle solving and bad guy banishing to keep everyone entertained. It may be a cutesy land of wizardry and magic fruit, but the combat component is no slouch. Pummel Weed can lay a nice upper cut and burning trolls into submission with your fire-breathing dragon character isn’t for the faint of heart. Kameo benefits from great graphics and a heavy integration with cinematic cut scenes. Maybe it’s easier since the characters are more cartoonish rather than realistic, but the game really capitalizes on the speed of the 360 to provide a plethora of in-game cinematics that unfold quickly and blend seamlessly into the game play. I just want to know how long it’ll be before you can buy add-ons to name, pet, and saddle the horse you get to ride in a couple sequences. Just imagine the cyber pet generation going wild with that.

The 360 claims backwards compatibility with something like 200 Xbox games, and Halo 2 played fine (although it didn’t seem to benefit much from the speed of the new console). You can get a full list at xbox.com. The console debuts with about 25 new games and Call of Duty 2 is probably the mint of ‘em. It has the best graphics and most real combat I’ve seen. There may not yet be another break-out hit like the original Halo was for Xbox mach 1, but the available titles are certainly engaging enough to get this casual gamer “back in the game” after watching my original Xbox and 15 titles gather dust on top of the TV stand for the last two years. If you’re a hardcore gamer you’re probably not reading this review, anyway; but if you’re an on/off gamer like me, the X360 is definitely cool enough to be the “it” device of this Holiday season. Now, if only they had made Star Wars: Battlefront II for the 360…

Steve Krutzler