I...I Think I'm Done With My 360
By colourful_hippie 106 Comments
The Xbox 360 was my first console of this generation which I purchased back in the summer of 2006 with a copy of Call of Duty 2. It was great, Oblivion blew my mind and I truly gained an appreciation of the potential of the “next generation” with the release of Gears of War which quickly became my favorite franchise in terms of multiplayer.
I picked up a PS3 shortly around the time of Killzone 2’s release but the Xbox 360 continued to be my go to console. I enjoyed the Halo and Mass Effect franchises (even though I now played the latter on PC) and just about any of the top 3rd party titles on that system, it was great. Gold, at the time, was a great service that I vastly preferred over PSN and I can still remember the countless hours playing with friends either in Gears of War 1, 2, and recently 3. I loved that console so much that despite going through 7 goddamn consoles, yes 7, I still stuck with it. Although to be fair, 5 of them red ringed, the other could no longer read discs, and the 120 gig Elite I used to have was fine but I swapped it out for a 250 gig 360 S when they first came out. Oh and there's an HD-DVD player somewhere around here. Yeah I enjoyed playing on that system that much.
Now for the downhill slope. Most of this I can blame on getting a new desktop which has taken over as the go to thing to play games on apart from the occasional great console exclusive, I honestly have a hard time going back to the 360 because its slow, clunky interface’s age is even more apparent now than ever before. The other thing to blame is being back at college again which means that my free time has dramatically decreased. I can no longer play multiplayer games as much as I would like to so I tend to put that free time into single player experiences that I really want to have. Speaking of single player experiences worth having, the solid exclusives for this system kinda have dried up, Halo 4 is the only thing I can think of that recently forced me to remember my 360's existence apart from Gears 3. It's mostly a third party system now which is unfortunate for me cuz my PC has taken that role now and does a better job at it for obvious reasons.
Now the one lifeline that has been keeping me clinging to this old machine has been Gears of War 3, that game is my 2012’s 2011 GoTY. I love that multiplayer to death; it’s just so much fun to blow away guys with powerful sounding weapons and watch them blow up into chunks. Unfortunately the online community has quickly descended into shit; there are not as many people playing it to the point that it’s easy to find games where there are just too many bots. It’s fucking depressing to see my favorite online game starting to become a ghost town. The other thing that has slowly begun to rip me away from my love of this game’s MP is Team Fortress 2, some of my friends made the shift to PC and we all go on TF 2 now which is just easy drop in/drop out multiplayer fun.
Looking back, the 360 has given me countless great moments in video games. I don’t regret owning the thing, but now I think it’s time to sell this console and everything else with it. I don’t see any reason to hold onto the machine apart from the upcoming Gears of War: Judgment which I already know I won’t like more than Gears of War 3. 3 is the pinnacle of that franchise and Judgment doesn't look like the leap that 1 to 2 to 3 were. Don’t get me wrong, my fanatical love for the franchise won’t allow me to pass it up but I won’t be sticking with it as long as I did with 3. Once that is done I think I’ll be ready to call it quits, wrap that 360 up, and get rid of it. As for my PS3, I’ll be keeping that one because I need to play Ni no Kuni. Looking back, I realize that I like the exclusives more on that system than on the 360 and I still have to play Beyond and Last of Us.
106 Comments