I revisited Black last night. It both does and does not hold up. I found the controls to be annoyingly slow and clunky, especially having just played Red Faction II with its very tight controls. Also, your black ops dude is hilariously bad at throwing grenades, which oddly don't really bounce at all. The enemies were more bullet-sponge-y than I remember. It's near-useless to shoot them at long range, and often much more expedient and satisfying to just blow up the nearest thing to them.

On the plus side, the enemy AI is still actually pretty good. I screwed up the stealth on Treneska Border Crossing and it became a real shitshow as enemies ambushed me from every direction. I still enjoy a lot of the gameplay touches, like the fuzziness during reload, the health kit mechanic, the disorienting effects when you're getting shot, etc. The sound is still pretty good considering the time it came out, and the game's soundtrack remains excellent (though I wish it were more often present).

When it all comes together, though, the game is a lot of fun. It's a chaotic, visceral, smoky nightmare where everything's exploding, and with the orchestral soundtrack blaring over the top of it, it's awesome. The guns are all great, but the shotgun is particularly satisfying and fits best how the game should be played. When you're just plowing through a building fucking shit up, it's pretty rad. I still like the game.

I only played the first mission after it downloaded, but it seemed alright. Little floaty and slow aiming but I got used to it near the end of the first mission. Also yeah, the grenade throw is fucking hilariously limp and I loved it. The biggest thing that hit me is that every button can be re-mapped, which is fucking crazy to me. A lot of modern games still don't do that, or have limited controller setup types. I made them more standardish (still a few caveats, but mostly standard) and it played pretty well. I like the idea of the side objectives.

I do want to try and get through it, but Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge needs some playing (it's my second favorite OG Xbox game), and Mario hits on Friday so I don't know when I'll get back to it.

It's funny you mention the button-mapping. Red Faction II is the same way where you can make any button do anything. When did we lose that? I love that you can do dumb stuff like have your fire button be up on the D-Pad. Replaying these games now, it's been really nice to be able to make them my modern control scheme of choice.

FWIW, the first mission in BLACK is pretty boring and easily the worst of the whole game because it's little more than a tutorial. The next one is good, and there's one later in Alcatraz that's basically The Rock, and it rules. I don't remember it being a particularly long game, so it shouldn't take up that much time to play through. I'm with you on Crimson Skies, though.

@notnert427: Good to know about the mission thing, I'll probably try and get through the second or third later today before going back to being a Sky Pirate. Also that Alcatraz thing sounds pretty rad.

Had my first sort of glitch in NGB, once you get to Han's Bar the movie that introduces Rachel starts to flicker intensely. (if you have epilepsy this might cause problems) Not a big deal but I wasnt expecting it considering how well the game seems to look and play on the XBO. The letterboxing in KOTOR on the other hand is quite saddening, i'm sure after awhile you tend not to notice it but I was turned off playing it. I seem to remember the PC version having a similar problem but not quite that bad.

I'm happy I still have KOTOR, Crimson Skies, Dead to Rights, Psychonauts, Prince of Persia and Pirates! All great games. I installed DTR and it looks much better but for some reason the left and right look is reversed (you can only invert aim). You move the stick to the right to look left and vice versa. Very hard to get used to in this day and age. I don't remember it being awkward back then (but that WAS over 10 years ago)...

I don't have an Xbox One, but I'm curious on what they're going to do with these original classics. I would assume that anything that wasn't compatible on Xbox 360 is off the table. But given you can potentially system link with older Xbox consoles I'm curious what they'll do in terms of patches or DLC.

On several OG Xbox games, system linking would be impossible if games didn't have a particular patch. Since you can't patch or download DLC for these older systems without soft modding, is Microsoft going to automatically include these patches or DLC when you run these on an Xbox One?

Also, since Sands of Time is out, the Xbox version came with the first two games as unlockable bonuses. Do these work on the Xbox One? Or are they hidden away/give errors when you try to play those games?

@jaqen_hghar: in short, I don't know. But I hope so. I'm in a similar position to you, minus the switch. My xbox one has been collecting dust, I haven't sold it because I have a couple of things I bought but haven't played yet. And it has all the Halos. Since I built my PC with a 1070 I haven't really looked back and I feel there's no reason to get a oneX. I hope these OG Xbox games come to pc, but I have my doubts it'll happen anytime soon if at all.