This is AMAZING!
Written: Jan 09 '03 (Updated Jan 09 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: fun, easy to use, lets friends play together from two sides of an ocean.
Cons: Occasional lag and some timing issues.
The Bottom Line: Go buy it. Today.
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| annecal's Full Review: Microsoft Xbox Live Starter Kit 3.0 for Xbox |
Adam’s very kind and overly generous best friend gave him an Xbox for Christmas, complete with the Xbox Live Starter Kit. The kit, which retails for about $50, includes a headset with earpiece and microphone, a set up disc, and an instruction booklet. You must have a high speed connection to use Xbox live- (we have AT&T Broadband)—so don’t bother if you’re using a dial-up!
The Headset
The headset is made of a comfortable, flexible plastic, and comes in a couple of pieces. The main piece is a U-shaped piece of plastic meant to be worn so that the curve of the U rests at the back of your head. On either side of the piece is a contoured bit, which is meant to be tucked over your ear. Adam and I both thought this would be uncomfortable, but we were surprised to find it didn’t bother us at all! The second piece is the earpiece and microphone. The ear piece snaps on to either side of the headpiece, and the microphone extends downward ending in a little ball. (Think Madonna, and VOGUE). The headset then snaps into the controller, and a little light at the tip will glow to green to let you know you can speak and be heard (well sometimes—more on that later), or red if you’ve muted yourself. I should also note that the cable that connects to the headset and from the controller to the game features a breakaway system, so that the cable will come apart should it be dropped or pulled accidentally. You just reconnect them, and this saves possible damage to the system.
Set Up
Set up for the Xbox live is very simple, and the “computer” will walk you through the process with no problem at all. It is very user friendly. You will be asked to enter a credit card number into the system, as the kit gives you a year of free play, and then you will be charged. There seems to be no way to avoid this, even though you aren’t charged for a year, so get ready to give them the digits. Another rather key element to the set up is choosing your user name! This is the name you will have for good, no matter which game you are playing. Give this some consideration, because it can go rather wrong for you. My favorite example is this guy who chose the username SOFAKINGBAD. So, clearly, he wanted to be known as so F*cking Bad, but they wouldn’t let him use profanity. The result? Everyone calls him “Sofa King.”
Another thing to avoid is game-specific names. We play Ghost Recon a lot, and there is one player who calls himself THE SNIPER- which is fine in that game, but looks ridiculous when he’s playing the motorcycle game, or Mech Assault. There is also I SEE YOU- another victim of the Ghost Recon stupidity name choosing plague, since he isn’t very good, and it’s fun to call out “I see you!” right before you kill him ; ) So choose your name carefully and good luck!
This Rocks!
One of my favorite features of the X Box Live is that you can insert your favorite music cd, and burn the entire thing, or just specific songs onto the Xbox hard drive. You can create mixes this way, and listen to whatever you want to for music rather than what the generic game tunes are. So now we race motorcycles to Disturbed, SOAD, and Chevelle rather than the standard musak provided. Cool, huh?
LAG LAG LAG and Other Gripes
So there are some downsides to the system, though they are to be expected. To demonstrate what I am talking about I’m going to talk about the Tom Clancy Game, Ghost Recon. In this game you are playing by yourself or as part of a team, and you’re in a large map (several to choose from), where you are killing everyone you can find—the players in this game are very well camouflaged). Lag is one of the occasional problems with this game. A perfect example of Lag is when you spot someone, target and fire. And fire. And fire. Normally, as soon as you kill someone, a message pops up in the top right corner of the screen saying, “KILLER 1 has eliminated THE SNIPER” or some such thing. In a case of lag, you can fire for upwards of a minute before the game recognizes and reports the kill. Major pain in the @ss.
Another gripe I have about the system are the bugs involved in joining a game. You can choose from several search parameters and the system will go into a lobby of sorts, showing you what games you might want to play. There may be ten selections, and it will show you who is leading the game (this person is the one who chooses maps, how many times you can re-spawn, whether a threat indicator is used, etc. Anyone can start a game). The current map in use will also be displayed. Also displayed, and this is key- is the amount of time left in that game. Some games may say “joining” which is rarer, but great, as it means that people are getting ready to start, choosing their weapons and whatnot. Other games will show a time, such as 3:54 or 1:29. This time is meant to show how much time is left in a current game, so that you can decide whether you want to wait for it. Most games run for 15 minutes, but can go on indefinitely, or for as little as 5 minutes (this is also chosen by the person who starts the game). The problem? The time isn’t very accurate. It’s very common to select a game with 2 minutes left, only to find that the timing was off, and that group has already started a new game, and there is actually 14 minutes to wait. So what do you do? Well you exit that game, since you don’t want to wait that long, and your frustration is compounded because when you exit, you can’t look at the ten selections again! You have to start the search process all over again. This happens frequently enough, and seems to happen repeatedly when it does! They need to work it out so that if you exit a selection, the ten it suggested to you are back for you to choose from again!
To Speak or Not to Speak
The first game we played, and the game we still play most often is Ghost Recon. When you play this game you can speak to everyone else in the game by pressing the clear button on the controller. When that button is not pressed, you can hear everything that others are saying, but if you’re talking to someone else in the room, then the other players cannot hear you. The clarity of voice is amazing here, and only gets mucked up in a laggy game, in which case the voice will sound choppy. Being able to speak with others around the world as you play is mind-boggling to me. It’s also funny when I’m getting my @ss kicked and the person who has been slaying me for the better part of an hour says something to me, and I realize its an 8 year old kid! Adam and I were amazed when he first played with a friend of his in England- it was like he was in the room, with no noticeable delay!!
One thing to be aware of it that not all the games require you to hit a button to talk. In the motorcycle game, you are always heard, unless you press mute. Found this one out in a rather embarrassing manner! So be sure that you know who can hear you when you open your mouth!
Voice masks are an option, and you can sound like a baby, or a robot or whatever, but I have to say that these are sort of annoying once the initial novelty wears off. It’s distracting, and you don’t really hear what the masked voice is saying, if that makes any sense.
Wanna be my FRIEND?
Another option with the Live Kit is to have a list of friends. We started out with our friend who gave us the kit, and a couple of blokes in the UK who also have the Live set. Using your friends list, you can see if someone you know is playing their Xbox, and what game they are playing. You can opt to join them in their game, or invite them into yours. We have some new friends, as well. If you play for a couple of hours with the same people, you’ll possibly make a new “friend” someone who you enjoy playing with, and you can invite them to become a friend and vice versa. It’s an excellent feature!
The GAMES
The kit comes with two demo games. This isn’t a game review, so I’ll just give you the basics.
The first is MotoGP, a motorcycle racing game. I’m not a huge fan of racing games, but Adam and some of his friends who also own sport bikes seem to enjoy it! You can customize quite a lot of options once you’ve bought the full version, but the demo will allow you to play live, and it’s pretty fun.
The second game took away 20 minutes of my life, which I shall never recover, and for that I will be forever peeved. This game is called “Whaked!” In this game you select a creature from the list of creatures and then you run around trying to kill everyone else and collect stars. I cannot even begin to tell you how pointless, simple, boring and annoying this game is. Unless you’ve got a small child who would be amused by this game, do yourself a favor and use the disc as a coaster.
Ghost Recon is the game we have been playing most often, and it is fabulous live! Absolutely amazing- it’s certainly worth the $50 purchase price, so do yourself a favor and pick it up when you buy the live kit. Playing live with this is great- you never know who you’re going to be up against and sometimes you’ll be kicking @ss and taking names, and other times your head is handed to you on a platter. It’s exhilarating and humbling.
Mech Assault is also pretty fun. I had never played any of the Mech games before, but it’s pretty straightforward and destructive. Playing this game live gets frustrating when you have been assaulting another Mech for a while, and just as they are about to die, someone else in the game notices that they are about to die, and shoots them once, which is the final blow, and they get credit for the kill! Arruugghh!
It’s a great game, though- satisfying in a very destructive way!
Overall
Overall the kit is wonderful. The best part about it for us is that Adam can now play with friends of his in the UK, and they can chat and catch up and have fun together even though they are so far away. Playing against other people you don’t know is usually a great experience, though you will certainly come across people you’d rather not deal with again. On the whole, I strongly recommend the Xbox live!
Special thanks to Andy for giving Adam (and me) this gift, and to Adam, who lets me play Ghost Recon under his handle, even though I am much, much worse than him! :)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
annecal
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Member: Annie
Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Reviews written: 125
Trusted by: 130 members
About Me:
Road test drivers over 75!!
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