Xbox
I went TPM DVD hunting today (to no avail), and was wandering around Target when I noticed that they had redone their end display for the video game area. As I wandered closer, I noticed two black controllers sticking out; but each one was different. One was a PlayStation2 controller... the other... the massive Xbox controller. I placed the enormous device in my hand, and noted it to be rather comfortable. Since it was supported, I don't know how heavy it was, but it's massive. However, like I said, it is comfy and fairly well designed. The four main buttons are smooth and fairly well placed (although it's important to note that I have long fingers)... and the upper two are obviously more of "option" buttons, not really to be used for actions. They are nice to have there though. The analog sticks are both smaller than they look, and the D-Pad is indeed smooth and the comfiest seen in quite some time. It's really not a bad controller, but I wish the analog stick had more resistance and maybe was a bit bigger, but I'm sure we'll get used to it.

There was a demo running of NFL Fever 2002, but since I've heard very bad things about it, I decided not to watch it, and to hit start and see what it had to offer. Up popped a menu that was crawling with a huge list of games. As I moved through them, I noticed that every single one of them was a non-interactive demo... in other words, stuff you can watch but not play. Out of the 25 plus games listed, only one, Munch's Odyssee was playable. For a system that launches in one month, that's a really, really, really bad sign that only one game is to the point of playability. Hell, Rogue Squadron 2 for the GameCube is already golden, as is Luigi's Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, and Super Monkey Ball. I started up Munch. There was an initial load screen of 30 seconds, plus another at least one minute load screen that didn't even say "loading". I thought load times were a thing of the past? They are on GameCube, I've seen movies, but this was ridiculous. I don't remember load times like this since Sega CD!

Once it finally loaded, I started wandering around, and the analog control was decent, but a little wobbly for my taste. It reminded me of the first time I played Mario 64. I picked up these odd green things, when the game seemingly froze for like 3 seconds, only for a screen to finally pop up and tell me to collect more. Great... the whole demo was a hand-holding walkthrough that was utterly ridiculous. I got no taste of the real game. The frame rate didn't even seem to be a full 60 FPS, more like 45 or so. The graphics were crisp, but nothing really blew me away... in fact, this could've been accomplished on the Dreamcast, in my humble opinion, with a minimal loss of detail. Admittedly, the demo offered little to no taste of the actual game, but if it's like this dumbassed demo, Microsoft has a huge uphill battle. If their marquee title sucks serious ass like this, they are screwed. Nintendo has a line-up of great games ready for launch day, and it looks like ol' MS isn't even gonna have everything ready.

Target did have a TV and spot staked out for their GameCube demo unit when it arrives. Now that's something I'm looking forward too!