Yesterday, the Belgian members of the press were invited to an Xbox Live presentation. Little did we know what the people of Xbox had in store for us :-) When yours truly arrived, accompanied by his two personal assistants aka bodyguards Speed and t20, he was pleasantly surprised. The gentle people of Microsoft Belgium had gone through much effort to provide us miserable journalists with no less than 20 functioning Xbox Live booths ! One floor up: some 40 or so Xbox booths, all of them featuring top titles and beta releases of upcoming games. Needless to say, I suddenly found myself without any personal assistants … yes, it’s hard to find good employees these days ;-)

But, let’s cut to the chase. First things first, the Xbox Live experience. The games on offer were MechAssault, Ghost Recon, Unreal Championship and Moto GP. Each game was consigned five booths, all of them were “online”. We tried them all, as we aim to please our readers, off course :-)
I’ve got to admit, I was surprised. As an online pc-gaming veteran I was … let’s say… sceptical about online gaming with a console. But after yesterdays event, I am forced to change my mind. Gaming with an Xbox online against British, German and Dutch people was fun not only because of the interactive gameplay (much like pc-gaming) but because of the interaction through the Xbox Communicator (= headset).

Why, you ask ? Well, as most online pc-gamers know, it’s not customary talking online to teammates or fellow gamers. Most communications these days are made by means of hitting the ‘talk’ button and then typing what you have to say. With the ‘Communicator’ you can just talk away through the microphone and share your innermost thoughts with your fellow gamers without causing any ‘delay’ on your connection. I shall not share with you the innermost thoughts of the British and German players when they were firing at each other on a MechAssault server :-)

Now, it is probably up to your personal taste what games you prefer to play online on which platform. Speaking for myself, I found it rather hard playing an FPS without my Optical Microsoft Intellimouse*. Though after a while I did manage to score a couple of headshots with my sniperrifle in Ghost Recon – much to the distress of the two Xbox-hosts standing at my righthandside :-) The game I enjoyed most was the racer (Moto GP). I had the chance to chat with a guy from Manchester I believe, whilst waiting for the race to start. Who dares to say that gaming alienates us youngsters from the community ? He was probably on the verge of inviting me to England, but I accidentaly crashed into him making us both lose that race :-) Personally, and I know I speak for a lot of people here, I’ve got high expectations of any Codemasters titles which will be made Xbox Live compatible.

As for the rest of the games which were on show, some of them made me wish I had begged for an Xbox console so I can write some Xbox reviews too :-). The most promising beta versions featured were: Indiana Jones and the Emperors Tomb, Steel Battalion (those controls, wow !), Mortal Kombat – Deadly Alliance and Racing Evoluzione (aka APEX). My personal favorites were The House of the Dead III – amazingly scary and fun, and Dead or Alive – Xtreme beach volleyball. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that ;-)


All in all, it was a fun event, where we got the chance to play with the Xbox Live and several beta’s of upcoming titles…. Actually, they had to practically throw t20 and myself out at closing time :-) I’m quite sure the Xbox Live will succeed, providing console owners have a broadband connection and the subscription costs don’t run too high. Of course, the people of Xbox themselves should take care that there will be enough top-titles and servers available. But after last night, something made me feel that nobody should worry about that !



* sorry about this, it’s an ‘inside joke’ ;-)