I feel very blessed to be the sole stinchfield, boy or girl, with possesion of the 360. I woke up at 5:30 and went to Costco to wait until its opening at 10. I stayed in my car and slept until everybody got out of their cars to wait at 7 so I really only had to wait outside for an hour or so because they let us in the first door. It was a wierd feeling because the Costco employees came out ot tell us that we needed to walk in a single file line and that if there was any running that he would throw us out of the store and we would go home 360less. So, here we were, all men and women, none under the age of 20, mostly in their early thirtees, being treated like Kindergardeners. And for good reason, there were some serious stress cases there but it was just funny. It really made you feel younger. Then they opened the door and they walked us through a roped area. On our left the games sat there, other electronics were also there until we got to the bins where they handed us the boxes. I was brought back to our childhood walking out on Christmas day to see what we had received. It was just really funny.
Anyway, onto the actual 360. I tell you what, it is everything I wanted and more. This is because of my understanding that there will be many games in the future that utilize all that the system can do, but, for now, they are doing fine. project Gotham 3 is amazing and so is Call of duty 2. I have not played Perfect Dark zero yet but it is receiving great reviews. The box itself is great because of its functionality as far as hooking to computers, streaming music to the box from the a computer or an xbox. In that way it can act as a good cd player that goes great with your home theatre. When you put the disk in it automatically has the names of the songs and the album, which is an upgrade. the last box did not do that so you had to put the names in manually. The interface is great, the dashboard is smooth, the customized soundtracks are great, and the wireless controllers work with no glitches. I was worried that the controllers would not be as responsive but, it is not so. It makes for very quick cleanup and it is a great DVD player. It utilizes the HD capabilities of Tv's very well. I do not agree with the critics that say that it is good, not great. It is a great system and can only get better. I hope this is good enough. It should make for a merry Christmas since we will be inside a lot in this weather out here and with the baby we will not likely be getting out a ton.
Tom