Achievement Unlocked 11.14.08: UI Upgrade

Posted by Rod Oracheski on 11.14.2008

411mania's Rod Oracheski takes a look at the New Xbox Experience, and what gamers can look forward to on November 19th, when it officially releases. Plus some World of Warcraft Achievements and a look at the Prince of Persia Trophy list.



So in just a few days, things change for Xbox 360 owners with the arrival of the New Xbox Experience, or NXE as the lazy refer to it. I've played around with it for just about a week now, so we'll take a look at what kind of changes you can expect when you fire up your 360 on the 19th.

NXE: Wait...what?

NXE, or New Xbox Experience as I said before, is the new user interface (UI) for the Xbox 360. It makes some fundamental changes to the way the UI works, adding a few new features (Avatars, game installs, Event channel, etc...) while also increasing overall speed. It arrives November 19th.

NXE: The Setup

The women love a man in nice slacks.

First off, the update goes pretty quickly - despite being a large-scale overhaul of the operating system. The initial download is done in no time at all, in fact. It's the larger second download after the system restarts that will run you about five minutes. I think it's this download and install that brings all the Avatar-related gear, which is why it takes a little longer.

Once you've got it downloaded, well - that's it. Make an Avatar and away you go. You can choose from a variety of 'pieces' to create your Avatar's appearance and outfit, with several added in updates over the last couple days. I've seen some complaints that you can't make an Avatar that looks as much like you as a Mii, and I'm not sure what to say on that front.

Though you can do a lot more with positioning of features with a Mii, I think a lot of it stems from the way Avatars are a lot more realistic than their Wii counterpart, so people are less willing to overlook weak areas. Get the hair and eyes right on an Avatar, for example, and it's the chin that's not quite right. Meanwhile you put basic features on a Mii and people will proclaim it a dead ringer, despite having a squiggle for a nose and a head that's shaped like an egg. It's the entry-level of the Uncanny Valley, I suppose. It's the same way we're willing to suspend disbelief and see resemblance in a caricature, but not in a 'serious' reproduction that's not quite right.

NXE: The Experience

Aside from the obvious difference in looks, the biggest difference between the new and old dashboard is simple - speed. Remember going to your Xbox Live Arcade titles and scrolling down, then having to wait a second as the next 20 or so titles loaded in? With NXE, that's entirely gone. To really test it I went to the Achievements list (some 100+ games long) and scrolled top to bottom with no loading at all.

No idea why he stands like that.

The only time you'll encounter loading is when you're buffering information from Xbox Live. For example, when you're viewing a game details there's a panel for DLC - that panel would need to load up before you can see it. The design team has taken that into consideration, however, and minimize any delay by putting those panels after the Xbox 360-resident information (the first panel is where you can choose to play/install the game, the second panel is Achievements, the third is featured DLC, etc...)

There are some new things to explore here, with one of the most interesting being the Events channel. This will allow gamers to stay on top of community events without having to check the xbox.com website (or those of involved parties) to see what's coming up for co-op or multiplayer gaming events.

The dash wasn't the only thing getting a revamp, with the Guide also being overhauled - perhaps even a better remix than the dashboard received. Now you can literally do anything from the Guide, including directly launching XBLA games (or whatever game happens to be in your disc tray). This is especially of interest to those who play a lot of XBLA games, as the old system made you back out to the Xbox Live Arcade, then choose the next game and then start it up. With NXE, it's as simple as hitting the Guide button, choosing the next game and then agreeing to leave the one you're in - no need to hit the dashboard again at all.

There's a bit of a functionality change on the Marketplace, where the old 1+5 download system (one game downloading, with five queued up) is gone, replaced by 1+29. With the upcoming ability to start up downloads via the web, that should prevent any problems with limited queue space.

One last change - parties. Now you can join up to eight-player parties to chat while playing games. You don't need to all be in the same game (or even playing a game at all) to be in the party, though the system makes it one-button-easy to invite friends into a game. It even remembers your status in the event you need to do a title-specific update before joining the game, and reconnects you to the party when your 360 restarts.

>

Not my video, I lent my copy of Lost Odyssey to a friend :(

NXE: Installations

The NXE also brings with it the option to install games to the HDD, an option that provides two benefits - though one may not manifest in all games: faster load times and near-silent operation.

Nearly any game can be installed, though Crackdown and Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 have been found to not support the feature and you're generally going to see a fairly large reduction in load times. Burnout Paradise, for example, is a 3.6 GB install that drops the initial load time from 36 seconds to 28 seconds, while Fallout 3 is a 5.9 GB install that drops the 48 second load down to 25 seconds, also cutting transition loads between game environments down to about 10 seconds.

Grand Theft Auto IV's initial load time goes from 46 seconds to 33 seconds, with the 6.8 GB install taking around nine minutes. The Orange Box, a 4.7 GB install, sees perhaps the most drastic improvement. The initial load time goes from 45 seconds down to 25 seconds, while loading a saved game shaved 30 seconds off the wait - from 46 seconds to 15 seconds.

That's not to say there aren't some games you won't want to bother installing, of course. Halo 3 actually gets worse when loading from the HDD - both the initial load (approximately 10 seconds) and at every level.

It's a negative that Bungie's Luke Smith said is due to the cache system that Halo 3 employs:

Jokes aside, installation for 360 games wasn't really something we were told about while Halo 3 was in development. Like someone above said, we had to get the game running under the parameters we (and tons of other devs) were given (i.e., 'no hard drive, no problem') and Noguchi's cache-system is a huge part of why it runs as awesome as it does in the no-HDD environment. Games that use the cache memory extensively aren't going to see much if any benefit from installing on the 360 since the data transfer from the HDD is slower than it is from the disc if the disc is spinning information to the cache.

Another game that experiences a bit of an installation oddity is Project Gotham Racing 4, which sees reduced load times, but picks up some crackling audio issues.

Installing a game is extremely simple: put it in the drive, hit Y and choose Install. Wait 5-10 minutes and you're done. To delete it, just hit the Y button and choose that option, or go to the Memory section and delete it from there.

NXE: Netflix

Those in the US can now fire up any movie in their Instant Watch queue, including the newly announced HD movie support. Those of us in Canada can wonder what that's like.

NXE: Community Games

In the Marketplace, you'll find Community Games to play. These are games that were developed via XNA and are all prefaced by a warning that they are not rated by the ESRB or reviewed by Microsoft. There's a price attached to these titles, though they tend to be minimal. One of the currently offered games is an Asteroids-like multiplayer shooter that will run you 50 MS Points, while another (the flower growing game called Culture shown off in an XNA preview alongside Jellycar and Dishwasher Samurai some time back) will run you 200 MS Points.

NXE: The 411

As I said in the forums, it's a UI update and I'm not really sure how excited anyone could really be about the idea, but it's functional and speedy so I'd say look forward to it on that basis alone, even if none of the new features interest you. I'll have some videos of the new UI in action over the next few days so look for them in the Microsoft forum.

WoW: World of (Achievement) Whores

11 million users - take THAT, heroin!

With the launch of World of Warcraft's newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, comes a slew of new Achievements for players to unlock. WoWInsider has a list of some of the easier Achievements, which just goes to show that there are Achievement Whores everywhere. You can check out the list here.

And a big "congrats" out to the first level 80 player, who hit that oh so prestigious goal before many people even had their copies of the game. I played WoW for quite a while, starting in a casual guild and moving into a couple high-end guilds - both PVE and PVP - before burning out when it started to be more like work than fun. With that experience under my belt, no pun intended, I'm not sure why you'd want to rush through all the content to get to the part where it's a boring end-game grind, but I'm sure the "fame" that goes along with this is probably the only explanation they have.



Two items this week with Trophies. First up, the Prince of Persia Trophy list was released by Ubisoft. I haven't seen the Xbox 360 Achievement list, so I'm not sure if it's the same one or not, but I'd wager it is.

At 51 Trophies, the list offers up quite a bit of variety. There are skill-based ones like 'Sword Master' for doing a 14+ hit combo and collection quests like 'Light Seeds Protector' for collecting 900 Light Seeds (Bronze Trophy) or 'Light Seeds Master' (Silver) for picking up 1,001 Light Seeds.

Word also came out, via Eurogamer's interview with game director Nate Fox. Fox had this to say on the subject: "We'd be complete and total jackasses not to support Trophies - they are videogame crack and everybody knows it."

Enough said, I suppose.

Getting shot at AND rained on - life sucks for a COG soldier.

I'm still playing Gears of War 2, but after beating the Campaign (for a second time, after a Memory Unit meltdown lost the Achievements while transferring between consoles) I've been sticking to the Horde mode with some friends. With one set I'm at level 15 on Insane, while another has it up to 44 on Casual. It's interesting to see the differences in the game between the two sets of players - one strategizes before starting the level, while the other just wings it and hopes for the best.

You can find more screenshots from the game here in the forum thread.

I borrowed Motorstorm 2 off a friend, burning through a good number of races before deciding to give it back. If you were a fan of the first game, it's worth a look. They did away with a lot of the ridiculous grinding at the high levels, and I didn't hit any of the 'you must play [x] vehicle to advance' races that plagued the first game, so even those improvements were enough to justify trying it out.

If you weren't a fan of the first game, there's probably nothing here that will change your mind. It's still heavy on the 'race to the corner too fast, turn and boost' style gameplay, though they've added some new boost mechanics that add some strategy. The enviroment is also a lot more varied than the first game, something that really killed my enthusiasm in that game. You won't feel like you're racing through the same canyon in every race this time around.

GIVE AUNTY A KISS!

I also played quite a bit of Resistance 2, though I abandoned the single player campaign after only a few hours. While the multiplayer is quite a bit better than last year's offering, it feels like the single player got shortchanged in the development cycle as a result. It's still one of the better FPS on the PS3, but I'm not sure that anyone who's not playing online is going to be thrilled by what they get here.

I didn't see Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts anywhere, so I'll probably have thoughts on that next week. I did pick up Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 however, and have had fun with it so far. The graphics are pretty sweet, with only a tiny bit of screen tearing to detract from otherwise solid work, and the FMV is great. I wasn't sure what to expect after the terrible YouTube stuff they did, but the actual game delivers.

Good variety of units and powers, along with an interface that allows you to group units quickly and still pick between unit types with ease - there's really not much to complain about here at all. Worth a look for C&C fans, even those who didn't enjoy the last few offerings.

I also got in some time with Call of Duty: World at War, a title that surprised me. The campaign is solidly put together, and though a lot of the annoying CoDisms from the past remain (particularly the 'move past the line to stop the respawning soldiers' one) the presentation and atmosphere are worth checking out. You'll run through the single player campaign in 5-7 hours, unlocking the Nazi Zombie mode, and it's a blast. Holding out against wave after wave of zombies is the kind of thing that just never gets old, no matter what game it's in.

The multiplayer is very similar to CoD4, with perks and advancement through the ranks. Don't dismiss it as "just" a CoD4 clone, however, as it plays very well and is a lot of fun. If you're like me, you got sick of CoD4 after a few months of non-stop play and are looking for something different. I was pretty tired of the WW II setting in FPS, but CoD: WaW has shown that maybe there's still some life left.

In last week's column, Nate asked what the point of Gamerscore was - aside from ePeen. In truth, aside from some scattered contests related to it, there really isn't one. It's a topic I've covered in the past, so check the history. Most recently, I proposed allowing Gamerscore to buy things for your Avatar.

Until next week, I'm out.