New Xbox 360 250GB review

When we first saw its face in a Italian ad, more than one Engadget editor called its bluff: "The top half doesn't line up with the bottom," some said, "that's got to be Photoshopped." While that early image was indeed CG, the form factor was certainly not -- the new Xbox 360 sports enough sleek angles and disappearing curves we've taken to calling it the Stealthbox. As mother always told you, though, it's what's inside that counts; does that glossy exterior house any improvements, or is it hiding just another Xbox? Find out after the break.

Read More ..

Xbox 360 Slim Noise and Heat

There are a few other aesthetic tweaks to take note of with the Xbox 360 S, such as the new glossy black finish or the fact that the Eject and power button are now touch-sensitive panels rather than physical buttons. The 360 Slim now beeps when you press either of these, while the new glossy case will record when you touch it anywhere else – it’s a real fingerprint magnet!

The really interesting visible change though is the alterations to the Slim’s cooling system. While older Xbox 360s had two smaller fans to provide (some might say inefficient) cooling, the Slim has only a single, larger fan.

The new fan measures 92mm and exhausts accumulated heat through the side of the console, rather than the rear. The immediate good news there is that, because the fans is larger, it doesn’t need to spin as fast – meaning less of the cacophony for which older Xboxes has become known for.

Measuring how the changes to the fan affect the thermal performance is obviously a tricky business, as the new design means that results gathered from any testing won’t be easily comparable. The layout of the motherboard has changed, along with the cooling system and actual hardware. The Slim uses a new 45nm chip which integrates the Xenon processor along with the Xenos GPU and eDRAM. So, it’s not just as simple as shoving a thermal probe in and running a game for five minutes.

Xbox 360 Slim Review Xbox 360 Slim Noise and Heat Xbox 360 Slim Review Xbox 360 Slim Noise and Heat
The side fan on the new Xbox 360 Slim

Still, eager to gather some sort of data, we recorded the temperature of the exhausted both subjectively and with a temperature probe. In tests the Xbox 360 S seemed to be getting hotter than the old Premium SKU we use for game reviews. In a room with an ambient temperature of 23°C the Xbox 360 S ran at 46°C after ten minutes of playing Crackdown 2 while the older Premium model sat at 42°C.

That might sound like bad news and the immediate instinct is to say that the Slim is therefore more likely to overheat, resulting in the dreaded RROD – but we’re not sure that’s true. The Xbox 360 Slim Review Xbox 360 Slim Noise and Heatsubjective test (e.g. sticking the back of hands on the consoles in question) revealed that the Slim is generally only hot around the exhaust, while the Premium feels warmer all over the casing. If red rings of death are caused by the Xbox 360’s hardware overheating then the fact that the Slim is exhausting all that heat, rather than retaining it, is a good thing. It means the new fan is doing its job.

Since we were unable to disassemble the Xbox 360 S review sample we had, it’s hard to extrapolate much further in regard to the Slim’s thermal performance. The hastily gathered results don’t, for example, mean that the Slim will never red ring – that’s just not something we can feasibly test.

Looking at the Xbox 360 S in terms of noisiness is, however, a bit easier than assessing how the Slim handles overheating issues though. The method for testing is simple too; we played around with an old Xbox 360 Premium, listen, then compared the experience to playing around with the Xbox 360 Slim.

The first results were incredibly positive. When idle or playing games from the hard drive the Slim was much, much quieter than the Premium. All previous Xbox 360 models have been known for the volume of their fans, but the Slim is an exception. It’s very quiet.

Well, most of the time anyway. We occasionally found that the disc drive would whirr prohibitively, making quite a racket. The first day we spent with the Xbox 360 Slim it was very noisy, with Antony commenting that it even drowned out the older models. A subsequent re-test failed to replicate those sounds, however. Alas, since we only had only a single Xbox 360 Slim to test with, we couldn’t ascertain for sure if this was a problem common to all models or if it was a temporary problem unique to our unit.

Read More ..

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions Review

Making the decision to create a new entry into the crowded world of comic book games is akin to deciding where to put your foot next in a dangerous minefield. Choose too quickly or carelessly and you're going to lose a limb, but if you choose correctly you're one step closer to your real goal. Activision and Beenox took this challenge on with Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and while they didn't make it out unscathed from shrapnel, they did indeed make it to the other side with a game that's sure to delight Spidey fans and entertain those who like pummeling bad guys into the ground.

In the game, Mysterio attempts to steal the Tablet of Order and Chaos from a museum, but Spider-Man swings in to stop him. But in the process of foiling the crime, the Tablet is shattered into pieces that disperse themselves amongst four different dimensions. Madame Web appears to Spider-Man to explain that she's gotten in contact with three different Spideys in the affected dimensions and that they are to work together to get the pieces back before they fall into evil hands. But the problem is that each and every piece has fallen into evil plans and Spider-Man has to get them back. The main act of theft takes place in the world of Amazing Spider-Man and the rest of the game is split between that world and the worlds of Noir, 2099 and finally Ultimate Spider-Man.

To fully break down what works in the game let's look at some overall facets of the game and then break it down by dimension in order to truly dig into the pros and cons.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is a universe full of unlockables, new powers, mashed up gameplay mechanics and nods to longtime fans. The tale is broken into thirteen levels: three per dimension and one final level to take on the big boss. Each level is focused on a particular villain and you'll start by learning who it is and then pursuing them through a series of fights in each level. The control scheme is the same for each dimension, though depending on which one you're in your skills will vary slightly. But I'll get into that in the dimension-specific section. Along the way you gather spider emblems which will give you points you can spend on combat upgrades and character upgrades. Powers are blocked by tiers of challenges. Each level has around twelve challenges in it, ranging from defeating x number of bad guys to beating a certain section in a specified amount of time. As you complete more challenges, more unlockables are available to you. As you buy combat moves, the majority are then available to all four spider-men.

This power-up system works well to motivate and drive the player forward. But in general the combat felt a little too loose. No matter how many combos I added to my arsenal, it seemed like I was only pulling off the same moves over and over again up through the final level. This lack of control was frustrating as it felt like I was the same Spider-Man who entered the tutorial so many hours prior with only an upgraded health bar to make me feel more powerful.


Points you can perch on are pointed out in each level (depending where you're looking) with a yellow arrow. This means that with a single button you can sling yourself directly to the object. You're also able to swing from the (often unseen) ceiling from area to area, as Spidey generally does. If you fall from too high you can save yourself by pulling off a first-person, last minute save to pull yourself to safety as well.
The game does a great job at transitioning between different points in a level. You'll start each level with a cut-scene that highlights a villain and once you pursue them you'll hit points where you'll get knocked into first person mode to make a quick comment, or thrown through a wall into a new area that wasn't accessible before.

But in general where the game stutters in its repetition. While some levels I'll discuss later do a fantastic job of bringing unique tasks and gameplay elements to the forefront, you're going to spend a lot of time simple brawling hundreds and hundreds of enemies. And amidst these brawls you're going to hit sections where you either need to save civilians and swing them to safety, or save workers who can then operate machines to help you gain access to the next part of the level. These things happen in each dimension and get old pretty quickly.

Read More ..