Gaming Happy 15th Birthday Xbox: Five Xbox Games You Should Play

Bear in mind that's a screenshot from Combat Evolved Anniversary, rather than the original game. It may have aged like that in the heads of those who played it on release, but unfortunately the it didn't quite look that good haha.

Good list though, including the special mentions. PGR2 was a fantastic game, many good memories of that title. Was so sad when Bizarre shut shop, SEGA just destroyed them. I mean who asks the developer of an arcade racing franchise to make a Bond game? I was a member of their forums for many years until they closed, spent many many hours messing about on there. Would be so good to see a PGR5.

 

Wait a minute, where's Jet Set Radio Future?

..article fail.

 

How dare you not pick Toe Jam and Earl III: Mission to Earth - journalism intergrity failure - you must be a shill for Sony!

/sarcasm

Nice retrospective. The Xbox was the first console I ever owned, and Halo was and still is awesome; the level design, the weapons, the Flood, oh god the Flood - epic.

 

Man, Jet Set Radio probably should have been on the list, but I prefer the original by quite a way.

Honestly, space constraints were the biggest issue. The Xbox was a hell of a console and distilling it to 5 is tough.

 

"How do I celebrate the anniversary of an iconic console...hmmm A list! Yes! That's how professional journalists on Buzzfeed do it!"

What is Bit-Tech coming to?

 

I'll take lists over starting arguments for clicks any day of the week.

 

Now that every BioWare RPG is either Dragon Age or Mass Effect, this is confusing to me too. In fact, I can't think of another major RPG that has used a Chinese fantasy/history setting like Jade Empire did. If it's not clear, I also loved Jade Empire, and would take a new game in the series over one of the aforementioned BioWare franchises any day of the week.

 

My favourite bit-tech article of all time was a two-parter, as I recall, that broke down the workings on Random Access Memory. It was informative, insightful, well-written and pretty much unique among all other tech publications, but that was years ago....Today "5 games wot a console had" passes for a bit-tech article, and it's frankly embarrassing.

 

Who cares what they publish. There are plenty of sites that have in-depth technical coverage of PC related things. It is the internet, you are not bound to visit only one site, nor read the content of any single site.

 

What, no mention of Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball?
...
I am only half-joking. While certainly not in the system's top five exclusives, semi-exclusives, or shared-with-Windows-exclusives, it was far better than the "softcore porn" reputation implied, once you realized it was a dating sim and not actually a volleyball game. AND FRIGGIN' CHRISTIE THREW OUT EVERY PRESENT I EVER GAVE HER!!!! THE WOMAN HAS A HEART OF SOLID ICE, I SWEAR!!!!



Gunvalkyrie was pretty darn good too. Once the player realized they weren't supposed to be walking, well, pretty much ever.
You would think that is self-evident for any game where you have a jetpack right from the start, but last time I looked at YouTube, people played it like they had no jetpack. Standing on the ground, walking towards the insectoid hordes veeeeeeeeeeeery slooooooooooooooowly in a way that literally made me scream at my monitor.
Note: I did not misuse literally.

 

Isn't this all very subjective though? That article you mentioned would bore me to death, for instance. Did CompSci so it would just be like revisiting first year at uni again, yeah no thanks.

I get that the articles definitely have changed though. I don't mind these current features, but I would like it alongside some more of the old school stuff. But then, I do wonder if things have just changed everywhere too. I must admit that I don't think a full article review for a 5.25" bay fan controller would entice people like it used to.

 

Conkers bad fur day, the funniest game I have ever played.

 

Sorry this has rubbed you up the wrong way pal, but as part of creating MORE stuff for Bit-tech, the 500 word pieces will sometimes be a little smaller. It's just a small thing to sit in games to mark the Xbox being 15 and isn't replacing any of the other games coverage you would get. It's especially not messing with the tech side of things, because neither of us games writers write about technology, so your RAM articles could still be forthcoming.

Sorry again, I genuinely find it upsetting when people are affronted by words I put on the internet.

 

Oh, is that what people want in news these days - quantity over quality? I had no idea...

What you need to understand is that articles like these are totally out of place on the site. Just going down the latest news on the front page we have subjects such as - AI, data breaches, IP law, asynchronous reprojection, etc...pretty mature stuff - A far cry from "Here are 5 games".

Compared to the other content on the same site it's an intellectual fall down a flight of stairs. A bit-tech xbox retrospective should be about it's development, challenges during it's life-cycle , cold hard facts like units sold, the corporate characters, the controversies, the drama, the cultural impact both in gaming and the wider world - That's a bit-tech retrospective, not "Here are 5 games", which is just lazy hack writing no matter what way you look at it.

 

although not xbox exclusive the original baldurs gate series of games were amazing. I wish they would get remade (or at least rereleased on xbox one)

 

Halo wasn't XBox-exclusive either. The first two games both had Windows ports.

 

So Bit-Tech can only do articles based on highly technical or "mature" stuff? Why should an article bobbed together to celebrate the Xbox delve into it's technical achievements, how many it sold, or who it pissed off the most? All of that is readily available on Wikipedia and it does not make for an interesting read.

I didn't even own the original Xbox and the article still caught my interest as it is one man's opinion on what essentially made it a great console.

Beyond that, all the "mature" stuff you mentioned is nigh on completely written by Gareth. That's what he does, technical stuff. And he does it very well. Jake does games reviews etc, again, very well. So why would Jake deviate from what he does just to rewrite the Wikipedia article here?

If all Bit-Tech did was the technical stuff, it would lose a decent chunk of content and readers. Because I'm fairly confident under your "No Fun Stuff" rule, we'd lose game reviews (they're not mature are they, really?), all the daft stuff like "We got bored so built a watercooling system out of a high spec water chiller then overclocked the nuts off a squirrel" and it just wouldn't be the same.

 

There's just no pleasing some people...

 

This.

Then they wonder why people get fed up and quit, leaving them with even less to read. Personally, I found the article a nice little morsel to read, which was clearly intended from the writing style.

Carry on Bit Tech - ignore those one or two more demoralising members - there are many more who enjoy reading the articles.