As I have mentioned quite a lot recently, I have become tired with the Wii’s lack of hardcore games (or decent games, for that matter); so I decided to buy a 360.

The first thing I thought upon buying the console was “Freakin’ heck, this is ridiculously expensive”. I bought an Xbox 360 Elite with two pre-owned games (Halo 3 and Rainbow Six Vegas 2) and one new game (Battlefield: Bad Company) with two controllers, one of which was pre-owned. The whole lot amounted to over £400, which is about $800. On top of this, I have to pay to play online. Sure, it’s only £40 ($80) a year, but before you even start paying for this cost, you have to pay £50ish ($95) to buy the part of the 360 which connects to the internet. It’s worth noting that the other two consoles of this generation allow free online play.

I’ve done some more research, and it turns out that as well as paying for the part of the Xbox 360 that connects to the internet and then paying £3 each month to use it, I also have to either buy a specific router which works for the 360, or get an extended cable which connects my computer to the 360 which would have to stretch over the whole length of my living room, risking my dad running over it with his wheelchair every time he wants to get to the other side of the room.

When I got home I thought “jolly good, all my troubles of costs are over, setting it up shouldn’t be too hard....” WRONG. I opened up the box to find at least 10 plastic bags covered in writing which describes its contents in every language with the exception of English, despite the fact that Microsoft is American. I then looked to the instruction manual for guidance as to what to do, setting up hardware has never been my forte. Reading the Xbox 360 instruction manual is like reading that of a car. The setup of a 360 can be summed up as the following: “attach a (extremely long technical word) to the console (leaving us to figure out where on the console to put this particular part, of course after you’ve found which bag this part is in)”.

When I had finally hooked up the 360 I was greeted with an eerily silent welcome from the Xbox 360 logo, as it spun around and flashed green yet did not utter a single sound. My friend happened to pop round a few minutes later to see how I was getting on with the setup. It turns out (after much wire inspection) that I had attached the wrong wire to the wrong part of the back of the TV. Maybe this says a little bit about my hardware skills, but it shouldn’t take three people (myself, my dad and my friend) to set up a console, and it certainly shouldn’t take more than an hour.

I then asked my strangely Xbox-familiar friend if he wanted to have a match of Halo 3, not realising he already had the game and as so I got my arse kicked.

Before I bought the 360 I decided to look through all the games which were available on the platform. Seems that most of them are FPSs and not all of them were original or fun, so after watching many YouTube videos and reading many reviews I decided to buy.... three First Person Shooters. Two of the games have been fun so far (Halo 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company), while the third game I have found to be too difficult to enjoy. Even without the online play, I’m still laughing at the arsonistic redneck in Bad Company and gawping in awe at the amazing graphics of Halo 3. The fact that I haven’t won a single match and yet I’m still having fun is a clear sign that Halo 3 is a good game, but I shan’t got into much detail, I’d be reiterating the points I’m making in the review I’m writing of the game.

The controllers are a complete rip-off of the GameCube controllers, even the button names are the same. Despite this, they are incredibly comfortable and fit perfectly into a gamer's hands.

The future of the Xbox 360 looks bright and very promising; with original and unique games like Fable 2, Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space slowly approaching their release dates. But the only thing that has guaranteed it’s success is the games.

The 360 is a bad console with good games. Unless the installation is miraculously made easier and online play made free with no strings attach, I will not be happy to say “I chose a 360 over a PS3”. I promise you, if the PS3 had the 360’s games I’d buy it straight away.