My Opinion
 

This is what I think about the Xbox360 so far.

First of all, the graphics are quite amazing at times. Cutscenes and such look almost real. I'm really digging the graphics in both Oblivion and in Forza Motorsport. The details in Forza Motorsport are absolutely amazing.

As for the two games that come with it, they really aren't that great, but that's to be expected. Forza Motorsport looks pretty neat-o and all, but it's just not really my thing. I managed to play it for a while and got bored after about 3 races. Ultimate Alliance was mediocre at best, I was quite disappointed. You can choose from a shitton of different characters but they are all almost exactly the same. Also, you have 4 characters at any given time, 1 that you control and 3 that do whatever the fuck they want. You can switch between these and all that jazz but I really would have prefered having only ONE character and being able to control only that character. It seems like the lowest of the low of hack-and-slash games. It's just chaotic, you button-mash and things die.

Now, Oblivion, that's a good game. I've really enjoyed playing it. While I don't think it is quite as good as Morrowind, the graphics and physics and such are much, much better. I would say that it is arguably equal to morrowind, sometimes I might say it's actually better. I'm really not decided on that yet. Either way, I'm really enjoying it. The only BAD thing I've really noticed is a lot of the "quests" in towns and such are "follow this person" "spy on that person" type quests, which mean I'm following a slow-ass NPC around for 15 minutes while he walks from one side of the town to the other. That just isn't fun.

The only real problem I've had with the Xbox360 is that I find it really hard to read some things in games. I think this is probably due to the fact that I don't have an HD-TV, but I literally have to strain to read some of the stuff. I don't know if this is because they didn't bother making non-HD look very good or if it's simply just a limitation of my TV, but it sucks either way. What makes little sense to me is the fact that the cutscenes and graphics and all of that are mindblowing but the text and icons and such are blurry and painful to read.

So, overall, I'm loving it. I'm getting Halo 3 this coming weekend and will probably be loving it even more at that point. I think if I ever manage to get an HD-TV, it will be perfect.

My main issues with Oblivion are

• Leveled opponents - if you just play and don't focus on your skill ups, it's possible to slip into a state where you just can't beat your opponents except by adjusting the difficulty bar or carefully counting and managing your skillups for several levels, both of which feel unnatural and cheat-ish. As nice as not having to grind levels to complete the main quest might seem at first the reality is that you don't have the option of just grinding levels to overcome the opposition, which sucks.
• The mage's guild - this isn't an issue if you bought the wizard's tower download or the Nights of the Nine pack, but if you're playing vanilla Oblivion, the only way to make your own spells is to join the Mage's guild, which involves a long string of quests. Then, if you decide to join another guild and the quest line involves killing or stealing from the guild, you get kicked out and have to gather vampire dust to get back in; that means you get to find you some vampires and defeat them -- it would seem that most vampires are +3 or +4 levels, so have fun with that...
• "Broken" enchantments removed - for some reason, you can't make a constant effect enchanted item that restores your health or mana, or a number of other powerful effects. I wouldn't mind so much if it just cost a whole lot and/or only allowed very small magnitudes, but they just completely locked it out...

I'm in all three guilds, and finished the Mages Guild missions first. But I've not been kicked out by doing missions for the other guilds. It might just have been the way you were doing things.

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Side-quests do get better, !K_A!... though they do become a bit repetitive - clear out this cave, search through this ruin. Still quite fun.

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It might sound stupid, but have you got your 360 set to output at the right resolution? No point having it output at 1080i, say, if your display can only handle 576i.

I haven't changed any settings on the Xbox360 itself. My cable had the option of TV or HDTV, and I flipped the switch to TV. Other than that, I haven't done anything.

Fair enough.

There might be an option under display settings somewhere to change what resolution the 360 outputs. If there is, then it could solve the problem, though I reckon if it does it'll make everything readable, and the cutscenes less glamorous.

Honestly I might prefer that. Struggling to read stuff can pretty seriously impact gameplay.

If there is a setting, you're on your own in finding it, I'm afraid. I've just read through a PDF of the 360 manual, and it doesn't mention such a setting anywhere.

Oh well, it's most likely just my TV anyway.

How much does a decent but cheap HDTV cost these days?

Depends on the size you want, and the resolution you want.

If you want to go the whole hog and get a 1080p HDTV, then it'll be over the 40" mark, and cost around $2500, I guess.

You can get 720p HDTV's, though, for a damn sight cheaper. I reckon you can get a good 32" one for about $1000. Most of this is just guesswork, though. I'm going off UK prices and just doubling them to get dollars, but we pay a lot of tax on technology, so I'm probably way out.

In fact, here are a few Samsung's from Amazon. I thought you might want white to go with the 360. :p

Samsung 19"

Samsung 23"

Samsung 26"

The third one is part of the range I got mine from, I think. Very good TV's. All three have HDMI ports, btw, and they might have serial ports, so they can be used as monitors.

Man, they really get you with those. That's a lot of money :(

Most of what you pay will be for the brand, to be honest.

I got my TV at £600, with about £100 off because I'd found some nice little discount codes. The next day my friend went out and bought a 32", of a similar quality (my Samsung was better, though), by a company with not enough consonants and too many vowels in their name to be taken seriously, for just shy of £250.

It's a gamble, but if you don't have the cash for a brand, you can always try getting a TV by a company you've never heard of.

How much are computer monitors, by the way? I've found that you can get a good computer monitor for a lot cheaper than a HDTV, that displays in HD, and can be connected to consoles as a display, as well as be used as a computer monitor. You might need a little box that performs some fancy magic to get it all working, but that might be worth a thought.

There are four guilds. There's a thieves' guild quest that can get you in trouble for stealing from some loon in a tower, and I believe there's a dark brotherhood quest that may get you in trouble, too. It's been a long time since it happened, but it sucked. That's why this time, I'm finishing off the other guild quests first, though this last thieves' guild quest looks like it's a whopper; may save that 'till I have more magic.

Oh yeah! I forgot one. :p

Thieves
Dark Brotherhood
Mages
Fighters

I can't say I had any trouble with any of the missions getting me thrown out of any guilds. The Thieves Guild mission to steal from 'some loon' - as long as you're not seen stealing from the Mages, then you're not thrown out.

Can't think of which DB mission might jeopardise your standing in one of the guilds.

If you do it all correctly, then there's no reason to be kicked out of any of the guilds.

And the last Thieves Guild quest is "mint", as some may say. Brilliant mission.

Actually, now that I think about it, I may have gotten kicked out because I got first strike on him last time, so it counted as murder.

I'm really loving the sneaky/assassin type play. I made my own class called "Ownerer" that is like a assassin/archer/illusionist. It's pretty awesome.