Xbox 360 "First wave" titles revisited

One of the first games I purchased for the Xbox 360 was Perfect Dark Zero. I had never played the original N64 game, but the game had some hype and I wanted something to play.

After a few levels in, I was disappointed and just gave up on the game. Jo couldn't jump, there were bugs, and the game just didn't feel right to me. I let DemolitionNinja play the game through instead. When he was done, I traded it in shortly after.

I had a much better time with Quake 4, but I traded it in after completing the campaign. After downloading the demo recently, I'm regretting that I got rid of the game. I already plan on buying it again when the price goes down.

DemolitionNinja decided to download the PDZ demo because he was bored one day. He figured out the secondary and tertiary functions of all the weapons, and he was hooked. After playing the demo repeatedly, he went and bought the game. We played co-op, and I gave the game another chance.

This time I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. We played through the campaign on the first two difficulty levels, and will probably try the other two. The game is no Halo, but the ability to take cover is much better than I initially gave it credit for. All of secondary weapon functions really add a lot to the game.

Yesterday, a friend was playing DOA4 so I dusted off the old Hori arcade stick and decided to join in. I hadn't played the game for months, so I did really horrible. Mark of shame? Definitely. I think I only won a single fight out of few dozen matches online.

Even though I'm not good at the game, it was great to hang out in the lobby and watch the fights before yours while talking to the other challengers. It renewed my interest in the game, and I may end up putting a concerted effort into figuring it out now.

What's interesting is that I previously had discarded the above games, yet now I'm finding that decision extremely premature. Not all is Sunny in Philadelphia for these games, but there is still a lot of fun replay value to be had. In hindsight, I'm guessing that "next gen excitement" left me running and gunning through these games a bit too quickly. I had attempted to try too many games at once to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Yet I missed everything.