Halo, here I come

Well, I finally did it. I finally plunked some of my hard earned (and government returned) cash on a shiny new Xbox 360. Shiny is just a figure of speech since I bought the flat black Elite model, but you get the point. All I can say is thank you U.S. for having tax returns and stimulus money.

Sorry, back to the Xbox story. I'd been thinking about picking up a 360 for quite a while, but I initially held out due to the whole nasty RRoD business. Two conditions finally seemed right for me to risk buying one of Microsoft's machines. The first was the shear lack of any news on the RRoD subject these last few months. I haven't seen one article recently in regards to the whole general system failure fault. I know Microsoft has been working to fix the faults, and it seems like they have made some progress. Even so if it hadn't been for the increase of the warranty for 3 years, I don't think I'd ever have purchased one. That was the second positive change. Not quite the full disclosure on why the consoles were failing, but better then nothing. After that, I just had to get one. Why? As any true game would tell you, "it's the games stupid".

See, here's the thing. I don't care about the consoles themselves, just the games. I didn't buy a PS3 because it was a Sony machine. I bought it due to the fact that it had some great games currently released for it and more coming soon. The whole Blu-ray thing didn't hurt either. I bought my PSP instead of a DS because of all the potential that that little machine was capable of. Did Sony influence my decision in that regard? No, it didn't. And that's why I had no problem with picking up a 360 two days ago.

For my Microsoft purchase I decided to go big (see, I actually paid attention to the box) and pick up an Elite. I thought the large hard drive and the black color was a good match for my shiny (actually shiny) PS3 that I already had at home, plus the whole white thing is too shabby chic for me. I don't care what Games Radar has to say, black is better. The harder choice was deciding on the one game that I had enough money to buy. Picking up the Elite plus one game is a heck of a lot of money for my meager budget (the government wasn't that generous). The choice definitely wasn't easy, but I finally narrowed it down to two. The finalists were Halo 3 and Mass Effect. I decided to go with Mass Effect. Like I said, one game, and since I haven't played the first 2 Halo games, picking up the third really didn't make much sense. The Halo series is most definitely still on my list to buy in the future. Maybe the government will be generous and send some more money my way. I know, wishfully thinking. I just tend to be optimistic.

So finally, I have my game, I have my console and since I'm on vacation, I have the time to play. Speaking of which, Mass Effect - and it's achievements - are calling my name.