by Mike Shea on 24 January 2003
After playing a slew of different games and demos for the Xbox, the one game I keep coming back to is Mechassault. It has the short-attention-span requirements met, it is an excellent multi-player game, great graphics, great easy control, and just all around good times. For a FPS-style game it is just fast enough to be exciting but not so fast as to be button mashing blind luck like Unreal Championship.
Two things hurt it. First, the sound is messed up for multiplayer. You will hear any enemy mech firing as if it is right on top of you no matter where it is in the field. This means it is impossible to detect via audio where the battle is taking place. Second, it is not in widescreen.
As of this writing, Mechassault is the only game I can recommend purchasing for the Xbox next to Halo.
There are a lot of games coming out this year that look to be very good. Here's a list of the ones I'm keeping an eye out for:
Halo 2 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Soul Calibur 2 Starcraft: Ghost
As part of my five minute xtreme gaming I played the demo of Quantum Redshift. It is an excellent looking game with a solid widescreen display and 60 fps animation the whole time. This one can be picked up for $20, but I am not sure you need much more than the demo to have fun.