Old Saint Nick was a sweetheart this year. He left a shiny new Xbox One under my tree, so I am guessing I have been an extremely good girl this year. 🙂  The holiday season was a busy one, as usual, so while the XBOne and I haven’t been properly introduced as of yet, we have fooled around a bit. The console itself is bigger than the 360. It reminds me a little of the original Xbox. Just more sleek. The dashboard is similar enough to what I’m used to that I had no problems navigating it and neither will anyone who may have purchased Xbox One as their first gaming system. It did come with a Kinect which I have not tried out yet. I’m sure I will not be disappointed when the time comes. I am told by others that the Kinect will allow for voice control over the system as well as hand comands, Skype and of course, one is necessary for the truly interactive physicality of Kinect games, such as Just Dance, Xbox Fitness or The Fighter Within.

The first game that I plugged into my new console was Far Cry 4. I was a huge player of its predecessor so my expectations were high and I am happy to say that I am not disappointed. Ubisoft has once again delivered a beautiful game with colorful characters, an interesting storyline and loads & loads of stuff to do. Straight from the opening scene, the excitement and adventure is rich and intriguing. I know that this game will be in my tray for quite a while and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys shooters.

The next game that I tried on the XBOne was Destiny  I know, I know, you have heard me bitch about this game and as I have explained, I’m still spinning it on 360. Mostly for the multiplayer value. Just so happens, my cousin also moved on to the next-gen console at Christmas and he made sure to provide me with a copy of Destiny so we could take this journey together. Games for the XBOne must be installed and this does take a little time. Next I had trouble connecting to Destiny servers but who doesn’t these days? Even Dinklebot looses signal in the Ocean of Storms story mission. Between Bungie’s Zoo (baboon, elk, rabbit, kingfisher, sheep, weasel, Marion Berry, etc.) & asshole hackers, I had a difficult time getting this version of Destiny to load. When I finally did get to play…wow! The graphics “pop” and are much more pristine than in the 360 version. All of my Destiny 360 content moved over to the new console effortlessly and even the DLC, The Dark Below downloaded without me having to repurchase the season pass. This I was thrilled about! It saves me money and it makes it easy to bounce between platforms depending on my mood and who I’m playing with. That being said, I would not mind spending more time on the XBOne version, if I could ever get to the servers. Eight out of ten times when I try to play Destiny on  XBOne, I can’t, even though I have done an uninstall/reinstall. Thank my lucky stars I have Far Cry to fall back on during these times.

Even though I have plenty of new “shinys” to explore, examine and experience (all of which you will be hearing about in the near future), tonight, my friends and are going old school. We are spinning my first love, Gears of War 2 as well as a little Gears 3, just to get the party star-ted. 🙂 Yes! It’s officially game night ’round here and I for one cannot wait to be back in the arms of Marcus Fenix as his frag-taggin’, two-piecing, cog-lovin’, death-defying, killing machine, femme fatale!! It’s going to be a BLAST!

See ya’ll on the box! Stay warm & stay real!

Peace