Just back from my time with the 360 at the Glasgow event. On display were good, bad, and downright ugly games. I made a run for a PGR3 pod as soon as the doors opened. Grabbed a pad, and jumped into a street race in London…The first thing you notice is that its pretty dark for a sunny day. Maybe that’s the fault of the Samsung LCD. Next thing you notice is that all those images and movies we’ve seen tell only a half truth. The game is pretty.

It does have huge amounts of architecture lining the roads, all the way into the distance. From a metre or two away, its a lovely site. But grab a pad, and stand infront of the 26 LCD and you’re greated by low resolution textures. Up close and personal and PGR3 is underwhelming visually. It’s still very pretty, and head an shoulders above anything on the XBox, but as a next gen game it looks pretty soft and low res. Oh, and if jaggies bother you, you might be bothered with PGR3 too. In terms of gameplay its flawless though. A near perfect racing experience. I loved it. But I came away from the demo pod disappointed. It’s not as pretty as you expect it to be, not by a long way. I kept wondering if it was running at 480p on a 720p monitor, it had that sort of sheen to it. All the pods running PGR3 were the same. Heck, even the fonts on the speedo and rev gauge overlays looked a bit crooked, again, like a 480p game stretched to 720p. Disappointing visuals then, top gameplay. Framerate worries are a non issues. It’s smooth as silk.

Perfect Dark Zero was a surprise alright. It’s very pretty. Crisp, sharp, colourful. It looks next gen alright. Jaggies crop up now and then, but honestly, who cares. I tried it on Perfect Agent and Dark Agent, the highest of the 4 skill levels. Thankfully the waypoints disappear on this setting. And the AI is hard as nails. In the carpark level, on Dark Agent, I was toast in seconds. Perfect Agent was a bit more forgiving, but still insanely hard (I never made it out the carpark). On the roof top level I noticed the snipers were much more active, shooting your partner with gay abandon. At one point a bunch of guys burst from a door way on the roof and let rip. I died. Never tried co-op or multiplayer. But this was very nice. Great potential for fun here, and as I say, crisp next gen texturing. Kameo. I had 5 mins on this. Again very pretty. Very smooth. Very next gen. Seems like a lot of fun, though I had no idea what I was doing, or what the controls were.

Call of Duty 2. Nice. Feels like a PC game. Looks like a PC game. Plays like a PC game. If PDZ weren’t so good I’d pick this up, but there seems little point. Fifa. Please. It was crap. Condemned. Pretty. Moody. Too slow a pace for my liking. NBA. Pretty. Very pretty. Not my thing really though. Need For Speed. Quite pretty. Strange graphics. Not my thing. Basically, PGR3, PDZ, and Kameo remain must buys. It’s just a shame that PGR3 seems to be using textures optimised for standard definition. It just doesn’t make you go WOW. For graphics, RARE stole the show. But PGR3, once my most wanted, is still up there in my top 3. It’s just not as stunning as I expected. Shame.