Worthwhile XBox 360 Exclusives?

The Game Room
#1

Over the weekend, we picked up a copy of Beautiful Katamari at a garage sale, which is an XBox 360 exclusive. Problem is, we don’t have an XBox 360. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth going out and buying a new one or maybe picking up an older model cheap and trying to upgrade it. It seems like most, though by no means all, of the games I’m interested in playing are either crossplatform or PS3 exclusive. I’ve looked at the list of exclusives on Wikipedia (we’ll exclude the Kinect games from consideration for now) and I’m not sure if there’s anything I’d actually want. I’m not much of one for FPSes, so that takes out Halo as an automatic reason. I’d be more interested in RPGs of various types, third-person shooters are okay, and I think I own more platformers than any other genre. However, I don’t mean to automatically exclude anything from consideration.

For that matter, how is XBox Live? Different enough from the offerings on the PS3 to consider an XBox for that as well?

#2

If you like JRPGs Tales of Vesperia is pretty good.

#3

Here is a list of all of the 360 games with the exclusives marked. Not liking FPS games does limit it a bit, but there’s still some decent exclusives. For RPGs you’ve got Blue Dragon and Mass Effect, there’s also the Fable games but those barely count IMHO. For 3rd Person Shooters there’s Gears of War and the highly addictive Earth Defense Force 2017. And if your into tycoon/management games then the Viva Pinata series (minus the second which is just mini-games) are rather enjoyable.

#4

If you like racing games, the Forza line is pretty good and there is a Forza 4 SDMB group going. The Halo games are a lot of fun.

You are right about the Kinect though, unless you play in an empty warehouse you do not have enough room to make it worthwhile.

#5

One vehicle-based platformer I liked a lot was Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Most of the gameplay involves planning and building custom vehicles from a crazy collection of parts to accomplish some goal (win a race, bash someone into submission, fly to a high point on a map, carry items to a location, protect a soccer goal, etc.), but there’s also plenty of running, jumping, and exploring. Here’s a few pics of vehicles I built, including a “Tumbler”-style Batmobile.

#6

IMHO, most of the really worthwhile 360 exclusives are Xbox Live Arcade titles, which, apparently, aren’t on that list. Though a lot of them have slowly been jumping ship too. Still, I consider Xbox Live (even silver) to be superior to PSN in terms of selection, interface (PSN is so bad it’s kindof astonishing to me) and the fact that EVERY SINGLE GAME has a demo.

You might consider:

Shadow Complex
Geometry Wars 2
Snoopy: Flying Ace (I’m not kidding, it’s really good!)
IloMilo

Also, some “retro” titles that have gotten released on Xbox Live (only):
Guardian Heroes
Radiant Silvergun
Ikaruga
Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram
Rez

Special Mention Xbox Live Indie games:
Escape Goat
Protect Me Knight (Can’t really recommend this one enough. It’s so brilliant. I suspect it’s not selling as well as it might because it’s title is in katakana. x.x)
Radiangames Inferno (It’s like… gauntlet as a twinstick shooter. Sortof.)

Also, if you haven’t checked out Castle Crashers, Chime and Pac-man Championship Edition: DX on PSN, for the love of Bob, check them out on XBL or PSN.

#7

Thanks to everyone so far. To expand the question a bit, are there any cross-platform games that are markedly better on the XBox than the PS3? I don’t mean things like slightly better graphics (although a big difference in quality or framerate is a different matter), but more like a better control scheme, better gameplay options or DLC, no bugs, things like that.

#8

Honestly, 99.9% of PS3/360 multiplatform releases play identically. It just isn’t a concern for anyone I know who owns both systems. That said, I always buy 360 because I like the controller better and I’m an Achievement whore.

#9

In terms of content most games are identical, however Microsoft frequently pays for timed exclusives of DLC. For instance the Skyrim DLC coming out soon will only be out 360 for some amount of time. This also happened for Fallout 3, GTA4, Black Ops, and others. Performance wise the games tend to look mostly the same, but the PS3 has become a bit infamous for being difficult to program for. Many games especially early on suffered from slowdown and stuttering. Occasionally there have been bigger issues like the recent Skyrim debacle, but most of the time the difference is minor enough to not be noticeable.

#10

Differences between the systems are basically the sort of thing where you have to sit down with a screenshot from a game on each system next to each other and squint looking for jaggy lines.

There really aren’t any significant differences beyond, as mentioned, a slight tendancy for DLC to come out for the Xbox first.