– Tomb Raider: Legend demo: Surprisingly good! I’ll play the full game after Easter, although I doubt I’ll finish it. I enjoyed the first Tomb Raider a lot but eventually grew bored with the puzzles, and never really played the rest. After the series went downhill, this one goes back to the roots. It seems to have more combat and physics-based puzzles, and might very well prove to be the best Tomb Raider. Plus it looks gorgeous.

– Burnout: This is the racing game that has nearly destroyed my appreciation for "real" racing games. It looks brilliant, is instantly fun and playable, moves fast as a bullet, and just feels great. The menu interfaces have a lot of punch, but I somehow feel more comfortable with the ones in the PSP edition. It is incredibly rewarding, although some people may find it too shallow.

– Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter: The heavyweight release on the 360. Visuals are quite detailed and have a lot of personality, although the city just doesn’t feel like Mexico; everything seems smaller than in the real world, and it’s all too static, lacking the presence of civilians in such a heavily populated city. Small debris, dust, leaves or paper trash thrown around by the wind, or even just rats and other critters, would go a long way towards making it less of a scenery and more of a real city where people used to live. Gameplay is solid and has a good amount of options for tactics, but it’s a bit too slow paced and repetitive. I soon found myself reverting to trial & error to locate enemies and solve situations, because staying under cover all the time while you detect every enemy on patrol (or just plain hidden and waiting to jump on you) became boring after the first mission.

– Oblivion: While I can appreciate the amount and quality of the work that went into creating this huge game, I just can’t get interested in playing it. Another example where I just prefer more action-oriented gameplay, I suppose. I find the outdoors scenery visuals fantastic, but the rest of the graphics (character close-ups in particular) look quite fake in their not-real-but-not-cartoon style. Everyone is going nuts over this game, so if you are interested in it, then chances are it will fulfill all your expectations.

Games on the 360 are apparently making all predictions good. After the ok-ish first wave, there’s a solid and polished offering of sports, shooters and racing games. Each one is clearly more detailed and better looking than their current-gen equivalents.

The Live Arcade selection keeps growing steadily with nice little games for the more casual or oldschool player. However, I think the rigid Dashboard interface is soon going to become insufficient to handle all the content in a comfortable way.

All in all, the 360 right now is a great console for any gamer that is not strictly expecting something new and different.