I recently got into the NXE Beta or whatever that Microsoft was doing, and something that disappointed me about was the limited character customization. Yes, I know it isn't the all the parts, but I think they could have put a slightly less Mii-ish look to the characters and slightly less cartoon looking. The eyes were all pretty crappy in my opinion and so were the mouths, they seemed to be pretty generic and kind of stupid that get really annoying to look at after a while. I also really hope that this is not the final clothes selection and that there will be sponsored ones like the themes and gamer pictures to download, but that's just speculation. I really wish there was color customization in clothes, it would look pretty weak only having a blue polo for example and 3 of your friends are wearing the same color.


(Only about 30 different tops in the current build.)


To get onto the more important thing, the interface. I'm quite impressed with how it works and it looks very aesthetically pleasing. It feels much more space-efficient than the blades were without making it look cluttered at all. The videos don't do it justice to how well it works and the only thing that annoyed me was that I like to use the triggers to navigate it and whenever you press the bumpers it will take you three or four selections over, unless you're on your friends blade. The current build consists of seven vertical blades and the horizontal ones vary depending on what it is. To start in order, whenever you start your 360 it goes to the spotlight blade which is pretty much all advertisements and it bothers me, I wish it would take me to the My Xbox blade which consists of the game currently in the tray, your information (Gamertag, your settings, your gamerscore, etc), you media, and then the system settings. After briefly checking around there is no way in this build that you can change that. Then there are the Inside Xbox (which is a collection of videos talking about current games and strategies if you didn't already know from the older Blades system), there is a blade for the events which is just another round of advertisements, but from Microsoft. Then,is your friends blade which for me as of right now is pretty empty since I don't have anybody on friend's list with it that I know of (II also want to point out that apparently people have some backgrounds and I'm unsure how/if you can change them), after that are the Video and Game Marketplaces which are just what the names are implying, it's just a collection of the newest releases and then somewhere to go visit the whole collection, pretty standard.

Onto the game installing, I currently have one of the 60 Gb 360s and I have quite a lot of space to spare so I could easily install a few game comfortably without the fear of running out of space. Be sure to make yourself a sandwich because it takes quite a few minutes to install a game. I really did not see any noticeable difference in Call of Duty 4 multiplayer, and I also installed Fallout 3, but I honestly didn't play it enough to notice if there was or was not a difference in the level loading. The only real difference is that the disc drive is completely quiet so if that bothers you then it's very good at that.

Now, my favorite part of this whole 'Experience', the condensed version of the blades when you press your Xbox guide button. It's a very simplified version of the blades in the older style with all the important options all built into the mini-blades, it's really well done and I really can't explain how good it is and how smooth it is in writing. I'm always a sucker for simplistic designs.

A feature I really wish I could try out is the Party mode, but as I said earlier I don't know anybody else who has it, so I couldn't really include it in my impression. Overall, this is truly a completely new experience and it is very well done regardless of some of my gripes with it. I look forward to the full version.