- Hey guys, Metal Jesus here. And today is a great day
because it is the start of a next console generation. And Microsoft has sent me
the Xbox series X for review. So in this video, we're
gonna talk about the hardware and we're gonna play four
generations of Xbox games on it. This is gonna be awesome,
let's take a look. (upbeat music) Now, I'm gonna go ahead and
start with the hardware, but I assume at this point, most of you have probably
watched unboxing videos and things like that so
you're probably somewhat familiar with the design of this. This sort of black monolith here. Although I have to be honest
that when I did unbox it and look at it, it actually
was a little bit smaller than I expected it to be
based on photos I saw. You can see it here
sitting with other consoles in my game room for a size comparison. And then really here it is
compared to two Game Cubes. So it's a little bit
taller than two Game Cubes, but not by much. A big selling point for
the Xbox Series X model is of course the ability
to play physical media. So it's got that DVD Blu-ray
slot there on the front. Now, I get the feeling
this is primarily designed to be stood upright on
its end like you see here. But I do wanna point
out that there are some rubber nubs here on the
side where you could also put it on it side like
that if it's a little bit more convenient for you, but I like the look of
it actually standing up. And then on the top, you'll
notice there are some vents and if you look down there closely, actually there is a massive fan that spins while it's running. I guess the way it works
is that it sucks air from the bottom and pulls
it out through the top. I will say, though, that it is very quiet. In the week or so that
I've had this thing, running tons of games on it, it wasn't very loud at
all, so that's really nice. On the back, you have two USB ports. You have an ethernet port,
there's where your power goes, your HDMI out. And then notice that there
is a storage expansion port and that is something
that I think a lot of us are gonna be taking
advantage of this generation. We're gonna get into more
detail of that in a bit. When it comes to the new controller, I think Microsoft was probably thinking, well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it because in many ways, the
new Xbox Series controller feels very similar to
the Xbox One controller, which is not a bad thing
because that's a controller I really liked, although there are some subtle differences here. The obvious one being the D pad. Instead of having the
typical cross like you had in the Xbox One controller, it is now a concave D pad,
which is actually similar to the elite controllers
that you had last generation. And I have to say I like this a lot; it's very comfortable. Here you see me playing SSX 3. This is an original Xbox
game that uses both the thumb pads as well as the D pad a lot. This is obviously a game
that I know really well and you do use the D pad a
lot when you're doing tricks. And for me, it was very
easy to play this game. I was able to play for
hours with that D pad and I just like it a lot. Another change that they
made is that it's slightly more textured underneath the
controller on the handles. And you'll notice it
immediately when you pick it up. It actually feels really good. I wouldn't say it's rubberized, and I wouldn't say that it's hard either. It's really interesting to hold. It definitely feels like it's gonna stay in your hands longer if you get sweaty, so I think it's a very good thing. Another change is the share button there so you press it once to do a snapshot, you hold it down to capture a video, and then you double tap it
if you just wanna bring up your gallery of media. But there was one thing
about the new controller that I wasn't crazy about
and I was kinda baffled with. And that is the new triggers. So, for the most part, the
triggers work just fine in 99% of the games that you might play. However, you guys know me, I
love my arcade racing games and so one of the first
backwards compatible games that I put in was Split
Second on the Xbox 360. Now you see me playing
the game just fine here, but I immediately noticed that, when using the right trigger, and I would let go, it would
almost kinda feel sticky. It's really hard for me to kinda describe, but basically it's almost
like the controller was sort of holding onto the
trigger for just, you know, half a second, it was really weird. I noticed it immediately,
it was almost like, again, it was just sticky, but it's not because if you're outside of the
game, the trigger works fine. But inside the game, it
would hold onto it for just a little bit. So I was really curious,
like okay, is this just the controller? Is mine maybe a little bit
defective or acting kinda weird? So I switched over to this
purple Xbox One controller and played the game just fine. So it's definitely something
with the new controllers. It's not every game; I don't
want you to think that. It's just that some of these arcade games when you're holding
down the right trigger, it just holds onto it for a second. I thought that was really weird. And I do wanna mention that
I did update the firmware for the controller. I was actually prompted
to, when I first set up the Xbox Series X, so it's a little odd. Maybe it's something that
can be fixed in the future, and I wanna be clear. I'm not necessarily saying that
the controller's defective. I honestly don't know. I'm gonna very curious to see
if other reviewers noticed it. It's weird because it
doesn't happen in all games; it just seems to be some of
these Xbox 360 arcade games that have you just holding down
that trigger the whole time. And like I said, it
doesn't do it with previous generation controllers. Very weird. As for the hardware in the console itself, well, you know, this is
the latest and greatest coming from Microsoft and
it's the next generation of consoles, so of course
it's gonna be extremely beefy out of the gate. And the specs for the Xbox
Series x are really impressive. Now, I'm not gonna get
into the terra flops and the RAM and all
that sorta stuff because I think most gamers just wanna know, okay, what do I actually
get from all this? And basically this generation of consoles is really preparing you
pretty much for the best 4K experience that you can get out there. But also for the future
when you might get, say, an 8K television at, like say, 120 hertz. And the other big benefit is
just extremely fast load times. When it comes to the visuals, well, you can see my TV here. It's relatively new and supports up to 4K. And I'll admit, games
look gorgeous on this. You see me playing the new
Yakuza game here like a dragon. I noticed immediately how
detailed Japan streets look in this game. Now, I know the Yakuza
games have been doing this for a while, but you know,
coming back from Japan last year, and seeing this right here, what I noticed was just the
little details in the signs. Again, I'm not necessarily saying this is next generation graphics or anything. I think you could probably do
something similar, you know, previous generation. But it doesn't look bad. It's funny 'cause I was actually stopping and just looking around
the city; it was very cool. And by the way, at this point,
I should probably mention that you are watching this
game play footage in 1080P and not 4K. And the reason for that is because the way I'm capturing the footage
here is using a hog pog video capture device right there, connected to my laptop. It's the best that I can do currently. So I can't actually
capture raw 4K footage yet, but I'm working on it. Here is Gears five, a game that
already looked really great on the Xbox One X, but
now it has been patched and updated to take
advantage of some of the new hardware on the Xbox Series X. Playing through this, it's, again, these Gears games are so well
made and look great anyways. I can't necessarily say
it's that noticeably better, but it definitely runs great, plays great, I was having a ton of fun. And then here's Forza
seven, and a couple things I noticed on here that I
thought were pretty cool little touches were, for instance, the multiple mirrors that
let you see behind you when you're driving in the trucks. I don't remember if
previous versions did that, but it was something again that I noticed that it's rendering as you're playing. Also, the white leather
gloves when you're driving in the Volkswagen Golf, looks really real. Plus, notice actually
that there is a reflection of the steering wheel on the
underside of the windshield. I thought that was a really nice touch. Now, I know that Forza Seven's
been out for a couple years, so probably people who are
familiar with the series already know about those little details, but it was really cool
for me to see that running in 4K on my television
at a high frame rate. It was very impressive. And then there's the talk
about the new generation and all of the improved load times. And I'm here to tell you
that that is absolutely true. I think that's one of
the features that's gonna really get people excited and interesting in upgrading to the
next generation because it's definitely a leap forward. So for instance, here's me just
waking up the Xbox Series X from sleep mode. It's instantaneous as you can see. I mean, literally it's just
a couple seconds at the most. But let's go ahead and take
a look at a better example. This is Red Dead Redemption
two, a game that is notorious for its long load times. So on the left you have
the Xbox One X version, and then on the right you
have the Xbox Series X. Now, these games are the same game disk, they are using the same patch, so they're the same version. And they are also using my same save file. And what you'll see here
is that Xbox Series X boots up in about 30 seconds, while the Xbox One X
continues to chug along adding about an extra minute. So it's very impressive
what the new console does. Here's another test I
did with Call of Duty Modern Warfare two. So from the time that I
click to start the game, it starts booting into it. It's actually going to
sync with my save game over the network real quick there, and then basically I'm in playing the game in about 26 seconds. I thought that was pretty impressive. I don't remember what it
was on the Xbox One X, but that's pretty fast. (video game sounds) The other feature that
Microsoft has been touting for the Xbox series of
consoles is quick resume. Now, the idea here being that any game that's optimized for the
Xbox series will have quick resume built in,
which allows the system to basically take a
snapshot of where you're at. And then you can go back to
it pretty much at any time. For instance, I'm playing
Hot Shot Racing right now, and then if I bring up
the menu by pressing the button on the controller, and then scroll down
and choose Forza Seven, then as you see here, it
flips over to a quick save I've already created, or I
guess the system already created the last time I played it. It takes about a second or two, and then you're back in the
game exactly where you left off. And it's kinda funny doing
this in driving games, especially when they're so different as an arcade racing game and
then going to Forza Seven. But then let's go ahead and
bring up the menu again, go ahead and swing back to Hotshot Racing, and here we are. And so this is definitely a cool feature if the games support it and
I think most of them probably will because this is
incredibly handy going forward. I can see this being very
useful 'cause a lot of gamers like us are bouncing
around from one game to the next. And while we're on the subject
of hard drive space and stuff like that, let's go
ahead and talk about file sizes because this is gonna be an issue I think in the next generation with
games getting just so massive. So this console here, the Xbox Series X comes with one terabyte of storage, which may sound like a lot,
and I think for, you know, starting off, I think
it's a pretty decent size. However, I quickly filled it up. Now, I might be a special
case because I was doing a lot of testing. I immediately put about
30 games on the hard drive 'cause I'm reviewing it and I'm putting four generations of Xbox games on it, but let me tell you, as you see here, file sizes are all over the place. Now, older games are gonna be smaller, newer games are gonna
be many many gigabytes. And so I think this is gonna be an issue for this generation because again, just games are so massive
and there are so many options out there. And again, especially on
the Xbox Series because it has all that backwards compatibility and so you are tempted to just load in every Xbox game you
own, but again, be aware you're gonna fill that hard drive. And this isn't necessarily
an Xbox issue either. It's gonna just be every
console going forward. When you have all these games downloading and installing on the hard drive, especially if you consider Game Pass and all the games that you get access to, man, it's so tempting to
just fill that hard drive up. And speaking of backwards compatible, while you guys know that
I love collecting for Xbox and again, I have so many great games I was so interested in
checking out on here, starting all the way back
with the original Xbox. You know, one mistake I
do need to correct though. And that is a couple
months ago when I was first talking about the Xbox
Series, I made the assumption and I thought was true
is that the new console was gonna work with just
pretty much every game ever released on an Xbox console. And man, I really wish that was the case, but sadly that is not true. It basically requires additional licensing as well as work from Microsoft
to bring those older titles up to the current generation. So I thought all my previous Xbox games were gonna work on this,
sadly not all of them do. Although I do have to say,
it is hundreds of titles. You see here going through the menu, this is the Microsoft store
that you get access to on the Xbox, you can see all
of the previous generation right here, and this is
everything from the Xbox to the Xbox 360. It's pretty impressive
how many games are here, but you know, it's not all of them. And so I'm gonna throw
in a couple games here including Morrowind. I don't know if anyone who
actually played Morrowind on the original Xbox
when there were so many great mods for it on the PC, but it does look and run really well here, probably as good as it ever did. Probably a better example
is Panzer Dragon Orta, which is a game that was
exclusive to the original Xbox and basically has better graphics here. Now, to be fair, these
were basically re-released or updated for the Xbox
One and that's the version that you're playing here. So it's not necessarily new, but again, it's running in 4K, it looks great. Now let's go ahead and throw
in some Xbox 360 games, and I do find that there is more support for Xbox 360 games. I picked a handful of them
here that I wanna check out, including Splinter Cell Blacklist. This is a game that I really
enjoyed when it came out just because it was a
little bit different. And jumping back into it here, I was kinda surprised and
blown away by just how good this game still looks and plays today. It's funny because I'm capturing
all the gameplay footage in this video and every once in a while, I get sucked back into one
of these old games again, and this is definitely one of them. I'm capturing the gameplay footage here and then hours go by
and I'm like, oh crap, I gotta try other stuff too. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a game that, when it came out, I was
very excited for because I felt like it finally
got back to its roots of what made Deus Ex
so great to begin with. Such a great game, and
again, it's really fun to play even today. (video game sounds) And then of course Mass Effect Two, one of my all-time favorite RPG's. This was a game that I think
just got everything right; the characters, the story, the graphics, the combat, you know, the
morality system in here. Such a great game, so much fun to replay. And of course I have a
bunch of Xbox One games I've been playing over
the last couple years that work on the Xbox Series. And you'll notice that,
in the packaging of some of the more recent
ones, at the top there, it will actually say
Xbox One/Xbox Series X. Now, the caveat is that
doesn't necessarily mean that there is a difference
in the game itself. It just means that it will work. I think in some cases,
some of the developers are releasing patches that
maybe unlock the frame rate or something like that, but just be aware. And as you would expect,
those Xbox One games running on the Series X look great. Here is Star Wars: Squadrons,
a game I just recently picked up so I'm not
super far into this game, but as you guys know,
I'm a huge Star Wars fan, I'm a huge fan of Thai Fighter
and X Wing back on the PC so this is one I'm really
looking forward to playing, as well as Crash Bandicoot
four, it's about time, and if I didn't mention it before, again, one of the nice
things that Microsoft does with all this backwards
compatibility is that your save game transfers
from, say, your Xbox One over to your Xbox Series X. So again you don't have to
restart all these games, which is super nice, so
again, with Crash four, I put in the game and
install to the hard drive of the new console, and then
I just synced my saved game and I just picked it up and
started right where I left off. As well as some other
games here, including Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Also gonna play some Tony
Hawk Pro Skater one and two. And again, you know, I
don't necessarily think you're getting a lot of
benefit on the Xbox Series X other than perhaps you
could connect it to an 8K television, and of
course you will benefit from the quicker load times. I guess I should say unless
the game is optimized to take advantage of the new hardware, or they release a patch to do that. Now, I know people were
curious, myself included, to see if Microsoft was gonna
change the Xbox interface for the next generation. And as you can see here, it's
pretty much a carbon copy of the Xbox One interface, which I think is both good and bad. When I first got an Xbox
One, I found this interface to be, well, frankly pretty confusing because I wasn't exactly
sure where everything was. I mean, it's cool because
there's a lot of stuff going on and it's pretty easy to get
lost in it and find games and stuff like that. But it's also a little bit
difficult to kinda figure out where is your screenshots
and your media at? Where do you find settings
and things like that? So I guess Microsoft
probably took an approach of if it isn't broke, don't fix it. But me personally, I think
it would've been pretty cool for Microsoft to kind of
redesign the interface a little bit, make it
a little bit special, a little bit different
to kind of, I don't know, put a stake in the ground that this is the new interface for a new
generation of Xbox consoles, but they decided to not do that. So what are my final thoughts
on the Xbox Series X? Well, despite some of the
issues that I ran into, which I think will probably be fixed by firmware updates and software updates, I really do like the hardware. Microsoft is taking what they did so well with the Xbox One X, a
console I really really love playing, and just poured
it all into this Series X and made it even better. So I think the future of
the console is very good, but let's be honest, the
launch titles for this system are pretty mediocre. I mean, there's no one title, at least in my opinion, that just screams must play on this console. And so the fact that
they have such excellent backwards compatibility
with four generations of Xbox games, plus when
you factor in game pass, there's a lot to love with this. So even though there's
not a lot of launch games out of the gate, well, there
are still hundreds of games that you can play. Now, I've been trying to decide if I think people should get it if
they have the Xbox One X. And I have a hard time
recommending it because the game play experience
from the Xbox One X to the Xbox Series X, I don't
know if you're gonna notice a whole lot of difference other than just the shorter load times when
you're playing your games. I think we need to get a
little bit further along, maybe into next year
where there's gonna be some amazing Xbox exclusives. Me personally, if there was fable on this, if there was a brand new fable on this, I would say heck yeah or
Halo or something like that. I guess my point is I think
if you are on the fence, you can probably wait a little bit. The other thing too is if, you know, if you never did get an
Xbox One or and Xbox One X, then maybe you skip
that generation of Xbox, then this might be a really
good time to jump in on it. So you know, that's kinda
my thoughts on that. Love to know what you guys think
down in the comments below. Did you pre-order the Xbox Series S or X? And what are your thoughts so far? Love to know. All right guys, thank you
very much for watching. Thank you for subscribing and take care.
