Features
Xbox Live: The Winter Online Gaming Grew Up
November 2002: broadband-only, one Gamertag, voice in every game. How Xbox Live’s launch invented the modern console platform in a single winter.
Author: Sal Benedetto
From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Reviews
Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath Xbox Review: The Western With Living Ammunition
A bounty hunter, a crossbow that fires wildlife and a frontier parable: the most original shooter-adventure on the original Xbox.
Reviews
Psychonauts Xbox Review: A Platformer Inside Everyone’s Head
Double Fine’s summer camp of the mind: every level a personality, every joke load-bearing, in the lead and best console edition.
Reviews
Jade Empire Xbox Review: BioWare’s Martial-Arts Epic
A wholly original wuxia world, stance-swapping kung fu combat and BioWare-grade twists in a focused twenty-hour epic.
Reviews
Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge Xbox Review: Pulp Heroics at Altitude
Gentleman pirates, zeppelins and dogfights in a 1937 that never was: the Xbox’s most romantic game and an early Xbox Live flagship.
Reviews
Burnout 3: Takedown Xbox Review: Violence Is Speed
Criterion’s arcade racer perfected: Takedowns, Crash Mode and the finest risk economy in driving games, in its fastest, sharpest edition.
Reviews
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Xbox Review: Stealth, Perfected
Ubisoft Montreal’s masterpiece in its definitive edition: dynamic darkness, a landmark co-op campaign and the versus mode nobody has ever matched.
Reviews
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Xbox Review: The Island That Swallowed a Console
Bethesda’s vast, strange, uncompromising RPG, substantially whole on a console: fog, loads and all, Vvardenfell remains a perfect world.
Reviews
Panzer Dragoon Orta Xbox Review: A Rail Shooter Painted Like a Masterpiece
Smilebit’s ravishing dragon shooter: three morphing forms, Sega-grade difficulty and the Xbox’s most beautiful disc.
Reviews
Jet Set Radio Future Xbox Review: The Coolest Game on the Console
Smilebit’s cel-shaded Tokyo-to: bigger, faster and smoother than the Dreamcast original, with the greatest soundtrack gaming has produced.