XBox 360 Zero Hour Review

XBox 360 Zero Hour - November 20th - 22nd, 2005
Mojave Desert

Before I begin, let me just give a shout-out to two awesome people who made this experience possible: Mike the Tyke and Sarah L. You know who you are – and I can’t say it enough – Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!!

After a week of scrambling and spending waaaayyy too much money, I was off to the Mojave desert with my pal Dave. It only took us about 1 hour and 45 minutes to get into the lovely town of Palmdale. There really is nothing there but a single strip of pink/peach colored shops and restaurants. We checked into the Hampton Inn. When I called for a hotel room earlier in the week the clerk said that they were all sold-out except for a suite. I agreed to take it thinking, what the hell might as well live it up while we’re there. Well, the “suite” was just a regular room with 2 beds and a goofy desk tray with beanbags to support it (don’t ask). Anyway, good enough since we weren’t expecting to spend too much time there anyhow.

The event was just about 5 or so minutes down the road which worked out great. The instructions leading up to the event stressed that you needed to wear warm clothes but it really wasn’t THAT cold. Once inside the hangars it was just right.














But before we get to that let me share some pictures of the awesome security guys we encountered. That's not our car, but the guy in front of me. The security guy asked if we were hiding any strange women (I swear) when he seached my vehicle. There were maybe about 15 females at this event total. That's me - the nerd between the two cops in the last picture.



















Okay, so then you go through this Buck Rogers metal detector that produces a graph of all the metal in your body. There are wands used for the tough cases as well. You have to empty out your pockets into airport-like platic containers and have the bar-code on your writband scanned.


















Finally you get to enter the secret Xbox 360 Zero Hour base! The first thing you are greeted with is this very serious sign:

So, you get the idea. This is by far the tightest security I've gone through.

A little bit further in are these deluxe restroom trailers. I was impressed! Microsoft really went all out - even with the crappers. There were some awesome signs as well:

Some cool things that were outside while waiting for the big opening:

- Hex Log Sculpture

Giant FoosBall

- Bean Bags, Bean Bag Fights, Broken open Bean Bags with foam everywhere

- Kyoto drummers

Some things that kind of sucked, but didn't impact our experience much:

- The hamburgers

- Broken beer bottles in the parking lot

After waiting for a several hours, J. Allard and Peter Moore kicked off the event and the giant hangar doors opened. People ran into the hangars to occupy the hundreds of XBox 360 consoles setup insided. The setup was awesome! All launch titles available on HD flat panel TVs! There were also a handful of non-launch releases you could play like Full Auto, Dead Risingg, and FFXI.

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You've probably allready heard all about the games so I won't bore you.

There are a few games I'd like to note that took me by surprise. These are games I wasn't really interested in much but after playing loved them:

Ninety-Nine_Nights, FFXI and Fifa. All were very fun to play!

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I was really excited about getting a custom faceplate at this event. However, we found out that the production run of Zero Hour faceplates wouldn't be ready until around Christmas and they will mail them to those who attended. You had to fill out a card to get one. They did have a display of what it is supposed to look like - along with some other faceplates. Additionally, there were a bunch of artists painting some for a contest. You may find these pix interesting:

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Some other notable things about the event were a massage table, XBox designer shoes and lots of people who couldn't handle the excitement and fell asleep. Cliff B. gave an awesome demo of Gears of War - read about it elsewhere. I also was lucky enough to meet J. Allard who gave me his signed business card. Nice guy!

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On Monday you had to pick out what you were going to buy from Best Buy and then wait in line at your designated time. Here are some shots of that excitement!

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Finally, we came back arould 7:30pm to get in line for pickup. There was an awesome hip-hop clown and his posse warming up the crowd.

Then Louie XIV played and took themselves very seriously.

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After hours of waiting in a long line snaked around the entire paremiter of the hangar - the count down began from 360! At the end 3 big Best Buy trucks rolled in! There was a great show with rent-a-guard guys acting tough on the back of the trucks. We finally got ours and went home. Well, almost. We had to wait in a big-ass line to get through the security checkpoint out to the parking lot.

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Top notch event, but I know what you are thinking - what did the trash look like?

So there you have it - the lowdown on XBox 360 Zero Hour - a true kick-ass product launch! I had a great time and will be reviewing my new XBox 360 and games in the coming week. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

- Tacohead