Editorial | Why the Xbox 360 is important to me.

By Sam Coles:

As the years go on I look back fondly on the Xbox 360, why I hear you ask? Well I was 16 years old when I received the console and I was finishing off my GCSEs, and then I had to start my A-Levels. It was the best gaming experience in my life as it was the first proper console that I could call mine, I played a wide array of games and experiences. I want to talk about why the Xbox 360 is special to me, and how the games shaped me as the gamer and person I am today.

In 2009 I was 15 going on 16 and I was in the final stages of secondary school, to be honest it was a time that I didn’t particularly like due to me getting bullied a lot due to my love for video games etc. On the 16^th of March (my birthday) I got an Xbox 360 with a copy of Mass Effect and Halo 3, before I went to school I played the first level of Halo 3 and I fell in love. 2009 was a beautiful year for video games for me as I experienced games from a few years prior; I fell in love with so many experiences. I was hooked on games such as Call of Duty 4, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Assassin’s Creed II, Bioshock and many more. It was the console that made me realise that games could rival the film industry with storytelling, and writing this retrospective today the industry has surpassed film with storytelling.

As I began my A-levels I felt comfortable again and felt like I was accepted for who I was, it was around this time in late 2009 when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came out. This is how I made a lot of friends at sixth form as we used to play the game well into the night, sometimes until the birds would emerge in the morning when we would realise “Oh dear we have to be in class in 4 hours”. It’s these beautiful relationships I established through Xbox Live is what makes the 360 special to me, when I was making friends at sixth form we could find an interest and talk the nights away.

However the 360 was one console that also got me through tough times, you see my academic years were tough and it was somewhere where I could escape. In 2010 my childhood dog passed away it was tragic time, to remedy this situation I would boot up Red Dead Redemption which I had just bought at the time. It was the beautiful deserts of New Austin that had me captivated, where I could ride endlessly with nothing more than the ambient music and wildlife in the background keeping me company. The 360 gave birth to my love affair with certain franchises Red Dead being one of them, it was during this time that the gaming industry were still experimental with games and took risks and didn’t chase trends.

Often during this era I would visit my local Blockbuster (yes that long ago), during a particularly hard day at sixth form I was perusing the shelves and there was a game that stood out to me. That game was Dragon Age: Origins, at the time I didn’t really follow the gaming news but I recognised the Bioware logo as I had finished Mass Effect 2 the year before. Me being an impulsive buyer at the time bought it without hesitation, and what I played when I got home was beautiful and I fell in love. The thing about Xbox 360 there was a game for everyone, not into first person shooters then pick up an RPG, not into RPGs then play a third person action game etc. In my physical collection which is nearly at 200 games as of writing, I have a wide array of games spanning different years and genres from shooters, role playing, racing games to the more experimental.

This was also the console where I got into writing about video games too, back in 2013 my writing started to take off where I was starting to get games sent to me by notable publishers. When I got an email back in 2013 from Rockstar Games saying if I wanted to play Grand Theft Auto V for review I was happy and shocked, I thought in my head This little white Xbox 360 I got 4 years ago is helping my excel my career. That is truly special!

These days obviously I use my 360 as a means to relax or to go to my safe place when I’m sick or upset. The console is truly special to me as I’ve had so many great memories with Xbox Live, local multiplayer and times where I could just get lost in a world. I will never forget the time on my 16^th birthday where I tore open the wrapping paper and saw the Xbox 360 logo on the box, and I’m still creating memories on that machine as my collection grows.