My fond memories of the Xbox 360

By Sam Coles: 

Gaming these days feels a bit lackluster and tiresome, with rehashed ideas with remasters and countless sequels where I find myself going back to the good old days of yesteryear. The Xbox 360 is a console I often go back to, as it was the console I grew up with in my teenage years and early 20s, now this isn’t going to be an article stating old is better and new is bad no far from it but it will be me looking back on my fond memories of Microsoft’s little box.  

Although the Xbox 360 originally came out in 2005, I didn’t get one until my 16th birthday in 2009 where I was absolutely enamored with it immediately as it came with Halo 3 and Mass Effect. It was a console that opened so many opportunities with the worlds I could explore as well as the career path I went down, where I ended up becoming a game critic as well as a video content creator today.  

The core memories stem from not even owning a 360 as a lot of my friends had one, and I just remember them bringing their 360 to my house, and we would play split screen Halo or Call of Duty until the early hours of the morning. Not only that, but it was also the height of the music rhythm game, with Guitar Hero and Rockband serving as excellent house party games which unfortunately became stagnate due to their overabundance. There was something great about mixing music and gameplay together at a party, where most had a few to drink which led to shall we say interesting results when it came to vocal quality with singing.  

As I got older when I got my 360 in 2009, I gravitated towards online play as our internet connection in my family household was more stable compared to our dialup routes. I started playing games like Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 online more, which is how I ended up making friends when I was studying for my A-levels. When Modern Warfare 2 came out, it was a massive social experience, not just because the game was good but that was a big factor but because it brought everyone together no matter your background. People who didn’t even play video games that often or if at all played Modern Warfare 2, that was how much of an impact it had where the 360 was the place to play it.  

However, as I got closer to my twenties, I started to gain more appreciation for singleplayer games. Not that I didn’t have said appreciation before, as some of my fondest memories are from singleplayer games. However, as I got older, I grew to understand art more with games such as Red Dead Redemption, GTA IV, L.A. Noire (a lot of Rockstar titles), and The Witcher 2 showed me how mature the medium could be. This was all in the span of a seven to eight year life cycle too, which seems insane considering how games evolved at such an accelerated rate on a console that had just over 500MB of RAM.  

The Xbox 360 is a console that I grew up with, from my early teens when playing with envy at my friend’s house, to my mid-teens of finally owning one to my late teens to my early twenties of finally accepting the medium as an art form. It shaped the gamer I am today, not only that I developed somewhat of a career out of it as I started to write written reviews about games, which then went onto video content in my later career. It helped shape me who I am as a person today, and honestly, I wouldn’t change any of that.  

The Importance of Replaying Games.

By Sam Coles: 

We live in an era where there are so many video games coming out that it can be overwhelming, from big budget titles to small indie darlings it can be a struggle to keep up. However, we find ourselves with burnout from our passion of escaping in a beautiful video game world, where we end up staring at our games library instead of picking a new title to play. This is where replaying games becomes important, it can reinvigorate our passion for our hobbies and makes us realise why we fell in love with the hobby in the first place. I am going to talk about personal experiences and some of my favourites I love to play, so strap in.  

The main question is, why would one want to play a video game when they know what is going to happen? Well, why would you listen to your favourite album again, watch your favourite film/TV show, or re-read your favourite book? It takes you back to a comfort zone, where it refamiliarises you with the passion that you once had with a hobby when you start to feel burnout with it, so replaying favourite games from the past can help you fall in love again. There can be emotional and personal circumstances that make you drift away from your gaming habits, and revisiting a classic can help one reignite their gaming habits.  

For me it was an emotional and personal circumstances that pulled me out of gaming. The year is 2021 a dark era for everyone but for me an especially dark one as I had lost my mum to terminal cancer and our family dog passed away. My passion for playing new games and games in general fell off a cliff, I was in a state of limbo at this point not knowing what to do with my hobby or life in general. Darkness clouded my emotions, where I felt stuck, and then I slowly got back into the hobby. Going back to the familiar when we are at our lowest fills us with comfort, nostalgia and takes us back to a time where we feel safe and don’t have to worry about real problems.  

Take for example the game I am about to present to you, Red Dead Redemption, a game that needs no introduction but the past 16 years since its release I have made it my routine to replay it at least once a year. The question I am going to hear is, why? Well, for one it is a classic that established Rockstar Games as a company who could write mature and thought-provoking stories, but mostly it is its world and atmosphere. When I replay this game, it evokes memories of hot summers when I was a teenager, hearing the crickets at night as I sip on a cold drink as I explore the vast wilderness of New Austin and Mexico. It is very much a summer game for me, as playing it in hot weather just adds to the atmosphere.  

It is a game that takes me back to times with no responsibilities, not only that it shows what open worlds needs to be when I feel tired or burnout by said genre in the current climate. Red Dead Redemption is a gentle reminder to me when I replay it the genre isn’t stale, it all depends on who makes an open world and who crafts it.  

Moving on from replaying open world games, there are handful of shooters and linear games I love replaying, Max Payne 3, some Call of Duty campaigns as wells as some RPGs like Dragon Age. Again, it reinvigorates my passion for said genres, especially Max Payne 3 shows what singleplayer story driven shooters should be, engaging from start to finish with a great narrative and tight and solid mechanics even to this day. Call of Duty from yesteryear, just remind me of what the series once was compared to the dross they release these days and bring back memories of good times playing online with friends. Not only that, it showed that the series once cared about crafting, engaging and meticulous stories with twists and turns that took themselves seriously.  

Only a few examples but replaying games is something that everyone should practice here and there, not only do you get to revisit some classics you love but it helps you get back on track with the hobby you love. In this era of social media and keeping up with trends, there is constant pressure to play games quickly and move onto the next one. This can cause burnout and sometimes you just need to slow down, play the games you have or if money is a problem one month just go back and experience an already loved game as there is no shame playing a game again.  

Falling Back in Love with Portable Gaming: PSP and Switch (Specifically).

By Sam Coles: 

Portable gaming was always something so novel when I was a child and young teenager, but as I progressed through my teenage years to my early to mid-twenties, I slowly fell out with portable gaming. Instead, I would favour the “big boy” consoles as it were as I wanted to dedicate my play time to bigger and more expansive games. However, as the years go by, I have fallen back in love with portable gaming, more specifically the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation Portable (PSP), as I find since I have entered my thirties, I tend to gravitate towards gaming that is easier, and more convenient. So how did I end up here on this gaming journey? Well, let’s take a trip back to early 2021.  

The early 2020’s can only be described as the dark ages for most people, as the pandemic really got people down to put it lightly. Anyway, people were not allowed to leave their homes unless it was for specific reasons and a lot of people started to gravitate towards gaming, whether it was veterans of the hobby putting in more hours or those who were new or had not touched the hobby getting back into it or just starting out.  

Me, well it was my first foray into the world of the Nintendo Switch as I had been given one by a local business to help promote their services via Instagram. What transpired was my love affair with portable gaming reigniting, where I was enthralled being able to play some of my favourite triple A and indie games from the comfort of my own bed on a lazy day. Not only that, but it was also the first new Nintendo console I have owned since the Nintendo Wii, and so I was able to surround myself again with my favourite Nintendo franchises.  

However, at first, I would play the console sparingly as again my mindset was still thinking of it as the waste of time console which sounds silly when said out loud. When it got to late 2022, I met someone who really got me back into portable gaming, that someone who I am with today and living with. My partner, she really got me back into portable gaming not only that showed me that it was okay to have days where you don’t have to do anything productive if you don’t need to, where we to this day play our chosen portable consoles in bed first thing in the morning before we have to do anything. It’s this attitude that I love because instead of scrolling my phone on the endless timeline of social media, I will pick up my Switch or PSP and speaking of the PSP.  

The PSP is a PlayStation console I once owned in the mid 2000’s as a child but again neglected due to my mindset of focusing on the main consoles. So, in early 2025 I decided to buy one from CEX with some voucher I had accumulated via trading in my game collection I had brought back to Norwich (where I live currently) from my dad’s house in Bristol. Anyway, I got a sizable sum of money for the collection that I downsized in voucher form, so I got a PSP, and it was the best decision of my gaming career, if you want to call it that.  

The PSP is one of my favourite portable gaming systems, as it has a large library of fantastic games but also, they are insanely cheap as a lot of them cost below £10, well most of them are with a few exceptions. The PSP takes me back to a simpler time where you are not connected to the internet all the time, and a lot of games on the system can be played in 30 minutes to 1-hour bursts. Not to say there are not the longer games, as there are some of them being my favourites like the GTA games, but again the structure of those games could be played in short bursts. I just love being able to pick a game from a wide variety of genres which seem to be lacking in gaming now and just having fun for a short period of time. Plus, being able to pop the UMD in and it starting immediately is a great novelty these days, without the long and laborious download and install times that come with newer systems. It is a system that I have invested a lot of time into, I would say money, but I haven’t spent any actual money on it as I have used CEX voucher to buy my games.  

If you are of my age or older, or hell someone young and looking for gaming experiences that don’t waste your time, then I would say portable gaming consoles like the PSP and Switch are all you need, I would throw in the Nintendo DS in there too but that is more my partner’s ball court. Portable gaming is a great way to game for those who may not want to sink countless hours into one endeavor.  

Thanks for reading, and a bit of an update on my absence from the blog I have been working on my TikTok and YouTube channel. Video content creation takes up a sizable chunk of my time, I have neglected my blog for a while and I apologise! I will get back to my usual schedule once a month with uploads soon!