I have to be honest, the idea of reviewing a game console has always seemed, well, stupid. While there are plenty of factors to consider when deciding whether to upgrade when there’s a generational change — price, upcoming games, status of your current console, etc. — choosing between consoles of the same generation really just comes down to which one has the most exclusive games you want to play. If you like Gears Of War but not God Of War, you buy an Xbox. If you prefer Forza over Gran Turismo, you buy a PlayStation. And if your favorite games are Halo, The Last Of Us, and anything with the word Mario in the title, well, your kid ain’t going to college.
But when the good people at Microsoft sent me an Xbox Series X so I could continue my career as a freelance game journalist who writes reviews for multiple outlets, I thought I’d write a review of my new console, in part out of a sense of obligation, and in part because I’ve never done one before and wanted to see what it was like. And while it didn’t change my opinion about console reviews or how someone should decide which system to buy, I still found that I more to say that just, “Well, what games do you like?”