Having access to Netflix on a console is extremely handy if you want to watch a video while still using your computer. This may seem like a blindingly obvious thing to say but shut up, I needed an intro.
The interface is simple. When you log on you have several broad categories including standards like comedy, horror, drama, etc. but also special categories for foreign and independent movies as well as television shows and “anime,” which includes both Japanese animation and North American cartoons. There is also a “recently watched” option (that disappears for not good reason) and usually a list of recently added movies and television shows. In each of these categories there are 75 entries but there are many more available that it decided not to tell you about. When you used to walk into a video rental store (remember those?) all the available movies would be on display. Netflix approaches this at if you were to walk into a video rental store and see a bunch of boxes labeled with their respective genres and all the movies tossed in every which way with you invited to root through the boxes and hope to whatever god you believe in that you might actually find something you want to watch buried in the piles of digitized dog poop. For extra fun these categories don't even make sense all the time. I have seen several movies listed in both comedy and horror, which leads me to believe that someone is very confused / they choose movie categories by blindfolding themselves and throwing darts at the wall.
To aid you in your coprolitic excavation they create new categories based on what you watch. So if you watch a large enough number of episodes of a show they might add a category called “Like: Help My Interface Sucks” and in it will around 20 movies that share some particular (randomly selected) quality with the show or movie you have been watching. It will also set up categories with weird criteria based on movies and shows you have watched. I have seen “TV Shows from the 1960's,” “Violent suspenseful movies,” and “Movies with strong female leads.” Strong female leads? That is getting pretty specific! It must be great to find movies based on such narrow criteria! Haha, sucker. It only shows you those when it wants to show you. It is like some weird video game where you have to unlock genres by watching movies with matching labels.
What makes this especially weird is the fact that it has so many specific genre labels. For instance, the movie “The Lost Boys” has the following genres: “Vampires,” “Teen Screams,” and “Cult Horror.” You would think that they would offer a way to look for other movies in those categories but apparently they decided that would be too easy. You can't even activate a “find movies like this” option. You have to hope that it deigns to give you this option the next time you log on. “You really want to see more Vampire movies,” it says with eyes wild and jaws frothing, “then you would work and find more movies with the “vampires” label! The gods have spoken!” Then it cackles madly and you hire an exorcist because it is clearly possessed.
If you know what you want to watch you can go ahead and use the search feature but this only highlights the problems with Netflix for the 360. For instance, there is no real way to browse the full selection. Sure, you can go to search and type in “a” and scroll through a full list of titles starting with that letter. How about if you want to find documentaries on a single subject? Nope. You will look at the movies it offers and you will like it! Of course you could go to your computer and look up the Netflix site, search with whatever means are available, and then use the search option on your 360 interface to find the movie you want. But this is a bunch of extra steps (assuming you have a computer nearby) for no good reason. Why not implement better search options in the 360 Netflix app? I blame NAFTA.
Besides this, it lacks a “save as favourites” option to easily find shows you were in the process of watching. There is an “instant queue” but, really, who plans out what they want to watch that far in advance? It does have a interesting “party” feature which lets you watch shows with other people who also have Netflix. This has the potential to be cool and maybe I will even get to try it some day.
Summery: Workable if mediocre.
Rating: 2 out of 5 “Be kind, please rewind” stickers.
Reviewed by: Leer's Poor Fool
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