I called around last night looking for stores with extra Xbox Ones. After talking to my friend who knows people at all the retailers, and he told me it was pretty bleak. Everyone just had pre-reserved units -- none extra for walk ins. So I called Richland Fred Meyer.

The lady said she had 17 that weren't reserved. So I asked if there were 17 people in line, and she said no, so I drove down at 9 p.m. and I was No. 3 in line!

After 2 hours and 45 minutes of waiting and some cash, I am the proud owner of an Xbox One.

I know people who were waiting outside in 17-degree weather and didn't get one. I was waiting inside, sitting on a chair they provided me.

Then I went to Walmart because they had cheaper games.

I bought Forza Motor Sport 5, Killer Instinct, Madden 25 and Ryse: Son of Rome.

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I didn't get to bed until 7 a.m. so I'm running on 30 minutes of sleep. I had to play all the games so I knew what I was talking about this morning!

I will say I was really impressed. With everything: the games, the system, the install. Pretty seamless. When you first put in a game, it takes a long time to install the disc (15 minutes). But only the first time. While it's installing you can go to the app store and shop around for demos, games, music, whatever, and it doesn't affect the install.

I noticed IT'S HUGE! Bigger than Xbox 360 and even original Xbox.

Included: cable, even batteries for wireless controller, but I recommend getting a batter pack. I was a little disappointed you can't just charge the controller. I hope that people have written down, or remember their Xbox Live logins and password otherwise they'll be starting fresh with a new gamer tag and all that.

Killer Instinct: I'm a fan of the old arcade, and I think they did it justice, both the arcade version and the version. Definitely worth the $40. I think it's strictly downloaded -- not available on a disc.

I played that for half an hour, then put in Madden 25. Started a season with the Seahawks. I played Madden 25 on PS3 and Xbox 360 and I can tell you this version is pretty different. Game play, character designs... seems to have been redone, mostly for the better.

I was hoping for something a little more advanced graphically, but it does the job. It can definitely go farther.

Players actually react to each other like real players. Blocking schemes are accurate. A lot of things make it more realistic.

Forza Motor Sport 5. I'm a big driving fan so I was excited to play this. Honestly, the game play is the same as every other Forza game I've ever played. However, the graphics are spectacular. There was a point when it felt like live video. Probably the first time that I had really, ever, not been sure if it was video or video game. Even for a second.

Last game I played was Ryse: Son of Rome. A third person, semi-open world, beat 'em up slasher super gory. The graphics on that were probably the most impressive of all the games that I'd played, although I really didn't play that long. Maybe 15-20 minutes. It was 6 in the morning!

The overall layout or setup of the software... the main Xbox One tiles... were exactly like Windows 8. So if you're familiar with that, it does all the same things with pinning and tagging, having multiple apps open at once, automatic recording of game play on the fly with your voice, calling friends, answering friends, Skype calls on the fly. Just a lot of cool social interaction features that seem to be built in.

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Fred Meyer even threw in a T-shirt!

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