Thursday, January 28, 2010

My Strange Habits

So, I've found that I have a very strange gaming habit. I play single player games with multiple people. Recently, a bunch of my family sat around taking turns on the career mode of Need For Speed Shift. I've been playing games like that for as long as I can remember. Not to say that I've never played games by myself, but simply that I think I prefer it that way. The first game I ever beat was The Legend of Zelda on the NES. I was four years old, my sister was six and we played it together. how we've always played Zelda games(which at this point is four separate titles on various systems) is that she does the walking around and problem solving stuff and then I fight. I don't think you've ever played a Zelda game, but there is plenty of both fighting and problem solving so we shared fairly evenly. To this day, I have only completed one Zelda game without my sister. I've replayed games I had beaten previously with my sister but only once did I beat one for the first time by myself. I find this strange given how big I am into gaming.

Rachel and I are tossing ideas back and forth about getting an XBox 360. The main reason is that I'd like to play some games with you and learn your styles and enjoy your company. I hate that the one person who is as in to gaming as I am lives across the country. The joy of online gaming is that we can still play together and I really hope that we get to play. The funny thing is that I really want to be able to play with you, because there are games that I won't play otherwise. The reason I won't play them otherwise is because of my strange habit of playing all games, multiplayer and single player, with other people...

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Console Wars: The Next Generation

There's been a lot of talk about the next-next generation of consoles. The PS4, the XBox 720, Wii 2, all of these concepts and ideas have been floating out there for the better part of 2 years. The irony being, of course, that the Wii and PS3 are only a little over three years old and the XBox 360 is closer to six.

When I look around, however, I don't know that I need a next generation of console. I have a Wii, and while it isn't the most powerful system out there by any stretch, There haven't been any games that have pushed it to its limits. Super Mario Galaxy came close as for visuals and unique gameplay experiencs. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the best local and online multiplayer experience on Wii. World of Goo is one of the pinnacles of story telling in modern gaming and one of the best puzzle games ever. Even the controls on the Wii are continuing to be perfected. I know that the Wii can do more.

XBox 360, even having been out for nearly six years hasn't been eclipsed in its abilities. Every year it seems that there are new games coming out that push the graphical boundaries on the 360. With Natal coming out in the next two years, a whole new collection of ideas and gameplay options will be attempted. If you don't know what Natal is, do some quick research. It's an interesting idea that could really do some neat things in the world of gaming, particularly in the advent of 3-D gaming.

It's hard for me to even talk about the PS3. I almost want to chalk up the first year and a half of the PS3's lifespan as a mistake and maybe that it didn't happen at all. It hasn't been until this second half of this past year and now into this year that there are games that even play on the same field as the abilities as the PS3. The PS3 was designed to last about ten years on the market because of the way the hard drive and processing cores were built. To this day, no one has even pushed the PS3 even a little bit. Not that there haven't been great, even excellent, games for the PS3, only that there haven't been any games worth the initial $600 price tag. The hardware was worth that much, however it is software that sells hardware.

With all that said, I'm pretty sure that Nintendo will be the first to upgrade. It will be a similar style to the Wii, but it will have quite a bit more processing power. They would be foolish to change the controls, I think that the Wii-mote with the Wii Motion + and the accompanied nunchuck is perfect for most gaming, if not all. They will adopt a new button layout, but only to make buttons more accessible. Next will be the XBox 720, but only after Microsoft can't keep up with the abilities of the PS3. All I'm saying is that it may be a while.