An Xbox sorta Tuesday

Well with the weather so dreary it wasn't hard to decide what to do today....actually, I got up around 0900, and didn't stop "moving" (moving being a relative term: I didn't go outside or travel anywhere - not even to base) and settle down until like 1500...Spent a bit of time chatting on MSN, and we have a plan in place for trying to find a friggin' Wii....

So I settled in an fired up the Xbox and tried out Catan (as in Settlers of, so that was a pun back there at the beginning of the sentence y'all). First I place the computer to get a feel for the game and I won...yippee...so then I tried out a match on Xbox live - which basically matches you up against people of similar skill level. So I got matched up against 3 other noobs and guess what, I kicked some major ASS - baybee! I busted out the biggest army and was the first to 10 points. Then right at the end of the game I get this message - network error prevented you from connecting to the game...and I don' think it saved the victory....I played against, and got trounced because my Choose Wood on the Red 8 (sorry no time to explain the scoring) and having a Red 6 on the side of the board with the Wood Port-strategy failed miserably....The number 8 got rolled so few times....and w/o access to stone to build cities (again, didn't I tell you no explanation this time?) I was royally fucked...but again I got the same error message right as it flashed this Japanese girl (at least I think she was Japanese) as the victor...network error and I don't think my loss was recorded either...What the hell? Anybody familiar with Xbox know what the heck this means?

Have I Gone to the Dark Side of Gaming by Buying an XBox?

As an avowed PC gamer I feel nearly every type of game, except for sports and fighting -- two genres for which I now longer have the twitch reflexes necessary to compete, -- are better, PLAY better, on a computer than on a console. First-Person shooters? Fuggedaboudit - I am long past trying to use two little directional pads with my thumbs (though I was weened on DOOM via the Playstation). Real-time Strategy games (like Command and Conquer, Starcraft, Supreme Commander, etc) - mouse and keyboard are a MUST.

So how in the hell is my family soon going to own not one but TWO (my wife is currently scouting for a Wii while she's in Florida, no luck so far) of the latest generation of console game machines (especially after resisting for so long)???

One word: FUN

I played the Wii the other night as a friend's place: It was an absolute blast! And all we did was play Wii Sports. But it gets you up and gets players in motion. Man its fun. I can see why its trouncing the PS3 in sales.

But the real question was the XBox, my wife is not a very big Microsoft (heck neither am I), and for the longest time the foot was down. No XBox is our house. Well, when I was as my aforementioned friend's place he showed me the XBox 360 (he's got everything, PS3 too) and I was impressed. Damn impressed. The graphics are high-end computer worthy, the controllers can be wireless, hell if you like the cheesy music on some of the games, you can plug in your iPod and play your own! (DRM-free only, so only those you've punched into iTunes from your CDs at home or bought the DRM-free version from iTunes - gay, but still, I've gotten dozens of albums to listen too - I chilled out playing Bejeweled 2 to Pink Floyd last night)

But what sold me? It was the downloadable games. And not just any games: easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master strategy games like Catan and Carcassonne. I mean these are german-made board games that some other friends introduced me to a few years back. Never got the chance to play them much, because, well board-games are very old-fashioned. But there they were, electronic versions, with cool graphical updates, every rule variation. Within minutes of finally scoring some MS Points (long, boring tangent there), I had downloaded Carcassonne and was playing a live game online against 3 different people, from I think, 3 different continents (me in Japan, a couple of dudes from Europe and 1 in the States).

I haven't tried Catan yet...I need to get some things done before I sequester myself with the XBox today.