XBox 360 Vs Playstation 3

Well folks, there is a reason this blog has suffered from a limited amount of post in recent months. The culprits: HALO3, Call of Duty 4 and Mass Effect. (soon to be joined by Grand Theft Auto IV, I'm sure.)

And there is just one console on which I play them: the XBox 360.

Now, hold on, Playstation lovers and PC Gamers. I am avid gamer. Here is a little background on me before you go judging:
- I didn't own a single next-gen console prior to July 2007. I'd owned nearly everything that had come out previously, gotten burned numerous times by Sega (Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast...grrr), even 3DO and absolutely LOVED my original Playstation (Final Fantasy VII, Worms, et al). Got a Playstation 2, but to be honest, it mostly just collected dust. Why? the PC had entered the scene as my rig of choice. And a high-powered ALIENWARE gaming rig blows away any console. Hands down.

- Said Windows-based Gaming Monster PC took a shit on me about a year ago after a certain someone filled up my hard drive with crap, and hasn't been the same ever since. So over the Summer of 2007, a friend shows me XBox Live Arcade, and I could see that the strategy game CATAN was available for download and online or offline play. I was hooked. I hit the local Base exchange, and lo' and behold, they had a military appreciation package. Got the 360, wired controller, 3 games, and 1-yr subscription to XBox Live Gold for about $450.

- By the end of the year, my wife and I would go on to hunt and track down a Wii (thanks to the parents back in Delaware) and also get a Playstation 3.

- So this review comes from someone who owns all the next-gen systems.

- Moreover, this review also comes at a time when the dreaded "red ring of death" problem appears to have been addressed to a significant extent. I understand the frustrations many would have if their 360 crapped out for no reason other than poor-quality control on the internal thermal paste, but I don't know too many people who've had that probably with new 360s.

So enough intro, let's get to it:

Why do I prefer the XBox 360 to the Playstation 3? Four B-I-G reasons:

1. The 360 is the place to be for Online Gaming.
- I've got 50+ friends on XBox Live...on the Playstation? Two, 2, dos, zwei, er.... This will increase when some PS3 exclusive games come out, like Resistance 2 or Killzone 2 (scroll down for more on that), but right now, there is just no real comparison between the online experience between the consoles. The XBox 360 beats the piss out of the PS3. Hands down, don't even try and argue the point.

2. Ease of navigation. The XBox has 5 total "pages" to navigate through. The entry page, gives you a quick glimpse at whether you have messages and how many friends you have online? The information is present is an intuitive, visual way that is impossible to sit here and describe. Suffice it to say that all the info you need (plus some advertisements). What to see which friends are playing, the info is a click away. What to download a new Rock Band song, a game demo, a Live Arcade game? A few clicks and you'll be playing in minutes (provided you have enough MS points...) - As for the Playstation? Everything is present along a linear horizontal line and choices pop-up in a vertical fashion when you scroll over them....In other words: NOT AS EASY. and ease and intuitiveness are key here folks. Want to see if any friends on PS3? Scroll all the way to the right....and up and down...there's no instant look. Hopefully that changes when Playstation rolls out their HOME.

3. Gamerscore and Achievements - a.k.a. Gamer-crack. It may have seemed like a throw away thing in the beginning...give the players "points" for doing certain things in games. I think there was even some discussion about folks who racked up high gamerscore being able to "cash" them in for free stuff from Microsoft (guess that isn't going to happen anytime soon). But I tell you what. Part of each game now is looking at what the designers set as Achievements. A lot of games are fairly standard, finish the game on different difficulties, get so many kills, fly this far, run this far...but others can drive you to do some odd things in games. Like running around with a shotgun in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 until you've gotten the "I like the sound it makes" achievement for shotgun kills, or running down zombies with your jalopy in Half Life 2 Episode 2 or starting a third play-through on a game like Mass Effect in an epic quest to the Extreme Gamer achievement for having a 60th level character (the Max level you can get in the game I just found out.) Of course, it has already been mocked to perfection by the Simpsons game, which unlocked a 5gp achievement just for pressing start at the beginning of the game. The inclusion of this simply, addictive add-on to games is hard to ignore. Perfect example: I have both a PS3 and a 360. Given a choice between getting the "next big thing" like Grand Theft Auto IV on PS3 or 360, and I will choose the XBox 360 version. EVERY TIME. Why? Not because of downloadable content or any difference in graphics performance. But because of Gamerscore and the thrill of pursuing those dastardly achievements!

4. Lack of Must-Have Content on the PS3! What killer game is on the PS3 that isn't also on the XBox, thus wrecking my choice and forcing me to get the game for PS3 and not for 360 so I can wrack up gamer point and achievements? The quick answer: NONE. Okay, okay, I've got Resistance (picked up a used copy) but I haven't played it yet....Its not about the 360 having better games or more exclusive ones, its that there isn't any game out there that MADE me get a PS3....The wife bought our PS3 from a friend who sold it because of this very reason, he was bored with it, used his XBox way more and wanted to recoup some of the money he plunged into the system. We bought it primarily as a Blu-ray player, and hopefully, there will be some cool games out for it soon.

Is it all doom and gloom for the PS3? HELL NO! First off, I think its the best Blu-Ray bargain there is, and Sony's Online is free, even if it is crappy right now. As Sony gets its online bandwagon rolling, it may actually force the XBox to rethink its $50/year charge for XBox Live Gold. Moreover, some exclusive games are on the way that will probably be prompting quite a few friends to get a PS3: Resistance 2, Killzone 2, and the new Metal Gear game, to say nothing of new Final Fantasy chapter. I think an 8-player co-op campaign for Resistance 2 will be killer, I just hope I have 8 friends who own PS3 to play with! As it stands right now, I may be a little hard pressed to find companions to help me right the Earth of alien invaders this fall.

The Christmas Haul

Well, Christmas is the season of giving, and we certainly ensure there is plenty to open on our Christmas morn....(especially for those animals)...

We have 11 separate smaller videos to post on Google Video, and I'm sure they'll all make their way onto the blog.

We got quite a haul this Christmas. Movies galore (they're easy to ship and both of our Amazon wishlists were full of various videos) and our HD movies list sky-rocketed. Counting the 5 "rebate movies we got (which arrived on Christmas Eve) we scored over 20 new titles, including: the new Blade Runner 5 disc-set, the Ocean's trilogy (11,12,13), The Bourne Identity, Shrek the Third, The Transformers, Training Day, Road Warrior (woohoo!), Lethal Weapon, Swordfish (the prior 4 in a four-pack), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Casablanca, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Pitch Black, Chronicles of Riddick, Blazing Saddles and We Were Soldiers - all on HDDVD....then on Blu-ray I gave Christina the Die Hard Collection, Fifth Element, the 300, and Final Fantasy. And that doesn't count television series, where Christina scored the first 6 season of That 70s Show, Daria, season 3 of Medium; while I got Lost - Season 3, Prison Break - season 2, and Smallville -season 6. Hollywood writer's strike? What strike? fellas I won't know the difference for months!

The more traditional haul included lots of LL Bean socks and warm things (get cold here ya know), a couple of throw blankets, Christmas ornaments (again we each got the other the same Santa in the Service military one....our fleet of ships continues to grow), books (Freakanomics, The World is Flat, The U.S. Intelligence Community, one on Kim Jong-il, and a few others including one by my favorite fantasy author Raymond E. Feist: Murder in LaMut.

As for the Eagles stuff: the folks scored me a new 75th Anniversary Dawkins #20 jersey (and it worked btw - they beat the Saints when I wore it), a little clock and a 2008 calendar.

We also got a crock-pot from Christina's aunt and a note that our crockpot inventory has doubled because the folks got us one as well. So we went from no crock pots to two in the span of a few days.

But what about the games??!! Well it was good year for Microsoft, because our XBox 360 collection expanded quite nicely. I got Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed, while Christina got the Simpson's Game (its co-op), then after Christmas we went to the BX and lo' and behold, they not only had Guitar Hero III, but also plenty of Gibson guitar controllers....SO we used the money Christina's grandmother sent us to get GH III and two guitars (one for each of us ya know - its another Co-Op game!). Guitar Hero III is a little hard, and I still think I might get Rock Band (the OTHER musical rhythm game out this year), but her friend Annabelle has GH III, so they can play online now. I also downloaded about 5 "new" games from XBox Live - I didn't realize that most of the coin-op classics were just five bucks.....so now I have some games like Contra, Jetpac, Tempest, Smash TV, etc to help ween away those spare minutes....

Nothing new for the PS3 - they just don't have as many cool games. Though the download PAIN is awesome! Good thing I don't depend on it for my gaming entertainment.

As for the DS - Christina got Sudokuro - which has both Sudoku and Kakuro games. Oh, and Scott, you got me a lot with those Amazon gift certs man....another book (Joel Rosenberg's Paladins II, the Transformers score, the Matrix Trilogy on HDDVD plus two DS games: Orcs and Elves, and Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command).

Videos to come soon

Jump-Starting ye ole Blog

Well folks its been awhile and that probably means that I've lost whatever meager viewership I actually had. Oh well. Easy come, easy go.

So what have I been doing?
Working, getting ready for the holidays, and playing lots of Call of Duty 4.

But you know plenty of stuff has been going on that requires comment:

First the ridiculous: The assertion that Mike Huckabee deliberately put in a subliminal cross symbol in his recent Merry Christmas ad. Did you catch it? Perhaps....since you were probably looking for it. The supposed cross is the bookshelf behind Huckabee....look folks, I am not a Huckabee fan (I don't "heart" Huckabees - that MOVIE SUCKED), but I think folks are going over the line trying to parse everything in every single candidates' lives.

And who the fuck is Ron Paul, and why is he even commenting about this? Get a last name douchebag.

Second, I found a great website for the old Commodore 64 - perhaps the greatest computer-gaming platform in history. Check out C64.com!

Third, a complaint. What game developer in this day and age creates a game with a fixed camera? Take Conan for instance.
Conan for the XBox 360 is pretty good, but implementation could have been a whole lot better.

Lets go down the line:

Graphics - a bit of letdown. I believe that the designers are trying to emulate the visual style of the many fantasy paintings done of Conan, and it sections it really works and looks outstanding. In other areas, especially the Queen/companion and other cutpieces - the graphics are laughable and the water effects are some of the worst this side of a PS1.

Gameplay - the fighting can be fantastically fun at time. The different fighting styles (two-handed, dual-wield, sword-n-shield) all have their own special moves. Lately I\'ve been partial to the Shield, which allows for some nasty Parry-then-attack death blows. And any game that tracks the number of limbs hacked off earns points in my book.

Voice-Acting - I didn't mind Ron Perlman and Claudia Black is good. The game definitely could've used a few more quips here and there and you'll hear every single one within the first 30 minutes of play.

Is it fun? - This is the real kicker, because at its core - hacking and slashing waves of itching-to-lose-limbs-enemies can be both extremely entertaining and satisfying. HOWEVER, sometimes the action gets bogged down by a truly dismal fixed cinematic camera. How any game designer in this day and age could believe that a fixing the camera and torturing players with some retarded perspectives is the way to go is beyond me. In many places you can forgive it. But when the came doesn't track properly and you forced to do one of the multitude of jumping sequences near-blind. Well, lets just say that the curses start to get dropped rather liberally in my household. It REALLY detracts from my pleasure with the game. Please game developers, listen to us gamers, give US the option to play the game HOW WE WANT TO.

Sorry its been so long

Since I've blogged. I got some great news over the weekend. WORK! So I've been busy making some dough this week. I think it will keep going, but we'll see. Between that and the release of HALO 3, well, let's just say time has been at a premium this week.

Of course, Christina is putting in a serious run for Wife of the Year by trying to tackle a game well out of her normal puzzle-adventure comfort-zone. She's playing HALO 3 with me and we're having fun (I think) trying to beat the game in the cooperative campaign. I also played on-line for the first time ever and registered my first 7 kills in slayer mode (though the winner of the round had 15). Not bad for a NooB. Anyway, the game was a massive attraction at the exchange yesterday. I mean, a Harry Potter-esque queue formed up before the BX opened. Thankfully, they'd ordered plenty of copies so anyone who was smart enough to show up early got one.

Its an official phenom, scoring an unheard of $170 million in first-day sales in the U.S. alone. And I tell you what else, the game comes with a free 48-hour subscription to XBox Live Gold (where you can play online and keep track of stats etc)....its like having a vial of crack enclosed with the game. You see, I already have an XBox Live account (as if the Gamertag didn't give it away) and XBox Live arcade is simply the best in the business. Nothing comes close. And now, with HALO 3 you get dedicated gaming servers from maker Bungie! Connecting to a game or creating your own is a snap. And it fast. And most importantly - ITS FUN! I am brand new to this and the match-maker put in a contest with some other noobs. So I wasn't facing some ultra-Halo Master Chief wannabe. Did I lose? Sure. But I had a blast, and after I finish this guess where I am going to be? That's right - shooting some shit up on the TV.

Well anyway, I was going to include some thoughts on the Eagles in this, but you know, I will give them a separate entry.

Like a Lamb to the Slaughter

That what taking the new DLPT V test was like...so much for my tingli nengli (that's listening comprehension to you non-Mandarin types). Whew...I thought I'd done a lot better than I did, but unbeknownst to my delusional brain, my ass was getting pounded more than a $5 gigolo on Castro Street (that's in San Fran, in case that makes the allusion any clearer for you).

Oh well. No use crying, just got to keep on trucking, get some reading practice and hopefully take less of beating next week on part 2 (not counting on that).

So what else is new?
Well the Phillies continue their up-n-downs....getting their ass reams on day and returning the butt-scouring the next with a 26-hit, 15-3 smackdown on the Dodgers.

Oh yeah, how could I forget? Michael Vick, the dog-fighting dickhead, got indicted by the Feds. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. I had to turn on the slingbox and watch ESPN News for that one. What a dumbshit. I have to say, I ragged on ProFootballTalk.com last week cause I think they've gotten a little high and mighty, but the site has been fairly informative on this Vick stuff. I'm not a big fan of their pissing match with ESPN (they've really got it out for Len Pasquarelli - but hey, maybe the dude deserves it), because I think its better form to take the high road instead of constantly finding fault and pressing the case that "we're right, he's wrong, he's a bad guy".

Other than that, I like the depth of their reporting on the Vick case. The link above goes to an entire page which chronicles the story.

And oh, I played a demo for OVERLORD on the Xbox 360 - who knew evil could be so much fun? I mean "liberating" the town of Spree from the little fat halfling "oppression"...that's grand. If you've ever wanted to control some "minions" and watch them gleefully run about to loot and pillage (all at your command) try this game out.

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.