People who keep on buying XBOX 360's....

[Rob]

For me a genre is a technical demo if all the love is lost once the next generation of that genre is out.

You could find love for Ico or God of war from the last generation. But try to get an FPS player to play Quake instead of Halo 3?

There's a lot of love for older FPSs. Doom 2, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Unreal Tournament, etc. I've seen newer games compared unfavorably to older games plenty of times.

I know its not strictly a FPS, but I watched 2 hours someone play Gears 2 and after 10 minutes I was so bored of the same online people running towards the same places and exchanging fire over and over and over and over and over and over.

The appeal is a lot similar to 2D shooting games. It's just pure action gaming, except you get more variation from game to game (yes, believe it or not). You have to think about outsmarting your opponent and have the precision to take them down - that isn't much of an accomplishment in, say, Thunder Force III.

(The idea is to play, not watch.)

[dave4shmups]

Ok, for those who like XBL better then getting online on the PS3, why? I have talked to PS3 owners who also own 360's and have told me that they have no problems finding friends on the PSN, or getting kicked off it.

As far as the PS3's overall game library goes, I will say that I definitely think that there should have been sequels to both Folklore and Heavenly Sword. Granted, I only played them on a retail interactive unit at GameStop, but Folklore used the Sixaxis incredibly well, and had beautiful visuals. I was simply stunned by the detail in Heavenly Sword; even on the ropes! The game got criticized for being too short, but not every game needs to be 60+ hours long.

There was a guy at GameStop that I worked with a year ago who traded in his 360 for a used 60gig PS3 after playing Uncharted on a 50 inch HDTV. There are some people who argue that, graphically at least, there is nothing on the 360 that compares to that game.

[AraraSPAMWitch]

I'm not just pissed with the 360, but the whole games industry. I just blame the 360 for it because it leads the way and others are somewhat following. Its killed the JP niche market completely dead. You won't find any new zealand stories or Ghouls and ghosts games now.. A new castlevania is coming out.. oh look, its like prince of persia!! Pretty much, you can blame 360 for it.. Because online is the focus of EVERYTHING!

New Castlevania does indeed look like ass (I began crying the moment I saw Kojima's name), but there's no connection between that and the 360 and its online platform. I'm as mad as you that the next Castlevania game will consist of mashing one-button slo-mo combos sandwiched between two-hour cutscenes where the Belmonts wax poetic over the cursed (pronounced cur-sed, of course) fate of their bloodline and where Dracula sits on his throne pondering the existential implications of immortality, but WTF does that have to do with online/360? That's the direction the series, and the 3D action game genre, has been moving since the PlayStation/64 era. You can thank the games-wanting-to-be-movies inferiority complex for that, and it's a damn shame but entirely unrelated to the 360 or the online emphasis, considering the problem predates the original XBox by about a generation or two.

And dude, I know plenty of 360 owners who break out older FPS's. Most of my friends who play Halo 3 on and off spend more time playing Halo 1 because it's a damn good game, and I still play the first two Doom games. I understand where your rage at modern gaming comes from, because I think most of us feel it, but I feel as if you're using the 360 as a scapegoat to vent your anger when the truth is that a lot of the problems with gaming today are by no means new.

Oh, and about the cave ports being only slightly cheaper than PCBs, NANI?

[neorichieb1971]

Ok I'm wrong, you can all go back to the subject matter now.

[popawell]

The only reason I have one was for playing online. I echo what was said earlier about the horrid language and screaming. About two months of that was more than enough reason to get rid of the account. I have not encountered the RROD yet, but when I do there will not be another in its place.

If all gaming is going to eventually be online based, it could burn for all I care.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

You can mute people, right? But I guess you want to communicate with your teammates too so not saying or listening to anything might make you suck. I watched my teenage cousins play Halo 3 once and I was like damn these kids. It was like every word anyone said was an expletive.

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Yeesh what a shitfest.
Buying a PS3 soon anyway for Demon's Souls as well as possibly making it my system of choice for online games(and Demon's Souls) but the 360 is still a great system between all of the niche titles & XBLA(the big titles help too, well some of them like Red Faction Guerilla, Saint's Row 2, and a few others).
So what's currently the best option for buying a J360? I can't afford to miss ESP Galuda 2.

[dave4shmups]

The only reason I have one was for playing online. I echo what was said earlier about the horrid language and screaming. About two months of that was more than enough reason to get rid of the account. I have not encountered the RROD yet, but when I do there will not be another in its place.

If all gaming is going to eventually be online based, it could burn for all I care.

I couldn't agree more! But surely there's cussing on the PSN! And I thought MS was cracking down a lot harder on cussing?

[Rob]

I thought MS was cracking down a lot harder on cussing?

I wish they would crack down on little kids talking. People flipping out can actually be funny.

[KBZ]

Well I've been sitting on the fence between buying a 360 or swearing it off forever.

on the one hand the shmup lineup is awesome and it has KOFXII on it.

But when I build anything with electronics, I don't half ass it and hope for the best. So why would I pay for something like this when I can be sure, or at least be very worried that it will crap out on me? Sure I could find ways to fix it, but this isn't some old dusty hardware that you'd expect to run into problems with down the line.

And then the fact that my money would be finding its way to sweaty old Balmer doesn't exactly say "BUY IT" to me.

My worries and 'buyer's morality' are probably more unique to who I am, and so I can easily understand why people will deal with the drawbacks of the 360 experience.

[Cuilan]

So what's currently the best option for buying a J360?

If you live in the mainland US, NCSX is the best place to get one. Otherwise, go with Play-Asia.

I really want to get Demon's Souls too. I would have preferred a real King's Field sequel, but I'll take what I can get.

[neorichieb1971]

The only reason I have one was for playing online. I echo what was said earlier about the horrid language and screaming. About two months of that was more than enough reason to get rid of the account. I have not encountered the RROD yet, but when I do there will not be another in its place.

If all gaming is going to eventually be online based, it could burn for all I care.

I couldn't agree more! But surely there's cussing on the PSN! And I thought MS was cracking down a lot harder on cussing?

There isn't as much cussing on the PSN because people actually have to buy Blue tooth gear. The headset is not a freebie like on the 360. Therefore by snobbish elimination kids are not as abundant in numbers. The types of games on the PSN aren't exactly what you would call kiddy fare either. You have to realize that most kids playing those FPS games on 360 are not old enough to buy them in the first place, so those that do have them are those types of kids.. If you know what I mean

Your more likely to meet a kid playing halo 3 than bomberman

[Elixir]

Except in Bomberman Ultra's case, you're more likely to have your PS3 crash.

[neorichieb1971]

Hmm, does bomberman have a rep for crashing on PSN then?

I watched a youtube of it ages and i thought the Saturn version blew it away. So never went anywhere near it.

[Elixir]

The PSN version is terrible. I've played a lot of Bomberman Live and I can say with 100% certainty that it's superior. The difference here though is that you're paying to pay online, as opposed to PSN's free online service.

There's also a few other issues with Bomberman Ultra. I mean, it's a blatant ripoff of Live, looking almost identical to it. I don't care about that though. It includes all the expansions from Live, but it also lacks a few key things. You can't save custom settings or presets like you can in Live, which makes creating a public game a chore as you need to set your shit over and over. The camera will automatically reset and the HUD will display after every single game, which is incredibly annoying as playing Bomberman with anything but a top-down view is just a painful experience. And lastly, it randomly crashes which forces you to turn off your PS3. It's just awful.

There's a few other things but there's no point going into it. While Hudson continually delayed Ultra's release over and over, it's just a disappointment. I seriously regret buying it. Hudson's main website is also messed up as well. From what I've experienced, their localization team consists of a bunch of idiots who don't really care about the games they're trying to market. And I'm saying this as a really long Bomberman fan and supporter.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Ok, for those who like XBL better then getting online on the PS3, why? I have talked to PS3 owners who also own 360's and have told me that they have no problems finding friends on the PSN, or getting kicked off it.

XBL is properly integrated into the entire experience - PSN feels very much like an afterthought. The PS3 has to spend ages retrieving information when you want to look at a friend's profile - or, hilariously, even your own - whereas it's as good as immediate on XBL. When you've got both consoles, it's blatantly obvious that the 360 is a second-generation online machine, whereas PS3 is kind of a first try. Same as the whole 'no rumble' thing - Sony seem to have decided to ignore all the good things about the Xbox just for the sake of it, not because they had a better way of doing those things.

Granted, I only played them on a retail interactive unit at GameStop, but Folklore used the Sixaxis incredibly well,

You'd get fed up with having to keep wrenching the thing around after an hour or so, trust me. The Sixaxis doesn't do anything for that game that couldn't have been done more comfortably with a twist of an analogue stick.

[Damocles]

They're still pushing Sixaxis? I thought that crap died long ago.

[dave4shmups]

They're still pushing Sixaxis? I thought that crap died long ago.

AFIK, they are not pushing Sixaxis. The AAA title for Sixaxis was supposed to be, IIRC, Lair, and thanks to the mess that Factor 5 made of what should have been an awesome game, that put a serious damper on Sixaxis support. It also didn't help that Sony kept running ads of the game on their retail interactive units in stores like GameStop, long after people knew that it was crap, in order to advertise the supposedly amazing power of Sixaxis. Folklore and Flower both got great ratings, but both could have been done without Sixaxis.

I know of no planned Sixaxis titles at this point, but I have busy with school and haven't been paying as much attention to gaming media as I used to.

[Skykid]

The last time I used my PS3 was for Wipeout HD.

Same as the time before...and the time before that...and...

Strangest thing is how much ass the Wii is whipping. The only thing keeping Nintendo from being untouchable is the horsepower behind their console.

Nintendo have always been untouchable.

I'd rather the KZ2 team from Sony to do something else other than a FPS game.

So do I, cos Killzone 2 is a pile of ass.

It's interesting reading Richie's stuff though, it reminds me of how I used to think about Sony encroaching on beloved Sega/Nintendo territory with the PS1 and it's crass advertising and torrent of fugly bargain basement games. When I learned to love the bomb (PS1) after discovering some of the overseas library, I then had much venom for Microsoft and they're butt-ugly breeze block Xbox. Yuck.
Years later, I got an Xbox and chipped it and modded it to hell and now I love it. I gave the 360 a chance, worked through the RROD's and loved tons of stuff from Ridge Racer to Gears.
Then, I looked on Sony once again as some kind of lame sheep, limping with the painful typeface of the PS3 logo, it's obese ergonomics and felt a little disappointed in its lack of innovation (control pad/online/price point) and it's unwillingness to shake off multimedia content for games focus.

But now, I warm to it a little bit. It's got a nice Blu Ray player and watching downloaded movies on it is a treat. One day, it'll be close to my heart and there'll be something else to hate.

I'm sure there's a moral in there somewhere.

[neorichieb1971]

Don't mind me skykid. I just hate anything that shoves online capabilities down your throat. I never deny the 360 its best selling features, I just hate them in general.

I still think Sony got the hardware right which is the main part. Its got more potential overall and everything built in. But even I didn't know how slow Sony would be on the software. They are taking their time and the promises of the marketting do seem like lies at this time. But I just wish they would get on with it.

If I were at a Sony meeting i'd tell them to drop developing home at this point, and start with stuff that people DO give a shit about.

[E. Randy Dupre]

I've got to say, out of the thre consoles it's the Wii that I've found to be the flakiest, especially where the online component is concerned.

As an example, I just switched mine on for the first time in some months in order to download Bit.Trip Beat. Select the option to download to SD card. Download starts, with that horribly annoying running Mario progress bar and the teeth-gratingly high pitched coin noise all the time. Download looks like it's about to end. Download gets stuck right on the last block and keeps running forever. All I can presume is that it fucked up at the last minute as I haven't yet installed the update that lets you play games from the SD card. But if it needs that update to even download them to the card, why the fuck couldn't Nintendo make the thing check my system when I selected the option and inform me at that point that I required the update?

Because they're shit.

I've also had it freeze up on me before now, or present me with a black screen when I've gone into the system menu, leaving me with no choice but to perform a hard reset. Which then just seems to make things worse for a while.

<edit> Actually, scrub that. I just downloaded the update then tried downloading the game to card again, and it's again managed to leave Mario jumping up and down on that last progress block like he's got a pogo stick shoved up his rectum.

<edit edit> And now it's finished. If it's supposed to do this, to take ages writing that last block to the card, you'd think the least they'd do is disable that fucking coin sound effect.

[Skykid]

Because they're shit.

Nintendo are shit are they?

Come on man.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I'm not in Nintendo's target demographic anymore. They don't care about me, so why should I care about them? I'm a fan of old Nintendo. The new Nintendo makes me sick to my stomach. I've nothing against the DS or Wii, though because third parties are actually releasing games worth playing.

Sadly, most of the games that sell on those systems are the garbage games.

[Skykid]

Sadly, most of the games that sell on those systems are the garbage games.

Like most of the games on the PS1 did when that was leading the market.

I know for a fact I'm not in Nintendo's target demographic anymore either, but I've always respected their shrewd business acumen, and for being a hardware developer who is also a triple A game developer with some of the highest standards ever (even if recent titles haven't quite met the bar.)

I don't give a shit if Nintendo sell knitting simulations to grannies, I'll always be impressed by the mark they've left on the industry.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

Sadly, most of the games that sell on those systems are the garbage games.

Like most of the games on the PS1 did when that was leading the market.

The Wii and DS have disproportionally more garbage games that sell because a lot of their audience know crap about games. Take a quick look at the top selling DS and Wii games.

I don't give a shit if Nintendo sell knitting simulations to grannies, I'll always be impressed by the mark they've left on the industry.

That's some hardcore devotion.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Because they're shit.

Nintendo are shit are they?

Come on man.

In terms of the online stuff, which is the bit I was talking about, yeah, totally.

[Skykid]

The Wii and DS have disproportionally more garbage games that sell because a lot of their audience know crap about games.

Sure, but that's only proportionate to the volume of consoles being shifted. The volume of garbage would be the same for anything selling at an equal level, because 3rd party startups come out of nowhere and take punts with junk to try and cash in. It's got nothing to do with Nintendo.

In terms of the online stuff, which is the bit I was talking about, yeah, totally.

In that regard, agreed.
Worth nothing though that the Wii was never intended to cater for a large online contingent from the beginning - as it stands it doesn't look like it needs to either.

That's some hardcore devotion.

It's simply respect, an entirely different thing.

[evil_ash_xero]

I respect old Nintendo, but they lost me since N64. I've been frustrated with every system they have released since(not counting hand helds). Basically it comes down to them not being concerned much for quality third party support.

I have a Wii, but I only got it for VC(with my own games I inject and install). I have a total of two actual Wii games, and one is a remake of a PS1 game. I hate the motion controls, and the games on they system....are there games on the system? j/k.. Basically, 90 percent(or more) of the games on it utilize the motion sensor, and are(to me) very gimmicky. If it wasn't for VC, I would have never gotten it. Although, that makes it worth the purchase for someone like me who is stuck in the past.

[dave4shmups]

I personally love the Wii. Besides the VC, it's got more old-school goodness, like Wario Land: Shake It!, plenty of rail shooters, and Super Mario Galaxy-one of the best games I've ever played in over 25 years of gaming. (And there's a a sequel coming!) And I don't care about playing people online, so that's not an issue.

The problem for me with XBL would be that I'd have to pay for it anyway, because I would want to download some XBLA games as well as DLC for games like Fallout 3. I don't know if that would require a gold membership, maybe just silver or bronze.

[Cuilan]

The problem for me with XBL would be that I'd have to pay for it anyway, because I would want to download some XBLA games as well as DLC for games like Fallout 3. I don't know if that would require a gold membership, maybe just silver or bronze.

You would only need a Silver membership for that (which is free). There is no Bronze.