Never Too Old To Play™

Nintendo is on the verge of announcing their next-generation console which looks to be something that will knock the socks off more traditional gamers and reclaim portions of that market that defected to Microsoft and Sony after the launch of the casual-centric Wii.

The console’s development nickname is Project Cafe, and a number of rumors have surfaced over the past week about what the console will be like.

Confirmed (supposedly) is an integrated touchscreen in the controller itself. The earlier speculation that the controller would be some sort of tablet seems to have been squashed with numerous sources confirming that the controller will feature two analog sticks, at least two triggers and a 6-inch touchscreen in the center of the frame. A new rumor is that the screen will have HD resolution although the fact that Nintendo has always made money on their hardware makes it seem unlikely that a controller would have such expensive components.

Also confirmed (supposedly) is that gamers will be able to stream entire games from the console onto the controller so the gamer can take their games with them on the go.

Concept mockup of the Project Cafe controller

Sources have reported that the console will be significantly more powerful than both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 (which simply means to me that when Microsoft and Sony introduce their next machines they will be even more powerful than Nintendo’s), and that the company has already started showing the machine to third-party developers so they have well over a year to design and implement compelling software for a potentially huge hardware launch.

Nintendo seems very much focused on winning back the trust of a lot of gamers who felt burned by the lack of support with the Wii for many of the fans who supported the company through the years. While I still enjoy the Wii quite a bit and feel that the new experiences offered by the system have been a refreshing change in the console world, I’m also excited at the prospect of a heavier duty device that will finally allow gamers to play those legendary Nintendo franchises in truly HD glory.

Time to start saving up…

It’s been a while since the shift of power in the console gaming industry from Japanese developers to their Western counterparts. Microsoft kick started this trend with the introduction of the Xbox, a video game console that was similar enough in architecture and design to a PC that formerly PC-centric developers had little problems porting their titles to the system. All of a sudden, Western developers like Bungie, Epic, id, and Valve who were marquee players in the world of Windows and Macintosh gaming but virtually unknown by gamers whose cash lined the coffers at Nintendo, Sega and Sony found themselves at the door of a whole new market of consumers.

However, while the console gaming population’s appetite for games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto III, and Splinter Cell grew, they still relied on Japanese developers like Square and Namco for their role-playing fix. Game series like Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, Kingdom Hearts, and Dragon Quest were among the many Japanese role-playing franchises available on the PlayStation 2, and the genre contributed to the console’s greatest strength: its “something for everyone” library of software. Some titles even reached blockbuster status with four in the top ten list of best selling PlayStation 2 games.

Then, the Xbox 360 arrived and everything changed. (Cue dramatic music.)

Actually, all Microsoft did was take the smart approach with regards to the design of their new console. (Cue PlayStation 3 fanboys ranting about RROD.) Microsoft knew the appeal the Western style of game development, up to that point mostly exclusive to the PC platform, would have with the growing video game market, and knew what those developers liked about working with the Xbox. Instead of trying to make radical changes for the sake of change (and under the guise of innovation), they simply expanded on what already worked and kept the architecture similar enough that the transition from Xbox to Xbox 360 would be fairly easy for developers. More importantly, they listened when the teams demanded more memory without which games like Gears of War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare would have been impossible.

One of the results of this approach was the release of highly evolved fourth entry in the Elder Scrolls role-playing game series on video game consoles. Oblivion arrived to much fanfare due to the high degree of character customization, the vast and fully realized world, the sheer number of characters with whom to interact, the epic story, and the beautiful graphics which all but guaranteed that gamers who weren’t interested in role-playing games before took notice. Critics raved about the game to the tune of a mid-90s average review score and many year end awards. The game went on to sell 2.93 million units on the Xbox 360 platform and 1.15 million units on the PlayStation 3 platform.

Bethesda followed up this masterpiece two and a half years later with the even better Fallout 3, a more action-oriented role-playing game set in the post apocalyptic world of the Fallout series of computer role-playing games. Fallout 3 was almost the exact opposite of Oblivion as far as concept – instead of a high fantasy world of wizards and warriors, elves and monsters, and good and evil, you had a depressing glimpse at a realistically possible future set on the desolate backdrop of a ravaged Washington D.C. where the denizens didn’t have the luxury of worrying much about the morality of their choices.

Similarly, BioWare’s space opera Mass Effect, released a year before Fallout 3 in 2007, challenged the player’s own perception of what was right and wrong. Although the setting was completely different – Mass Effect took place in a distant future where humans are galaxy-trotting with aliens on board advanced starships – the developers had the same approach with regards to the choices you made: almost nothing was clear cut good and evil, and it was commonplace for someone to find themselves conflicted about which path was the right one to take.

What these three games did was introduce console gamers to actual role-playing games where the gamer actually plays a role by deciding what their character says and does, and how they say and do it. Until this point, most gamers only knew Japanese RPGs, which were games that merely paid lip service to the term “role-playing game” – the stat-building aspect of traditional tabletop role-playing games was there but the spirit of the genre was missing.

Oblivion, Mass Effect and Fallout 3 opened gamers’ eyes to the reality of JRPGs. The wool over their eyes had been lifted and many realized just how shallow and simple these games were: it’s kind of hard to go back to the linear progression, restrictive turn-based combat, static stories, and canned dialogue that simply served as sound for pre-rendered cutscenes when you’ve experienced open worlds, thousands of dialogue options, real-time action, and the ability to make choices that have an actual impact on the game.

The old style of “role-playing” was no longer acceptable, and both sales and critical reviews reflected this new attitude. Of all the JRPGs released this generation, only one – Final Fantasy XIII - broke a million units sold with 1.88 million as of early February. Mind you, this is after seven weeks on sale in Japan where Final Fantasy XII sold 1.82 million units in Japan in the first week alone and ended up with a total 5.69 million units worldwide when all was said and done.

Games without the benefit of a mega franchise fared significantly worse at retail: Infinite Undiscovery from Square moved only 0.57 million units; Blue Dragon moved less than that at 0.53 million worldwide; and the well-reviewed Demon’s Souls (GameSpot’s 2009 Game of the Year) has only managed 0.63 million in sales. And none of the JRPGs released this generation have achieved aggregate scores in the 90’s at MetaCritic whereas just one – Demon’s Souls - barely made it at GameRankings (Oblivion, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and Mass Effect 2 all scored in the 90’s on both sites).

And if the game with one of the biggest brand names in console gaming history can’t put Japanese role-playing games back in the spotlight, what game can? Dragon Quest X? Highly unlikely despite the history of that series because the game will be a Wii exclusive. A third Kingdom Hearts game? The Final Fantasy series has historically sold better and received better reviews so the likelihood of that currently theoretical game surpassing Final Fantasy XIII is probably low. Plus, the real diehard Disney gamers are actually likely to spend the money on a Wii (if they don’t already have one for all those Disney licensed games) just to play Epic Mickey, a Disney game where you actually play Mickey Mouse instead of just drag his buddies Donald Duck and Goofy along for the ride, instead.

No, sadly (for JRPG fans, anyway) this seems like the permanent trend as Western developers for all genres take the reins of the video game industry from Japanese developers mired in their old ways, unwilling to adapt with the times and create products that appeal to more than just the often quirky tastes of the Japanese consumers.

In response to a recent IGN interview with Sony executive Peter Dille in which Mr. Dille proclaimed that the PlayStation 3 would “be around in 10 years” and eventually overtake the Xbox 360 in sales, GameStooge writer Jordan Lund unsurprisingly went on an anti-Sony tirade, making sure not to forget any of the key fanboy tactics in arguing the superiority and domination of their preferred entertainment device.

Mr. Lund gets what appears to be an ad hominem argument out of the way early on in the article, declaring that Mr. Dille’s position cannot be taken seriously because he is a Sony executive and other Sony executives have in the past professed confidence that the PlayStation 3 would surpass its competitors (or at least its primary competitor, the Xbox 360). While Mr. Lund is of course unable to support any point of view that said Sony executives are wrong about their predictions since the timeframe has not yet passed, the intent is certainly there to link the possibly dubious nature of their claims to the validity of Mr. Dille’s.

The crux of Sony’s argument that the PlayStation 3 will eventually outsell the Xbox 360 is the premise that Microsoft’s console is not “future proof” and thus cannot possibly stay on the market for an extended period of time beyond the historically standard “five year lifespan” afforded to video game consoles, resulting in a period of time during which the PlayStation 3 will no longer have competition from the Xbox 360. This is a laughable strategy because the PlayStation 3 does not and will not have a deep and broad enough library of software to be a viable “cheap” option for so many years after the next Microsoft, Nintendo and, yes, Sony consoles hit the market. The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 were able to stay relevant because they had enormous game libraries – the PlayStation 3 selection pales in comparison.

Mr. Lund has the generally right idea, but argues based on the iffy prediction that Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony will not launch new consoles anytime within the next six years (assuming that Mr. Dille was actually referring to a ten year total life cycle for the PlayStation 3 and not an additional ten years from now). The notions that in six years the economy will not have recovered to the degree where gamers would not be interested in new console technology and would be fine with playing Project Natal games and editions of Halo and Gears of War that look pretty much the same as the ones we played a couple years ago are ridiculous at best.

He continues with irrelevant paragraphs of stats that are focused entirely on the North American region with no consideration whatsoever for the rest of the world mainly because the only significant Xbox 360 sales lead is in this region whereas the two consoles are nose-to-nose in Europe and the Xbox 360 is a lost cause in Japan. After crunching tons of numbers to show just what kind of a lead the Xbox 360 has over the PlayStation 3 in terms of install base, he “put(s) things in perspective” with an extreme example of the PlayStation 3 needing a whole year of sales consistent to its 2009 numbers while the Xbox 360 sells nothing instead of the realistic example – the PlayStation 3 maintaining its current weekly worldwide lead of just under 37,000 for three years – that might show just how flimsy his whole line of argument is.

In short, Mr. Lund’s protestation of Sony’s incompetent arrogance is understandable, but his modus operandi of using nearly any statement by Sony that doesn’t fit into his narrow world view of things to vomit a veritable feast of selective statistics tarnishes his credibility by painting him as little more than a bitter fanboy trying desperately to play down any bit of positive news for “the other system.”

And lest we forget – Nintendo did not lose the 16-bit console wars to Sega. Sega squandered a two and a half year lead time for their Genesis console to end up with only a 10% market share lead on Nintendo just two short years after the launch of the Super Nintendo. Now, to put that into perspective, imagine a scenario where the PlayStation 3 didn’t launch until December 2007 yet started off 2009 with the same proportion of sales to the Xbox 360’s that it enjoys today (45% of sales that don’t include the Wii) at only 10% the number of games that the Xbox 360 had. That would be pretty impressive indeed.

Note: It might be useful for me to mention that the reason why Mr. Lund’s fanboyism doesn’t surprise me is because he is a (now rare) poster in the Usenet forum alt.games.video.xbox that I often browse.

Aren’t you supposed to learn from others’ mistakes? Microsoft seems to be putting a lot of eggs into that shaky basket with the big “Project Natal” sign taped to it.

In case you missed the overly dramatic reveal during Microsoft’s press conference at last year’s E3, Natal is the codename for an upcoming device to be released this holiday season exclusively for the Xbox 360. The device includes a 3D camera and depth sensor that interprets an infrared map of the space in front of it 30 times per second with the ability to simultaneously track and analyze the motion of up to four people (and 48 skeletal points on each of those people) down to movements of individual fingers. In addition, there is a multi-array microphone running proprietary software that allows it to determine the source of any sound and distinguish between “real” noise and ambient sound (and appropriate suppress the latter); this software even includes voice recognition capabilities that can be used in tandem with the facial recognition aspect of the camera’s software for some impressive results.

So with all of this cool technology rolled up into one little black bar of plastic, why do I have such little faith in Natal? The answer is simple: Natal is little more than a glorified Wii.

The primary feature of the technology is the advanced motion sensing functionality that essentially turns the entire gaming space into a controller. Think of it as a Wiimote on crack – instead of just sensing where the controller is like the Wii does, Natal actually sense where every part of the player’s body is and tracks how that body moves. That’s very impressive in concept but unfortunately less interesting in practical application.

Think of all the games you like to play and then try to come up with a way those experiences could be improved through the console’s knowledge of how your entire body is moving. There are a few games where this would be a benefit – Wii Fit would be able to let you know if you’re doing a particular yoga pose incorrectly and a game like Just Dance would be able to evaluate your entire body instead of just an estimation of what your arms are doing based on the motion of the Wiimote – but they’re pretty much all Wii games.

How would “core” games benefit from this technology? What motion sensing functionality could you add to a game like Modern Warfare 2 that would actually improve the gaming experience to a substantial degree? Some have suggested that you could hold a model gun like a real soldier but I can’t see how that would be a more fun gaming experience (think back to all the derision aimed at the commercials for the first Call of Duty Wii game that showed a teenager ducking for cover behind his sofa) and more importantly how developers would handle movement (running in place doesn’t strike me as a particular fun or immersive activity). Others have suggested that you could still play with a standard controller (which is in direct conflict with the marketing slogan that you wouldn’t need a controller to play Natal games) and just use hand signals to command your squad and hand motions to throw grenades – do either of these ideas improve the gaming experience, and would you really want to take your “button hand” off you controller in the heat of battle? Still others offer the idea of using the microphone to dictate commands to your AI teammates – isn’t that something you can technically already do with the Xbox Live headset, and more importantly have any past games that utilize voice command systems actually succeeded with them?

I can anticipate people thinking that it’s unfair I focus only on one genre of games so let me look to others. What about racing games? What bold, new functionality could developers add to a Forza Motorsport or Project Gotham Racing sequel that would make the racing experience more authentic or more realistic? One suggestion I heard was that gamers wouldn’t need to spend money on a specialized wheel controller and could just use something round as a stand-in. That’s a real winner of an idea when gamers are already complaining that the use of the Wiimote, with or without a wheel attachment, in Mario Kart Wii is too light and loose. Let’s not forget the absence of any rumble-based feedback, a problem cited by PlayStation 3 gamers who played Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.

Action games? Again, it wouldn’t be practical to keep removing your hand from the controller in order to flail your arm in a hilarious attempt to instruct your onscreen avatar to attack your foes although I suppose that you could just hold the controller in one hand with your thumb on the analog stick and just swing a pretend sword around in your epic battle against monsters that aren’t there. Fighting games? I would love to see people film themselves playing a fighting game with Natal and post those videos up on YouTube: we’d have a whole new generation of Star Wars Kids! Ditto with platformers – can you imagine how hilarious footage of people hopping around their living room would be?

When you really start to look at things, it becomes obvious that Microsoft is trying to do just a bit too much with Natal. Whereas the Nintendo Wii was the gaming technology that nobody knew they actually wanted, Natal will be the gaming technology that nobody actually wants (or they would have already bought into the Wii).

Hardcore gamers have hammered the Wii again and again for being little more than a gimmick that many developers tried to jam into their game concept just so they could say “we have a Wii game” and try to cash in on the Wii craze. There are countless complaints from people who lament the dearth of “core” games on the Wii while countless shovelware titles crowd retail shelves. Does anyone really expect things to be any different with Natal? It’s pretty clear that there’s no viable application of the functionality to the most popular game genres so most Xbox 360 releases will ignore the technology altogether (and those that don’t will surely include a way to play the game using “normal” controls which means the Natal features will just be tacked on gimmicks). The only Natal titles that will come out are the ones that were made specifically to take advantage of the device’s features (in other words, niche games that are only going to sell to the relatively small percentage of gamers who actually go out and buy in).

Of course, there will be a handful of diamonds in the rough like possibly the Milo concept shown in the “impressive” demo I referenced above, but they’ll be radically different gaming experiences that won’t help foster wide mainstream support of the technology like the marquee Wii titles (Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, etc.) did for the Wii.

It seems that Microsoft is simply making the same mistake many companies did in thinking that they could copy Nintendo’s efforts and make tons of money doing it. They’re banking on a scenario in which Natal is a runaway success that will make gamers forget that we’re already over four years into this console generation, a point in time at which the manufacturer traditionally started to drop hints at what the next generation of hardware will be like, or at least make them happy enough to ignore that tradition and give Microsoft some breathing room.

Aaron Greenberg, Director of Product Management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, said at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show that “we don’t think we’re halfway through this generation.” Think about when you first turned on your Xbox 360 and tried out Call of Duty 2 (yes, 2). How long has it been since you’ve played Perfect Dark Zero or Kameo? Could you wait that long for the next Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo console? Would something as niche and gimmicky as Natal really tide you over for the next four to six years?

The core gamer in me finds that possibility almost terrifying.

Just about two weeks ago, IGN editor Ryan Geddes wrote a piece for the site’s PlayStation 3 channel titled “Editorial: Why I Bought a PS3 – How Sony (and Microsoft) finally pushed an Xbox gamer back into the PlayStation fold.” The title of the article should have been “Editorial: Why My Inner Sony Fanboy Finally Resurfaced.”

Mr. Geddes starts out by cleverly painting himself as some sort of diehard Xbox 360 gamer so that his “conversion” to the PlayStation 3 has much more impact, as if his buying a PlayStation 3 for himself – a gaming journalist who no doubt has near unlimited access to more than one of them at his workplace – was testament to some sort of dramatic victory for Sony: If even a hardcore Xbox 360 gamer like me jumps ship, the PlayStation 3 must really be the superior console!

Of course, he drops subtle hints at his past life as a PlayStation 2 owner but spends far more time explicitly bashing the Xbox 360 than actually delivering solid arguments as to why the PlayStation 3 is a good system. The best he can do is offer the vague opinion that “it’s cool and Japanese” – with no elaboration on why the console is cool and what being of Japanese design has to do with that – and recycle the tired hardware diatribe while ignoring how much better Microsoft was – and still is – than Sony at dealing with those problems: Microsoft replaced my launch Xbox 360, which lasted just shy of three years of generally heavy gaming usage, for free whereas Sony asked for (but didn’t receive) $150 to repair my 40GB PlayStation 3, whose touted Blu-ray drive died after about sixteen months of infrequent gaming (with the rest of the console following suit a week later).

“It recalls a time when Japan was the center of the hardcore gaming universe, before it ceded that mantle to the West.” Is that like at all like how the Xbox 360 and its predecessor recalled a time when the West was the center of the gaming universe with systems like the Atari 2600, the Intellivision and the ColecoVision before the video game market crash and the emergence of the Nintendo Entertainment System as the new go-to home entertainment device for video games?

Sony’s PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems ruled their respective generations because the games, and not the systems themselves, were cooler than what was available for the competition, and games are inherently platform-neutral pieces of intellectual property: technically there wasn’t any reason why Super Mario Bros. couldn’t appear on the Sega Master System, Final Fantasy VII couldn’t appear on the Saturn, God of War couldn’t appear on the Xbox, and Halo 3 couldn’t appear on the PlayStation 3. Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360 is going to be no “less Final Fantasy” than Final Fantasy XIII on the PlayStation 3 unless you’re one of the few who think that watching hours upon hours of drawn out, self-congratulatory and pretentious pre-rendered cutscenes is an admirable trait of the series.

The Xbox 360 succeeded – and continues to succeed – this generation for the same reason. Microsoft recognized the potential appeal of previously PC-only genres like FPS and “western” (i.e. computer) RPG to console gamers and built the right system for developers to most easily bring games of such genres to the modern console gaming market. If you build it, they will come: Microsoft built it, and gamers came by the millions.

Engrossed in his fanboy-fueled “epiphany,” Mr. Geddes seems to instead think that Microsoft forced the Xbox 360 on gamers by “hijack(ing) the game industry… (and) beat(ing) Sony at its own game” – Microsoft did in 2005 what Sony did a decade earlier so why all the bitterness? What he doesn’t realize is that gamers didn’t buy the Xbox 360 because they had to but because they wanted to. The excitement and fervor surrounding the Xbox 360 was far greater than any shown for the PlayStation 3 a year later for a variety of reasons, including a significant shift in the types of games the majority of the market wanted and a conspicuous ambivalence by most gamers towards the overhyped new technologies Sony wanted them to pay an extra $200 for.

With last year’s PlayStation 3 price cuts, the playing field is more level now yet the consumers still want the Xbox 360 because that’s where the best overall gaming experience is. “Cool” isn’t defined by a glossy black exterior (and all the lovely fingerprints that go with it), high-definition movies (which most people don’t actually care much about) or a Cell processor that nobody cares to work with (unless they’re owned by Sony).

At the same time, “cool” isn’t eroded by a likely niche new technology (anyone who thinks Project Natal has a seriously deluded perception of market reality) or a middle-aged Xbox Live spokesperson whose “insecure awkwardness” only graces the eyes of the few who actually watch Major’s Minute instead of playing Modern Warfare 2.

I wonder if Mr. Geddes sees the irony in attacking the legitimacy of Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb as a viable console cheerleader when it’s because of the demands of gamers the same age as he was when the PlayStation brand first arrived that gave Sony an opportunity in the first place. As far as solid console spokespersons are concerned, I’m interested in hearing who Mr. Geddes thinks is even fit for that role on the PlayStation 3 side. Last I checked, Sony wasn’t even concerned enough about their community to have someone other than aged corporate executives like Jack Tretton, Ken Kutaragi and Kazuo Hirai toot their system’s horn.

And Jessica Chobot, host of IGN Strategize which is front and center on Xbox Live, isn’t too shabby a mouthpiece – just ask the PSP. Sure, she’s not actually an official Xbox 360 or Xbox Live spokesperson, but the average gamer, who doesn’t browse gaming websites or read gaming magazines wouldn’t know that – they just see her plastered on one frame of Xbox Live almost every day. Perception is everything as Sony found out when suddenly the Xbox 360 was the talk of the industry.

Well, everyone except closeted PlayStation 3 fanboys with press passes.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village, from independent Japanese game developer Level-5, is hands down one of the best games available for the Nintendo DS and my personal favorite DS – no, make that handheld – game of all time.

The Curious Village came out in February 2007 in Japan and a year later in North America as the first entry in a new series of puzzle games. Players follow the exploits of the eponymous scholar and his young sidekick Luke as they explore St. Mystere, the “curious village” referenced in the title, to try to solve the mystery of the Golden Apple left behind by the late Baron Reinhold in his will as a challenge to find a worthy inheritor for his fortune.

The game is a masterpiece because Level-5 basically did everything right.

The developers started off with a rock solid foundation in choosing to revolve the gameplay around solving brain teaser puzzles, which are very popular outside the realm but not often the focus of video games. This sub-genre of brain stimulating activities is a nice alternative to “block” games like Bejeweled and Tetris or the puzzle solving aspects of games ranging from Legend of Zelda to Resident Evil.

In fact, the type of puzzles you’ll find in The Curious Village are akin to the ones popularized by Games magazine and books dedicated to brain teasers – Professor Layton and Luke spend all their time trying to beat tests of logical deduction, observation and manipulation.

Level-5 chose the perfect gaming platform for this kind of gameplay as the nature of these puzzles are a perfect match for the DS’s touch screen technology. Or maybe it was the other way around, with the advent of the technology inspiring the team to bring this kind of puzzle solving to video gamers.

While the game probably could work with your standard video game controller, using your stylus to circle the correct person in an image, draw the best path through the streets of a town or drag pieces of a sliding puzzle around the screen just makes sense.

Of course, simply offering the gamer a random collection of unrelated mind bending puzzles would result in a rather disconnected, boring presentation so Level-5 wrapped the whole thing in the mystery adventure plot I vaguely summarized above and integrated the puzzles into the story as either challenges to advance the plot or optional “side quests” to help some of the villagers the Professor meets.

This type of presentation works well as the viewer sees the puzzles as obstacles to the Professor’s efforts to solve the mystery rather than as recitations from some printed collection of teasers – the experience is more immersive and seamless.

The visual design of the game is also top notch with Level-5 thankfully avoiding the use of Japanese-style artwork and embracing a more European feel for the characters and environments to go with the setting. The character designs are generally pleasant and the overall palette leans towards brownish autumnal hues, which surprisingly work well, a nice repose from the (sometimes garishly) vibrant and saturated colors and exaggerated details often found in Japanese style cartoon designs.

Especially impressive are the wonderfully animated cutscenes that deliver the most important developments in the game. These are full motion, traditionally animated cartoons, complete with localized voiceovers, that look good enough to pass as clips from a professional quality animated film. In fact, the overwhelming popularity of the franchise in Japan prompted Level-5 to create Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, a full-length animated feature produced by one of the main producers of the Pokémon movies with plans for another new film each winter.

My only complaint with the cutscenes is that there aren’t enough of them. Most of the cutscenes consist of non-animated images of the characters communicating with each other through dialogue text at the bottom of the screen. I imagine that the infrequency of these clips is due to the amount of space necessary to store such high quality video files – a Nintendo DS game card doesn’t have a whole lot of capacity.

Nevertheless, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a top tier, high quality video game that will challenge players of almost any age (some of the puzzles could prove too challenging for younger gamers) and take them on an intriguing ride through a well-written mystery plot full of twists and surprises.

If you’re anything like me, the action-packed conclusion will just leave you ready and raring to go for the next game in the series. The eighteen months I had to wait for the U.S. release of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box was one of the hardest video game-related spans of anticipation I ever had to go through, but that’s just because The Curious Village was so very good.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

Parents need not worry about the appropriateness of the content in Professor Layton and the Curious Village. The game is similar to Pixar movies in that the visual design and story are both appealing to adults and accessible to children at the same time. Aside from younger individuals who may find some of the puzzles too daunting, players of almost all ages will have a blast trying to solve the clever brain teasers scattered throughout the game as they unravel the mysteries of St. Mystere. I would recommend this game as assuredly for children as I would for adults.

To get an idea of the type of puzzle solving you’ll experience in the game, try the sample puzzles at the official Professor Layton website.

Experience this for yourself!

• Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS) (Amazon)

So you’ve finally decided to take the plunge and buy a new video game console.

Maybe your stack of unfinished PlayStation 2 games has finally dried up. Maybe you’ve discovered the joy of playing games while sitting on your living room couch instead of at your computer desk or decided you don’t want to upgrade your 5-year-old video card to play the latest and greatest PC games.

Or maybe you just want to find out if there’s more to video games than sliding your finger around on your iPhone.

However you came to the decision to join the over 125 million people worldwide who enjoy video games on their Wii, Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, you really couldn’t have picked a better time to do so. All three console manufacturers – Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony – cut their prices in the last few months and, for the first time this generation, the PlayStation 3 is at an accessible price point.

My goal here is to try to help you make the choice of which console to purchase according to your interests and concerns. It can sometimes be a daunting task to look for advice on the web because for every unbiased website there’s a slew of immature, irrational forum posts by raging fanboys who are fiercely and unmovingly loyal to what’s essentially a hunk of plastic that spews pretty lights and sounds at them.

Indeed video game console fanboys (and fangirls) can be some of the craziest, most rabid fans in the world, singing praises at their console of choice and hurling insults at people who disagree with them. Often there’s no rhyme or reason to their rhetoric, which tends to be formed out of ignorance to reality.

Why bother weeding through that jungle of idiocy when it’s so much easier to just look at the facts and make your decision based on which console is more suited to your needs? Hopefully, I’ll help you at least a little bit with that today.

The first thing to consider is the kind of games you like to play. The Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are aimed at generally older gamers who have a lot of video gaming experience and more sophisticated tastes whereas the Wii is aimed at young kids and the more casual gamer who maybe hasn’t played a video game since the Super Nintendo days or dabbles only in lighter fare like Bejeweled or Diner Dash.

While there are certainly children’s and casual games available to play on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well as more mature and complex games on the Wii, you can get a general sense of the style of gaming on the systems based on their marketing. If you like blasting away enemies, going on epic quests with lots of interaction with characters or playing realistic sports or driving simulations, your best bet is to go with the the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

In fact, the software libraries for these two systems are quite similar with the exception of a handful of exclusive games. The Xbox 360 has the better overall library of games with both acclaimed and popular titles like Halo 3, Gears of War and Left 4 Dead (and its sequel), but there are some killer PlayStation 3 exclusives like Final Fantasy XIII and Gran Turismo 5 (both entries in hugely popular series) coming out in the next year.

If you’d rather take a more laid back approach with games that have simpler and more straightforward goals and don’t require you to remember what two control sticks and eight different buttons do, the Wii is probably more up your alley. Another aspect to consider with regards to Wii gaming is that the games available on Nintendo’s system tend to be more geared towards “party play” – they’re not very complex so friends and family of all ages can quickly join in on the fun, no gaming expertise needed.

If you want to play games online with other people, you can do it with all three consoles. The Wii has the most restrictive online gaming functionality in that you can only play with people with whom you’ve exchanged “friend codes.” It’s a relief, in a sense, to parents who don’t necessarily want their children interacting with complete strangers on the Internet. On the other hand, it also means that you have to personally know a decent number of people who own Wiis in order to have some variety and flexibility in your gaming sessions.

The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 allow you to send invites to people you already know (by typing in their IDs) or people you’ve played with right from within the gaming session. Even if you don’t have a lot of “real life” friends who own your system, you can still compile a sizeable list of people with whom you enjoy playing.

The Xbox 360’s online network, known as Xbox Live, is the only one that requires a monthly or annual fee (generally $50 per year) in order to play games. This seems like a lot to ask of gamers until you consider that Xbox Live is more mature (Microsoft introduced it in 2002 and has been improving it since then), more robust (there is a lot more content and functionality on Xbox Live than on the PlayStation Network) and more reliable (Microsoft has a lot more servers in a lot more locations for higher performance, greater reliability and more up-time). The online experience is also more consistent on Xbox Live due to Microsoft themselves handling most of the core networking code – developers of PlayStation 3 games need to program this themselves and can do it pretty much any way they want (to sometimes unfavorable results).

Of course, if none of that matters to you and all you want to do is play with some buddies, the PlayStation Network is a fine service indeed and won’t cost you a dime. Just hope that those buddies all have PlayStation 3’s (less likely in North America where there are almost twice as many Xbox 360’s).

On the other hand, the PlayStation 3 has a related advantage over the Xbox 360 in that it includes built-in WiFi, useful for people whose Internet service providers have given them a wireless router (or who have purchased one themselves). You can, of course, use an ethernet cable to connect an Xbox 360 to your network (that’s the same cable you would use to connect your computer if you didn’t have wireless networking), but if you want to get a wireless adapter be prepared to shell out $80 or more.

If you’re interested in doing things other than playing games on your gaming console then you can all but rule out the Wii as there isn’t a whole lot more to do on that little white box. If you have a wireless router at home, you can easily configure the Wii to use that to connect to the Internet in order to read news, check the weather and see what Miis (the little characters that represent you within the Wii’s game “world”) other people have put together. If you leave the Wii in standby mode (i.e. if you don’t unplug it when you turn it off), it will even automatically update itself on a regular basis to get you the latest content.

Disappointingly for some fans, Nintendo once again decided that theirs would be the only console to not play movies in any way, shape or form, despite utilizing discs that are the same physical size as DVDs and Blu-rays. Nintendo wanted to focus on games and target consumers looking for nothing more than a fun gaming system. Their logic was that most everyone has a DVD player these days and that the hardware is so cheap that there was no real advantage to including movie playback functionality. I can understand their viewpoint as easily as I can understand some fans’ frustration.

If you absolutely need to be able to watch movies on your console, you have to choose between the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The PlayStation 3 has the obvious edge here in that it can play movies stored on the relatively new Blu-ray disc format (pioneered, unsurprisingly, by Sony). Blu-ray is a technologically superior format that stores high definition video and audio (perfect for all those HDTVs that are dropping in price by the year) and includes evolved versions of many of the extra features found on DVDs.

Whether you would benefit from that superior quality or care about it is an entirely different matter. I don’t want to get into a meaty Blu-ray discussion here but I will suggest you take a quick glance at this chart circulating around the Internet that shows whether you’d even see a difference between Blu-ray and DVD based on the size of your television and how far you sit from it.

If Blu-ray isn’t a priority for you, then you can still watch all of your DVDs on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. They’ll even upscale the image quality to pseudo-HD which looks quite good (comparable to the quality of the HD television broadcasts from most of the national service providers like DirecTV and Comcast).

You don’t even have to use DVDs, either. Both devices are capable of accepting streaming movies, television and music from your home computer. You can even view all of your photos on your nice, big television set. This is a little easier with the Xbox 360 if you own a Windows-based computer since it utilizes the Windows Media Center that’s part of most Windows installations. There are plenty of free software online that will allow you to do the same things on the PlayStation 3. In fact, I use TVersity (compatible with both systems) instead of the Windows Media Center functionality.

Beyond that, you can rent or buy movie and television episode downloads from Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Many of these downloads are high definition with impressive quality despite not being as sharp as a Blu-ray movie. The pricing is skewed a little high, though, at the moment. If that’s a problem for you, join Netflix and you can stream thousands of movies and television episodes free to the system of your choice as part of your membership! The functionality is part of the Xbox 360’s operating system, but you’ll need to request a special disc for the PlayStation 3 which Netflix will send to you for free.

The final, and perhaps most important, thing to consider is the price you’re willing to pay to enter this generation of video game consoles. The Xbox 360 and Wii have the cheapest entry costs with models priced at $200 whereas you need to spend at least $300 for a PlayStation 3.

You technically get a lot more value out of the PlayStation 3 than you do out of the Xbox 360 and the Wii if you want and/or need the added functionality in Sony’s console (significantly, the Blu-ray capabilities). However, if all you want to do is play games, it’s tough to go wrong with any of the three consoles.

In short:

• If you’re a casual gamer who is looking for simple yet entertaining games that you can play with friends and family of all ages, your best bet is the Nintendo Wii.
• If you’re a more experienced gamer who wants a more robust gaming experience without breaking the bank, the Xbox 360 is a fine choice with the best overall video game library.
• If, on the other hand, you want all the bells and whistles and are willing to pay for them, you won’t regret purchasing the PlayStation 3, which will provide you with a solid library of games from which to choose and one of the best Blu-ray players on the market.

Experience it for yourself!

• Nintendo Wii Console (Amazon)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 Arcade Console (Amazon)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite Console (Amazon)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 Limited Edition Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Bundle (Amazon)
• Sony PlayStation 3 120GB Console (Amazon)
• Sony PlayStation 3 250GB Console (Amazon)