Never Too Old To Play™

About a week ago, a fellow poster to the alt.games.video.xbox Usenet group referenced an Engadget article about gadgets they considered to have defined the decade in which the Engadget staff chose Microsoft’s Xbox 360 for the gaming world. Despite being an avid fan of the Xbox 360, I had to laugh at Engadget’s choice considering the two systems they listed as “runners up” had much more impact on the gaming world than my current favorite console.

First of all, the Xbox 360 was only around for half of the decade and didn’t really pick up steam until about a year or so after launch due to the widespread “red ring of death” hardware failures that I suppose do make a case for the Xbox 360 defining the decade in some way. Engadget editor Paul Miller states that “You don’t remember a console for the chips inside or the case design, but the games you played.” I counter that what gamers most remembered about the Xbox 360 from 2005-2007 were four letters: RROD.

Miller goes on to list Gears of War and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as the two games that made the Xbox 360 so very special to him mainly due to the Xbox Live online gaming experiences he had with them. I agree with him that those are two of the top games people can play on the system. I just have a slight issue with him ignoring that Call of Duty is, and has always been, available on the PlayStation 3 with online play made possible by Sony’s PlayStation Network, which is free in contrast to Microsoft’s $50 per year charge for Xbox Live play.

Now, before PlayStation fanboys get all tingly, I’ll point out that I’m not bashing Xbox Live or being critical of the charge – I in fact believe that you get what you pay for with these two services and that Xbox Live is a much more robust network that offers a better experience with that monthly or annual fee gamers pay to use it – but highlighting the folly of basing a claim that the Xbox 360 is the defining gaming system of the decade on its online gaming service (as indicate by “We went with the Xbox 360 for its innovation in online play”).

In choosing the gaming device of the decade, you have to look at a much bigger picture. The PlayStation 2 debuted in 2000, the beginning of the decade, and is still on sale today. Sure, its sales are straggling now and it may very well be on its last legs this year, but it’s been strong for the better part of the decade. In fact, it took the Xbox 360 a year and ten months to outsell the PlayStation 2 at the global level and even longer to really solidify a sales advantage over the then 7-year-old previous generation console.

The PlayStation 2 managed to survive this long on the strength of its games, the most important aspect of any video gaming platform. Like Mr. Miller said, you remember a console for the games you played – the PlayStation 2 has 1,800 of them. Many top franchises got their start on the system. Many of the best entries in beloved franchises called the PlayStation 2 their home. While Sony’s arrogance regarding this generation has cost them exclusivity on third-party video game series like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry, those franchises were available only to console gamers who owned PlayStation 2′s from 2000 to 2009.

And the Xbox 360′s current success is really all due to Sony’s past efforts. Had it not been for Sony’s foresight with the PlayStation 2 – and the PlayStation before it – we’d all still be playing Mario and Kirby games (not that I have any problem with this – I love Nintendo’s games – but I know a lot of “hardcore” gamers who would give up gaming if their only choices were between one cute and cuddly mascot or another). Sony is responsible for making video games cool again, and the bulk of that transformation took place shortly after the launch of the PlayStation 2 with the release of games like Grand Theft Auto III, Final Fantasy X and SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs.

Now, I can kind of understand where people might have an easy time forgetting about a previous generation system that debuted almost a decade ago – I myself sometimes feel as if this generation of consoles has been around forever and pine for what amazement the next series of hardware and games will offer. However, that’s still no excuse for choosing the Xbox 360 as the defining gaming device of the decade when one of its contemporaries, the Nintendo Wii, has had a far greater impact on our favorite past time and the industry behind it.

The Wii landed on retail shelves about a year after the Xbox 360 did, but unlike Microsoft’s big white box Nintendo’s little one made an immediate splash, outselling its competitors on a weekly basis right out of the gate and surpassing the Xbox 360′s total sales in less than nine months (at which point the Xbox 360 had been on the market for 21). Even though the Wii’s software library was severely lacking in the traditional “core” games that long-time gamers favored, the console thrived on the strength of its innovative style of user interaction which was much more appealing to casual and non-gamers who had no interest in learning what the eight buttons, two sticks and one directional pad on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3′s controllers did.

The Wii has been a complete game changer for the video game industry. Thanks to Nintendo, the console gamer market expanded by several degrees, a result of their decision to stop engaging in the traditional “red ocean” strategy of beating competitors for existing market space and instead employ a “blue ocean” strategy of using innovation in key areas to create new market space. Millions of people who would never have thought to buy a video game console, whose gaming experience was limited to marathon sessions of Minesweeper, Bejeweled or Diner Dash on their PCs or who abandoned video games after the Nintendo Entertainment System simply because games got too complex to be a recreational vehicle quickly became part of that new market space, and Nintendo hasn’t looked back.

And while we’re talking about the Big N, let’s not forget the current king of the portable gaming space, the Nintendo DS, which also happens to be the king of all video gaming with more systems sold than any other handheld or console this generation. The DS debuted in November 2004, and in the half-decade since then it has become something of a portable gaming phenomenon, consistently outselling all other gaming systems worldwide on a monthly basis. Nintendo is basically printing their own money with this platform, which is so popular that millions of people have actually paid for what amounts to a marginally improved version of the hardware, the Nintendo DSi.

Nintendo’s foray into the blue ocean style of thinking truly started with the DS, which offered features that were innovations in the video gaming space, namely the touch screen interface, the second screen and the wireless connectivity for quick and easy multiplayer gaming, and games that took advantage of the functionality.

Nintendo even expanded the breadth of their library beyond traditional games with titles like Brain Age in which the player engages in brief activities designed to stimulate the mind, Nintendogs in which the player interacts with a virtual pet using the touch screen and microphone, and the Personal Trainer series of titles in which the player trains in various activities like cooking, mathematics and walking (this title comes with pedometers that are wirelessly connected to the DS system).

With the incredible impact the PlayStation 2, Wii and DS have had on the gaming space in the past 10 years, each essentially redefining what gaming was – and is – it’s a little shocking that people who are for all intents and purposes objective journalists could possibly cite the Xbox 360 has having been more important to this decade of video gaming. Of course, I realize that ultimately this is just a matter of opinion, but I believe that when you make such a bold statement you need to back it up with more than Xbox Live and, literally, a couple of games.

Experience this 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 2 Console (Amazon)
• Nintendo DS Lite System (Amazon)
• Nintendo DSi System (Amazon)
• Nintendogs Dalmatian & Friends (DS) (Amazon)
• Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! (DS) (Amazon)
• Personal Trainer: Cooking (DS) (Amazon)
• Personal Trainer: Math (DS) (Amazon)
• Personal Trainer: Walking (DS) (Amazon)
• Gears of War (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) (Amazon)

What do you get when you combine cutting edge graphics technology, well-designed platform gameplay, production values so high they blur the lines between video game and cinema, and a story line that rivals the most recent big screen adventure of a certain fedora-wearing, whip-wielding archaeologist?

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is easily one of the best games available on the PlayStation 3, rivaled only by its recently released sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. For that matter, it’s one of the best games for any platform – console, handheld and PC – of the past several years. The PlayStation 3 might as well not have existed prior to Uncharted’s November 2007 launch date as the game was the first really solid title for the system, the one that truly declared the arrival of Sony’s console.

In Uncharted, you take on the role of one Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter archaeologist type who is searching for El Dorado, the fabled city of gold, with a diary written by his ancestor Sir Francis Drake, famed sea captain, privateer and pirate. With the help of journalist Elena Fisher, along for the ride to gather notes and film footage for a documentary, and your old friend Victor “Sully” Sullivan, you explore thick jungle, enemy base camps, hidden caves, and ancient ruins all the while fighting off pirates and soldiers on your quest to discover the lost city.

As you can probably surmise from my brief overview of the game, Uncharted offers a mix of shooter and platform gameplay as Drake puts his climbing, jumping, swinging, fighting, and shooting skills to the test against the various obstacles in his way.

In this sense, the game feels like a superior version of the Tomb Raider series of games with Drake navigating along edges, jumping across chasms or pillars, and otherwise exploring beautifully rendered environments.

When combat comes into play, you have the option of taking cover behind whatever objects are in the immediate vicinity. Actually, it’s more a necessity than an option since Drake isn’t a heavily armored, genetically enhanced super soldier in green armor and, when you think about it, even Fenix, Dom, Cole Train and Baird in their heavy armor can’t stand out in the open in the middle of combat for very long – all Drake has is a half tucked-in shirt!

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Uncharted is the exquisite graphics which are more advanced than those of any other console game this generation with the exception of the Uncharted 2. The impressive amount of detail and clarity in the environments, the high-resolution textures plastered across walls and objects, and the layers of animation used to create realistic facial expressions and more fluid motion amount to a veritable bonanza of eye candy like none seen before in any console game.

The high-quality visual experience you get in this game is absolutely mind-blowing and is one of the only real examples of what’s possible when a developer harnesses the potential of the PlayStation 3′s Cell processor. We’re not talking extreme close-ups on a character in a cutscene made possible by diverting resources away from the environments, physics, artificial intelligence, etc. as in a game like Heavenly Sword but organic water effects, natural movement of foliage, and lush and vibrant environments that you’re actually moving around in while you’re playing the game. This is what the PlayStation 3 is all about.

Of course, the best graphics in the world can only take a game so far. Without an entertaining story with well written dialogue and a solid plot, even the best-looking game can fall flat. Thankfully, Uncharted’s story is exactly what we need more of in the video game industry. Granted, it’s not an epic space opera like Mass Effect’s or a sophisticated dystopian tale of the downfall of man like BioShock’s, but it is an action-packed, light-hearted, fun adventure that would have made a better Indiana Jones movie than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (and, incidentally, is being adapted into a film right now by Columbia Pictures under the guidance of Avi Arad, former CEO of Toy Biz and head of Marvel Studios).

Unfortunately, the game is a bit short, leaving players wanting for much more by the time the credits roll. A decent gamer could probably get through the game on the standard difficulty level in seven or eight hours assuming a little time for trial and error as well as taking in the sights. A good gamer could probably burn through the campaign in five or six hours. Add to that the fact that there is very little replay value with no multiplayer modes – subsequent jaunts through the game are really only useful for collecting arbitrary hidden treasures which can unlock alternate costumes, making-of videos and concept art.

Nevertheless, the relatively short time you’ll spend in the South American jungles searching for the riches hidden in El Dorado will be some of the most entertaining you’ll have playing a video game this generation. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is one of the few masterpieces of recent times with all the necessary ingredients for a near-perfect debut of a soon-to-be classic video game franchise.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

The gunplay and a possibly scary development in the last part of the game probably makes this game unsuitable for young children, but there’s really no reason to not let kids who are at least in the tail end of elementary school play this game. Uncharted is essentially a video game version of an Indiana Jones movie with a fun, adventurous vibe.

Experience this for yourself!

• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PlayStation 3 Greatest Hits) (Amazon)
• PlayStation 3 160GB Uncharted Bundle (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)