Andrew Busey: My Musings

I can’t write a review of Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 because I haven’t played it enough.  They got my money so I contributed to the $300 million craziness.  But I haven’t played for more than an hour.

Why?

The short answer might be that I’m getting too old for these types of games - which is depressing.  So I’m going to explore a different path.

So backing up in history a little bit.  Let me tell you about my Xbox 360 experiences:

• Call of Duty 2 - I loved this game.  I played it a lot.  It was fun.  I played it with friends.
• Call of Duty 3 - I hated this game.  It was hard to play (see more).   It wasn’t particularly fun.  It was hard to find games (maybe because it was new).  Oh, but it was visually stunning.
• Gears of War - I have mixed feelings about this game.  It was visually stunning.  It was fun to look at while I played.  The game control was a little weird.  I played with friends a few times.
• Halo 3 - This game seemed like Halo 2 with better environmental graphics and effects.  It also might possibly have an interesting story, although I didn’t get that far, and improved multi-player.  I found it cumbersome to play.

So, Call of Duty 3, Gears of War, and Halo 3, were all beautiful games.  They looked amazing.  Wow!  But I really didn’t like playing any of them.  I’ll call it the 2×2 rule:

2×2 Rule:  If an important action takes more than 2 joysticks and 2 buttons to accomplish, it’s probably too complicated.

Now, I’m sure the Fatal1ty and some of these other pro-gaming guys out there are spectacularly good at playing 2×2 games.  In fact I’d wager that part of the reason they are pro gamers is that they can take 2×2 actions in a non-2×2 game.

I’m glad that there is now an evolutionary track that enables this kind of manual dexterity and near-super human hand-eye coordination.  I have been playing games a long time, am pretty good at them, am generally pretty coordinated and dexterous, and I lack this skill set.

Making games more complex to play does not make them better.  Frankly I think COD3 would have been a better game if it had just kept the game mechanics as COD2 and made newer, prettier environments.  But then I guess that wouldn’t have made the cut.

I hope we don’t see all new games that require constant weapon switching, monkey jumping, and head pivoting, grenade aiming, super tosses, as part of the game.  Because to me (and hey maybe I’m not the sweet spot of the market) that just isn’t that much fun.

So I guess my Xbox 360 will be collecting more dust because Halo 3 is not for me.

Back to Wacraft 3 and Duels.

From Time:   5 Things That Went From Buzz to Bust

PS3 Coverage:

TO PLAY’S THE THING

The big story in computer games this year was HOW TO BLOW A HUGE LEAD, by Sony. Its PlayStation 2 was the champ in the last round of the console wars. This time Sony bet on a chip called the Cell and a disc format called Blu-ray. They’re probably awesome, but how would anybody know? The PS3 is hideously expensive–it goes for up to $600–and Sony manufactured only a piddling few hundred thousand for the U.S., fewer for Japan. Plus it’s hard to write games for; the launch titles were lame. You know you’re in trouble when you get beat by something called a Wii.

It is interesting to see the backlash.  I am really curious to see how this turns out.  If one of the Halo games comes out about the time the PS3 supply loosens up that could be ugly for Sony.  I’m also curious to see if they break down and release a non-Blu-Ray PS3 (if they even can, I’m not sure if the PS3 game discs are Blu-Ray).

Another related article from Time:  Sony’s Playstation 3 is Not Worth the Hype

Anyway, I’m just the messenger and I’ll continue to keep you informed.

This is a good article comparing the two on C|Net.  The article market research firm NPD as providing the following numbers for November sales:

• Xbox 360:  511,000
• Wii:  476,000
• PS3:  195,500

Obviously it’s a lot easier to get an XBox 360, but outselling the PS3 by a lot and a one year headstart are a significant advantage.  What did they think about the quality:

The problem is that I didn’t agree. I looked at Gears of War and it looked great. But so did Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS3. To my eyes, which are admittedly not trained to see the minute differences that can show up on an HDTV, the two war games seemed about equal in quality.

And his conculsion:

I just hope these guys realize that for all the differences, the similarities in the performance of these two boxes are remarkable.

Given that the Xbox 360 has been out for a year longer, is substantially cheaper ($200 less comparing retail prices of premium versions), readily available, and has sold at least 5-6 million more consoles…. this seems to me a pretty strong endorsement.  If I’m Sony with my new technological marvel, the PS3, that I’m trying to sell on the basis of its serious performance enhancements over anything else - this is not a good thing to hear.

Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3.  (BTW, XBox wins for best and easiest to find website.  Googling PS3 doesn’t even get you the official site as the top result and ps3.com and playstation3.com don’t go there either…. and it takes 2 clicks from playstation.com.)  They are all finally here and the battle is engaged.  It’s funny, when I set this blog up I went back and grabbed my favorite posts from my old blog and posted them on here with their original dates.  When I did that, I noticed a post from November 28th, 2005 - exactly one year ago - discussing the Xbox 360 launch.  That was the only one of the consoles that I made a half-assed attempt to buy on launch day, but I wasn’t there early enough so I missed out.  I later bought an Xbox 360.  At first I wasn’t blown away by the few games I tried.  Perfect Dark sucked, for example.  Halo 2 was fun to play in higher res, but not a big change.

Then my friend, Adam, introduced me to Call of Duty 2 (buy) and it was the first Xbox 360 game that I thought was really cool.  That was fun to play for a while, but I never really became a junky.  Probably because I was too busy playing World of Warcraft (which still, in my opinion, beats any console game).  But I did keep paying attention to the coming next gen console wars and followed that story with interest.

The outcome is one I never really expected.  First off, Microsoft really did a good job of throwing a monkey wrench into the PS3.  Gears of War (buy) is a great game (it has already sold one million copies) and it launched just before the PS3, accomplishing two things:

• Keeping all the Xbox 360 owners interested and excited about the Xbox 360.  It’s much easier to run out and buy Gears of War than it is to wait in line to get a PS3.  And a lot cheaper than paying a premium.    So I think it was a powerful mechanism for keeping the existing base excited about the X360 platform.
• It is a powerful, and cheaper, consolation prize for the people that wanted a PS3.  Microsoft got a bit of a boost since the PS3 got some bad reviews early on.  Everyone already knew it would be hard to get, but a few bad reviews, a lack of good games, and the general plethora of negative Sony news (exploding batteries anyone), wasn’t good.  The only really interesting PS3 game (IMO) that isn’t on another platform is Resistance:  Fall of Man (Gamespot: 8.6).  But it looks pretty similar to Gears of War (Gamespot 9.6).   And you can get an X360 and Gears of War, and still have almost $800 left over (given eBay’s PS3 resale price averages of $1,186).  So what would you choose?  I have chosen to think about buying a PS3 in the spring when they are plentiful, not marked up, and maybe have some games I am interested in.  Although if Microsoft feeds enough Halo 3 info before then, I might never buy one.

 

So, I got a Wii.  I paid about $50 over retail through craigslist, which I thought was reasonable to get it now.  I’ve never been a big Nintendo fan, I always thought they made kids stuff.  I mostly bought the Wii because I was curious about how the controller would work and how games would take advantage of it. 

So first I’ll admit:  I have only played Wii Sports - the basic game that comes with it.  (I have Zelda and Red Steel, but haven’t had time to try them yet.)  On Wii Sports I’ve played Boxing and Tennis.  And I have to say:  I like them. 

They are also seem to be good exercise, especially if you playing them standing up, which is how you should play them.  I can’t imagine playing them sitting down, that just seems weird.  The WSJ had a story about this called Wii Workout, which was pretty interesting. 

I’m pretty impressed.  The PS3:  not so much.  And I’m sure not paying a $400 premium for it.  I have an XBOX 360 (see my GamerTag in the gutter) already and I don’t see anything that makes me think the PS3 will deliver anything much better.  I’m sure in a year we might see something.  But until then, I think Gears of War is a killer 360 app.  And hey, in a year there will be Halo 3.

I generally prefer PC games anyway.