thoughthead

I’m finding it difficult to really like the Wii. Maybe I’m too much of a video game snob or maybe I’m spoiled by the extra year I spent with my Xbox 360 but beyond the initial excitement I’m bored to tears with the console right now. Heck since purchasing the Wii I’ve actually played more of my Dreamcast then the Wii. The console just doesn’t have the substance yet. It seems that most games either offer a really well built control mechanism but fall short in terms of Substance or they have the necessary substance but fall short in terms of a well built control mechanism. (more…)

          

A few days ago I had to renew my Xbox Live Gold Subscription. I honestly don’t play online very often. I’m really more of an off-line gamer but I keep the subscription around for the occasional game among friends, and more recently for when achievements call for it. I see a lot of people scoff at the subscription fee for Xbox Live; why pay when other platforms offer online gaming for free? If you had asked me if paying for an Xbox Live subscription was worth it about 2 years ago I would have responded with a resounding HELL NO! At this point however, if posed the same question I’d would assure you, it’s worth every last penny. (more…)

          

The biggest question mark over the Nintendo Wii is whether the new Wii Remote controller will make or break the console. Motion control has been attempted in the past, in general though it has been a failing strategy. Before it’s launch many of the outspoken who follow the industry seemed to be split on the issue, some thinking the new controller will sling-shot Nintendo back to their former glory as king of the proverbial video game console hill, others speculating that the controller is but a mere gimmick and will end up Nintendo’s greatest downfall. With the console having been available for nearly a month certainly we now have a better idea about how this will all play out… right? (more…)

          

There is no arguing that the most popular debate in video gaming over the last five or so years has been Playstation vs Xbox: which one has better graphics, which one has better games, which one has the better controller, ad nauseum. As somewhat of an off-shot of that debate is the debate over “next-gen” disc formats, being HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray Disc. I use the term next-gen loosely because calling it that in any kind of seriousness would imply that storage mediums somehow evolve in easily packaged generations the same way video game consoles do. In-fact just using this term is the first sign that people are approaching this issue all wrong. (more…)

          

I was reading an article on /. and someone mentioned that they thought the Wii had the best launch line up of the next gen, because if you averaged all of the review scores it would be not only the highest but have the most titles. So I decided to put it to the test…. I went to gamerankings.com and collected the scores for all of the launch day titles for each of the 3 next gen systems and this is the result.

My guidelines were simple: None of this “launch window” crap I only took the games that were available on the day the console was released in the US. Scores were all rounded to the nearest whole number when placed on a scale out of 100, and I listed the scores from both professionals as well as users with the final verdict being an average of the two. (more…)