[thechat] Games Consoles

Lachlan Cannon lach at illuminosity.net
Wed Sep 29 08:33:16 CDT 2004


William Anderson wrote:
> I'm replying to this with a fresh message and a different subject line 
> to get it out of the Evolt camera thread :)

Makes sense to me.

>  > Basically, I want one :) And we've reached that really critical junction
>  > in our relationship where, having left all our exes with all the good
>  > stuff, we have to now decide if it should be a PS2 or an Xbox.

It really depends how much you think you'll be playing. If you're not 
expecting to be playing very often, but when you do play you want to 
make sure the games are fantastic, there's no going past Halo & Halo 2.

On the other hand, the PS2 has such an enormous library of games that 
there's almost certain to be something you'll love there -- as long as 
it's not a shooter. There've been a few 'Halo killers' but nothing worth 
looking at twice to my mind. Still, GTA: San Andreas is going to be a 
*big* drawcard, and you'll generally find a lot of imaginative games on 
the PS2 that you won't find on the X-box.

>  > The Xbox seems really spendy to me, but it does have guns/blasters for

If you mean as peripheries (rather than being some slang I don't 
recognise for shooter games), there's absolutely no poiint in getting 
them. Games are designed for the standard controller, and they tend to 
play horribly with anything else in my opinion. not to mention that the 
difficulty of games is hugely influenced by controllers. Halo, for 
example, is difficult in great part because it's not all that easy to 
aim for people. If you can use a mouse, or a gun periphal to aim right 
at them, there goes all the challenge.

> Both types of games are equally available on both platforms - your 
> friend needs to look at the catalogues harder :>

Technically, I don't disagree with William here, *but* it's more about 
the quality of the game. Since the PS2 is largely centred around Japan, 
and before Halo most shooters seemed to be relegated to PCs, it really 
doesn't have much choice with shooters, and what is there is pretty 
appalling. The PS2's greatest strength is its large library of games (if 
90% of everything is crap then the more things the more quality there'll 
be to find amidst the dreck), but there simply isn't a large library of 
shooters for PS2 because of the lack of interest to now.

If you want mostly shooters, stick to the Xbox, but the PS2 will have 
you covered for most any other kind of game.

> The two machines specifications are moot these days, and you've 
> rightfully chosen software selection as your purchase criterion.  Both 
> consoles have very good 3D graphics, excellent sound (with some games 
> supporting Dolby Digital or DTS as both have digital out), >2 player 
> capability (up to 4 players on Xbox, up to 8 on PS2 with 2 multitaps) 
> and online capability (incompatible with each other - Xbox has the 
> unified Xbox Live service, PS2 games use separate per-game online 
> services).

If multiplayer gaming over the net is an issue for you, I'd go with the 
Xbox. The unified service is far away better. It's obvious that Sony 
didn't really expect multiplayer gaming to take off when they introduced 
the PS2 (and fair enough, back then, I guess).

Anyway, William seems to have covered everything else pretty well.
-- 
Lach
http://illuminosity.net/



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