[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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