Or: How I quite liked the look of some PS3 games and needed a blu-ray player!
I feel I would like to clear up the fact that I am not a Nintendo “fanboy”, although I have had every version of each console released up to the DSi so I have followed the Big N since I can remember gaming.
That said, I have recently seen myself wavering away from Nintendo and find myself leaning more towards the Xbox 360 in terms of my ‘go-to’ machine for gaming.
The recent influx of high-calibre, home-brewed titles such as Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, Metroid Other M and Donkey Kong Country Returns, along with impressive third-party support in the likes of Tales of Symphonia, No More Heroes, Little King’s Story and the DS Professor Layton games have always kept me loyal to the scrappy underdog that Nintendo would appear to have become (at least to the public eye, monetary evaluations would surely tell a different story!).
That leads me to feel a slight sense of concern about what I, very much intentionally, bought myself on Sunday the 30th of January, 2011.
Yes, while currently owning a Gamecube, Xbox, DS, Wii and Xbox 360, I bought myself a Playstation 3.
If current-gen gamers that own a Wii and a 360 call that a ‘Wii60’, I guess that makes it… what? A WiiS360? Can I trademark that?!
I have never been dead-set in one camp or the other and was never a ‘hater’ of the Playstation.
Indeed, my brother has had all 3 versions of Sony’s console from the original one and there were times when I found myself at the mercy of Time Crisis or Tekken but at the end of that session, I would always go back to the N64 or Gamecube and to the comfort of Mario and his strange friends, driving karts, playing tennis or golf or football or baseball or another version of tennis or golf or football, having a party that nobody would ever accept an invitation to or just sprinting through strange worlds trying his best to wipe out an entire species by jumping on them.
This was the world I grew up with and this was the world I thought I would never leave.
There was just nothing that really spoke to me in a way that Nintendo couldn’t say louder, brighter and a bit more fun, especially with friends.
The early 2000’s (00’s?) saw the previous generation of consoles come out with the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox and obviously, the Gamecube was ordered and bought as soon as it was announced and in the shops.
The lacklustre effort on behalf of first and third-party publishing left a bit of a gap in my gaming and so it was to Microsoft that I turned, once again shunning Sony despite the huge catalogue of games available, some of which I knew I would enjoy.
I can’t really say why though. Perhaps it was the games?
Though the big release that everyone was after was Halo and I didn’t actually get round to buying that until at least 16 months after buying the console.
There were a few exclusive titles on the Xbox that I wanted, such as the Splinter Cell games, Project Gotham Racing and a few others, but there were exclusive titles on the PS2 which I know I would have snapped up had I gone the other route.
I can’t really think it was the controller, though that has been an absolute hatred of mine for all of Sony’s hardware as it is, in my opinion, a pointy, badly laid-out design but the Xbox’s gigantic controller wasn’t exactly appealing until the good sense was made to go with the S Controller as standard.
I think it might have just been the lack of commitment from the beginning.
Like I said, I’ve had every Nintendo console that has been released, and I bought the original Xbox so maybe I just felt like if I’m going to spend money on a new generation of consoles, it should be one that I had already spent time with and was familiar with. So I went for a Wii (on release day of course) and, a few months later, a 360.
I was happy with my gaming again.
And I stayed happy, and I would still be happy as I was, but then something not related to gaming made me rethink about my commitment to these two consoles I had stuck with since from release and through all their changes, something that made me believe I could finally allow this previously ignored third company to place some hardware in my bedroom and software in my time.
And that was Blu-ray.
It wasn’t the gaming that changed my mind on the PS3 though there are a number of titles exclusive to the machine that I have picked up quite quickly, it was the introduction of HD films and my recent acquisition of a 50” Plasma TV upon which they look incredible, that made me think “Yes, I think I would like a Blu-ray player now, so why not get one that also plays some games?”
So I did.
And the world is good in HD.
0 comments:
Post a Comment