Tommorrow I'll be picking up my first WW2 game since BF 42 months ago and I'm not sure what's cooler that i'm getting the game or that I'm getting it digitally. It's pretty nice not to have a extra box and more trash to take up very rare space at my apartment. My Preorder bonus was the original Splinter Cell which i've already played on the xbox but the PC version is so much better with the quick saves making for a great deal less frustrating gameplay.
But back to the main point digital distribution is the wave of the future. I mean seriously why should you have to go out to the store to get data. I mean that's what you're doing when you go out to the store and buy a cd or a game you're going out and acquiring data. I buy all my music via Itunes nowadays, I go online buy a single song and it's mine. Every so often I back these up in case of emergencies to a CD.
Games are even better, my first experience with this was Steam for HL 2, it went all smooth and perfect, I had the game as soon as it was available in stores and was playing it the next day. My Second experience with this was splinter cell just the other day, i downloaded it, surprisingly quickly. It was ready, it was there, it played well, no trash to take out, no boxes and cds to store no cd keys to worry about. Furthermore I backed up the installer but even had I not, i'd be able to download it again from anywhere.
Now I know some you aren't ready for this, maybe you'll never be ready some of you like the experience of going out to the store and buying a box and getting a bunch of stuff that I never even look twice at generally. I'm not against all games being released to stores for as long as people keep buying them. I however would much prefer to just download my data. I've bought more music since I got ITunes then i'd bougght in two years before that because it's simple it's conveniant and it's just cooler than taking a big long trip out of the house to a music store and putting up with the jackal behind the counter. If publishers put huge swaths of their catalogues up on the net for sale I surmise that you'd get more sales that you're missing out on for a variety of reasons at the store.
vermouth Blog
Returning to my Roots
by vermouth on Comments
My X-box recently bit the dust on me, during my Journal Hiatus. This was doubly unfortunate because it happened when I could least afford to fix it. Well, after much deliberation, I decided to go back to what's been my favorite platform for almost as long as I can remember, certainly since the end of the Genesis days. I traded in my X-box and all my games for it and got like 200 dollars worth of trade at Electronics Botique. Well, that being the last console to go in a bizzare twist has me back just on vintage machines and the PC. Will I be missing some stuff, like a game i'm sure to love, Jade Empire. Of course I'll be missing some stuff, but will I be regretting it? No of course I won't. I've got a pile of games to play and more to acquire. One of the nice things about PC gaming is it's fully backward compatible and I've got a handful of games in the pipeline to play.
Having Only last year started the series I'm itching to play Wheel of Time as I'm really enjoying that mythology and so a even loosely connected game involving Aes Sedai would be welcome. I'm also looking to pick up the RPG classics Fallout 1&2, Planescape Torment and more. I'd Really further like to soften the blow of loosing my x-box by picking up ports like Halo, Splinter Cell (both and the sequel coming up) Madden & NBA Live 2005 ( I was a 2k man myself but EA Sports will do in a pinch) I've already got KOTOR and the sequel to that is tops on the list. I'll probably, for the first time have a longer list than I have time to play as many of these games can be had for really cheap these days. I've seen most of these available for 20 bucks or less online.
It's been way too long since I updated this
by vermouth on Comments
Sorry about the lack of updates, I just didn't know what to say in this space for a while. So for my first post in this new series of posts I'm gonna talk about the last two games to really get me happy with them.
Troika games' exceptional traditional RPG.
Vampire The Masquerade=Bloodlines =8.4
and Blizzard's Magnum Opus
The last one World of Warcraft, is one of my favorite games of the last year and would have placed very highly in the top 10 list if I were to reseed the list. I'm not quite sure where but it's not quite as good as Ninja Gaiden.
Vermouth presents: the best of 2004
by vermouth on Comments
Having had plenty of time to think about this I'm finally ready to fully write up the best games of 2004. I'm a multiplatform gamer myself having played a good game on almost every platform out there so I'm gonna do this as a top 10 list. I, like most every non-journalist didn't get around to playing every single game that I'd like to have played. But of the contenders the only ones I didn't have time to get to at all were MGS 3, Katamari Damacy and GTA:SA, I had to unload my PS2 as i couldn't afford 5 platforms so when/if these games are ported to the x-box, GCN or something else then i'll be happy to try em.
10-Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tommorrow- The single player here, was a bit of a rehash, but it was a rehash of something that i enjoyed quite a bit and then their was the multiplayer which was the clear focus of the game. The innovative 2 v 2 style of gameplay involving first person mercenaries facing off with 3rd person spies made this a real treat to play. The story was also good, solid Clancy stuff which made the single player a bunch of fun for me to play.
9-ESPN NCAA college hoops 2k5-I love basketball, particuarily good fundementally sound basketball. I mean a slam dunk is nice but a perfectly executed pick to get a 3 point shooter a clear shot at the basket is really beautiful too. NCAA 2k5 really puts this at the fore of the game and it's a lot more fun for it. While it's NBA cousins are gonna emphasizes the sizzle this one really emphasizes the substance of the coach's game of basketball. That's not to say you never dunk but flashy moves aren't at the heart of this game, good intelligent passing and play calling take that honor.
8-Burnout 3-Typically, I don't much care for driving games but yet for about 3 weeks Burnout 3 was all that I was playing as it really was that good. It really did a good job of two things, first and most obviously was that it really conveyed the sense of speed. Secondly, it made it into less of a problem to crash your car early in the race, you normally couldn't crash yourself out of a race by one or two in the early stages of the race. This meant that you could almost always come from behind to win this thing if you drove crazy good through the race. Not always but a whole lot of the time this could be achieved.
7-Chronicles of Riddick- I really wasn't expecting all that much out of this title and it really blew me away. The game, was based on a movie and it was both innovative and really good. This didn't wreak of a cheap, cash it in on a title but rather a game that recieved the same kind of attention that the film got and it showed. The atmosphere was just right for a game set in a prison, the graphics were really impressive, but most of all it was an innovative title that mixed fighting, stealth and shooting all in first person and tied it together with an interesting story about Riddick the surprisingly likable Vin Diesel character.
6-Doom 3-This game really seemed to wreak of love it or hate it, I for one loved it. The sense of atmosphere in the early levels of the game is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Later in the game the fear factor disappears and it becomes just a shooter, which to me isn't a negative thing. One of the best things i can say about this shooter is like most Id shooters before it, it wants you to be reacting not thinking and I think this is a very good thing. Maybe it's not gonna keep you engaged for long 12 hour sessions but it's a whole lot of fun to play for 1-2 hours at a time. It really gets the adreniline flowing unlike no other game in a while as it's good and clausterphobic. I understand all the complaints and they are valid for those people generally speaking but this one is one of the most intense shooters i've played all year as it's not pretentious like too many these days.
5-Rome:Total War- I've not played the TW series much before this year for a variety of reasons but wow what a way to kick it off for me. The combintion of strategic board game play, with tactical 3d battles on a grand scale makes it just a compelling game that you're gonna keep coming back to time and time again. The board game has that great "one more turn syndrome" that lead you to playing far longer than you originally anticipated and the gigantic battles will often test your wits in a variety of ways making you very nervous t times as to weather or not you're going to be able to manage a victory. Unlike a great many RTS games their are long stretches of battle where it's unclear whom has the upper hand and this chaotic feel really gives battles a real feel without being so real it's boring to play.
3-Halo 2 and Half-Life 2-Everyone seems to want a decision between these two games, which is better, which I liked more, which was more up my alley and the truth of it is that they were 2 purchases that perfectly complimented each other. Half-Life 2 had the best single player FPS campaign that I've experienced in a long time, with a awesome new implementation of physics leading to some interesting puzzles. However that being said, it's multiplayer was just missing something as Counter-Strike is already really tired and the Deathmatch combines a style of DM I don't like with a feeling of a bone being thrown to the community with some amateurish DM maps. Halo 2 on the other hand did the exact opposite providing a single player game that offered little new on the original's gameplay but it had some of the best multiplayer action i've seen in years. The ability of the game to keep the players of lesser skill and higher skill seperate makes it one of the best multiplayer games I've played in a long time as every match seems to come down to the wire.
2-Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2:The Sith Lords-On most testable, empirically judgeable scales KOTOR 2 doesn't have any right being this high on any list but games can't be judged solely on the empirical. KOTOR 2 was more fun than most of the other elite games on this year's list. The quality of the conversion of Star Wars to D&D added to the exceptionality of the story and the sense of the galaxy hanging on your choices makes KOTOR 2 one of the most fun, addicting games of 2004. Easily the best RPG from this year, and were it not for it's samey feeling I'd have named the Game of the year.
1-Ninja Gaiden-This game beats out several of the best games that I've ever played so choosing this one was something that took several months to decide on. But in the end the first great game to come out this year really was the best. I say this for two reasons, first of all this was the only game in the top 5 that wasn't a rehash, wasn't a sequel (I know their were ninja gaiden games when I was 9 years old but those aren't really the same). Secondly, and most importantly this game had the fewest problem areas, I could overlook problems in almost every other game in the top 5 and put them there but I don't have to do so with Ninja gaiden. Even the camera which bugged many never really got too cumbersome to me to prove more than a very mild annoyance at worst.
Some more Reviews
by vermouth on Comments
Aight having had some free time i've taken it to pen some brand new game reviews
Lord of the Rings: The Third Age=6.3
Come one and all and tell me how dumb my reviews are
by vermouth on Comments
This idea of a central hub of all my reviews was shamelessly lifted from maximum maker so yay for him. Alright now on to the bussiness at hand of cataloging my reviews their are more to come here as this is very much a Work in Progress.
PC
Half- Life 2 = 10.0
Doom 3=9.4
X-box
Halo=9.7 DOA 3=7.2
Splinter Cell =8.3
KOTOR=9.8
Crimson Skies=9.8
Deus Ex Invisible War = 8.4
Ninja Gaiden=9.8
ESPN NFL 2k5=9.6
ESPN NBA 2k5
Halo 2=9.6
Gamecube
Rogue Leader=9.4
Rebel strike =8.4
PC
Half- Life 2 = 10.0
Doom 3=9.4
X-box
Halo=9.7 DOA 3=7.2
Splinter Cell =8.3
KOTOR=9.8
Crimson Skies=9.8
Deus Ex Invisible War = 8.4
Ninja Gaiden=9.8
ESPN NFL 2k5=9.6
ESPN NBA 2k5
Halo 2=9.6
Gamecube
Rogue Leader=9.4
Rebel strike =8.4
Memo to Notre Dame: You're Horrible
by vermouth on Comments
Wow Stupidity abound this week at Notre Dame this week. I mean seriously Ty Willingham is a very good football coach who was doing as good as could have been expected when he was hired. They finished ahead of their preseason expectations this year and won some tough games against Michigan, and Tennessee most notably. Yeah he did loose some tough ones too as Notre Dame is playing an inane schedule anymore.
One thing that's definitely hurting their program, and generally I applaud them for this, but they need to consider it if they expect to go 10-1 every year is they don't lower their academic expectations for football players. Every other big time school does and it's hard to recruit trying to be Harvard during the week and Oklahoma on Saturdays. It's actually a policy i prefer as I think Universities should be about education first and last and football just as a diversion but it's a factor you need to take into account when judging head coaches success and failures.
The one thing I can't dismiss, and I'd like to be able to dismiss is the nagging question of would Ty still have a job if he were a white coach. I mean Notre Dame has never fired someone after less than 5 years even if by all categories they'd done worse than Willingham. Bob Davie got 5 years despite the fact that he inherited a much healtier program and made less progress bringing than Willingham had at making serious changes to the nature of the system. They were progressing well from Davie's option attack to Ty's West cost style offense. Willinham was the only black head coach at Notre Dame, note i didn't say only black head football coach i said only head coach which is a bit disturbing. I'm actually not making the acusation that they are but I certainly can't dismiss it as a possible factor. It may not have even been the main one but all reasonable expectations should have had them about where they should be by now.
One thing that's definitely hurting their program, and generally I applaud them for this, but they need to consider it if they expect to go 10-1 every year is they don't lower their academic expectations for football players. Every other big time school does and it's hard to recruit trying to be Harvard during the week and Oklahoma on Saturdays. It's actually a policy i prefer as I think Universities should be about education first and last and football just as a diversion but it's a factor you need to take into account when judging head coaches success and failures.
The one thing I can't dismiss, and I'd like to be able to dismiss is the nagging question of would Ty still have a job if he were a white coach. I mean Notre Dame has never fired someone after less than 5 years even if by all categories they'd done worse than Willingham. Bob Davie got 5 years despite the fact that he inherited a much healtier program and made less progress bringing than Willingham had at making serious changes to the nature of the system. They were progressing well from Davie's option attack to Ty's West cost style offense. Willinham was the only black head coach at Notre Dame, note i didn't say only black head football coach i said only head coach which is a bit disturbing. I'm actually not making the acusation that they are but I certainly can't dismiss it as a possible factor. It may not have even been the main one but all reasonable expectations should have had them about where they should be by now.
Stuff I'm thankful for and people I'm tired of
by vermouth on Comments
Of course the biggest things that i'm thankful for are my good health, my immeadiate family and their good health, my continued employment and all that however this is all about the gaming stuff I'm thankful for and a few of the people I'm really tired of.
I'm thankful for this being the greatest year for games ever. People think about the holiday games but what you might forget if that's all you thought about were all the great games that came out before that. Ninja Gaiden, Rallisport Challenge, Onimusha 3, Chronicles of Riddick, Full Spectrum Warrior etc. Then we got hit from late August all the way up to and probably into December with the greatest wave of games in my memory and I have a good one. Doom 3, The Sims 2, the big games of September and November, GTA, Ace Combat 5 and a whole lot more. I couldn't have expected more but it delivered it all and then some.
I'm thankful for x-box Live FINALLY becoming what they promised more than two years and 100 dollars ago. After a couple of years of it just being a cheap immitation of PC online gaming it's becoming apparent that x-box Live is just as good and at times better than anything the PC has to offer. Halo 2, Ghost Recon 2, Crimson Skies (admittedly last year's only game i loved for it) and the sports games keep getting better and better. This year's NBA & NCAA 2k series have better netcode than the series ever had before and really deliver a much more playable version of basketball than was the case in year's past. NFL 2k5's awesome VIP system let's you figure out all sorts of stuff about how a player plays before you even start a game so if you're playing one of those cheap shot artists who believe running the ball is a trick play then you'll know to avoid this idiot before hand. And Halo 2's stat tracking setup is really amazing. It's like every time i play, I'm playing with a group of players of around my skill level and i actually have a chance to win every time and I tend to either contribute to the win or suck it up in a loss and help the other team.
I'm Thankful for Sega Sports cutting the price of their games. Instead of just getting one or maybe 2 sports games this year, I've got 4 awesome sports titles from Sega on the shelf to choose from.
I'm thankful I got a PC this year and tried the Total War series for the first time. Not only that I'm thankful for Itunes and steam setting the table for digital content delivery with their awesome setups to buy stuff at a competitive price without the hassle of having to go to the store and get all the extra stuff that i'm not all that interested in having.
And now for the opposite side of the coin
I'm tired of system fanboys-not fans mind you but fanboys, those who find their system superior to everyone elses. In particualar one type of this the PC elitist. I have a great PC, it runs games very well, I get solid framerates in all my games and It's my co-favorite platform. I'd say I play my x-box and PC about 40 percent each and my Nintendo stuff about 20 percent of the time. But I don't think that any of those systems are intrinsically superior to the others. Their are a lot of people out there who cry about every game that the PC has to share with another platform. I mean seriously you won't see me crying about my games being ported to the PS2 or Gamecube on the x-box or even from the PC. I understand that this is part of the deal but these people can't seem to grasp this.
I'm tired of people crowing over scores at gamespot, who feel that their game was terribly slighted because god forbid it scored .1 lower than some other big ultra hyped game, particuarily when that game is on another platform.
I'm tired of people who feel the need to whine about Doom 3's gameplay and/or Halo 2's single player. If you didn't know what you were getting into in these two instances you didn't read all that many reviews of the game because every reviewer and their brother talked about this. At least at gamespot and gamespy, but you didn't listen.
I'm tired of publishers finally. I mean it's getting time for these guys to be pushed aside more for some online content, the middleman cut out. Let's have direct download of games and cut out the crap from Electronic Arts and Vivendii Universal who've really both became Pariahs and we could all do without them. I mean how many people want go go working these 10 hour days at EA? Oh yeah and don't expect any extra time off after crunch time, and don't expect much non-crunch time where you only work a semblence of regular hours. I'm frankly through with EA, they're gonna have to really knock my socks off to ever to get me to come back to them ever again. As far as i'm concerned my gaming dollars are better spent elsewhere. VU between keepng Interplay down, so much they're on death's door right now and what they've been pulling in court with Half-Life 2, they're none too far behind.
Thanks for reading my rant.
I'm thankful for this being the greatest year for games ever. People think about the holiday games but what you might forget if that's all you thought about were all the great games that came out before that. Ninja Gaiden, Rallisport Challenge, Onimusha 3, Chronicles of Riddick, Full Spectrum Warrior etc. Then we got hit from late August all the way up to and probably into December with the greatest wave of games in my memory and I have a good one. Doom 3, The Sims 2, the big games of September and November, GTA, Ace Combat 5 and a whole lot more. I couldn't have expected more but it delivered it all and then some.
I'm thankful for x-box Live FINALLY becoming what they promised more than two years and 100 dollars ago. After a couple of years of it just being a cheap immitation of PC online gaming it's becoming apparent that x-box Live is just as good and at times better than anything the PC has to offer. Halo 2, Ghost Recon 2, Crimson Skies (admittedly last year's only game i loved for it) and the sports games keep getting better and better. This year's NBA & NCAA 2k series have better netcode than the series ever had before and really deliver a much more playable version of basketball than was the case in year's past. NFL 2k5's awesome VIP system let's you figure out all sorts of stuff about how a player plays before you even start a game so if you're playing one of those cheap shot artists who believe running the ball is a trick play then you'll know to avoid this idiot before hand. And Halo 2's stat tracking setup is really amazing. It's like every time i play, I'm playing with a group of players of around my skill level and i actually have a chance to win every time and I tend to either contribute to the win or suck it up in a loss and help the other team.
I'm Thankful for Sega Sports cutting the price of their games. Instead of just getting one or maybe 2 sports games this year, I've got 4 awesome sports titles from Sega on the shelf to choose from.
I'm thankful I got a PC this year and tried the Total War series for the first time. Not only that I'm thankful for Itunes and steam setting the table for digital content delivery with their awesome setups to buy stuff at a competitive price without the hassle of having to go to the store and get all the extra stuff that i'm not all that interested in having.
And now for the opposite side of the coin
I'm tired of system fanboys-not fans mind you but fanboys, those who find their system superior to everyone elses. In particualar one type of this the PC elitist. I have a great PC, it runs games very well, I get solid framerates in all my games and It's my co-favorite platform. I'd say I play my x-box and PC about 40 percent each and my Nintendo stuff about 20 percent of the time. But I don't think that any of those systems are intrinsically superior to the others. Their are a lot of people out there who cry about every game that the PC has to share with another platform. I mean seriously you won't see me crying about my games being ported to the PS2 or Gamecube on the x-box or even from the PC. I understand that this is part of the deal but these people can't seem to grasp this.
I'm tired of people crowing over scores at gamespot, who feel that their game was terribly slighted because god forbid it scored .1 lower than some other big ultra hyped game, particuarily when that game is on another platform.
I'm tired of people who feel the need to whine about Doom 3's gameplay and/or Halo 2's single player. If you didn't know what you were getting into in these two instances you didn't read all that many reviews of the game because every reviewer and their brother talked about this. At least at gamespot and gamespy, but you didn't listen.
I'm tired of publishers finally. I mean it's getting time for these guys to be pushed aside more for some online content, the middleman cut out. Let's have direct download of games and cut out the crap from Electronic Arts and Vivendii Universal who've really both became Pariahs and we could all do without them. I mean how many people want go go working these 10 hour days at EA? Oh yeah and don't expect any extra time off after crunch time, and don't expect much non-crunch time where you only work a semblence of regular hours. I'm frankly through with EA, they're gonna have to really knock my socks off to ever to get me to come back to them ever again. As far as i'm concerned my gaming dollars are better spent elsewhere. VU between keepng Interplay down, so much they're on death's door right now and what they've been pulling in court with Half-Life 2, they're none too far behind.
Thanks for reading my rant.
What PC online gaming should borrow from x-box Live
by vermouth on Comments
If you'd told me two years ago, when x-box Live came out that i'd enjoy console online gaming more than PC online gaming in 2004, I would have said you were insane. I'd have told you about the numerous technical advantages of playing online on a PC, how PC's could have mods and how big the PC onine community was etc. But here we are, it's 2004, and I do prefer console gaming by a slight margin to PC online gaming. So Given that this was something I myself would have found unlikely it bears some review why online console gaming would rise so high? and why PC gaming hasn't kept up. Oh and one more thing I'm not really talking about Sony, it's really just x-box Live as Sony's system is terribly inadequate in my estimation.
Well I'd be a liar if i said that the x-box itself didn't have anything to do with the equation, they've made a system that focused on the same kinds of games i've been playing on the PC for years. You've got flight sims and shooters just like the PC. I'm still waiting for an xbl enabled action-rpg but I imagine that will come eventually. But then in addition to those ports and PC style games you've got the console staples of sports games and driving games which really gives it a variety of games to play online. But if this were only it it wouldn't be enough.
But if it were only the system itself, it wouldn't be enough, it's something about x-box Live that just works really well, better in fact than anything else. For the first thing you have a universal portal to track where your friends are. Anyone with x-box Live has access to their friends list, so you add anyone who plays you in a really good game which makes sure that you've got a bunch of decent people to play against. You can always find your friends, and even when i'm sitting at my PC my linked MSN messanger is giving me updates on who's playing what on x-box Live. I defintiely like this as it helps with the social experience.
Which leads me to my next point, X-box Live is a more social experience than most PC games are online. The reason for this is simple enough, the microphone-almost everyone has one. Yeah yeah yeah, I know about the handful of PC games that have a microphone. But you'll say what about MMORPG's those provide such a wonderous social experience. And well maybe for you they do but to me they play like bad chat rooms with bad grinding gameplay attachedto them. You can't get on and chat with a buddy and play a quick game of something while you're at it. You've gotta play them around the clock to really get anywhere at them and I'm not willing to make this kind of commitment not to mention they cost upwards of 300 dollars per year. I might be interested in one of these if they came out with one with a microphone included in the box and everyone used it. But Even then i'm not really sure.
But lastly I want to talk about the Best Point of x-box Live that this year between the VIP system in ESPN sports games and Halo 2 really started to come into it's own, Project Gotham Racing 2 really got the ball started in this regard. When you join up for a game on x-box Live you can have a pretty good idea what exactly you're getting yourself into when you start the game. You know how good they've been in the past and they know what they're doing or perhaps they don't. This is my favorite point and why I love Halo 2 because it matches you up with people in the same skill brackett. Therefore no starting a game and finding out you're totally out of your league once the game gets started and being stuck having your ass handed to you. I've joined into far too many of these games on the PC and want to see more of what Bungie's doing in other games. Not so often do i get overwhelmed by th quality of other players.
To close this I want to point out that I still think PC online gaming does a lot better than console online gaming and has more potential for instant growth. Don't get me wrong UT 2k4 and BF 42 etc. are great games which provide experiences you can't get on consoles and when they're right 32, 64 and 128 player matches on a PC game can be rather special. They can also be boring as hell if the teams aren't balanced or whatever. The point of this isn't to bash PC gaming but just to show some stuff that PC's could do better if we could find a way to co-op some of the great ideas running around x-box Live. I dunno if these things could be implemented as XBL has the advantage of being a closed system but it's something to think about
Well I'd be a liar if i said that the x-box itself didn't have anything to do with the equation, they've made a system that focused on the same kinds of games i've been playing on the PC for years. You've got flight sims and shooters just like the PC. I'm still waiting for an xbl enabled action-rpg but I imagine that will come eventually. But then in addition to those ports and PC style games you've got the console staples of sports games and driving games which really gives it a variety of games to play online. But if this were only it it wouldn't be enough.
But if it were only the system itself, it wouldn't be enough, it's something about x-box Live that just works really well, better in fact than anything else. For the first thing you have a universal portal to track where your friends are. Anyone with x-box Live has access to their friends list, so you add anyone who plays you in a really good game which makes sure that you've got a bunch of decent people to play against. You can always find your friends, and even when i'm sitting at my PC my linked MSN messanger is giving me updates on who's playing what on x-box Live. I defintiely like this as it helps with the social experience.
Which leads me to my next point, X-box Live is a more social experience than most PC games are online. The reason for this is simple enough, the microphone-almost everyone has one. Yeah yeah yeah, I know about the handful of PC games that have a microphone. But you'll say what about MMORPG's those provide such a wonderous social experience. And well maybe for you they do but to me they play like bad chat rooms with bad grinding gameplay attachedto them. You can't get on and chat with a buddy and play a quick game of something while you're at it. You've gotta play them around the clock to really get anywhere at them and I'm not willing to make this kind of commitment not to mention they cost upwards of 300 dollars per year. I might be interested in one of these if they came out with one with a microphone included in the box and everyone used it. But Even then i'm not really sure.
But lastly I want to talk about the Best Point of x-box Live that this year between the VIP system in ESPN sports games and Halo 2 really started to come into it's own, Project Gotham Racing 2 really got the ball started in this regard. When you join up for a game on x-box Live you can have a pretty good idea what exactly you're getting yourself into when you start the game. You know how good they've been in the past and they know what they're doing or perhaps they don't. This is my favorite point and why I love Halo 2 because it matches you up with people in the same skill brackett. Therefore no starting a game and finding out you're totally out of your league once the game gets started and being stuck having your ass handed to you. I've joined into far too many of these games on the PC and want to see more of what Bungie's doing in other games. Not so often do i get overwhelmed by th quality of other players.
To close this I want to point out that I still think PC online gaming does a lot better than console online gaming and has more potential for instant growth. Don't get me wrong UT 2k4 and BF 42 etc. are great games which provide experiences you can't get on consoles and when they're right 32, 64 and 128 player matches on a PC game can be rather special. They can also be boring as hell if the teams aren't balanced or whatever. The point of this isn't to bash PC gaming but just to show some stuff that PC's could do better if we could find a way to co-op some of the great ideas running around x-box Live. I dunno if these things could be implemented as XBL has the advantage of being a closed system but it's something to think about
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