Is anyone interested?
With The Worst Day Of The Year just a few months away (and oh-ho, will there ever be a thread about THAT), everyone is salivating over the new consoles that they want to find in their stocking. The PS3 is out of the running, of course, but the X-Box 360 and the Nintendo Wii...
Sigh, I can't do it. I can't fake interest in them anymore. I mean - haven't we reached a point when all we're doing with the games nowadays is making them look a tiny bit better?
With every next gen console there was a sense of genuine progression. From the 90's consoles of the Snes and Megadrive (or whatever else you foreigners called them) they evolved into the Saturn and the Playstation, and the difference was immense. Next up was the PS2, Dreamcast and N64 and, again - a leap forward, although obviously not the gargantuan one from the 16 Bit to the 32 Bit.
And now what? Really though, what else can be done with these games? When you look at the release schedule of some of them it's depressing - all sequels or remakes. The difference being? Nicer graphics. "Generic Driving Crap IV - now when it rains in the game, the water looks, like.. real."
I'm not going to bang on about playability and all that, because we've been there. But really - there's nothing happening in the gaming world that even slightly interests me, never mind question whether I'm going to upgrade from my PS2. And that is a fairly depressing development.
Anyone else feel like this? Am I missing something, or are these Next Gen consoles more faceless and charmless than ever before?
3 comments:
In a sense, you're right. The difference between the reasonably priced current-gen and extravagantly priced next-gen consoles is relatively negligible. Now, I love my xbox 360 and all, but the truth is that it's just a much glossier version of the old xbox. I might not have even paid the enormous price for it, but my wife went and got me one for christmas. God, I love my wife. Anyways, I was saying, while the actual gameplay has only gotten minor tweaks and improvements, the games that are coming out right now are pretty awesome. In the end, it's all about the games themselves anyway. PS3 and Wii have shown me very little in that department so far, but I'm constantly salivating over the awesomeness of the 360 lineup. DOA 4, Oblivion, Dead Rising, and others have really reminded me why I still enjoy this kind of crap at 28 years of age. I may not have that much time to devote to games any more but there is still enough fun to be had to keep me interested for now, especially with online play booming like it is. But if you're looking to get out of the whole gaming thing, the rising costs of the consoles might be reason enough to drop out now.
There's an X-Box 360 game out right now, I can't remember the name of it - some generic GTA clone, and there is NOTHING special looking about it all. If someone told me it was on the PS2 I wouldn't bat an eyelid. And this is supposed to be on the most powerful console in the world?
Methinks not.
That GTA clone is "Saints Row" I've played the demo and it's really fun; about as fun as GTA. Rockstar should sue. The only things SR really has going for it is that GTA 4 won't be out for a while and it reportedly has a pretty bitchin' online multiplayer component. "Dead Rising" is arguably the best reason to buy a 360 right now, but with a $400 price tag on the console and $60 per game, the old xbox is stil looking pretty good.
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