Month: May 2017

ARMS:Global Test Punch:IMPRESSIONS

H2x1_NSwitch_Arms

 

This past weekend Nintendo sent out a free demo for Nintendo Switch users to try to test the  game’s impact on servers, they called the timed demo a Global Test Punch. This was the same approach they took to their last e-sports contender, Splatoon, for Wii U a couple of years ago. I missed the Splatoon Global Test Fire, although I did end up buying the game anyways. I managed to get in on the ARMS test punch two different times this weekend, the first was on Friday and again on Saturday. I didn’t bother trying again on Sunday, I already had my fill and learned all I needed about the game.

First, I went in like everyone else, on even footing having no experience. I was playing with the Joy Con’s attached to the tablet as I refuse to play any game using motion controls these days. I won my first 5 matches in a row and was feeling pretty good about myself. I am not a competitive online gamer at ALL. I despise the online atmosphere, the trash talking, the way competitive gamers take their games way to seriously, so I normally only tryout a new online game the first day or so and move on. If a game requires online only play or doesn’t have a significant offline single player mode, that game is not for me. I do, however, love fighting games. But I want a good campaign more, or arcade ladder mode I can play against a CPU opponent, I want the option for a multiplayer mode for when I am in the mood, but I am a loner I play games for the experience, not to socialize. With that out of the way I went in the test punch using it as a demo to try the game out, not as a way to actually be competitive. Needless to say I said I was either going to play just a few rounds, or if I was on a winning streak quite once I lost.

I played through the little introduction level, beat up the bot character, learning the basic controls. I went into the game handicapped against motion control players, at least according to some commentators I watched online. This turned out to not be true on Friday, when everyone was starting out with no practice, I did okay, won 5 in a row and I was having a blast. I was able to play the different modes as the demo just picks random modes and throws you in, which I liked for the purposes of a demo/beta test but if the real game is like that, I might get bored of it.

Impressions:

arms

Controls:

I didn’t try the motion controls on day one, I learned the buttons and I thought the controls were perfect. It reminded me of Smash Bros. very simple pick up and play mechanics, with enough depth for the competitive gamers to really get serious, while being accessible enough for a mostly casual playing gamer like myself. Not that I am a casual gamer, far from it, but I play more casually in my style. In fact, the only game I am good enough to be competitive in is Mortal Kombat, and the first time I tried that online my perfect winning streak was demolished and I never went back.

The controls are basic, punch, guard, jump, dash, power shot, grab, not much to it. I didn’t try the different weapons I stuck to the default boxing gloves. I was playing exclusively with Ribbon Girl, which I suspect will continue to be the case as I just gravitated towards her and immediately felt natural playing has this character in this game. She has a neat double-jump coupled with some really basic moves that I was able to pull off with ease. I honestly didn’t even bother trying the other characters I just stuck with Ribbon Girl the whole time. I might sample other fighters once I get the full game but for the Test Punch I was fine with sticking to one character for familiarity sake.

The game does play similar to Wii boxing in some ways but is much improved and a ton more fun. I did try the motion controls on day two but I didn’t get to replay the tutorial to learn the basics so I went in blind, wasn’t able to get my character to do anything as I was pounced upon very quickly and couldn’t take even a second to learn the controls. I quickly went back to using the Joy Cons and felt very comfortable. I only played the first day for about 10 minutes out of the 1 hour long demo so I was not at all prepare on day two for how already advanced the other fighters were. I supposed if I had spent the entire hour on Friday getting good at the game like most people I might have stood a greater chance, but over all I lost too much time and all the things that worked on day one the fighters were countering with tricks and moves I couldn’t even figure out.

Graphics:

spring man

I like art style of this game and the colors. It does remind  me of Splatoon quite a bit, which I fell in love with just based on the style before the game even launched. I enjoyed this game’s art direction very much. It felt like being inside a Saturday morning cartoon fighting other cartoon characters. This is Nintendo at their best, which is why they hire artists to create games and not engineers. Needless to say I enjoyed the graphics tremendously. It had a sort of retro Game Cube look at times, and yes I am kind of taken aback that I am calling GameCube retro, but that is the case so fine.

Characters:

Arms-Trailers_02-10-17

Before the demo went live I watched the goofy little Nintendo Direct dedicated to the game where it introduced all of the characters that would be playable for the demo. I don’t remember all of their names but the anime looking spring boy and Ribbon Girl were the two that I immediately thought I would try. I picked Ribbon Girl for the two day demo so I decided to just stick with her. I might try the other characters once it launches but just from playing against them I got the feeling there isn’t a lot of depth to these characters at the moment, which is good in a way because some Nintendo characters getting tired I was ready for Nintendo to introduce some new characters. With that in mind, I can imagine these characters as a part of the official Nintendo cannon of characters. Just like the Inklings in Splatoon, these characters have a very distinct Nintendo feel to them and I am perfectly happy welcoming them into the ever expanding Nintendo family.

Game play:

I touched on this a little with the controls. The game is very accessible like most Nintendo games. The controls are simple and intuitive enough anyone can pick up and start playing, while deep and varied enough for the pros to really latch on and find plenty of ways to play.

I really liked the 4 player brawl, the 3 player free for all, the 1 on 1 matches the most. I didn’t care for the volleyball much, I won every watch so it was easy to pick up and play but I didn’t enjoy it. I also hated the 2 on 2 tethered mode. Mostly because you were tethered to a player with inferior skills, my partners usually died quickly leaving me to carry the match against 2 people who were bashing me endlessly. In 3 player free for all it’s easy to switch back and forth between the two, gang up on one character and once the other guy is in the groove, turn your attention to bashing them. I won every 3 player match I was in so this was by far my most favorite mode in terms of winning. I was 50-50 in 1 on 1 matches, I won mostly early on when everyone was starting out, but I started losing day 2 after I came back with little practice. That being said, I loved it, the gameplay was spot on and a total blast.

Overall thoughts:

I learned enough to know I am going to be playing this game a lot. I do enjoy Smash Bros. from time to time and I can pick up a Mario Kart every once in a while, but this game felt natural to me, like it was the type of game I had been waiting for Nintendo to make. Between this and Splatoon, I think Nintendo finally has enough of a strong catalog of new IP and characters to bring in a whole new audience while bringing back their loyalists like myself.

Confession, I had so much fun playing this I couldn’t wait for release so I already pre-ordered my copy from Amazon Prime. It is supposed to be waiting for me on my door step on release day. I honestly think this is going to be the big sleeper hit Nintendo was needing to ensure the future success of the Switch. I was skeptical at first thinking it was just another attempt to bring back the Wii gamers. Not so, sure most people will be playing with motion controls, but I am glad to say that the basic button controls are good enough to be able to enjoy the game on their own. Once I get the full release in my hands I might try motion controls once more just to see how I feel once I can try the tutorial with them, but for now I am happy to say this game is a blast and I highly recommend it to anyone with a Switch and say to those who don’t, buy a Switch and get this game.

switch

 

 

Looking back on the Nintendo Wii U: Nintendo’s last true Home console

So the topic I want to discuss today, is the Nintendo Wii U Nintendo’s last true home console? I’m sure I’ve dabbled on this in the past and I’m probably going to talk about it more in the future but this is just sort of a brief look back.

With the release of the Nintendo Switch people are saying that Nintendo future is bright and some people are saying their future is in doubt. But I don’t think Nintendo’s future has ever been in question to me. They’ve been in pretty good financial shape since they released the Nintendo DS and honestly Pokemon.

So if the Nintendo Switch is a true hybrid console then the question is does it count as at home console and that’s what I want to consider.

I’ve owned every Nintendo Home console since the NES so for me I have a lot invested in Nintendo’s success because they keep making products that I enjoy buying. However I have not owned every Nintendo handheld I’ve never owned a 3DS and I’ve never owned a Gameboy Advance SP or a GBA micro. I have owned Nintendo DS, Gameboy Advance, original Gameboy, Gameboy Pocket, and Gameboy Color, but I’ve never been a huge fan of the handheld’s my main problem is the screens are too small. I have bought most of them for a couple of games and mostly for road trips. I rarely just sit and game on a handheld.

So to me I don’t really think of the Nintendo Switch as a Home console I do have the doc but I never got it and I don’t hook it up to my TV I almost exclusively play in tablet mode with the joy cons attached. No it’s not that I haven’t tried it in console mode I have I played breath of the wild in console mode but most of the games that I have don’t really require being on the big screen and they don’t really gain anything from being on the big screen the tablet screen is good enough and I like to multitask so I usually will have my movies or TV shows playing on the TV while I’m gaming on the tablet this was the one feature I really enjoyed about the Wii U I could sit and play Nintendo games on the Wii U tablet while still watching a show.

A few years ago I was in a discussion board on a Nintendo fan site and we were talking about what Nintendo should do following up the Wii U and I had suggested that they should just make a tablet with buttons that has HDMI out that can connect to a TV for me personally I felt that a product like that would you not both of Nintendo’s core demographics their shrinking console market and they’re consistently loyal handheld Market. For me it seemed like such a no-brainer that I thought if they did anything other than that I was going to be disappointed and not be interested in buying the product considering how disappointed I was in there last two home consoles.

So for me I was very excited when I saw the Nintendo Switch reveal and learned it in fact was a tablet with buttons and HDMI connecting to a TV the best part is the controller’s word attachable that wasn’t something I had consider Nintendo doing as a tablet I kind of feel like maybe Nintendo could put a little more into some of the apps at least get a few multi media apps but I think Nintendo smart to stay focused on the gaming demographic if they were to take Apple head on or Google, they’d probably lose.

So let’s answer the question what to me makes a Home console. Well I’ve always maintained that in order to be a home game console it has to play video games on your TV that’s the core of it the Switch does not play video games on the TV not in its base mode it don’t you have to connect it to a separate piece of Hardware that connects that to your TV so to me that does not qualify the Switch is a true Home console to me it is a mobile device that connects to your TV not a true Home console.

So then to me that makes the Wii U Nintendo last true Home console assuming that the Switch moves forward as their new business model that looks like that’s going to be the plan. So I want to do some Reminiscing on the Nintendo Wii U as Nintendo’s last Home console. I’m going to briefly run down the things that I did not like about the Wii U first and then I’ll end on talking about the things that I did like. The very first thing I dislike about the Wii U was the name I hated the Wii I don’t make that a secret and I did not like the fact that the Wii U was the replacement of the way I wanted them to get away from the Wii brand the we name the motion controls in the little Mii Critters and they didn’t do that.

Some people can look past the name and I was able to do that as well but it was a hard sell. The second thing I didn’t like is how it force you to create a me I didn’t like the Mii’s on the Wii and I didn’t like having to use them and I don’t like being forced to I’ve never liked when any company video game website or anybody forces you to do something I like toys I like options if you give me the choice to do something I might choose to do so if you tell me I don’t have a choice then I don’t want to do it.

The interface was exactly the same as the Wii but there was a slight alteration and had to really annoying me verse and me Plaza and you couldn’t turn them off I didn’t like that either it was just a little reminder that you had a TV screen full of means running around chattering and that Mii gibberish language.

Looking back on it the only other thing I didn’t care for was how you had to load it into Wii mode in order to access the Wii stuff but now that I think about it, the one benefit to that is it allowed you to continue accessing the Wii virtual console and we download games which I did continue to do.

I don’t want to get to negative on it because I did buy the system and I did enjoy it I understand why other people didn’t but it was fun it had some fun games so let’s talk about the things I did like I loved the tablet in the off TV play being able to sit in my recliner and playing a game on the tablet while watching a Netflix show on the TV I enjoyed that.

I also liked the Pro Controller it was better than the classic controller on the Wii. I like the eShop it was easier to navigate the search function was a lot more useful it had a lot more games and it had a few non-game apps that Wii didn’t have as many of those.

I did like the web browser better on the Wii U and once they finally got profiles I liked using the Netflix app on the Wii U better than using it on the Wii which to be honest I never used it on the Wii but my sister did so I know what it was like and I didn’t care for it.

That’s enough about features a game console is only as good as its games so now I want to talk about the games. To a non Nintendo gamer the Wii U was a Barren Wasteland that’s a fact. Fortunately for me I am a Nintendo gamer and it had quite a few games that I really enjoyed.

The first game that I enjoyed the most with Super Mario 3D World I played this game a lot and I even showed it to people and recommended it to friends.

I also played Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Captain Toad, both New Super Luigi U and new Super Mario Brothers U, Smash Bros. U, Dr. Luigi, Pikmin 3, Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, the Wonderful 101, Hyrule Warriors, The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker HD remake, The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess HD remake, Mario versus Donkey Kong game, Splatoon, and Super Mario Maker. I had a few eShop titles like Shovel Knight, Pier Solar, a few others I can’t remember them all. Overall I was mostly satisfied with the games that I had I like most people there were a lot of games I didn’t enjoy those were the games I never bought and there weren’t very many games to choose from so they weren’t a lot of options.

I know some people will disagree with this but I’ll remember the Wii U a little more family than the original Wii but not as finely as the Nintendo GameCube I think I’m going to put it on par with the Nintendo 64 which is the system I like just a little tiny bit more than the Wii.

I think the end of the day it was a good system it had some good games it just had some marketing issues it had a few technical flaws that Nintendo couldn’t overcome and the biggest problem was it was a full HD console it was Nintendo’s first full HD consult and they didn’t know how to develop HD games.

Looking forward I think Nintendo is going to have a better time getting games out for the Switch because they’re going to be in the middle there going to be a little bit better and 3DS games but not quite as good as PS4 games and I think that’s Nintendo’s comfort zone.

The way you did have an assortment of accessories just not a crazy number like the Wii, but I didn’t own enough of them to really comment on that. The Nintendo GameCube was the last time I tried to make a Nintendo console my only console so I had a Wii U but I also had a PS4 and a PS3 so I didn’t really feel like I was missing out on anything I do think if you are a Wii U only console gamer you probably didn’t have a very good generation.

I think maybe in time I’ll start to appreciate it more for what it was and maybe Overlook some of its claws and maybe discover some of the hidden gems although I don’t think there’s that many hidden gems to discover cuz there’s not that many games.

I don’t want to speculate on what could have been or should have been or how it could have been improved I’ll just say that I had fun with it I’ll keep it around and I’ll be able to go back to it from time to time and reminisce without too many negative thoughts. At the time my biggest gripe continued to me the system being overpriced for what you got

When I bought mine Nintendo was running a special if you bought the deluxe edition it came with 3 games and any digital game you bought in the eShop you got like extra bonus points so I got a lot of free games just by buying the system so it worked out for me but I still think it was overpriced.

The games that I don’t own that I still want to pick up I can’t think of any maybe Paper Mario Maybe Star Fox I don’t care for Animal Crossing I don’t care for the Wario games and I won’t buy any of the games and have the Wii name in them, or depend heavily on the Mii’s.

I do have Nintendo Land but that’s because it came with the system and I’ve just never played it and I’ve never saw fit to sell it.

The rest of the games unfortunately if they’re on Switch like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe I just bought for Switch I think I’ll get them on the Switch I’m not interested in going back to the Wii U at this point. I guess there’s a couple of Sonic games that I haven’t played and I think there’s a Rayman game on the Wii U but I’m not 100% I think some of those games are coming to Switch.

I guess that’s all I have to say on it I’m enjoying the Switch and I know all look finally back on the Wii U in time. I don’t think it had as much potential as some of Nintendo previous consoles I think it was held back tremendously by the hardware and it was also held back by some of the Wii stuff but it was a good system not their best certainly not their worst.

My G.I. Joe memories

In 2009 Paramount Pictures teamed up with Hasbro to make a live-action G.I. Joe film. It was loosely tied into the Michael Bay live-action Transformers film series. I personally enjoyed the film. I went into is expecting a science fiction action movie based on a cartoon, based on a toy, based on a generic Vietnam War soldier. Yeah, it was a complicated mess. I was never a big G.I. Joe collector. I was, however, very into the Transformers, Hasbro’s other popular action figure line.

This is just going to be me looking back on all of my memories of the G.I. Joe franchise.

As far as I can tell my earliest memories are sometime around 1987. I vaguely remember having a couple of random Joe action figures, to this day I couldn’t tell you any more about them, honestly even if I saw them in a catalog or on a collectors shelf I don’t think I could pick them out. What I do remember is the cartoon. Mostly because, at least where I lived, it aired immediately following the Transformers cartoon. I was such a huge Transformers nut that I didn’t want the show to end. I would keep watching G.I.Joe because it was close enough it almost had that Transformers feel to it. It had a good vs. evil plot, diabolical robots, a futuristic science fiction technology, and most importantly, many of the same voice actors. Even as a kid before IMDb or Wikipedia, I know that Starscream and Cobra Commander were voiced by the same guy. In a lot of ways the two shows were connected.

I continued watching G.I. Joe even after Transformers went off the air. My earliest memories, I think, were around 1987, I would have been 5 years old. I am not talking life memories, just these two shows. I do very distinctly remember watching Transformers episodes with a giant Optimus Prime robot and a little boy, I later learned this would have been the 1987-88 season, around the time the show was cancelled. I used to tune in to he same channel I thought Transformers had come on, never finding it but always looking. I kept watching the Joes in vain hoping that some day the Autobots would return to their war against the Decepticons. I remember watching the 3rd and 4th seasons of the cartoon with Cobra Commander becoming a real snake, then turning back into a man, and them introducing Serpentor, then the show got too weird for me, I didn’t recognize enough of the characters to stay interested, plus this was around the time I discovered the TMNT cartoon. This distracted me from the lack of Transformers, and was a satisfying alternative to G.I Joe: A Real American Hero, to the point I was able to finally stop tuning in. This was also around the time the Disney Afternoon cartoon block became popular so my interests had shifted. At this time I no longer had any connection to the Joes or Cobra. I would continue to pick up random action figures at flea markets, thrift stores and yard sales, always frantically looking for Transformers, or even Go-Bots figures, but I would pick up a Joe or a Cobra from time to time, if I came across them.

I wouldn’t come into full contact with G.I. Joe again until 1993. This was the time when Transformers Generation 2 launched on TV and just like before, Real American Hero was on immediately following. This time I watched the 5-part G.I. Joe: The Movie episodes, bought, or was gifted can’t really remember, one of those multiple puzzle murals featuring depictions of G.I Joe characters. It was one where if you had all 4 puzzles you could take off the edge piece and connect them into a large mural. I never complete the puzzle, let alone the set, but I did work on it day and night for a good couple of weeks or so. It was around this time I came across an original Sgt. Slaughter action figure for sale at a Good Will for like fifty cents or something, it was dirt cheap. I snatched it up, he was one of my favorite characters from the show, and wrestling too, which I was still sorta of into around this time.

Something else happened in 1993. I was introduced to the Mortal Kombat arcade game. I was immediately hooked and began playing that game obsessively for the next 2 decades. Yes I still re-play the original arcade games to this day. Mostly I switch back and forth between MAME and the collection on PS3, plus I also own Midways Arcade Treasures. Anyways, getting off topic. I also got into collecting comic books, trading cards and TMNT figures at this time. Plus I was just starting to get back into Transformers collecting full force with all of the G2 stuff coming out. In the summer of 1994 I started reading Wizard Magazine, and inside there were all of this kitbashed toys where someone would take one action figure and turn it into something else. I was super obsessed with Mortal Kombat. MKII was all the rage and Kung Lao was my favorite character. If you can’t guess where this is going let me assure you toy collectors, yes I kitbashed an original Sgt. Slaughter action figure to look like a Kung Lao action figure. Or at least, I tried. I ended up destroying the toy in the process. The ironic thing is, just months afterwards I was in K-Mart and there on the shelf was an actual MKII Kunk Lao toy, not surprisingly as they were made by Hasbro, they used the same style of figures as G.I.Joe toys, so needless to say I destroyed an 80’s classic trying to turn it into a $3 toy that was available for sale at K-Mart the whole damn time!

I skipped G.I. Joe Extreme or whatever it was called. I had grabbed a few Transformers comics along the way during my comic book collecting days, including some of those Transformers and G.I. Joe cross over comics. By 1997 I was pretty much done buying toys altogether. I lost interest in Transformers once Beast Wars came on the scene, TMNT had fallen into the toilet by this time, and I was never that into G.I. Joe to start off with so I was done with it for the next few years. It wouldn’t be until 2001 with the launch of the Robots in Disguise toy line before I would slowly start to get back into collecting Transformers. I was also discovering retro game collecting at this time, mostly NES, SNES, and SEGA, so my money was spread pretty thin. I 2003 my sister married a guy who told me about his G.I. Joe collecting day when he was a kid and I started to learn more about the toys from him, not much but more than I had ever known. This wasn’t enough to spark any interest in me or desire to collect but it was enough to read up on the newly popular internet about the history of the franchise and how it intersected with Transformers and Star Wars. Since I was already a huge fan of Star Wars also, this knowledge started to pique my curiosity so I began learning more about the history of the toy line.

I didn’t have any further connections or experience with the toys until sometime in 2004 or 2005. I remember buying one of my nephews one of the Joe figures for Christmas. He was kind of excited for it for a while, then, he wasn’t. I did end up picking up a copy of both Transformers: The Movie and G.I. Joe: The Movie, the original cartoons. This was around 2007 I think. This sparked some nostalgia within me and pretty soon I learned about the upcoming film. Since the Transformers movie just released that same year, and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, in fact I bought an HD-DVD player and a copy of the movie to watch it in HD on my new HDTV in 2008. This was right around the time they announced they were discontinuing the format so I was able to get the player and movie very cheap. Actually free, because a guy bought it for me as payment, or thank you, for fixing his computer.

Then in the summer of 2009 I dragged a few of my unwilling friends to go see this new movie and, I loved it. I shouldn’t have,  didn’t have very strong ties to the series, I didn’t have much nostalgia for it, but I thought it was a fun movie. By this time I had also picked up a Blu Ray player so I was able to get the film on Blu Ray when it released. A few years later I watched the mess of a sequel, which I still can’t stand and refuse to re-watch.

Since this time the most I have connected with the series is reading the entire Transformers cross over comics, buying a couple random action figures for nephews over the years, and watching some Angry Video Game Nerd videos where he reviewed the old games based on the cartoon.

My most current tie was about three weeks ago when I picked up a sealed 25th anniversary figure of Storm Shadow, sealed, at a yard sale, for $5. Based on preliminary research on ebay/Amazon/craigslist, this would appear to be a fairly good deal. I am not going to sell the toy, but also I am not going to start a collection either. I just thought it was an interesting piece to add to my collection.

And there you have it, my 30+ year history with the Hasbro/Marvel/Sunbow/Paramount franchise known as G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero.

Discovering the Xbox 360 in 2017

There are some people that might consider this a confession. There are others that might consider it a revelation. Most will just read the headline and skip right over this one. Nonetheless I am here to describe the long journey it took for me to finally get into gaming on the Xbox 360.

The bottom line is, I am a gamer. That description alone is often plentiful when telling people who I am. There are different stereotype of gamers, because frankly there are different types of gamers. Some are PC gamers. Others are console gamers. There are mobile gamers, arcade gamers, casual gamers, hard core gamers, Nintendo gamer, retro gamers, etc., I have tackled this before but honestly I am none of these and all of these. What I mean is, oh forget it, let’s just get down to business.

I never cared for the Xbox brand. In fact I cared so little about the Xbox brand that I refused to buy a console, made fun of people who owned them, and went out of my way to avoid them. This probably makes me sound like some kind of PC snob, (the internet refers to PC gamers as the “master race”, or it could make me sound like some type of console fanboy, i.e. a “Pony” for those who prefer Sony Playstation, or Nintendo Nerd for those that prefer the Big N, or worse, the casual non-gamer who only plays crap cell phone games.

Why all the commentary? Because this is my blog, it’s about making sense of the things in my world so deal with it or go someplace else. It’s ad-free, I don’t make money off this so I don’t bother caring what the readers want, I’m pretty sure there’s not more than 2 of us out there, if that. So I say whats on my mind, thank you very much. Unprofessional, sure it’s a personal blog after all.

Getting back to the discussion. Xbox never appealed to me for reasons that weren’t entirely fanboyish. Trust me I have never been a fanboy. I currently own a Pong, an Intelivision the entire Playstation family, and Xbox, a 360 a Wii, Wii U and Switch, and that’s just the consoles. So no I have never been a true fanboy. But I do have a weird set up that made the Xbox systems seem, useless.

I have owned every Playstation console as they have come out. I migrated from PS1 to PS2, PS3 and recently PS4 all within a couple of years of their launch. But I was never a Sony only guy. No sir, I bought my trusty N64 the exact same day as my original PS1, less than a year before getting my GameCube, and two years out from picking up a Sega Saturn and Sega CD/32X complete with Genesis. Yeah I have always been a die hard gamer.

As a die hard gamer I game on everything I can get my hands on, that includes the Windows PC, and by extension, DOS gaming too. So when I owned a PS2, had a desktop gaming rig, a Game Cube, a Game Boy Player and a Nintendo DS, that honestly left me very little room for an Xbox. Why bother? It’s not like the other consoles where you have TRUE exclusives, right? That is what I always thought. I knew it had a handful of games tied to the platform, but I always figured they were just more Call of Duty clones or generic First Person Shooters. Since I am not a fan of FPSes, sports games, or racing games, and since I have a Playstation for the 3rd party stuff, a PC for the Microsoft stuff, which I had Fable and Halo on PC no need for Xbox right? Then I had the Nintendo for everything else. This set up left me in a position where I was just not that interested in Xbox as a brand.

Now that you have read the back ground let me get into what I discovered about the Xbox 360 following my purchase.

First, it’s not a bad console. The system itself runs smooth, in fact from start to loading a game takes roughly the same amount of time as it does on PS3. Both are snails compared to the blazing fast PS4, but I haven’t noticed any major delays on the 360 that are any longer than PS3. So I rate them as equals in that regard.

System library

A game console is only as good as the games it plays, no gamer would disagree with this. What I learned, however, is the reverse of what I always thought. Bottom line, instead of just looking at the games I can’t get on Xbox 360 and focusing on the true exclusives I realized so what if game is on PS3 and 360, if I own both consoles then I can pick and choose which version to buy. I have done this with Sega and Nintendo in the past owning both SNES and Genesis at the same time. I did it while owning N64 and PS1 at the same time and even Wii and PS3 at the same time. So for me owning 2 consoles and picking which one to buy the game for is no big deal. The real benefit, especially today, is that Xbox 360 has been out longer than any other console currently on the market. This means it not only has the largest library, but many of those games are cheaper, and still jut as good as their Playstation counterparts. I just picked up Titafall for 360 and they only wanted $5 for the same store wanted $20 for the Xbox 1 version and guess what, there wasn’t even a Sony version at all so that was at least one game I enjoy playing that I discovered I had to own a Microsoft system to get.

Also the second benefit in terms of games is, Microsoft has a to more money than Sony so they can offer discounts on their digital games Sony can only dream of. I mean this, I have been buying digital games on Sony and Nintendo since 2006, I have never seen sales with deals a great as this last week’s Backwards Compatibility sale that I took full advantage of. I mean I was able o pick up 31 FULL retail digital games and I spend less than $75 bucks! A brand new PS4 game costs $60 new and takes well over a year to get down to $40, so to pick up full games like Fable 3, Lost Odyssey (a game that was going for $18 at the game store I got for less than $5 on sale, full game!) and a bunch of other games, and I checked many of them were on PS3 shop, for twice, or even triple the money in some cases. This was a bargain the likes I have never seen on a Sony console. Sure PS2 games are dirt cheap,  but damn I couldn’t get 31 PS2 games for the price I picked up these digital games. Oh and by the way, while I do prefer physical copies for the most part, I have over 120 digital games EACH on Nintendo and Sony consoles so I am okay with buying digital games. As long as I can download the game and play locally that is. In fact I am starting to get to the point where I think digital games are better than physical ones. IN some cases.

The Controller.

I gotta say as much as I DO love Playstation, the Dual Shock sucks compared to the Xbox 360 controller. I have been hearing gamers say it is essentially the perfect controller for, well over a decade! So yes, I am not officially on board, count me in the camp who spent several hours playing a game on 360, booted up the same game on PS3 and was shocked at how different the controls were. Now Nintendo, hasn’t made a decent controller since the Game Cube and their last truly good controller was the SNES pad, so if you game on Nintendo consoles you have to get used to terrible controllers. Or gimmicky crap.

What about the features?

OKay Playstation wins here HANDS DOWN. Sorry but I can watch Blu Ray movies, Netflix in full HD, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime plus Vudu movies all on the same Sony device that I play my favorite games on. Xbox plays DVD’s sure and it does have many of those same video apps, but at a cost. You have to have a Gold membership to use them. Which means an extra $10 a month for the standard price, or if you have the cash $60 for a full year. I am broke so I have to go the $10 a month route until I can get a head a little. I am okay with paying for it, partly because I want to try out the features and services of Xbox Live, partly because I want to sample the free games, and also, there is a part of me that wants to try getting into online gaming for real this time. Yes, you heard that, here in 2017 I still hardly ever play games online. I played ten minutes of Mario Kart Deluxe online on Switch and said screw this. The last game I tried online was Smash Bros. U, which I barely played three matches before giving up. I am just not competitive enough, or good enough for that matter, to get into online gaming. Maybe that will change if I find the right game?

Anyways moving forward, form factor.

I personally think the original Xbox 360 is ugly. It looks like a white 90’s desktop PC and squished in the middle. I hated it. The black model was just black, it was like an early 2000’s Gateway or something, trying too hard to be cool but still ugly as crap. The Slim model was slightly better but the one I have, the 360 E, is the best looking of the bunch. Too bad it has to remove features to get the cost down, still a fair trade all things considered. If I had to spend more on the machine up front, that’s less money for games. So I took the cheap route because I wanted more games.

But even thought the E is the best looking of the series, it’s still nothing compared to the futuristic sci-fi stylish sleekness of the sexy PS3, or the super cool Skynet looking PS4. Say what you will about Sony, they have style. Microsoft, on the other hand, does not.

So while I am still experimenting with things my initial impression is that, if someone is in the same boat as me, a multi console owning gamer with a gaming PC who overlooked the Xbox 360 for all the reasons I said, this is the time to pick it up. The machines are cheap, the games are cheap, and you can get some of those games that are pricey on the Playstation platform for a very good deal and you aren’t sacrificing quality hardly at all. I have noticed that in some cases certain games do look better and run smoother on the PS3, but my experience is limited as I am mostly concentrating on exclusives and personal favorites of mine. Still, the library alone is vast competed to PS3. Sure PS3 as a lot of good games and it did catch up to Xbox 360 in terms of hardware units sold, but Xbox still has the edge here in terms of number of titles. Sometimes they have multiple entries in a franchise Sony has only 1 or 2 in. I haven’t researched the library extensively, and yes the whole not being nto Sports or FPS games is starting to limit the games I am looking at already. With 31 digital games and 14 physical games, I have already amassed a good start of a collection so I am on track to discovering the library as I go.

Some games I like.

Halo 3

Fable 2

Blue Dragon

Lost Odyssey

Ninety Nine Nights

Quake 4

Kameo

Banjo Kazooie Nuts N Bolts

Perfect Dark Zero

Gears of War

Crackdown

I haven’t tried many others yet, but I can honestly say, so far, I am very satisfied with the games I have played and over all my entire experience has been mostly positive.

The negatives.

Just a couple here. The first, the batteries in the controllers suck. I got one that used AA’s and bought a charging cable with spare batteries. Nothing seems to charge these things so I have to play with it plugged in. At least it’s USB and I have a USB wall charger sitting on my arm rest that I use to charge my PS3/PS4 controllers so it’s not a big deal, but it is kind of an issue having to deal with a cord in 2017. The other issue, the hard drives. Sure I can use my 1.5 Terabyte USB drive to store my games and the internal flash memory for game saves, but if I want to experience backwards compatibility with any of my original Xbox games, I have to shell out more money for an official Microsoft hard drive to get the partition with the emulators on it. Sure I could hook up the original Xbox but then that’s one more thing going against my power bill. Also, I don’t like having to have an avatar/profile. Sony doesn’t force you to do that crap, but Nintendo does and I always hated it. I was happy Switch didn’t force Mii’s on me, until I learned you have to have a stupid Mii to play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Okay thanks Nintendo.

So there is my long, long overdue, semi-rant, impressions of the Xbox 360 console. No I haven’t lived under a rock and never played one before, come on I said I was a gamer, all my friends had them I played plenty of hours on Xbox 360 over the years. But I just never felt the need to actually OWN one before now. My distaste for the console was replaced with a slight appreciation when I decided that instead of knocking it for being just a PC you plug into your TV, I reversed my stance and appreciate it for being a very solid, and very stable gaming PC that plugs right into the TV and just works without much hassle. As a PC gamer who hates fiddling with settings and upgrading hardware to get that one game to work, I can appreciate it as a PC for the living room. In some ways more so than a Playstation, but still in other ways not as good.

All in all I am mostly satisfied with my purchase. I fully intend I will continue to get plenty of joy out of owning this gaming machine for years to come.

Getting back into PC gaming

I have decided I am going to start getting back into PC game collecting as well as PC gaming. I don’t know what my budget for this is going to be, fortunately I come across old PC games usually very cheap at thrift stores and yard sales all of the time. My new rule is I am not going to be buying games to play, I am only collecting the disks/packaging for the sake of it, I will rely on Steam, GoG, Origin, etc., for the purchase of games. As for shareware and “abandonware” titles, well I will resort to those means at my disposable.

What got me back into PC collecting?

For starters, I have nearly reached the limits of what I am capable of in terms of console gaming. Not that I own every console game I wish to own, or console for that matter, but what I mean is I have shifted my console gaming collection to mostly digital for playing and only buying physical games where the digital version is not a viable option. I would love to have the time and money to purchase and track down classic retro NES games, but with the market being what it is, the economy being down, and my limited funds all around, I just don’t see this happening any time soon. PC games on the other hand are cheap, dirt cheap n most cases. It can cost a lot of money if I wanted to get into buying big box games or complete games with all the little trinkets and inserts, but that is not what I am going for.

My goal is just to pick up the main games, if the game came on a floppy disk, I intend to buy that, if it came on a CD-ROM, I want the CD-ROM. I do want collectible condition, however, so I will look for CD games that come in the jewel case with booklets, basically the same thing I would get if I were looking for a PS1 game, but I don’t necessarily need to buy the cardboard box with all the papers, booklets, and collectible stuff that was often included. I understand for many collectors that is their goal, and if that is you go for it. Not me, not now. I do want to attempt to amass a reasonably sizeable collection, but I want to realistically meter my expectations so that I stick to buying those items I can hope to find without spending a ton of time or money tracking down the extra rare stuff.

Now if I happen to come a cross a complete in box collectible game for a good price, sure I will pick it up. But since I am resorting to, let’s just say less than official, means of playing these games, I am not exactly interested in the little key codes or maps, etc., that came with the games. In fact, I don’t even have a floppy disk drive to be able to install most of these old games in the first place. Not only that, but I am running Windows 10 64-Bit, most of these retro, old school, and classic PC games are going to be completely incompatible with my system, and I have no intention of buying old hardware just to run old games.

Because loose games with instructions can typically be found at yard sales, thrift stores, flea markets, and the like,  usually for just a couple bucks, I fully intend to focus on buying the cheap stuff, at least for now. It’s no different, to me, than if I were to get back into NES collecting, I would most certainly be going for just loose carts only, heck I wouldn’t even be that interested in getting dust covers or instruction books, at this point.

As far as playing on “original” hardware. I am a Windows Gamer through and through, so there is no chance I will ever be without at least some form of semi-current PC machine, technically these games are all running on “original” hardware or at least compatible hardware, to some extent.

Part of what motivated me to get back into collecting is watching Metal Jesus Rocks videos on Youtube, and listening to the CUPodcast with Ian and Pat. I do see the merits for going for complete games with all the fun little artifacts, but I also have limit funds, as well as limited space.