A Public Service Announcement

::Attention::

If you are a dirty redneck slut and you are at a party stoned out of your mind, please do not randomly bite me or my friends. Seriously, it will just work out better for everyone if you don't.

Great, now that we've got that out of the way I can tell you about the weekend, or rather three weekends ago. Last weekend contained very little video game time. It did contain a trip to Texas, a last minute wedding, being awake for 56 strait hours, and a strange series of events which prompted me to make the above statement. And that's all we need to say about that weekend.

Three weekends ago I had the pleasure of driving up to my old home town in northern Virginia to see some old friends and play some old games. Er, new games. When I arrived the host (who I shall call "David") was busy pulling a new TV out of the box. This modest 46" was going to go in his bedroom eventually, but for the festivities we set it up on his kitchen table. In the dining room (or what was intended to be a dining room) there was a second set-up. Will brought a projector from work and aimed it at the blank wall. The host had his own not-so-modest TV in the living room and Will's little brother had yet another spare TV next to him. We all had 360s and the 5 of us (my other friend who I shall call "Vlad" was there but systemless) spent the next 48 hours playing all sorts of shit. Highlights included Modern Warfare 2 (which is great when you have everyone in the same room), a rousing 4 player run through I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT, and a 2 hour push into Gears of War 2's horde mode.

I also found time to play a little Forza 2 and over the course of those sessions I finally reached career level 50. So that was cool. Got to try out the first 15 or so minutes of Bioshock 2. It seemed like a great game but considering I've spent the same amount of time with its predecessor I wasn't inspired to go out and grab a copy. I did however pick up Red Faction Guerrilla, which is hella fun. It has some issues no doubt but played about 15 hours of it over 2 days so they must be doing something right. I'll put up an Impressions post about it later.

Needless to say that weekend kicked ass despite the drive and sleep deprivation, which is becoming old hat for me at this point. I'll try to throw up some pictures once I figure out how to pull them off my phone.

The New Toy part 2

So why the 360? I'll start with the small reasons. Price really wasn't a big issue but I suppose it mattered. Obviously the 360 is cheaper, but it can be argued that the PS3 plays blue ray disks and the online is free. Still the price difference is pretty big, 100 to 200 dollars currently. I don't know I guess price really didn't play too big a roll since you can compare system features and bundles until your face turns blue. I spend several hundred dollars on games a year anyway so whatever.

I think one big thing that got me was that most of my friends had 360s already and being able to play with them was a draw. I'm not usually into doing the popular thing, but in this case it pays off. I have old school friends all around the country, California, Virginia, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, even a friend stationed in Italy (who's never friggin online). If they all had PS3s would I have a PS3 now? It would be more likely.

Another thing that drew me in was achievements. The community has grown to have a love/hate attitude toward achievements. Some people think too much emphasis is put on them and that they distract from gameplay. Other people say they create new reasons to play a game and provide more to do. Others are obsessed with bumping their gamerscore. Others hate the people who are obsessed with boosting their score and couldn't give a crap about their own. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. Back before the system came out I was reading about the features and the magazine that had the article described achievements as a way for gamers who aren't into climbing online leaderboards and prefer more single player games to show off what they have accomplished. At that time I wasn't really into online play (and was under-enthusiastic about the online revolution in video games) and I was intrigued with the idea of a gamerscore. Now I have to admit that I am one of those people who are obsessed with it. Getting an achievement is a great feeling and I like seeing my gaming habit tied to an ever-growing number. I even track my gamerscore in a spreadsheet, how nerdy is that? Very. So do I think achievements are ruining my gameing experience, distracting me from the gameplay? Can an addict admit he has a problem?

Getting off topic. A third reason I chose the Xbox360 is the games. Now most of the big games that come out now come out for both systems. There are few noteworthy exclusive titles (percentage-wise). However, It seems like the 360 exclusives are more frequent. I don't have numbers to back that up it just seems that way. I only own a couple at the moment, one of which is Forza 2 (which is awesome and I may have to do a post on why its better than the GT series). Shit, I'm beating around the bush here, allow me to knock that off.

The only game I really care about is Final Fantasy XIII. Originally this game was going to be exclusive to PS3. At E3 last year it was announced that this was no longer so. Coffin nail. In my last post I claimed that I was not a fanboy. This is true to the extent that it does not include Final Fantasy. I will always buy Final Fantasy games. Even if they came out with a really crappy one I would buy it blindly and the next one as well. I short, I like them. When that announcement was made I was already leaning towards the Xbox and that was the final deciding factor.

So now that I have had the system for a few months, what do I think about it? I shall evaluate it in a future post.