So we’ve now seen the launch of the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii (worst name evar…) and the good old 360. And me? I got nothing.
I was going to go out and do some coverage of the local game launches, but none of the local stores did any midnight sales or even seemed to have people camping out and waiting in line. So no coverage for you!
Personally, I bought Half-Life 2 for X-Box for $9.99 just to see how it compared to the XP version. It looks the same, but the controls blow. The right stick is used to aiming and if you click it, you zoom in, but you can’t shoot. Therefore, inevitably, whenever I get into a tense fight, I inadvertently click the stick, zoom in, can’t shoot, and die. The D-Pad is used to switch the weapons. In a fairly clever approximation of the PC version’s menus where multiple weapons would be under each number, the X-Box D-pad has four categories with multiple weapons under each one and pressing in the same direction multiple times will cycle through the weapons in that category. The problem is, however, to switch you have to take your thumb off the left stick which is used to control the direction you are going. So when you switch weapons, you have to stop moving, which is frustrating. I’ve started to stretch my right thumb over to the D-pad to switch.
I’ve played Halo, I’ve played Goldeneye, and now I’ve played Half-Life 2 — all on consoles. And guess what? They all sucked. So is the appeal of games like Goldeneye and Halo simply people that have never played FPS games on a PC? Or is there something I’m actually not getting about these games? On some level, I suppose it is similar to EA who keeps releasing Madden for PCs. Who buys those? If you are going to play Madden, buy a console. If you are going to play a FPS buy or build a gaming computer.