Yes I understand that the title references something that is considered a PC game although keeping with the point of this thread, that is bullcrap as the Orange Box is in fact available for the 360. Now that that's out of the way, lets get to the point of this.
One thing that has, does, and always will get to me is when people throw out the old "PC are better than consoles" and many things to that effect, particularly mouse & keyboard vs. button pad, but I'll get to that later. The most prominent reason for this is that I am primarily a console gamer, and secondarily because I have been observing the evolution of console gaming these last couple years and have come to the conclusion that console gaming has become essentially up to par with PC gaming. I take games like Bioshock, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and the Assassin's Creed series as proof of that.
I can hear even now the "Pshaw, those games (or Oblivion and Fallout 3 anyways) are PC games that you dirty console tards stole from us." My response is simply that if we can put the same game on a console without diluting the expirence to the point of horribly mixed Kool-Aid then what the hell is the significant difference between the two, that makes PC's so great? It all really seems to be driven by the old dogma that console games are all just the gaming equivilent of a Michael Bay film in that they are filled with nothing but endless parades of military hardware, followed by horribly characterized gruff marine badasses who all look and act like they've been abusing steroids for sevral years now.
Okay the fact that the biggest selling franchises on the two consoles that I can really speak for the PS3 and the 360 are exactly this doesn't help, however even PC's have these sorts of games so I don't feel that this is something that they can rightly be criticized for. Usually I look at other games like say Assassin's Creed or Bioshock as counters to these. The strengths of Assassin's Creed lie in it's unique approach to the open world and platforming gaming styles by combining them in an elegant and very well done manner, other strengnths include characters who feel real as opposed to larger than life cutouts, a setting which has been virtually unexplored in the gaming medium, and a story that you actually have to apply yourself to understand, as opposed to boom, zoom, hooray, kapow.
The other example: Bioshock, is one that some might find strange choice because of it being supposedly "dummed down", whether that is really a big issue to you or not is if you really care if it uses the RPG thing to the fullest extent or not, which I don't feel is the biggest criticizm you could make on it. Aside from that all the characters are very well done, You only hear/ see any of the three major characters in the game, player character not included and you can tell what kind of person they are, and well pretty much everything from the first minute of Yahtzee's review of it is a major plus.
In closing I felt that I should address the button pad vs. mouse and keyboard issue I brought up earlier. I have never understood the this argument in PC>Consoles, because I have never played a current generation game that gave me any true problems like this, not even Turok. I gather that the idea stems from PC central gamers who try to start playing a game using a button pad, and their inexperience with that kind of control scheme causes them to play not as well. Obviously then, since they are so good at the game on PC the problem is with the controler not them. I figured this out when I went to play CoD 4 on a friends house on his computer and couldn't aim for shit, then when I got it myself for my 360 everything came like a charm. So it is like my old band teacher said, "It isn't that the instrument sucks, it's that you suck at playing it."
One thing that has, does, and always will get to me is when people throw out the old "PC are better than consoles" and many things to that effect, particularly mouse & keyboard vs. button pad, but I'll get to that later. The most prominent reason for this is that I am primarily a console gamer, and secondarily because I have been observing the evolution of console gaming these last couple years and have come to the conclusion that console gaming has become essentially up to par with PC gaming. I take games like Bioshock, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and the Assassin's Creed series as proof of that.
I can hear even now the "Pshaw, those games (or Oblivion and Fallout 3 anyways) are PC games that you dirty console tards stole from us." My response is simply that if we can put the same game on a console without diluting the expirence to the point of horribly mixed Kool-Aid then what the hell is the significant difference between the two, that makes PC's so great? It all really seems to be driven by the old dogma that console games are all just the gaming equivilent of a Michael Bay film in that they are filled with nothing but endless parades of military hardware, followed by horribly characterized gruff marine badasses who all look and act like they've been abusing steroids for sevral years now.
Okay the fact that the biggest selling franchises on the two consoles that I can really speak for the PS3 and the 360 are exactly this doesn't help, however even PC's have these sorts of games so I don't feel that this is something that they can rightly be criticized for. Usually I look at other games like say Assassin's Creed or Bioshock as counters to these. The strengths of Assassin's Creed lie in it's unique approach to the open world and platforming gaming styles by combining them in an elegant and very well done manner, other strengnths include characters who feel real as opposed to larger than life cutouts, a setting which has been virtually unexplored in the gaming medium, and a story that you actually have to apply yourself to understand, as opposed to boom, zoom, hooray, kapow.
The other example: Bioshock, is one that some might find strange choice because of it being supposedly "dummed down", whether that is really a big issue to you or not is if you really care if it uses the RPG thing to the fullest extent or not, which I don't feel is the biggest criticizm you could make on it. Aside from that all the characters are very well done, You only hear/ see any of the three major characters in the game, player character not included and you can tell what kind of person they are, and well pretty much everything from the first minute of Yahtzee's review of it is a major plus.
In closing I felt that I should address the button pad vs. mouse and keyboard issue I brought up earlier. I have never understood the this argument in PC>Consoles, because I have never played a current generation game that gave me any true problems like this, not even Turok. I gather that the idea stems from PC central gamers who try to start playing a game using a button pad, and their inexperience with that kind of control scheme causes them to play not as well. Obviously then, since they are so good at the game on PC the problem is with the controler not them. I figured this out when I went to play CoD 4 on a friends house on his computer and couldn't aim for shit, then when I got it myself for my 360 everything came like a charm. So it is like my old band teacher said, "It isn't that the instrument sucks, it's that you suck at playing it."
