Thursday, 12 December 2013

The New Generation

Next Gen is here!

   and has been for a month or so, at least in my house in the form of an Xbox one. There has already been lots of discussion worldwide about which you should or shouldn't buy, so to add a slightly different one i thought I would see if i believe I have the correct purchase, let's begin.

   The most important thing for me when buying a new console is the games, primarily the exclusives, and this is what made me choose the Xbox over the PlayStation. There was no ps4 exclusives i was interested in, and doesn't look like there will be until late 2014 with 'The Order', whereas Xbox was shipping with Dead Rising 3. Not that i claim this is a system seller, sure, i enjoyed the first 2, a whole lot more than i did any Killzone game, but i knew i was going to be buying one of them anyway, and this swayed me.
   But did this game warrant me choosing this console? Well, firstly, the game got lost in the mail, so i had to wait nearly 2 weeks to actually get my copy of Dead Rising, by which time the excitement of everything being new had worn off anyway, which has probably made it more of a trudge than it should be to play through it. I still have not finished it, and about half way in have lost the motivation to do so, At first it was great, going round, Crafting dildo launchers, slicing zombies into pieces, hunting down the collectibles an all dressed in a tux with one of those fake glasses with nose, moustache and eyebrow's attached (you know what i mean, right?). But after a short time, i realised that I'd had enough of this, and just wanted to get on with the story and get through it, but this game doesn't make it easy to do. It's full of road blocks and too many zombies at times, when you just want to get from point a to point b, it can be infuriating. This wasn't supposed to be a review of Dead Rising, so I'll leave it there with the one word summary, "S'okay"

   I also played through Ryse, which i was thoroughly against playing and looked like i would hate it given all of it's reviews, but seeing as it was supposedly so short, an a great tech demo for the system, i thought I'd give it a go while i waited for the postmen to sort themselves out. And i actually enjoyed it, certainly not the most challenging game by any stretch of the imagination, but it looked great (if you ignore the very small amount of enemy characters). It was quick, fun and no fuss, just pick it up and go with no problems, but they're the kind of games you tend to play when you're waiting for something to come out and are passing time in between, everyone has done it, but on the release of a new system, that shouldn't be that day.

   Lococycle was another one I've played, and most of it can be copied over from what i just said about ryse, but tale out and references to 'good graphics' and put in more about 'questionable comedy'. To be fair it wasn't bad at all, i had fun, but I'll forget that it ever existed, if i were to look back at my achievements to see what I'd been playing before in a few years time, I'd remember it about as fondly as Kameo.

   Finally, this week, Peggle 2 came out. Hardly the game I'd buy this system for, but then the same would go for Resogun on PS4 and they are both the highest rated exclusives on their consoles. I loved the first Peggle, an considering from when i turned t on the first time last night, i finished all the base 60 levels before i turned it off says it all really. It's great, better than the last (but no local multiplayer, wtf? this is exactly the kind of game that local multiplayer still exists for) an I've still got plenty to go back for as Popcap has yet again done a great job of giving us challenges that can last dozens of hours alone, without even thinking of multiplayer.

   Do these games make me feel i made the right choice between xbox and Ps4? yes. Do they make me feel like i needed either though? no. The problem besides just the games is that there's still a lot missing that means my 360 and ps3 are still both plugged in to my TV. For one, no i player on Xbox one. The simplest thing. On a similar note there's also no sky player of itv player (not that i know why anyone would want that). If you want to catch up on TV you've just missed and it wasn't on channel 4, then you'd better look somewhere else. While talking playback, there's also no way to play a video through an external hard drive or memory stick, which is a pretty poor effort.

   But on the reverse of that lets talk about the game recording, and upload studio. What i didn't appreciate going in was that games will often just have their own set of automatic records, consequently, when i go to look through the videos to find the one i want, It's full of clips of Peggle and Fifa that i didn't care about as they happened, let alone wish to see again. If you want to record your own clips though, it is made very difficult without kinect, and navigating the menu's to find the studio and snap it to the side takes time from when you'll going to have want to have been recording. Kinect also doesn't work all that great on voice commands, sometimes it will work fine for me, others i'm just sitting here like a moron saying 'xbox on' or something like that over and over again (it could be argued that anyone using voice commands for xbox control looks like a moron anyway, and they would probably be right). The real problem here comes when playing online. For some reason, Kinect works as a microphone so the person you are playing against can here you. I don't understand this at all, if i wanted to talk to them, i would use a headset, so i just have to have Kinect unplugged whenever I'm playing online. Which means that if you want to record something you just did online, you are out of luck. Sure, you could leave it in and do voice commands whilst the person on the other end mocks you, but I'm too British for that.

   To wrap it up then, yes, I'm glad i chose X1 over PS4, but I'm not sure i needed to get the new consoles straight away, it seemed exciting though because after 20+ years of gaming i could finally afford to buy myself a console on launch date, and maybe this have given me rose tinted spectacles, but i know some day, everything will come together, probably not before any price drop mind you. So, if anyone would need a recommendation I'd say wait until eveything's working smoother and more games are out, but there's plenty on it to do for now.

 





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