The Best of the Best
Happy Friday. And to celebrate, I'll be spending some quality time with Half Life 2: Episode 1. I've only had the chance to spend an hour with it, but what an hour! It's the same great Half Life 2 action you love, but with so much dense content that it's ridiculous. The first 5 minutes alone are brilliant.
This is Valve's first foray into episodic content and I think some people don't get it. The whole point of episodic content is shorter but denser games at reduced prices. Many reviews are giving Episode 1 the scores it deserves, but all knock the game for its five or so hours of gameplay. That's the whole point. It is supposed to be that short. That is why it is twenty dollars. Plus, those five hours probably have about as much content as a 10 hour game with out filler such as backtracking or endless waves of enemies in the exact same room over and over (cough, Halo). I've paid over twenty bucks for movies less exciting than this. Far as I'm concerned, this is a much welcome direction in gaming.
The Nintendo DS Lite has apparently been released early at some locations. Normally, I'd be right out there rushing Walmart with the other hardcore folks, but I decided to hold out for that dark blue DS Lite. My old DS still works, so hopefully it won't be much of a wait. Still though, it will be a tough period, especially if someone I know shows up to my house with a bright white DS Lite.
In what I feel to be a strange yet pleasant surprise, IGN is relaunching their Dreamcast section. They are re-reviewing every Dreamcast game and ranking them accordingly. A nifty way to revisit what I feel to be one of the greatest consoles created. As they have said over at IGN, the Dreamcast didn't fail, we failed the Dreamcast.
Lastly, word is that a new backwards compatibility update will soon be released for the 360. The who BC issue has been hot with the 360 since well before it's release. Quite frankly, it's getting tiring. Backwards compatibility is one of those features that is important for about the first 6 months of a console's life cycle. After that, fewer and fewer people need it every day. Do I enjoy it? Sure. It's nice to be able to play Halo 2 right from my Xbox 360. It's just convenient. But you know what? My original Xbox still works fine and is hooked up in my bedroom, Live and all. I never used my PS2 for PS1 games, and I played GBA games on my DS for about a week before I realized it was just more comfortable to use my SP of my Micro when I got it. It's just one of those features Sony has convinced the world they need, when they really don't. It must also be remembered whereas the various Game Boys and the PS2 actually contain the old hardware for the previous generations, the 360 is running purely on an emulator. We only just got the SNES and Genesis running smoothly on PC emulators and there are still problems there. So imagine trying to do the same for a console that was released 4 years ago. It's going to take time. So don't worry, don't throw out your Xbox, and instead enjoy the great 360 games that are being released. That's why you bought your 360 in the first place.
The podcast may be a bit late. I'm home now for a garage sale and not sure if I'll be able to get access to recording equipment tonight. I'll get it up this weekend ASAP. Until then, I'll talk to you later.
This is Valve's first foray into episodic content and I think some people don't get it. The whole point of episodic content is shorter but denser games at reduced prices. Many reviews are giving Episode 1 the scores it deserves, but all knock the game for its five or so hours of gameplay. That's the whole point. It is supposed to be that short. That is why it is twenty dollars. Plus, those five hours probably have about as much content as a 10 hour game with out filler such as backtracking or endless waves of enemies in the exact same room over and over (cough, Halo). I've paid over twenty bucks for movies less exciting than this. Far as I'm concerned, this is a much welcome direction in gaming.
The Nintendo DS Lite has apparently been released early at some locations. Normally, I'd be right out there rushing Walmart with the other hardcore folks, but I decided to hold out for that dark blue DS Lite. My old DS still works, so hopefully it won't be much of a wait. Still though, it will be a tough period, especially if someone I know shows up to my house with a bright white DS Lite.
In what I feel to be a strange yet pleasant surprise, IGN is relaunching their Dreamcast section. They are re-reviewing every Dreamcast game and ranking them accordingly. A nifty way to revisit what I feel to be one of the greatest consoles created. As they have said over at IGN, the Dreamcast didn't fail, we failed the Dreamcast.
Lastly, word is that a new backwards compatibility update will soon be released for the 360. The who BC issue has been hot with the 360 since well before it's release. Quite frankly, it's getting tiring. Backwards compatibility is one of those features that is important for about the first 6 months of a console's life cycle. After that, fewer and fewer people need it every day. Do I enjoy it? Sure. It's nice to be able to play Halo 2 right from my Xbox 360. It's just convenient. But you know what? My original Xbox still works fine and is hooked up in my bedroom, Live and all. I never used my PS2 for PS1 games, and I played GBA games on my DS for about a week before I realized it was just more comfortable to use my SP of my Micro when I got it. It's just one of those features Sony has convinced the world they need, when they really don't. It must also be remembered whereas the various Game Boys and the PS2 actually contain the old hardware for the previous generations, the 360 is running purely on an emulator. We only just got the SNES and Genesis running smoothly on PC emulators and there are still problems there. So imagine trying to do the same for a console that was released 4 years ago. It's going to take time. So don't worry, don't throw out your Xbox, and instead enjoy the great 360 games that are being released. That's why you bought your 360 in the first place.
The podcast may be a bit late. I'm home now for a garage sale and not sure if I'll be able to get access to recording equipment tonight. I'll get it up this weekend ASAP. Until then, I'll talk to you later.
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