To 360 or to PS3?

[Delphine]

Man, don't even TOUCH Infinite Undiscovery. I know I'm a lot more forgiving than you are, and I hated it. The characterization is sloppy, the plot is forgettable, and the battle system is nothing new. Fable II is worth a playthrough -- the battle system isn't as advanced as it thinks it is (here's how you win every battle ever -- spend EXP on a single spell until it's maxed out. Hold down the button that charges your spell. Release it. Most enemies die instantly. And yes, I figured this out well before I saw the Zero Punctuation on the game.) and the "life sim" aspect isn't as in depth as it says it is, but you can basically do whatever you feel like, plot be damned. There are a number of quests that have a significant impact on Albion, which I thought was pretty neat. The dialogue manages to be clever once in awhile, and the characters are interesting. And being a dog lover, having Little Dude (for that is his name) follow me around usually put a smile on my face.

(Not that most people will care, but I really, really love that fact that 1. I can have a lesbian relationship [or two at a time, ahaha] 2. with local co-op I can have a surrogate and thus have children in said lesbian relationship.)

[Green Gibbon!]

That's about what I suspected - I've never been a fan of Tri-Ace.

Mind if I ask what those three games you mentioned were? I know one of them must be Mass Effect.

Yeah, Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey, and Blue Dragon. I didn't play much of Blue Dragon 'cause I didn't like it. Actually, I also played a bit of DoAX 2 - I didn't like that either so I didn't play much, but I don't remember having any loading failures with it.

[Senbei]

I don't think I'd really play MGS4 because the story is self-referential to the previous games and I haven't played MGS2 or 3 yet.

Then now would be excellent time! I can't really recommend MGS2 unless you care about the series' full plot, but MGS3 is one of my favorite PS2 games, right up there with Okami and RE4. The game just reeks fun from every outlet: story, gameplay, music... If you liked the original game at all, you owe it to yourself to play MGS3. And then you can enjoy MGS4, which isn't as good, but really is a must-play if you own a PS3 right now.

[Segaholic2]

Fable 2 is not a game so much as an interactive button mashing simulator. My friend got blind drunk one night and played Fable 2 for hours because all you have to do is follow the golden trail and mash buttons to advance. The next day when he loaded the game he didn't remember any of the progress he'd made, and was confused why his save file was so much further.

[DackAttac]

I've actually seen the red ring once on my 360 - right after I got it shipped to me here, I plugged it in and the first few times I powered on, I got the red ring, and I thought it was all over. But then I hit the button one last desperate time and it worked like normal and I haven't had any problems since.

Same thing happened to me, except I had to do some minor troubleshooting first, to find out I was getting it because the power cord wasn't 100% plugged into the console, but apparently was in enough to supply enough power to light up the red ring. It was an odd revelation, but quite the relief nonetheless.

[Xyton]

I played all the way through Infinite Undiscovery. It start off slooooooooooooooooowly, but it's pretty good in the end. The gameplay is okay -- nothing spectacular, but not super terrible, either. Just be sure you go in to it knowing the setup takes forever (as in the game doesn't get really interesting until a bit onto the second disk).

[Isuka]

It's quite pointless now that J4Y made up his mind, but I don't think it would harm to tell everyone else that's considering a 360 to check out this: http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3472
That's a guide for getting a new 360 with a "Jasper" chipset, which is supposedly free of any RRoD risks.

-I like the 360 controller over the PS3's. The fact that the Dual Shock 3 is rechargeable is really nice though (vs. the AA batteries of the 360).

It doesn't come with the system, but they also have a rechargeable battery kit for $20, and if the battery pack dies you can get a new one for $12, unlike the built-in DualShock 3 one.

-I'm going to be playing these on a standard definition TV. That shouldn't affect anything should it?

If that's the case, then maybe you wouldn't mind getting yourself a $200 Arcade 360 and that "limited" 20-gig HDD + Gold membership offer. This would be $250 now, plus the Wi-Fi thingy it would be $350 tops, still 50 bucks under the basic PS3 and with some five free games bundled.

-The PS3 is capable of much better graphics than the 360. Has any game on PS3 really shown far superior graphics yet?

- I've heard that most game for both systems are built for Xbox 360 and ported over to PS3, due to the higher 360 sales. This can cause the PS3 to run games less smoothly, since the devolpers didn't have the PS3's architecture in mind when it was being made.

To my knowledge, the only better-looking thing on PS3 is/ would be Uncharted 2 (the first one is already gorgeous), but if you aren't going the HDTV way... that being said, the reason why most multiplatform releases on PS3 are inferior-looking to the 360 versions is because most developers have moved to unified shader architecture development. The 360 GPU was one of the first to support this, while the PS3's RSX processes pixel shading and vertex shading independently, so, when the developers don't take their time to do the conversion, they basically waste the system's resources, and this applies to the complex, server-oriented Cell Broadband Engine CPU, too. Think of the Saturn if you will, which is quite ironic.

-I heard that for many (maybe even most?) PS3 games, you have to install a large file (over a GB) to play blue ray games. Meanwhile on 360, the only game I've heard of needing to be installed is Soul Calibur IV.

That has to do with the BD drive's data streaming speed. It reads data at 72 Mbits/s CLV, while the 360's DVD drive reads at 126 Mbits/s CAV. Therefore the installing in order to stream data (mainly textures) with enough speed.

[Protodude]

So.....Folklore. What's the deal with it? It sounds like a monster collecting RPG or something, but that's all I really know about it. And Warhawk, has anyone played it? I've heard it's a really good multiplayer game, but I'm kind of weary to spend $40 on a multiplayer only game and find out I don't like it.

I finally hooked up my 360 and PS3 online yesterday. 360 definitely has a wider variety of games and content download, but I kind of like the PSN interface and some of the exclusives it has. Tried out Home for a few minutes and it was as lame as I expected it to be.

My gamertag is Protodude and my PSN name is ShinProtodude. I best be hearing from at least some of you.

[Green Gibbon!]

You can download a demo of FolksSoul from the PSN store. It's a hack & slashy whatsis-may-cry with none of the flair - I think that's all Game Republic does.

[Esrever]

It took me FOREVER to decide whether to get a 360 or a PS3, just because the differing advantageous and disadvantages are so minimal! Has there ever been a generation with so few notable exclusives? The only system that had more than two that really interested me is the Wii! (And it's a good thing it does, since exclusives are basically ALL it has.)

In the end I just went with the 360, because it was cheaper and because I thought it had the better lineup of downloadable games. But I think it's pretty telling that of the seven retail titles I've bought, only one of them isn't a multi-platform release.

[Green Gibbon!]

So what's your gamer tag? I have an important message to send!

[Segaholic2]

Don't give it to him, all he ever sends me is butt cheese.

[Locit]

So what's your gamer tag? I have an important message to send!

In the end I just went with the 360, because it was cheaper and because I thought it had the better lineup of downloadable games. But I think it's pretty telling that of the seven retail titles I've bought, only one of them isn't a multi-platform release.

You both need to send me your gamer tags. I'm, uh, locit.

And yeah all he ever sends is butt cheese. And one wildly inappropriate message about that chick from Twilight Princess.

[CM August]

And one wildly inappropriate message about that chick from Twilight Princess.

But the important thing is, which one?

[Green Gibbon!]

I am shocked at these allegations.

[P.P.A.]

Accept my XBL request already GG!.

[Forza Johnman]

I own a 360 so I'll just tell you what I like and dislike about it and stuff.

Likes:
-Xbox Live is pretty good really. Can't really understand the amount of hate it gets just because you have to pay for it.
-The Mii60s look alright and they haven't turned into a horrifying vision of a microtransaction hell. Yet.
-Good selection of games now and Xbox Live Arcade is great. Pacman Championship and Boom Boom Rocket are must tries.
-Picking up Microsoft points (Money made more fun! Honest.) is pretty easy.
-The controller is nice. Apart from the D Pad.

Dislikes:
-The new layout is horrible. I miss the "Blades" system. Especially the "Whats New" link which made it very easy to find what was new in the Marketplace. And getting to your XLA games is a chore.
-1200 is the new 800.
-Namco are cunts for DLC. Even if you never buy the game, have a look at how much extra missions and stuff you can buy for Ace Combat 6. And you know full well the whole lot is already on the disc. More of a personal thing that.
-If you've been able to avoid the promotion onslaught for Halo, Gears of War, Forza, Project Gotham Racing, Fable, Ninja Gaiden and Mass Effect and you haven't bought a 360, then there's nothing else really new to attract people to the machine. Other than exclusive free DLC swimming costumes for Lara Croft.
-It occasionally makes funny noises. And its hardly the most reliable product out there. I got the red ring once while playing Mass Effect and I had a power cut. I nearly shitted myself. After I went to toilet it worked again.
-Updates are the most annoying thing in the world. For some reason there isn't an option to directly install them to the hard drive. So whenever I have a slight urge to play the Orange Box, I plonk it into the tray. I will be disconnected from Xbox Live and either I choose to update the game which takes a few seconds but you could be talking to someone and it makes you seem like a right arse. Then you reconnect to Xbox Live. Then you have to say, "Sorry I had to update". Even though I have downloaded this update goodness knows how many times.

That's about it I think. Ultimately it does come down to what games you like but, you should be able to find what you like on both machines.

Also my gamertag is JohnBoyAdvance

[Delphine]

Accept my XBL request already GG!.

Maybe he'll accept yours when you accept mine, fagass.

[Oompa Star]

My gamertag is OompaStar (no space in the middle).

For anyone that likes to download stuff off of Xbox Live Marketplace, make sure you have at least 5 gigabytes free on your hard drive. I recently had a problem with content downloads stopping mid-way through the download process. I checked Xbox.com to see if there were any solutions and came up empty (or so I thought). They mentioned memory space as a reason for the content not downloading to my hard drive, but since I still had about 2 gigabytes left, I thought that space wasn't the issue. Two weeks later I found myself clearing about 3 gigabytes worth of content that I never used in order to make space for some games I had purchased. Afterwords, I tried to download Pac-Man CE for the upteenth time and was surprised to see that it finally downloaded.

Case in point, try everything on the troubleshooting list.

[gr4yJ4Y]

So my college sent me a bill that was $1,300 short of what it was supposed to be. No PS360 for me now.

Thanks for all the help and advice though everyone.

[Baba O'Riley]

That sucks.

On a totally unrelated note, my XBL gamertag is JamminGtarman and my PS3 is Zandar10.

I mean, if you care or anything.

[Delphine]

Wow, Baba, you really like Guitar Hero.

[Baba O'Riley]

Wow, Baba, you really like Guitar Hero.

I didn't register my gamertag, my dad did that.

That said, yeah, I play a lot. I like rhythm games, and Guitar Hero and Rock Band are the only games I'm good at in that regard.

[Delphine]

I was referring to the fact that you have played pretty much all of them.

[Baba O'Riley]

I was referring to the fact that you have played pretty much all of them.

Yeah... I even got Rocks the 80's, which is essentially an overpriced expansion pack.