The Big Bad Console Thread - Sway your Station with an Xboner !

Ronne_sl said:

Being a jackass aside, I'm actually completely underwhelmed by everything I've seen out of the gen so far. I mean yes, it does look (slightly) better, but this is the best they have to offer after 8 fucking years? 4 year old PC graphics? I was really expecting a bigger leap in graphics than we're getting , but so far everything is a big fat meh.

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I think you're going to see it get better but agree with the broad strokes of this.

This is going to be like...the last generation of consoles if this is the best they can muster. And that's as someone who is excited and ready to get the ps4.

I just enjoy Sony exclusives a lot I guess. Just think, the last really big Sony exclusive for the ps3 was The Last of Us. Which I enjoyed the living shit out of.

As a gimmick, though, a touchscreen pad is way better than wagglan!

I actually kinda like the intent of the touchscreen pad. The PS4 is doing this with the Vita and remote play to some extent.

I guess I like the gamepad for the Wii U because it allows me to do things like let my son play Pikmin on the system without having to give him the TV, which is hooked to my PC, the Wii U and the ps3 (soon to be ps4)

It has some advantages but its definitely a gimmick.

Nintendo got lucky with the waggle gimmick and made so much money from the non gamer demographic because of it, I think they feel sort of defined by it, such that they felt they had to come up with a new gimmick for the new system, even if they should have just kept the wagglan and invested in beefing up other areas.

Utnayan_sl said:

Last of us was fantastic. So were a lot of the other Sony exclusives I played.

But yeah, one of the major problems is the gap in upgrade paths. PC's are already three times as powerful than either of these consoles, and twice as powerful on a budget mainline. The games, even when developed for properly, are not going to look at different than what I have already seen 2 years ago with DX 11 and max settings on my PC. Sometimes I wonder if they are just trying to condition the market on purpose.

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I think they just feel constrained by price. PS3 showed people won't early adopt a 600 plus dollar console until the prices come down. So they're stuck in a rock and a hard place. If they want to build something that will straight out compete with PC, they have to go beyond a price point people are willing to pay. 400 bucks for the ps4 is a carefully crafted and designed for price, same as 500 dollars for the xbox one. They are trying to put in parts that give them enough power to go for 5 plus years, while remaining below a price point that people consider too high for a console.

They'll never be able to compete 1 to 1 with PC on computational power because of this fact. People perceive consoles to be worth, you know, significantly less than a gaming pc (even if that perception is often wrong).

If Sony and Microsoft thought they could get away with a 1200 dollar console that could remain competitive to the PC over the course of half a decade, they'd do it in a heart beat. They just know they can't.

The battery life on the wii u controller is a crime against humanity.

Now, I kinda like ZombiU. But I've been a zombie fan since the early 90s. Its a frustrating game that plays tanky and I can see why people don't like it, but I did. That's a purely personal position I don't expect anyone else to agree with.

Its a roguelike meets classic resident evil style controls and gameplay, basically, and so I like it.

Utnayan_sl said:

For me, it takes me out of the game. Inventory management by looking down at my Gamepad is a nuisance. I really like control of a game to feel attached and fluid, so I can just stare at my LED and get sucked into the game I am playing. When I have to break that to look at a bag on a separate screen and push a button to equip something, taking my eyes completely off the LED and on top of that having to concentrate on the actual controller/key maps, it takes me right out of the game.

Like you said, I like it as a gamepad to play games on while the TV is in use, but that doesn't ever happen for me. If I am watching a movie/show with my wife, she wants me to be watching a movie/show with her, not playing a mario game. But we also have about 7 TV's in the house and 2 360's, 2 Wii's, a Wii U, and a PS3. So plenty of entertainment options for everyone else.

Now, if it actually had a range? I could play it before bed but... poor design limits it to bluetooth range before it cuts out. Terrible design thought.

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Yeah we have several tvs as well, I just happen to have the Wii U attached to mine because for the longest time the only game I had for it was Monster Hunter, and then I did a buy 2 get 1 free Wii U game deal at target so I was playing through some of those. Eventually its getting moved to my daughter's room and the tv the kids share but my son loves the Pikmin series so he asks to play it and that's pretty much the only reason I get any use from the feature as well. But in that extremely specific situation, its a cool gimmick lol.

I guess I don't mind the gamepad because I played through Wind Waker with a gameboy attached to the Gamecube back in the day and got kinda used to doing some of that stuff on the second screen back then. Its not a perfect solution but I don't mind it per se.

Yeah I agree its not a completely well thought out design choice, just handy at times. Sony copied it basically, so its not a completely horrible idea. Just not well thought out on the Wii U.