After getting to spend just a short amount of time with the 360 again this weekend (Lead Salad visited me) I'd like to take a look back, get nostalgic and honestly ask myself, did I make the right choice?
Since the reasons for me ditching the 360 have been wildly spewed from my mouth and keyboard I'll keep that to a minimum, but will sum it up as being mainly a feeling of betrayal as a consumer by Microsoft. Betrayed by nickeled and dimed costs as well as the utter failure of them to fix a broken console spurred on by the consumers continuation to buy the damn thing.
For work Salad will sometimes bring his 360 with him when he travels. Since he stopped by my place a couple days before work began he had it with him. After a 3 hour Portal 2 coop marathon he said he wanted to show me the Gears 3 beta.
As soon as he turned on the 360 I instantly became somewhat nostalgic. Not sad, but more akin to the feeling you get when you see an old game you love booting up or when I hear the menu music from Morrowind. A feeling of hey there guy, remember me? Remember how much fun we had? You love me.
I realized how much I missed just how visual the 360 menus are. A little too visual as far as advertisements go, but visual none-the-less.
Seeing Amateria and Sporadic Spider online as the old avatars was refreshing. Watching Salad pop into a chat with them seamlessly and talk without lag or having to say, "can you hear me?" a thousand times was awesome.
I sat and watched as Salad joined a party and played the Gears 3 beta with them and was impressed with what I saw. It was still Gears at it's core, but seemed much smoother and lag free. I started to feel like maybe this was a great game. I started to think maybe I shouldn't have ditched my 360 so I could play this with the guys. Then I saw Salad get blown to bits over and over with the sawed off shotgun and instantly put those crazy notions out of my mind!
Why the hell would I subject myself to that crazy ass broken MP again? I came away from watching the beta with the strong impression that it's somewhat fixed, but still broken. Any game with that much of a douche strategy IS broken. Sure it's totally playable, but fundamentally flawed. You just have to decide what your personal threshold of douche tolerance is and either play it or don't.
I finally asked if Salad had brought a second controller. I wanted to play as a group with the guys again and everyone had Halo Reach (a game series I've struggled between hating and loving since Halo 2). We popped it in and got to playing and I realized after 1 minute that I didn't miss that game at all. It still feels like water guns with 50% gravity and caters to weapon, vehicle and power up control. Bottom line is any feeling of wanting to play that series is pure emotional nostalgia. It was good to be away from it for so long and come back and still hate it. In my mind it reaffirmed what I feel to be true. Halo sucks.
Even though my time with the 360 was short I feel that I don't miss the console as much as I thought and even feared I would. I either played or watched the 360's two biggest exclusives and I don't miss either of them. Bad Company 2 is better than Halo and Uncharted 2 is better than Gears of War 2 and I'm gonna call it, 3 (does that even make sense?!).
The conclusion I came to is that I still feel I made the right choice about getting rid of the 360. If I still had mine it wouldn't get near the amount of play that my PS3 does and I still wouldn't be up for paying for another year of Gold Membership as well as the looming cost of replacing the thing when it breaks because it will. Towards to end of my career with the 360 I only enjoyed L4D and Gears of War 2 Horde. Not worth the 60 bucks.
I guess I realized what I actually missed when I initially put on Salad's headset. Playing with my friends. This should be remedied now that Amateria realized how good Uncharted MP is.
Feel free to comment and ultimately rip me to shreds.
2 things:
ReplyDelete1. I really don't think it's fair to judge a game based on watching it for less than 5 minutes in a beta. Especially on the smallest map and the gametype that encourages shotgun use the MOST (King of the Hill on Checkout). Team Deathmatch is the new gametype for Gears and it works really well IMO. Way more tactical with people being less "douchey" due to the limited number of lives, as opposed to the reckless abandon of King of the Hill with its infinite respawns/aka dying-doesn't-mean-anything-so-I'm-gonna-use-the-sawed-off-and-just-rush-everybody.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm never been a big fan of Gears multi. I definitely have problems with Gears 3, but I'm liking it more than the others. I'm not saying it's incredible or anything and I have no idea how much time I'm going to be putting into the final product. Like I said, it's a beta and some things will change. Writing ANY game off as being flawed after seeing so little of it is ridiculous. *Disclaimer: I would not be shocked if I end up liking the Uncharted 3 multiplayer more than this. I'm excited to see.
2. "I suck at Halo." Those were the exact words that came out of your mouth after we finished playing last night. Not "Halo sucks." Those two statements are very different. I'm not trying to be a dick, but your original statement is more accurate. Halo has definitely changed over the years and you didn't change with it (which is absolutely fine). All shooters are very similar in the sense that you hold a gun and shoot dudes, but at the same time they're all a little bit different. You are very good at Call of Duty and Battlefield, but Halo doesn't suit you anymore.
Again, I'm not saying Halo is perfect at all. It's not. Not by a LONG shot. Armor Lock has all but ruined regular Team Slayer for me. But as I've said before, we like what we're good at. We stick with what we're good at. Saying a game sucks because you're not good at it makes about as much sense as me saying that Bad Company 2 sucks because I had a crappy internet connection and that weird lag when I played it.
SIDE NOTE: Spanking the Portal 2 cooperative mode and taking Tag Team dumps on Shao Kahn's face in Mortal Kombat was a blast!!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I won't rip you apart, but I will amend a bit of what was said, while maybe echoing a bit of Salad's thoughts.
ReplyDeleteHalo is a different beast, but I still think Halo's pros outweigh the cons. Solid campaign, coop without feeling tagged on, a horde style mode, a diverse and ever changing multiplayer experience, and the best map editor I've seen on a console to date. Not to mention that Bungie supports their games better post-launch than 99% of the industry, all while paying attention to the community that plays it, with generally cheaper DLC, and with the forge mode, mostly free changes to maps.
Gears is better, but the style choice still could turn some off. It *is* a beta, so the weapon balancing definitely has some issues, as well as me getting used to the changes in how I approach strategy. (If a guy isn't shooting at me, he probably has a sawed-off... maybe I shouldn't approach this way...)
Original thoughts... I miss you. I like LBP and Uncharted 2, but it isn't the same. Nostalgia of interface aside, I miss having you on the team. I can't count how many times we've been in a game, getting our asses kicked and I say to myself "we sure could use Raph right about now..."
Love you.
Good points on all counts and granted it isn't fair to judge Gears so early, but I will be watching Salad and Amateria closely for a realistic review. No offense brjahu, but your Gears opinions are about as useful as an asshole with teeth. How many times did they fix Gears 2?
ReplyDeleteAs far as Halo you're right. It did change and saying I didn't change with it is probably the most accurate way to put it and I guess that's where the nostalgia comes in. In my mind it still sucks for those reasons I stated AND I do suck at it. I am a fan of the colors (as gay as that sounds) of the MP maps though. Especially the map we played.
I still feel that, those being the 2 biggest 360 exclusives (and technically Gears isn't an exclusive. it could come to the ps3. http://www.industrygamers.com/news/epic-games-would-love-to-put-gears-of-war-on-ps3/) they didn't warrant me keeping the 360.
I truly miss playing with you guys as regular as we used to (we're all much busier than we used to be), but without the games I want to play and my stubborness as a scorned consumer it's just not gonna happen.
I'm looking forward to late night Uncharted MP very soon!
Amateria: I'll always be your Raph.
Lead Salad: Portal and MK was tits!