I’ve been playing with the HD systems this Christmas, especially the Xbox 360, and it is very obvious to me that the HD Twins are PC game machines but ‘casualized’.
I don’t see the Wii going to the ‘casual route’ so much as the HD Twins going that direction. Nintendo’s “New Generation” isn’t really new, it is actually very old, the original generation. Wii is the spiritual successor to the Atari 2600 and NES. HD Twins seem more like the spiritual successors to the Commodore 64 or other casualized PC gaming machines.
Everything about the Xbox 360 reminds me of a castrated PC. The system, itself, makes noise, puts out tons of heat, and looks like a chunk of a PC. Even the revamped menu system with Xbox 360 ‘miis’ still have the smell of PC about it. Maybe I am confusing the smell of PC with the smell of Microsoft, but when I play the Xbox 360, I do not think I am playing a game console but a headless PC that is connected to the TV because someone couldn’t afford a monitor.
The games feel and look like PC games. This doesn’t mean they are bad games, many are very good, but they do not feel like CONSOLE games. They feel like PC games. Even to this day, playing a FPS on a console (especially with those dual sticks, ugh) feels as absurd to me today as playing Ultima on the NES. Yes, it is possible. And there is certainly an audience for it. But it feels ‘watered down’. In other words, ‘casualized’.
Ironically, the HD Twin fanboys and developers keep declaring war on ‘casual gaming’. But that is exactly what the HD Twins are: casualized PC game machines. While a stereotype, I cannot dismiss that I always see Xbox 360s attached to male teenagers and married men who use it as their ‘fantasy out’ while they deal with the daily rigors of family life. I never see Xbox 360s played by women, by grandparents, or even being a family console. It is always played by the men, often in a backroom, seperate from everyone else. (Which puts it as having more in common with a PC than a game console.)
There is one thing Xbox 360 has performed better than PC gaming: local multiplayer. In the past, before the Internet, before LAN gaming, multiplayer PC gaming had to have been performed by multiple people around one computer. They would either squeeze around the keyboard or there was ‘hotseat’ where one would play a round and the other would do his round. Some examples would be Archon (1983), MULE (1983), or Star Control 1 (1990?). After playing Gears of War all night for several nights, it is clear that the local multiplayer really makes the game.
But, alas, publishers are treating Internet capability as a means to decrease local multiplayer which will isolate the HD Twins from the household even more.
Not even the hardcore can disagree with the Wii’s terrific local multiplayer from Wii Sports to Mario Kart Wii to Super Smash Brothers Brawl.
Speaking of online capability, it is an incorrect strategy for consoles to look at the Internet as PCs did. PC gaming went LAN first, then we tricked the software to do LAN over the Internet (Kali FTW), and only then did Internet gaming become more prevalent. But Internet gaming, aside from MMORPGs, have been used as an evolution of the LAN model where multiple PCs were connected with everyone playing with a different PC… all alone.
Internet gaming for consoles has to be performed without isolating the console from local multiplayer. No one has really performed this yet. Microsoft and Sony are adopting the PC way with headsets and one console per player. People don’t realize this yet, but Nintendo is pioneering this avenue (with many stumbles I might add). An example is the Wii-Speak microphone that picks up what is going on in the room rather than being a microphone for *one* person. Something like the Wii Speak shows Nintendo aiming for internet gaming to be an expansion of many people around one console rather than the PC model which is one person per machine.
However, I must say that the HD Twins also beat the PC in the racing genre. Good heavens, how pitiful racing games were before 3d! 3d has made many games more obtuse than before, but racing games have been very much helped. Before 3d, racing games were either top-down view (RC Pro-AM, Rock-and-Roll Racing) or behind the car (Rad Racer, Pole Position) making a faux 3d view. No one ever wants to play retro racing games after 3d. It isn’t much fun to play such racing games on the computer due to the smaller screen and the mouse and keyboard doesn’t feel right. On a big TV screen and in one of the rare cases where the classic controller is the superior interface, racing games rock.
I’ve also been very disapointed by the online stores for the HD Twins. All the games feel like shareware emerging from its grave. I did enjoy the Age of Booty, yet it did feel like a shareware PC game from the mid 1990s. Geometry Wars does feel like a console game. Perhaps it is its high action and arcade like nature. (Most console games are action orientated or arcade like.) I was also disapointed with the lack of diversity of titles available. Twin stick shooters are cool, but I would prefer some games with more content to them.
Complain about the VC all you want, but when I look at the overall library of what is currently available, aside from just lasering in on what comes out each week, I’m amazed at the sheer content of titles available. Aside from the lack of Square-Enix RPGs, I can always go to the VC and find something I like in a large diversity.
But then again, I’m partial to gaming between 1985-1995.
Malstrom's Articles News 