Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Fully well-rounded

My wife and I have absolutely no patience when it comes to gift-giving; it's incredibly rare that we can actually hold out until the actual day to exchange gifts. Our 4th wedding anniversary is in a little over a week and being that my wife is currently in a cast recovering from foot surgery, this meant that I was actually tasked with not only buying her a gift, but buying myself a gift as well (at her request, and on her dime). And so, last night, I bought her a 32gb iPod Touch, and she bought me a Playstation 3.

The PS3 is going to serve mainly as a Blu-Ray player, which is just fine with me; ever since the format war ended, I knew I was going to get a Blu-Ray player at some point, and so why not the PS3. I did feel compelled to get some games for it, though, because, well, it can do that, and so I picked up Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Ratchet & Clank and spent roughly 10-20 minutes with both.

Uncharted certainly looks really nice, and it plays like a masculine Tomb Raider, which is just fine. And R&C has moments of near-Pixar-like beauty, although I'm not sure it's anything the 360 can't handle.

It is exceedingly weird to now own all 5 major gaming devices (not counting my cellphone, which I play Scrabble and Solitaire on during my commutes and my PC, which I haven't used in a gaming capacity since I stopped playing WoW). I had been an Xbox loyalist - and rather proudly at that - for a very long time. I suppose I kinda still am, to be honest - the 360 still has the most compelling lineup and I am an Achievement whore, and that shit goes a long way when it comes to considering cross-platform purchases. But it is nice to be able to know that I can finally experience all that this generation has to offer.

And hey - I'll give the PS3 a fair shot, now that I have it. I'll admit that I've been a hater since before it launched, and I maintain that there isn't really anything in the PS3 catalog that's screaming for a purchase right now; in fact, there's really not all that much that I'm thinking about renting, either, except for Resistance and maybe Motorstorm. I will probably end up checking out MGS4, but I've hated that franchise for years and nothing I've seen of this new game has done anything to change my opinion that MGS is fantastically overrated. OK, and I am looking forward to LittleBigPlanet. Still, though, that's not really much of anything to get terribly excited about, and unless there's a terribly compelling reason not to, any cross-platform games are gonna be bought for the 360; that's where my friends are, that's where my Achievements are, that's what I'm used to.

3 comments:

Corey Chaplan said...

I love my PS3, and you should have a dam good time with Uncharted. R&C is next on my list of games as well.

Hit me up with a friend request if you like.

PSN: Kori911

Anonymous said...

R&C is by far one of the boys' favorite games, and I really like it too. I don't know how into racing games you are, but the Need For Speed series (particularly Carbon) is fun and durned purdy.

I hope you got, er I mean Katherine got you the backwards compatible one, too.

jervo said...

Joe: I've played the NFS games, but I prefer Burnout. And the PS3 we got isn't backwards compatible, but that's not really such a big deal since I don't have any PS2 games. That said, I'd love to get my hands on the Oddworld games on PS1.