Games & gear forum: best current gaming system?

You've got the wrong approach, and should be focusing on the GAMES not the system. Sports games will be nearly identical on PS3 and 360, think Rock Band is on all three, racing games likely the same with the possible exception of something like Mario Kart, and there are probably plenty of adventure games out there, though Zelda is a Nintendo owned franchise. Nintendo makes and/or publishes all Zelda titles, so they are only on Nintendo platforms. For now at least. In 5-6 years when the inevitable Apple-Nintendo merger happens, who knows.

But seriously, just go to some game review sites like IGN and Gamespot, and check reviews of games. Just sort of browse through a couple of genres you're interested in, and keep a running tally of which one has the most games you're interested in playing. Whichever one has the most games at the end, wins. After all, who cares if the PS3 has a theoretical higher graphics capability if there's only like 5 games you want to play for it, but the Wii has 30, or the 360 has 25?

And honestly, the graphics on the PS3 and 360 are just higher resolution, they aren't really what I'd call better. Companies blow about 80% of a game's budget coming up with really high resolution graphics, but they still use the same tired ragdoll physics engines, the characters still tend to move like they have a fused spine, facial expressions look like those Conan O'Brien gags where they take a still photo and cut out the mouth. Gameplay is more often than not an afterthought at best. It's basically the same kind of crap they've been pumping out since the move to 3D models instead of sprite based games, only the graphics resolution keeps improving. But if it's ultimately a largely unplayable mess, it may as well have been an animated movie.

A lot of the exceptions to this end up being some of the more "kiddie" style games like Eternal Sonata and Tales of Vesperia, which have cell shaded (cartoony) graphics. If you can get past that, and a few other little flaws, they're pretty good RPGs. And while I admit Gears of War is fun on the 360, the character animations are so stiff you sometimes feel like you're watching someone do that robot dance that was popular in the 80s. So the point of this rant is that you shouldn't discount the Wii simply because the graphics may not be as mature looking. The grass isn't a whole lot greener on the PS3 or 360 side.

I don't know... Tales of Vesparia seemed to me like they had to cut big chunks of it out. They never really explain why that Jager guy is doing anything, you never really fight the twins, that Zagi guy is just some random repeating boss with no real explanation as to why, and the same goes for the "red eye" characters who are never explained. It also seems like they were going to do more with Duke and the city lost in time, just ran out of time and had to edit it out. It would also explain why the difficulty levels seem to jump suddenly. It's a good game, and I've played it through twice already, but It's got nothing on Tales of the Abyss or Tales of Symphonia, and it doesn't even come CLOSE to Final Fantasy X.

But the Wii has the whole Metroid Prime trilogy, and a new classic Mario now. That's on top of Zelda. But the Wii is aimed more at the casual gamer, not the same type of person who'd look for a 360 or PS3. They're aimed at different groups of people, so it's kind of pointless to fault the Wii for not appealing to hardcore gamers, because that was never Nintendo's intent.

Yeah, but none of that really meshes with the rest of the game, and feels like the just were trying to tie up loose ends as much as possible. Especially since you don't fight Yeager until the very end of the game. And the "red eyes" were supposed to be some kind of new class of warrior. And then Zagi just pops up out of nowhere early in the game, and then just keeps popping up, but they never explain why he was there looking for Flynn in the first place.

But since Tales games, like Final Fantasy, are all self-contained stories, a sequel is unlikely. Even Tales of Symphonia II is just a game set in the same world as Tales of Symphonia, but other than that, it has no real relation to the original GameCube game. If they were going to do a Tales sequel though, Tales of the Abyss seems much more deserving. Actually a prequel, where they could actually show the great war they talk about during the game. I still wish Square-Enix would do a proper sequel to Final Fantasy X, and even a prequel to detail the great war they talk about in that game.

Tales of Vesparia was a decent enough game, but it just feels like at about 75-80% of the way through the game, they suddenly had to rush to finish up the rest and get it out the door. So they edited out a lot of the unfinished bits, and tried to stitch things together as best they could. Makes me wonder if the extra characters talked about for the PS3 version will mean that this is the full game, with the extra content added in, a la Star Ocean 3 on the PS2. The US release was essentially the "Director's Cut" version.

I think either 360 or Ps3 will work.
If you want online play go Xbox..
Blu-Ray PS3

- a baseball game _ Pretty close on both
- rock band _ Again same...
- a racing game _ I really liked Forza 3 on Xbox
- adventure game _ (like zelda from along time ago) I think ps3 may have a slight edge, but both have many.
I have a 360 and like it... but I would look at a few review sites.