Holiday Console Breakdown

By

Gerald Robinson

For the holiday season I present you a breakdown of what systems are worth buying and what games you should pick up for them. There has been a veritable “gamesplosion” in the last couple of months and rather than stumble around blindly like your eggnog sauced grandmother, I thought you could all profit from a little guidance.

Wii

Don’t let the hype and sales numbers fool you. The Wii isn’t the second coming of Jesus in the form of a repackage Gamecube. This lightweight makes its living by catering to the crowd of people that barely know what a video game is but love to flail about madly when the opportunity to break home appliances arises.

What You Get: For $250, the Wii comes with one Wii remote, a nunchuk, and Wii Sports. It has 512mb of built in memory and can use Secure Digital (SD) cards to uselessly store, but not access (while playing), saved games and files. Impressively, you can download old game titles from the NES, the Genesis, and more straight to your system for a small fee. Forget about playing games on the internet. A confusing and mind boggling interface requires you to know a 16 digit friend code for every person you want to play with that is unique to every single, different game you play in order to play with your friends – that or you get paired up with random players that you can’t use voice or text chat with. The real slap in the face is that Nintendo didn’t bother adding DVD playback or making it HD ready.

Best Single Player Game: Super Mario Galaxy – The triumphant return of Mario 64 is here. Blast off into outer space as you collect stars and bash the shit out of Bowser. With amazing artistic vision, tight controls, and some truly genius caliber levels, Super Mario Galaxy is cream of the crop.

Best Multiplayer Game: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles – This rehash of the Resident Evil storyline pre-Resident Evil 4 takes you on a rail shooter frenzy ala House of the Dead. For up to two players you can re-explore the mansion where Jill became the master of unlocking, or dodge Nemesis as he rampages across Raccoon City in search of you. With hours of serious light gun challenge and a crap-ton of unlockable content, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is worth any Wii owner’s time.

Final Word: It’s a party system. Sure, you can get some quality single player time in with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and Super Mario Galaxy, but everything else on the system is best played in bite-sized chunks with your friends or family. Pick up the Wii if you have small children or if the only time you game is with a bunch of drunken friends. The Wii is not a system for “real” gamers.

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is the next best thing to buying a toaster oven, except when the toaster of gets hot it doesn’t break down. In all seriousness, despite the incredibly frightening breakdown rate of the 360 it has an impressive game library and leans on the side of mature titles. Packaged at a fair price, you won’t notice it gutting your wallet until you start buying extras and accessories.

What You Get: With the 360, assuming you avoid the handicapped arcade pack, you’ll be ready to enjoy your system right out of the box. Packaged with a 20GB or 120GB hard drive, HD cables, and two free games (Forza 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance – Holiday Only special), the 360 is a deal that is hard to pass up at the $350 and $450 price tags, respectively. The 360 has an incredibly robust set of online features and a downloadable movie store. It also has the largest library of the current generation. What is strangely absent from the whole affair is an affordable wireless setup ($100 for the adapter). Let’s just hope that you won’t ever need this so badly that you’re willing to pay its price.

Best Single Player Game: Bioshock – There is nothing quite like beating an entire nation of hobos into submission with a wrench and then setting a swarm of bees on them. This slightly philosophical, often creepy, and devilishly creative first person shooter is one of those games that everyone needs to own – No excuses.

Best Multiplayer Game: Call of Duty 4 – Forget Halo, it can’t hold a candle to the high octane, adrenaline fueled gunplay in Call of Duty 4. With more customizing options, game ranks, and achievements than you can shake a ten foot pole at, this is the game to beat. Trick out your weapons and slap on the anti-tea bagging perk, Martyr, because its time to blow up some terrorist pieces of shit.

Final Word: If everyone you know already owns a 360 and you want someone to play with, you can’t go wrong. Be wary of potential for your system to breakdown and get an extended warranty if you can. Also, get ready to shell out extra cash for its internet service and any of its other overly expensive accessories. The library is solid and whether or not you are playing alone the 360 will keep you happy for years to come.

Playstation 3

The PS3 is the heaviest and most expensive system currently on that is large enough to take shelter behind in a storm. It’s a solid argument to question whether or not all the features that have been shoveled into it are worth your money when all you want to do is play some video games. Sony has started to make a comeback with some fantastic first party games and is looking to drive that success and their new lower prices into a winning position.

What You Get: The PS3 breaks down into two models. The $400 model, 40GB, has full backwards compatibility with the PS1 and zero with the PS2. The $500 model, 80GB, has full backwards compatibility with the PS1 and roughly 60% with PS2. Both systems also include a BluRay DVD player, a built in wireless adapter, a free internet service, a web browser, the ability to install the OS of your choice, the ability to drop in a new laptop hard drive at any time, 1080p resolution, 7.1 digital surround sound, and Bluetooth compatibility. The $500 model even includes a compact flash, SD, and memory stick slot for easy file transfer. What you’re not getting is any sort of HD cable to use with your system, which doesn’t make sense as the system is designed to have the best quality experience on an HDTV.

Best Single Player Game: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune – A little Indiana Jones, a bit of Tomb Raider, and a hell of a lot of Gears of War combine to make this pulp action adventure game one for the ages. This game perfects duck and cover gunplay and tosses in a kick-ass story that wouldn’t be far off from a summer blockbuster movie. Hands down, it is the graphics king across all consoles.

Best Multiplayer Game: Warhawk – Taking advantage of the PS3’s dedicated servers for online play and its free network, Warhawk aims for the skies. Intense 32 player battles filled with tanks, jeeps, infantry, and planes will keep you playing for months. Hundreds of servers, thousands of players, and new content already on the horizon combine to make Warhawk an amazing experience.

Final Word: Whether you need the added features or not, chances are if you had them you’d put quite a few of them to use. It also helps that the value of its features are outstanding for its price point. While it had a rough start, (with very few exclusive titles worth mentioning and little to play in its first few months on the market) the PS3 has found some real solid footing and is poised to make some serious moves in the months ahead. It has some of the best first party titles on the market and shares a multiplatform library with the 360. There is little wrong with the PS3.

Holiday Best Buy

The Playstation 3. It’s hard to argue with such an amazing value. Having to dump $30 on cables to get it HD ready is a small issue when compared to everything else you’re getting. Sony has proven time and again that it has some of the best developers in the business working on first party titles for them and it is no coincidence that they ruled the previous two generations with an iron fist. A massive back library of games, some of the most promising titles on the horizon, and more value than its cost, the PS3 is the system to buy this holiday season.