[OT] Which Gaming Console to buy?

[Agnostic Paladin]

I just want to add that I suggest taking all discussion of graphics capability of one console over another with a grain of salt. There's really only so much that can be done at the resolution of a standard television, and the graphics of any console will not awe anyone who plays modern pc games. (High Def tv is another story of course, but anyone who's got HDTV can probably afford multiple consoles anyhow.) That said, the XBox can look nicer than the PS2.

 

[Tsyr]

I just want to add that I suggest taking all discussion of graphics capability of one console over another with a grain of salt. There's really only so much that can be done at the resolution of a standard television, and the graphics of any console will not awe anyone who plays modern pc games. (High Def tv is another story of course, but anyone who's got HDTV can probably afford multiple consoles anyhow.) That said, the XBox can look nicer than the PS2.

Graphics mean more than resolution, though. And I beg to differ... I have a good computer, and some of the stuff on the x-box is still impressive.

 

[Uruush]

If you do a seach on gameranking.com for the top rated games of all time, (any platform including PC, although they don't go back to any platforms before the Playstation, and limit your search to 50 games, you'll find 12 PS2 games, 2 X-Box games, and 1 Gamecube game. The X-Box games are Halo and NFL2K3. You already indicated that you don't like console shooters as much as PC (I'm with you there), and you can get the great Sega sports games on any of the consoles. If you care about a good quantity of quality games, the choice seems pretty easy to me. If you want to play some amazing games from the recent past (Final Fantasy 7,8,9, Metal Gear Solid, XenoGears, Vagrant Story, Chrono Cross, etc. a PS2 can play those too.

Fighting games, "Console games" i.e. Jak & Daxter, Super Mario Sunshine, Devil May Cry, etc. Driving games, and Sports games are the types of games I think consoles do better than PCs. PS2's Virtua Fighter 4 is probably the best fighter available; X-Box's Dead or Alive 3 doesn't show up in the top 100. While pretty, the gameplay is extremely shallow.

The X-Box does have better graphics, but honestly, there isn't a single game on it that I want to play that isn't on another console as well. If you are a sports game fanatic (EA or Sega, Football or Basketball), you don't really care about any other game genre, and you care about having the best graphics currently available then the X-box is for you. Other than that, I don't see why people bother.

 

[Tsyr]

Logic I don't understand:

The X-Box currently has very few good games. The PS2 does. Ergo, the PS2 is the better system. The fact that the the PS2 also has crates of games that are average or horrible too, and really has no better a ratio of good games to bad ones is completely irrelivant.

*shrug*

I'll admit right now, the X-Box needs more good games. I don't think that's any indication of anything else, however.

 

[Slacker]

I think the best thing you (or anyone interested in buying a console) can do is look at the games available for each system. Choose the console that has the type of games you're looking for. My opinion?

Gamecube: The little cube that could. Not a huge amount of game titles, but a huge amount of quality games. (Metroid Prime, Super Mario Sunshine, Starfox Adventures)

PS2: Buy it. There's too many good games for it to go ignored. It has a large amount of support and a wide selection of games. (GTA:Vice City, Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy X)

X-box: If you like online gaming, this box is the best suited for it. Although it only has one or two truly outstanding games, it should get better as more developers take advantage of its hardware. (Halo, Splinter Cell, Buffy The Vampire Slayer)


I don't think you'll go wrong by buying the PS2.

 

[Uruush]

Logic I don't understand:

The X-Box currently has very few good games. The PS2 does. Ergo, the PS2 is the better system. The fact that the the PS2 also has crates of games that are average or horrible too, and really has no better a ratio of good games to bad ones is completely irrelivant.

*shrug*

I'll admit right now, the X-Box needs more good games. I don't think that's any indication of anything else, however.

Are you refering to my post? I don't understand the above logic either. I agree that the PSX and PS2 have boatloads of average to horrible games, and that both of those systems have no better ratio of good to bad games than any other system. I think that the NGC and the Dreamcast probably have the best ratio. My argument is that the X-box has only a few good games period, and that the games it has that are really good are either:

A) available on other consoles,
or
B) in a genre (shooter) that I prefer to play on a PC.

The X-box needs more good exclusives. I'm somewhat interested in Buffy and if I didn't have Jet Grind Radio on the Dreamcast, JSRF might hold some appeeal for me.

I've owned the Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari 5200, NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, PSX, and the PS2. In every generation, a console has to have *something* on it that I can't get on another console. I'm sure the X-box is a good value for some people, and has a few good games. There's just no exclusives on it that compel me to put out the dough, and this from someone who buys just about everything console-wise.

 

[drothgery]

Logic I don't understand:

The X-Box currently has very few good games. The PS2 does. Ergo, the PS2 is the better system. The fact that the the PS2 also has crates of games that are average or horrible too, and really has no better a ratio of good games to bad ones is completely irrelivant.

Well, the ratio doesn't matter much; you don't have to buy bad games. Absolute numbers matter, as do the distribution in the genres that you like.

Of course, if you've got the money, you can just get two or three consoles. I've got a PS2 and an Xbox, and I'll probably get a GameCube early next year (I want to play Skies of Arcadia, and a GameCube looks more interesting than a used Dreamcast).

 

[Zappo]

More than the current number of good games, it matters that the PS2 has about ten times the units around that either Xbox or GC have. This ensures that good games will be made in equal or larger numbers than the other consoles for a long time.

 

[Etan Moonstar]

There is one aspect of console gaming that I'm surprised nobody has touched on yet, given the nature of this board--multiplayer gaming. Before I moved to go to grad school (sadly, haven't found a gaming group here yet), my wife and I used to have friends over every Saturday for a couple of sessions of D&D. Meeting shortly after everyone had a chance to get their own lunch, we'd play D&D for a few hours, then I'd collect a couple of dollars from everyone to compensate for the groceries I'd purchased earlier in the week and cook dinner for everyone (great way to save money if someone in your group likes to cook). While dinner was cooking and being eaten, we'd turn on the Nintendo and play some multiplayer games. After dinner, we'd then resume gaming for another few hours.

It is in the area of fun multiplayer games that the Cube really outshines the competition (as did the N64). A quick list of my old group's favorite games: James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire; Bomberman Generation; Gauntlet Dark Legacy; Super Monkey Ball (and number 2 is even better than the first); and of course the ultimate party game, Super Smash Bros. As someone mentioned earlier, the PS2 really doesn't support multiplayer gaming. The X-Box has Halo and some sports games, I guess, but since you say you dislike fps's that's not a big deal to you (and I don't like sports or sports games).

My philosophy regarding console gaming is that I have a PC if I want to play single-player or online games. X-Box games are generally ports from the PC or multi-console games, so it lacks appeal, imho, to PC gamers. Thanks to ePSXe, I can also play PS games on my PC (and they generally look a lot better on a hi-res monitor than on the TV), so the backwards-compatibility of the PS2 doesn't mean much to me. I also watch DVDs on my computer, so I couldn't care less about the DVD capability of the PS2 or the X-Box. The PS2 does have a lot of great single-player games, and I love playing some of them on my brother-in-law's PS2, but I find myself accumulating too many single-player games on the PC that I haven't had enough time to play.

Summary: if you use your computer for single-player games, online gaming, and watching DVDs and just want a console for great multi-player party games, go with the Cube (which also has some good single-player games--Nintendo has always been known for concentrating on fun gameplay). If you're not interested in multiplayer and just want to play single-player console games, get the PS2. And if you have a computer, don't waste your time even looking at the X-Box.

 

[Kibo]

The X-box needs more good exclusives. I'm somewhat interested in Buffy and if I didn't have Jet Grind Radio on the Dreamcast, JSRF might hold some appeeal for me.

For what it's worth I found Jet Set VASTLY superior to Jet Grind.