Why do console games suck so bad???

[John Crichton]

However, this is not true of all games. Katamari Damacy for Playstation 2 is an excellent game, and you don't need to press any buttons. You move two joysticks. Nintendo is sort of the bright light of innovation in the industry. When they announced the DS, I thought they were insane, but it allowed them to create many fun, inventive games. Sony's PSP, meanwhile is a neat piece of hardware with very few good games. The Playstation and X-Box have some good games, but that's only because they have a lot more games. Percentage-wise, Nintendo has a great deal more winners. The Nintendo Revolution has me excited.

Percentage of good to bad games should mean absolutely nothing when buying a console. All you need to look at are the quantity of good games and games that you like to play and forget the rest. There are plenty of sites that review games out there (and messageboards) and it's easier and easier to avoid the stinkers these days than it was in the past, at least for me.

The Gamecube has been a dissappointment to me, just like the N64. Yes, those systems all had some outstanding games but there simply weren't enough of them, not to mention an almost complete lack of 3rd party games - which translates directly into diversity of games.

And for the record, yes some games are a bit too complex for my liking but I stay away from those. Have consoles gotten worse than in the past, certainly not! There are just many more games and types of games to choose from now.

 

[Arnwyn]

Percentage of good to bad games should mean absolutely nothing when buying a console. All you need to look at are the quantity of good games and games that you like to play and forget the rest.

This needs to be repeated for truth.

Percentages are valueless when buying a console - you need to look at total numbers to get proper console value-for-money. (The whole "quantity vs. quality" debate is entirely nonsensical, because they don't have to be mutually exclusive - and they're not.)

Nintendo is sort of the bright light of innovation in the industry. When they announced the DS, I thought they were insane, but it allowed them to create many fun, inventive games. Sony's PSP, meanwhile is a neat piece of hardware with very few good games. The Playstation and X-Box have some good games, but that's only because they have a lot more games. Percentage-wise, Nintendo has a great deal more winners. The Nintendo Revolution has me excited.

If we want to look at "innovation" when it comes to (current) consoles, the PS2 has the largest number of innovations (everything from Katamari Damacy to Okami to the Eye Toy), no question.

With the Revolution, though, I expect that to change. (Though, IMO, "innovation" isn't the panacea that some people think it is.)

 

[XCorvis]

Hated Nintendo; controllers were not rounded on edges and hurt my palms to hold. Never played Zelda, Metroid, etc. I was exclusively a Sega Genesis player (Sonic rules! LOL), then moved on to Sega CD and 3DO and then PS1 to play Suikoden I + II and Resident Evil I-III.

...

Don't like fighting games. Can't master the controls. Too hard, makes my thumb hurt.

Hate Myst, 7th Guest, that kind of "smarty-pants" crap.

You know what game rocked for multi-player? Gauntlet: Dark Legacy. You play one screen up to 4 players at same time. That's the kind of multiplayer game I want.

Gamecube has hardly any good games, just RE4 and Gauntlet.

Call of Duty 2 was awful and other random thoughts... :\

The problem is not that console games suck, it's that you don't like the vast majority of video games. There's just more selection in computer games. You also don't sound like a hardcore computer gamer to me (no offense intended), and that's who consoles are aimed at now.

You want games like Mario Kart, Mario Party, Fusion Frenzy, Super Monkeyball, Baldur's Gate: Dark Aliance. Low learning curve, simple gameplay, minimal strategy or tactics. Read the reviews before you buy a game - they'll usually help you realize if you'll like it or not. Gamespot has a "party game" genre that you might want to look through.

 

[dogoftheunderworld]

... I was raised on Atari 2600, Colecovision and arcade games like Donkey Kong...

Dang youngin's and their fancy smancy Atari "2600"s. Back in the day, we had Pong... and we liked it! If we got tired of Pong, we had to program our own games ... on our VIC-20 ... and we liked that too!

 

[mojo1701]

Dang youngin's and their fancy smancy Atari "2600"s. Back in the day, we had Pong... and we liked it! If we got tired of Pong, we had to program our own games ... on our VIC-20 ... and we liked that too!

Program your own game? What are you, a Communist?

 

[farscapesg1]

I'm more of a PC gamer, if for no other reason then not being able to justify buying game consoles to the wife when we don't have kids yet It's easy to justify computer upgrades when we are both using it all the time, so I usually have a pretty good system.

I've never been a big "Street Fighter" genre fan. I don't care for playing First-person shooters with people across the state/nation/world. Those are more fun to be sitting in a room with all you buddies so you can see their faces when you take them out

I wouldn't mind the console games if there was just more "cross-platform" going on. As it stands there are games that I will never get to play thanks to the fact that they haven't been "ported" to the PC. The Gauntlet series is a good example. When Gauntlet Legends was released on the arcade, I loved it. Then I heard it was being ported to some of the consoles and there was talk of taking it to the PC. Well, the PC idea seems to have died for the entire series Why, for the love of god, can't they port them to the PC? Now I am seeing a bigger trend of games only going to console :\ Is the PC game platform dying? And then you have the issue of three different game consoles with very little cross-over between them. If I get a Nintendo system, that means no Halo. If I get an XBox that means no Zelda

 

[Arnwyn]

Is the PC game platform dying?

Absolutely it is - there's actually been a fair number of reports and editorials about it the last couple of years ago.

And then you have the issue of three different game consoles with very little cross-over between them. If I get a Nintendo system, that means no Halo. If I get an XBox that means no Zelda

Yeah, but this is to be expected - the console manufacturers want exclusives, as it gives the consumer a reason to buy that particular console. Smart business practice on their part.

 

[mojo1701]

Yeah, but this is to be expected - the console manufacturers want exclusives, as it gives the consumer a reason to buy that particular console. Smart business practice on their part.

Which is a double-edged sword for 'Cube: on the one hand, the exclusive titles for Nintendo are great, but there are a lot of semi-exclusive titles for the other two that 'Cube doesn't get, e.g. Star Wars: Battlefront.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I always choose console systems based on the games, not on the console itself.

I bought a Nintendo 64 so I could play Perfect Dark.
I'll buy an X-Box 360 so I can play Perfect Dark Zero.

 

[John Crichton]

I'll agree with Arnwyn and add my own comments...

Is the PC game platform dying?

Yes. The PC game, the way the industry currently makes big games, needs to sell big-time or not cost that much to make - which is getting harder with polygons and 3D graphics in most games. Anything in-between and the company goes under. These developers are getting swallowed up by the big companies like Take 2 & EA (hell, one could be owned by the other at this point, I've lost track). So they will be less willing to take chances on games that aren't sequels or are typically on the PC.

So a game like Gauntlet, which was designed for a controller is most likely to stay in the console arena. Strategy games (RTS & turn based), MMO RPGs, some normal RPGs, Tycoon/God games & FPS are the domain of the PC now. There are a few exceptions but unless you like those genres you are better off getting console.

I think that PC games will still be around for quite some time, but the kinds of games available simply won't have the diversity of consoles.

And then you have the issue of three different game consoles with very little cross-over between them. If I get a Nintendo system, that means no Halo. If I get an XBox that means no Zelda

That's by design. The average console, mid-way through it's life (say, 2 years old) will cost around $250. Add in an extra controller and memory card and you are down maybe another $80. That's not bad. To play Half-Life 2 you need a system that can handle the graphics. The video card alone will cost you $200. So the whole system - which won't even be close to a top of the line system or even mid-range (without monitor or any accessories) will cost you $600. That's 2 consoles right there and a few games.

And yes, most people already own a computer so it's easier to just have an all-in-one solution but that's not how things work. I agree that it's frustrating to (my own life example) own a Gamecube that only has around 12 games over its whole existence that I would bother playing and I only got it to play the Resident Evil franchise (exclusive at the time), Metroid & Zelda. Luckily, the hundreds of fun hours my friends and I had with Super Smash Bros Melee made up for the cost of the initial purchase it was still a system I could have lived without. But I'm a HUGE Resident Evil fan so I had no choice.

In this next gen of systems, if you want a system at launch you will be spending ~ $500 to get the system and some games (maybe not Nintendo but we'll see). But that price will drop after a holiday season or 2 (which is also when there will be big enough selection of games to know which system is for you). There is an increasingly bigger amount of games every year that are ported or flat-out released on all 3 consoles (see the same reason about chance PC games above). Now Nintendo is sometimes left out because the user base isn't large enough to do it. I can see this trend continuing in the next gen systems.

The big titles like Madden will at the very least be on both Xbox360 & PS3. There will be exclusives and if you only want to own one system you'll have to choose which ones are more important. The safest current bet are on the Sony as their user base is easily bigger than anyone elses which means that more games are likely to come out for it.

I'm curious to see if Microsoft's first-release system get enough early supporters to make a dent. Maybe a bit but their launch line-up isn't lighting the world on fire. There isn't a single must-have, system-exclusive game on there. There will be some fun games that will look great and the system will sell-out but we'll see. I can't wait to play these games on my TV that I bought specifically to play high-res progressive scan games. Mmmm.