Saturday, 9 February 2008

Consoles, consoles and more consoles

Surfing the internet this morning I stumbled across an advert for a new video game. The game 'Lost' based on the TV show, finally arriving in a store near you on the 29th February. Much anticipated, much awaited. One fly in the ointment. Only available on three platforms. PC - not sure that my laptop is up to that, PS3 or Xbox360. Oh dear. And me with a collection of consoles but not either of those.

First of all I bought a PlayStation. I'd been playing Final Fantasy VII on somebody else's PlayStation and just had to finish the game (I never did by the way!). Next came PlayStation 2 when it became impossible to buy games for the PlayStation. So then there were two...

Then came the release of several Sonic the Hedgehog games. Only on the GameCube. Happy memories from past acquaintance with the Sega Megadrive. And the necessity to buy a GameCube to continue this happy association.

The original PlayStation is now retired... so there are still two.

The next game that I just had to play was the much advertised 'Fable'. Curse their excellent advertising campaign. Fable, only available on the Xbox. So then there were three. It was worth it though, as Fable remains one of only two games that I've ever finished (the other being Tomb Raider Legend).

The Xbox has been my favourite of the three. Best graphics, best processing power.

Of course the march of consoles never stops. There was the NES, the SNES, the MegaDrive... practically before Sony and Microsoft had even a twinkle in their eye. It was inevitable that the PS2 would be followed by the PS3. And definitely inevitable that Nintendo who had been concentrating on the hand-held market would have to re-join the console race. Enter the Wii (looks too much like hard work to me all that action). So also inevitable was the Xbox 360.

So, continuing the trend I decided that I must be ready for the advent of the Lost game, and that I should spend my savings on another new console. Welcome Xbox360.

Fantastic. Beautiful graphics (oh, I do need an HD TV), fantastic processing (not too long in the loading sections). The console came with an excellent game 'Assasins Creed' which I had seen advertised on TV. The footage was so amazing it was hard to believe it was a game, and that is true to the game. Absolutely awesome. And as Rich pointed out, during the several hours game play yesterday afternoon, no swearing at the game... so not too hard then!

So. Despite my fervent belief that my console buying days were over (well, that was never really going to happen was it) welcome to console number 5!