Sunday, August 06, 2006

Video Game Dilemma



I knew I should not do it. But I did. I started looking at the new game consoles; MS XBox 360, Sony Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii. I am not a gamer. The game I play now only online solitaire and online monopoly. So why am I looking at these game consoles? Because they made these consoles possible to do other than running games softwares. Xbox extended itself as Media Centre client. Playstation - with its Blu-Ray player - may be the media centre on its own. Wii, on the other hand, explore more on the gaming experience. At least, that is the way I see it as a non-gamer.
My girlfriend - on the opposite - is a hardcore gamer, at least from my perspective. She bought a computer with bumped up RAM and VRAM to ensure she has the best gaming experience. She can spend hours and hours in front of her computer, playing World of Warcraft (WoW). She interacts with people online to do some kind of mission. She talked with them with Skype-like application, Team Speak, to coordinate the mission. It scares me the way this game make interactions so closer to reality. There is a very thin line between virtual and real world. My girlfriend said she can separate those worlds, but I can see why some people couldn't.
Anyway, she tried to introduce me to games - by bringing Playstation 2 to my place one time - or sending the screenshots of her 'mission' in WoW via email. I am not an anti video games - I am just suck at playing games. Just too many buttons to press and too many combinations. I used to play space invaders, pac-man - with okay performance - and the most complicated game I ever played was Street Fighters and Mortal Kombat (both the first release version). That was the time that I realised I had reached my limit. My girlfriend grew up with Playstation already in the market. She can tap those buttons in any combinations possible - which I like in any other circumstances.
So, obviously she just beat the crap out of me in the games. And she probably thought that I was not a good game buddy. And she is now playing WoW where she can play with other game enthusiasts. I feel left off and always in bad mood if I found her playing that game. Although she came with a very good reason; by playing WoW, she just stayed at home and play with total strangers. Which apparently not always the case as one day she told me she was thinking of going for "off-line gathering" of her WoW team out of town. I can only say - I hate WoW. And I just said it once more over Live Messenger to her - she is playing WoW on the other side of the world as I type this post. She said I was cute everytime I said that - and continued playing.
Enough about me girlfriend and her WoW. It is an endless argument between her and I. But I love her as she is.
XBox 360, PS3, and Wii. If I am to buy a game console, which will I pick? I am not a hardcore gamer, and has no past attachment with previous platform (XBox, PS2 or Gamecube). On paper, Wii should be my good option. It's the cheapest among the three, the games looks amazing and the one that caught my eyes is the way we interact with the game. The Wii controller makes the games (probably) easier to play for people like me; more movements instead of pressing combination of buttons. XBox and PS are more for the high quality graphics, surround sound, processing hungry, out-of-the-world gaming experience enthusiasts, which my character hardly in that area. I was more interested with the current packages offering PS2 with Trivia quizzes and Karaoke - rather than discussing how good the graphics of Halo 2. And the price - AUD600 for XBox 360 and AUD1,000 for PS3 - will not cut to my interest level of playing games. Including after added justification of XBox to be my media center client or PS3 to be my next HD (Blu-Ray) DVD player.
Will I get Nintendo Wii? Most likely. But I will wait until my girlfriend's next visit, and see whether this could be our "bridge" of our video game interest - or the lack of it.

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