The Cynic Says……

Well, when they come out that  is. But seriously.. I’m skipping the Xbox 360 and possibly even the PS3 (we’ll see) but I’m definitely not going to skip over the Nintendo Revolution. First off, I don’t own an HDTV. While the non-techie of you might wonder what that has to do with anything, the fact is in order to really reap the benefits of the other next-gen systems a TV capable of displaying hi-def content is almost a necessity. Both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 are going to be geared toward displaying content at very high resolutions and frankly won’t be all THAT much better than existing systems on a regular standard-definition TV. Ok, so you’ll notice at least some difference but I can’t justify the $400 price tag for the new systems if I don’t really plan on getting an HDTV anytime soon. The revolution’s hardware specs pale in comparison to the Xbox 360 and PS3 but that doesn’t really bother me. Nintendo is going for the gameplay angle on this go-around and I think that’s really a good thing. While I’m a huge fan of great graphics and all that good stuff, I think that most games today just aren’t as enjoyable and fun to play as they should be. I mean, that’s great that the characters in all these new games are totally life-like and they’re offering these immersive worlds and near virtual reality quality graphics but whatever happened to just being able to pick up a game and play? These days, the controls are so convoluted and difficult to figure out that the average gamer (most of us out there) will get so frustrated just learning how to control the game that we’ll probably never get to enjoy the game the way it’s meant to be enjoyed. Seriously, when I want to play video games I don’t want them to be a chore. I just want to pick up the controller and have fun. This is where I think Nintendo might just have a winner. The controller appears to be quite intuitive from what I’ve seen so far. It’s not crowded with buttons that most of us don’t have the finger dexterity to make use of and it even uses motion sensitivity to interact with the game. For example, if you’re playing a game that requires sword fighting you would actually swing the controller around as if you had a sword in your hand. Pretty damn sweet if you ask me. As if that’s not enough the system will actually be small and quiet, something that definitely can’t be said about the Xbox 360 (not to mention it runs hot as all holy hell). I don’t like the idea of a console system taking up ridiculous amounts of space on my desk or wherever I choose to put it. While the 360 is a good bit smaller than the original Xbox (thank god!) it’s still bigger than I would like. From the pictures of the revolution I’ve seen, it looks to be not much bigger than a couple of DVD cases stacked together. I could seriously deal with that. Not to mention since the CPU is going to be considerably slower than the other systems, I don’t see it requiring any aggressive cooling techniques, thus reducing noise and heat. Nintendo is also going to be offering downloads of every game previously released on all other Nintendo systems. Basically, the Revolution will be able to connect to the internet and download any of the old NES, SNES, N64 and gamecube games to internal memory or removable external storage (connected via USB) and play them on the system. So I’m basically getting 5 systems in one for my $200 - $250 (whatever the price may be; something in that range is being speculated). Sounds like a plan to me. So hey, it’s half the price of the other two and gives me most everything I could want. Yes, it has its disadvantages (lack of some major titles like Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Dead or Alive, Project Gotham Racing, Perfect Dark, etc) but I’m willing to overlook them in the name of its cheaper price and better overall gameplay. Now let’s just hope Nintendo lives up to expectations unlike how the gamecube flopped.