I know I know - The Orange Box isn’t available for the PS3 yet. In case you haven’t seen/heard a review of the latest from Valve, check out the video below.

But a review is not really what this post is about. This post is about complaining. Again. And I will keep complaining until developers GET IT. So here we go.

Last night at Todd’s place he put The Orange Box disc into his 360. First Todd showed us Portal, a mind-bending puzzler which looks like a boatload of fun but is a single player game. So we just take a quick gander and then moved on - cool stuff, but not for us right at the moment. We also looked at the single player Half Life 2 Episode 2 briefly, and it looks like fun too. But then we came to the star of the show, at least if you had “multiplayer” on your minds as we did. Team Fortress 2. We boot it up and lo and behold - NO SPLITSCREEN SUPPORT. What the heck? Todd was pissed. I was pissed. Steve was pissed. So here’s yet another game that should have had 4 player splitscreen support, but didn’t.

Are developers getting lazy? Do they not think we want splitscreen? What’s the deal here? Why isn’t splitscreen a priority for developers anymore? Guess what Valve? WE WANT SPLITSCREEN. Before trying to play Team Fortress 2 we played PGR4. Which still doesn’t measure up to PGR2, BTW. Dumb classification system for cars, not as many tracks, etc. (At least they improved the menu system over PGR3.) But also: NO FOUR PLAYER SPLITSCREEN. Two player splitscreen isn’t enough. The PS3 and 360 are the most powerful gaming consoles ever. EVER. I think they can handle splitscreen. Let’s see it!

Now that I got that off my chest, here’s a somewhat-funny review of the game:

So just what is the competition up to? You can see some Halo 3 screenshots at the link below. They look quite nice, actually. Some of them look more like something from Unreal Tournament, I’m looking forward to playing the game at my friends’ places, because I’m sure they’ll both be picking it up. Halo 2 was a lot of fun, and we especially had a lot of fun playing King of the Hill.

MUST SEE: 17 new Halo 3 screens

Dead Rising for the Xbox 360, like any other game for the Xbox 360, can be played in SD or in HD. The user hooks up their display to the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 will put out 480 lines or 720 lines of resolution, depending on your needs.

But what happens when you have your Xbox 360 hooked up to an SDTV, and you can’t read any of the in-game text? You can’t read any of the instructions, nor any of the conversations. Does this make for a satisfying experience?

Part of me thinks that man, people should just go out and buy an HDTV already. But then I come to my senses and realize that not everyone is ready to do that just yet. Besides, if a game is supposed to work in SD, then the game developer (Capcom in this case) should, oh I dunno, actually test the game in SD?

What my point here? Oh yeah. I’m glad that this happened now. Yup, you heard me. Glad. Why? Well, because this was bound to happen sooner or later. The industry will learn its lesson, correct the problem, and move on. Then we won’t hear about it anymore. Now that it’s happened with an XBox 360 title, I’m hoping never to see this problem recur on a PS3 title. That’s why I’m glad!

Xbox’s ‘Dead Rising’ seems to require an HDTV

As someone who thinks that PGR2 on the Xbox is actually a better game than PGR3 on the 360, Moore’s latest comments aren’t too comforting. What did he say? “Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility. We under promised and over delivered on that,” according to IGN. But that’s not all. He goes on to say “I like to think we’ve upheld our end of the bargain in making at least two or maybe three hundred games backwards compatible.” There are still updates on the way, but this statement speaks volumes. Maybe I won’t ever be able to play PGR2 on the 360.

This is in stark contrast to Sony, which likes to keep its previous-gen console alive and well. They only recently stopped selling the original PSone, for example, and plan to continue supporting the PS2 far into the future as well. The original Xbox? It’s going out of production soon. (Or has it already?) Again, another indicator of Microsoft’s priorities. And they’re not to support old customers. They want you to upgrade. (Hmmm. This is strangely like their OS and productivity app businesses.) I’ll be the first to defend a corporation’s right to make money. But can’t they do that by continuing to support existing gamers?

Where was I going? Oh yeah - BC.

Personally, I don’t have a huge collection of PS2 games. But I do want most of them to work on the PS3. A friend of mine has already expressed an interest in my PS2 when I get my PS3. And frankly, I don’t want a PS2 lying around if I can at all run my PS2 games on the PS3. I don’t want the clutter. I plan to get rid of my PS2 ASAP once I have my PS3, and I plan to play all my PS2 games on my PS3. Well, I don’t plan to play my PS2 F1 game on the PS3, because there’ll be a cool new PS3 replacement. But I want to be able to play other games like Champions of Norrath, Frequency, and Guitar Hero.

So what else can I say? To me BC is a very important priority. We know from the PS2 that Sony makes a valiant effort in the BC area. Sure, not all the PS1 games worked on the PS2, but the vast majority of them certainly did. And I expect the same thing next time around on the PS3. Too bad Xbox owners can’t expect the same thing of Microsoft.

IGN - The End of Backward Compatibility?

As a gamer, I view the next generation of game platforms as a chance for developers to strut their stuff. Show us some great new graphics. Show us some great new gameplay not possible before. But I also expect developers to have learned some from previous mistakes and make the whole usability thing work better as well. And I also want the developers to give us more options, not fewer.

And I don’t think developers are giving us all these things in the Xbox 360 games I’ve played so far. I’ve only played on my friend Todd’s machine, so I am limited in my experience to the multiplayer games that he has, though I have to say he seems to have a good selection. In particular, I’m talking about Project Gotham Racing 3 (PGR3) in large degree, but Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) suffers a bit too. I’ll take these one at a time.

GRAW

First off, GRAW. Now, I have to say that this is one great game, and my quibbles are few. But I have to wonder how many people actually play-tested this thing in multiplayer offline mode. As I’ve complained before, setting the options before gameplay begins is a pain. The use of the ‘B’ button is inconsistent and frustrating. But that’s not the worst of it. Why can’t the players change their names? We haven’t found any way to do this. So the people that are playing the game are Todd, Player 2, Player 3, and Player 4. Which is really annoying. I’d like to know if I killed Viper (unlikely, if you know Viper), or if Scae potshotted me. None of this Player 3 killed you nonsense (or whatever the wording is). And if you can change the names, and we haven’t found it yet, that’s just as bad! The UI should be easy to understand and manipulate! This mars what is otherwise quite a great game. (Pssst! Anyone know how to change the names? Is it possible?)

Pugger 3

Second, I’ll look at the larger offender, PGR3. What are some important things in a racing game? Great graphics. Yup, sure. PGR3 has that alright - it looks great. Great gameplay mechanics. Yup, it sure is fun racing around those tracks, but frankly the experience isn’t much (any?) better than PGR2 was. What about a large variety of cars to race? Well, here they fall down. They’ve got a bunch of fast cars, sure. But where’s the Mini? The Beetle? A BMW? I wanted to drive that Audi again - crap, it’s not there. The decision to go with the over-170MPH club was an extremely bad one, IMHO. As well, they way they organized the cars in PGR3 was confusing as heck. In PGR3 you chose “Compact Sports” or “American Muscle” or somesuch. It was easy to know what kind of cars you’d get in each class. No longer. Now each class of cars is virtually indisinguishable from any other. How are you supposed to remember what class your favourite cars are in? A real disappointment.

But it gets worse. What about the fact that they only give you five cities with a few tracks each to play? PGR2 had a much wider selection of locales for your racing pleasure. It feels like they ripped out all the best tracks.

What else? Oh yeah - getting into multiplayer mode is more complicated. You don’t just select multiplayer. No! That would be too easy. You also have to go into the blade and add players there. What the heck? It’s messed us up a couple times already. But that’s not the worst of it. No no no no. Two-player? Two-player? What happened to our beloved four-player mode???? GGGGaaaaaargh!

Frankly, when you put all these problems together, you come up with one conclusion: PGR2 is better than PGR3. I eagerly await the day PGR2 is added to the Xbox 360’s compatibility list, because then we’ll play a real racer at Todd’s place. Sure, it won’t be as pretty, but it’ll be a lot more fun.

Next-Gen

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a knock against the Xbox 360. It’s a great platform, and we’ve seen some good stuff on it. It’s the developers that still have something to learn. When they charge us that next-gen premium for a game, I want to get a premium product.

I know two games is a small sampling, but so far these problems have been quite annoying, especially the deficiencies in PGR3. Let’s hope that as developers get used to the Xbox 360 that they polish their games more and try to at least match the previous generation games in functionality, playability, and enjoyability. After that, ratchet it up a notch or two. This is next-gen, after all.

Now this is exactly the kind of thing I’m looking forward to on my PS3, and it better have it! (Actually, all indications are that it will.) Paramount pictures is going to be offering HD versions of movie trailers for Xbox 360 users to download and view on their HD televisions.

Launching April 12, the Xbox Movie Showcase will feature free, high-definition, downloadable content from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, starring Tom Cruise and directed by J.J. Abrams (the creator of LOST and ALIAS), hitting theaters May 5, and NACHO LIBRE, a comedy starring Jack Black and directed by Jared Hess, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE) in theaters June 16.

Sure, it’s only two movies. But it’s a start. Right now I like to go to Apple’s QuickTime site to check out movie trailers in HD. But that’s on my puny little 19″ CRT monitor. I’d much prefer to see movie trailers in glorious HD and 5.1 surround sound on my HT!

VFXWorld - Paramount, Xbox Launch Movie Showcase

So we finally got to see Todd’s Xbox 360 in action on an HDTV last night. I always thought it would be my HDTV we’d see it on first, but logistics gave it over to my friend Mike’s place with his Toshiba CRT rear-projection HDTV.

One word: very nice!

Ah, well, make that two words. It was more than just nice. Previously we had played the Xbox 360 on Todd’s 32″ (I think) SD (standard definition) television, and it was good. The improvement over the Xbox was obvious, and the graphics were nice. But seeing the games in full HD on a 55″ (or so) HDTV screen was just another experience altogether. All of us were quite wowed by the experience. There were so many details to see, the environments were so immersive, it was great. So thanks to Todd and Mike for putting this together!

Side note:

Why can’t game developers think through their UI’s better?

I already complained about GRAW, but last night noticed something else. The little red flash on your screen? Guess what? It tells you that there’s gunfire in that direction. Not that you’re getting hit from that direction. Most games that I’ve seen that use a splash of red like that use it to mean that you’ve been hit. GRAW does it differently, and it’s confusing.

And what’s with the menus in PGR3? It took Todd more than a minute to figure out how to set up a multiplayer game. Quite confusing. Then I had a chance to play and wanted to change tracks and cars, and man what a pain in the arse that was. The UI for PGR2 was SO much better. Why don’t they leave a good thing alone? And we still miss 4 player mode.

Anyway, Burnout has become our favourite racer now. It’s a blast to play and the UI is actually usable. But would it kill them to have a little description next to each menu item as it’s chosen? It would be nice to know what each of the events really do, because the name itself is in no way descriptive enough.

Last week I played GRAW for the first time at Todd’s place on his Xbox 360. It’s a fun game, and four of us sat around the television and chased each other around the map, having some fun with headshots and whatnot. Thursday night we’ll be doing more of the same, but this time on an HDTV. I’ll tell you what that was like afterwards.

We were a little confused by the kill king of the hill mode. The “hill” was not marked in any way. You just had an icon in the corner of your screen that changed colour if you were on the hill. I much prefer the Halo way of doing it - actually showing graphically where the hill is.

But it was still a great game. I was a blown away by the good graphics. But the UI needed a little work. Sometimes “B” meant “back”, and sometimes it meant “cancel”. Which was really annoying. Each of us had to set up our warriors, so each of us made the same mistakes of exiting the screen without actually making changes, etc. Plus we couldn’t find any way of naming our warriors, which is strange.

Good game, but it needs a little polish.

Home Theater - Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

If you’ve been a long time reader, then you may remember that a long time ago I mentioned a Japanese game developer questioning the small capacity of the DVD drive built into the Xbox 360. (I’m too lazy to look it up. But feel free!) At the time there was a small debate about whether or not disc capacity would ever become a problem for the 360.

It seems like it has.

According to this Joystiq article, a premium Xbox 360 title will have to be shipped on four discs! That’s what, 36GB dual-layer DVD or 18GB single-layer DVD. Gosh, 36GB would easily fit on one dual-layer Blu-ray disc, or one triple-layer HD DVD disc. 18GB would fit on a one single-layer Blu-ray or one dual-layer HD DVD disc. Makes me think that maybe Microsoft shoulda stuck an HD DVD drive or Blu-ray drive into the 360.

Whoops!

Couldn’t have done that now. Then they wouldn’t have had that 6 to 12 month lead over the PS3! Ho ho ho. What was I thinking? (eHomeUpgrade asks why the 360 didn’t ship with an HD DVD drive. This is why! Just my personal opinion.)

;)

All kidding aside, how many games do you think this problem will affect? Is it a problem at all? Is the Blu-ray drive in the PlayStation 3 really going to be all that helpful to gaming companies, or is it just part of the media center thing?

Joystiq - Certain “highly anticipated” Xbox 360 title filling four discs worth of space

I went by my local Best Buy today to pick up an RF splitter and check out the Xbox 360. I’ve never seen an Xbox 360 in real life, I don’t know what I was waiting for. I was in for a treat.

I played Call of Duty 2 and it was great. The detail was amazing. The textures were great, the HD was wonderful. I literally saw the allure of next-gen systems. I also played King Kong battling it out with a t-rex. Also very cool.

The controller was very nice. The shoulder buttons seemed a little cheap, however. Otherwise it was great. Controlling my soldier was easy, once I inverted the camera. (Annoyingly, the option for this was not in the control menu.)

The only problem was the demo system. I wanted to try Kameo and the system put me through so many logo screens and introductory cinematics that I actually gave up. Quite annoying.

Well, here’s a review of PGR3.

Now that I have the wind knocked out of my sails about lack of 4 player support in PGR3, I don’t know why I should bother.

Today’s Thursday, so I just got back from games night. It was at Todd’s place, and sure enough, we played PGR2. And I did pretty good this time. Steve wasn’t around, so I got to win some! But Todd was a little ticked too about PGR3. He was postulating that maybe Mike can bring his Xbox 360 over, and we can set up a computer monitor for the other two players and play 4 player PGR3 via system link. (Mike plans to buy an Xbox 360 as well.) Good thing the Xbox 360 has a cable with VGA out to make this possible.

We’ll have to see how that goes. We really love this game, hopefully we can work something out.

IGN: Project Gotham Racing 3 Review

The Next Generation has taken a look at the Xbox 360 launch titles and gives its opinion.

They like Perfect Dark Zero and Project Gotham Racing 3 the best, waxing turtle-like over them both. The label Perfect Dark Zero “The 360’s biggest launch shooter and biggest game.” And they think that PGR3 will take over Xbox Live, shifting some serious units, even without proper HD support and only 2 player local support.

Personally, I think it’s not a bad list. Sony will have to work hard to do better with the PlayStation 3 (PS3).

Next Generation - Analysis: Xbox 360 Launch Titles

I own a PS2. One day I’ll own a PS3. But I have to admit that the most fun I have playing video games these days is playing PGR2 at my friend’s house against three of my friends. PGR2 ROCKS! My friend plans on getting an Xbox 360, so I was really looking forward to playing PGR3.

I just discovered a minute ago that PGR3 for the Xbox 360 will only support up to two players locally. That sucks!

First, I hear that the game is really rendered at 1024 x 600, then upscaled to 720p. Crap. Then I hear that the game will only have five locations: Tokyo, Las Vegas, New York, London, and Germany’s Nurburgring. Crap. All my favourite European locations are gone. Now I find out that I can’t play PGR3 with three other friends at the same time! Quadruple crap.

Where’s the fun in that?

Bizarre Online Forum - 4 players simulatiously on one XBOX360 ?