Getting An XBox

[The Former DMiller]

Well I already have a GameCube and PS2, so this Christmas the time has come to get an XBox. I've definitely decided I want to get Knights of the Old Republic, but I'm not sure what else to get. I know someone will say Halo, but I'm not the biggest fan of the game. Anyway, I welcome any and all suggestions.

[OB1]

Yeah I'm not a huge Halo fan either. I suggest Shenmue II, Splinter Cell, Sega GT Online, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Jet Set Radio Future, and the updated version of Crimson Skies (coming out soon).

[The Former DMiller]

I've been thinking about JSRF, but I've heard it's much easier than the first one. Does this take away from it at all?

[Dark Jaguar]

Doesn't JSRF come with the XBox now, or did MS stop doing that?

[The Former DMiller]

They stopped doing it. Now they include two shitty games, Clone Wars and Tetris Worlds.

[Dark Jaguar]

Well Tetris IS Tetris, even though the current owner of the franchise hasn't done a single good thing with the franchise, it should still at least have the original's game mode somewhere in there... It's kinda stupid that MS would include Tetris Worlds with the XBox AND with the upcoming Live kit.

[OB1]

You can get JSRF at Best Buy for only $15 if you use one of those gamer's gift card coupons. Just put $15 on the card and pay it with that and the coupon.

It is a bit easier than the Dreamcast game, but the controls are better, the environments are much bigger and very well-designed, and it's still fun as hell. Definitely worth $15.

And if you get an X-Box with Clone Wars I'd be willing to buy it from you for a reasonable price. PM me.

[A Black Falcon]

Clone Wars bad? Not really... and not on X-Box, where its Live... :)

[The Former DMiller]

Well, I know it's Live enabled, but I don't really plan on using Live past the free 2-month subscription. I spend enough money on games as it is, I can't afford to buy something that requires an annual subscription.

And if I do end up getting Clone Wars, OB1, I'll let you know. I played it on GameCube and wasn't all that impressed.

[OB1]

I don't really want it that much but for the right price... :D

[A Black Falcon]

But $50 a year is just the cost of one game...

[Great Rumbler]

It seems like the Xbox just doesn't really have that many AAA games, the Gamecube on the other hand...

[OB1]

Ninja Gaiden looks like it's going to be extremely good. That's exclusive. :D

[The Former DMiller]

Originally posted by A Black Falcon
But $50 a year is just the cost of one game...

I guess it's not just the price, but I don't see myself playing games online too much. I hardly ever play PC games online and all the games I own are free to play online. I just don't think it would be a worthwhile investment for me.

[The Former DMiller]

Originally posted by OB1
Ninja Gaiden looks like it's going to be extremely good. That's exclusive. :D

Yes, that's one I'm definitely thinking of. I recently heard they are going to include the entire NES trilogy in the game. :) I'm going to wait for the reviews, though.

Do you remember when Tecmo had a poll on their website asking which platform we would like Ninja Gaiden on, and GameCube won overwhelmingly? Good to see those polls aren't useless. ;)

[OB1]

Well Tecmo is officially Microsoft's bitch, so I didn't expect to see it on the cube. Hopefully it'll sell poorly just to teach those guys a lesson. :evilha:

[Dark Jaguar]

Ah, well if you aren't an online game player then I suppose it wouldn't be a good investment. It's just that I want a few people I feel are worth actually adding to my friends list on live, and so far no one is "worthy" (and none of my friends have bought a live kit yet, not until Halo 2 some of them say).

Well, to add to the list of games you should get...

Fable! You HAVE to get this game, well at least you should. It's supposedly being released this upcoming winter, so ask for it as a gift. The only thing I wish they'd add since it's supposed to be a legend you write yourself is the ability to customize your starting character's appearence, rather than it being the same brown haired white man. Though, that would mean they'd have to design all the changes you could do to that different start appearence... I can totally see why they wouldn't do that, I'm just saying I wish it was there anyway 'cause I'm greedy :D.

Then, next year Jade Empire which seems to be KOTOR++ (and all with stuff the actual company has total control of this time so they have a lot more freedom in design).

[OB1]

I can't believe I forgot to mention Knights of the Old Republic. :bang: Get that game with an X-Box, Derek! Best game on the system, by far.

Fable might come out this winter, but definitely not this year. Think February if we're lucky. March or April is more realistic, though. And you start out as a little white boy. They didn't have enough time for anything else since the whole morphing/look customization system is so complex.

[Dark Jaguar]

No no, you didn't forget to mention it. He mentioned that as a must buy and was asking what OTHERS he should get, so you were paying attention.

Well I meant to say "male", but you know what I mean. Yeah, I already said I totally understand why they decided not to add that sort of customization in

Though, that would mean they'd have to design all the changes you could do to that different start appearence... I can totally see why they wouldn't do that, I'm just saying I wish it was there anyway 'cause I'm greedy .

I'm just saying I wish they were able to do that anyway, that's all. Still, if they add some sort of online access at least, maybe a patch in the future could add that sort of thing *wishful thinking*.

[The Former DMiller]

I'll definitely be getting Fable when it's released. The release dates I've seen are January so that's a no-go for Christmas. And, as I said in my first post, I am definitely getting KOTOR. It's the game that finally convinced my to get an XBox.

[Dark Jaguar]

So there is something more set than just "winter". Well, at least January is sooner rather than later.

[A Black Falcon]

KOTOR? But there'll be a PC version...

[OB1]

January according to ebgames.com, March according to gamestop.com, and "sometime early next year" according to Big Blue Box, DJ.

[Dark Jaguar]

Well ABF it all depends on whether or not DMiller here has a very powerful computer, AND whether or not he'd rather play it on the XBox or the PC.

Just to clarify, I remember hearing that KOTOR had dowloadable content support. However, the memory seems somehow faulty to me so I decided to ask you if that's the case.

[The Former DMiller]

I didn't know it was coming to PC. My computer is almost 5 years old, though, and chances are the game won't come to Mac right away anyway.

[Laser Link]

Yeah, you guys should know by now that Derek is a Mac Man. Ooh! That would be a great game!!! And I don't think they make a Wine for Macs. But maybe...

Macs aren't based on the x86 architecture, are they? Cause then you could run Linux, and then use Wine to emulate Windows, and then play PC games! And you'd probably get an award for the most convoluted system EVAR!!!

And I like your sig. It's funny and true, and I really think a lot of my friends would support that law. :) Penguin Power!

[A Black Falcon]

I bet there's a version of Linux for macs... no, they aren't x86, but OSX is almost Linux... so I bet someone made a version.

Oh, and while there isn't Wine, I'm pretty sure there are decent windows emulators.

Or you could wait years for a mac version they'll never make because macs are worthless gaming platforms.

[Dark Jaguar]

Mac machines aren't worthless gaming platforms. It's just there's a vicious circle where game companies don't make games for them, so gamers don't buy them, so game companies don't see any reason to make games for them. It won't be easily ended, but then again I don't care that much.

[Laser Link]

Exactly. And that's why platforms like Mac and Linux can't compete with Microsoft. So something like WINE is really cool because you can use a non-MS OS and still use the apps you need to. And that in turn can help these other platforms grow.

There may be a Mac version of Linux (I'm not exactly sure, there are a few bajillion distributions out there), but I don't think you could use a standard Red Hat or Mandrake, for example. Linux was designed to be "Unix for PC's", and it's gotta be very dependent on the architecture.

[A Black Falcon]

When there are almost no games on a platform it is by definition pretty much worthless as a gaming platform...

I don't like Macs or MacOS, but I do think Linux is nice... it just doesn't have games on it. :)

[The Former DMiller]

They do make Linux for Mac. However, OS X is built on Unix so any Unix programs can be compiled to run in OS X. There is already a PC emulator called Virtual PC that runs incredibly well. The problem is you need a fast computer to run games well. Another problem is that Microsoft recently bought Virtual PC so we don't know if there is ever going to be another version. :(

And there are some game companies who are great at Mac development. Blizzard is an awesome supporter of the Mac. Most of their games come on hybrid CDs that can be played on Macs or PCs. There are also numerous companies that specialize in porting PC games to the Mac. There are many games that wouldn't have been ported to the Mac if it weren't for these companies. Age of Empires is a good example.

[Dark Jaguar]

And how about... exclusive titles?

[The Former DMiller]

Bungie used to be exclusive to the Mac, but we know that's not true anymore. Most exclusive titles are just free/shareware games. The last big exclusive title I can think of was an RPG called Realmz, but that eventually went to PC a few years later. An awesome game called Escape Velocity was also exclusive for a while, but it would be stupid for companies to not port those games to PC if they become incredibly popular.

[OB1]

Originally posted by Dark Jaguar
Well ABF it all depends on whether or not DMiller here has a very powerful computer, AND whether or not he'd rather play it on the XBox or the PC.

Just to clarify, I remember hearing that KOTOR had dowloadable content support. However, the memory seems somehow faulty to me so I decided to ask you if that's the case.

There will be downloadable content this holiday season, apparently.

[A Black Falcon]

No sane company would release games exclusively for Macs...

Here's a question... which has a bigger games market, Mac or Linux? :)

[Dark Jaguar]

Well there's just another thing about Macs then. Yes the whole design of it is great for games, probably better as a design than PC, but without exclusive games I'm not going to be spending money to get one. Of course, with people like me doing that, and rightfully so, game companies have no choice but to not make exclusives for a system very few gamers get, and rightfully so. Kinda sad really.

Edit: So there is downloadable content eh? That's great. I may just end up getting it after all, like I said. One last question, is the content free, like Mech Assault, or do you have to pay for the content, like Splinter Cell?

[geoboy]

Linux is a sort of technology I guess you could say, and it is presented in several distributions. For PC, the most popular are Red Hat and Mandrake. There are multiple Linux distro's for the Mac as well. The most popular is SUSE.

OS X is based on Darwin *I believe* which is based on BSD which is based on UNIX. Linux is also based on Unix, but that does not mean software developed for Linux will run on OS X or even UNIX for that matter. OS X is already so powerful that you really never need to install linux on a Mac. You can easily setup servers and whatnot with the stuff OS X is already built upon. The only reason someone might want Linux on their Mac is for Linux-exclusive software or just for the heck of having another operating system.

[A Black Falcon]

Well Linux and Unix aren't exactly compatible, even though they have a common heritage... but I would think it'd make it easier to bring Linux stuff to OSX since its a Unix-based OS...

[The Former DMiller]

Originally posted by A Black Falcon
Well Linux and Unix aren't exactly compatible, even though they have a common heritage... but I would think it'd make it easier to bring Linux stuff to OSX since its a Unix-based OS...

That could be true. However, a lot of Linux software is already based off of exisiting Unix products so it's usually easier to just compile those in OS X. Anyway, OS X has so many cool features that there really isn't any reason to install another OS. And I really doubt Linux has more games available for it than Macs. I could be wrong, but there are a lot more games available for Mac than you guys think. Just not enough for anyone who plays a lot of PC games like ABF.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, Macs get a few older ports from the PC, but generally much later and only a few of the games... most all of them are PC only, for good reason... being a Mac gamer would stink, so little variety...

[Laser Link]

Crap, I did know that SUSE was for Macintosh. I read that just the other day. Doh.

Well Linux and Unix aren't exactly compatible, even though they have a common heritage... but I would think it'd make it easier to bring Linux stuff to OSX since its a Unix-based OS...

Well, anything Unix will run on Linux, but not back the other way (just like PSX games play on a PS2 or DOS programs work on Windows, but not the other way). And I don't think it would be too easy to port stuff from x86 machines to Apple machines. They are very different in architecture (RISC vs CISC, to begin with) and that's a big deal. It might not matter for very high end stuff like word processors, but there are good word processors for every OS so nobody would really care about porting that. Stuff like games, on the other hand, are very hardware dependent.

Now honestly, I don't know if this is a big deal or not. I've only written graphics stuff for Windows, and that was all high level. I think it's very likely that OpenGL games can be ported pretty easy, because if I remember right OpenGL was designed to be very platform independent. The OpenGL code the programmer writes is pretty standard, and the implementations of OpenGL for the specific machine take care of the details. For example, you tell OpenGL to make a window, and then it figures out how to talk to the OS and make the machine actually do that. In theory, Java is like that, but it doesn't quite work, but that's another story... :)

On the other hand, DirectX is Microsoft, and they make anything easily portable. But, by that same token, I don't think you'd be making games for Linux with DirectX, and that's what we were talking about, so I'm getting off topic again...

[A Black Falcon]

Yes, OpenGL, Java, and some other languages and stuff are intentionally designed to be easy to port to all the major platforms... but these days very few games use OpenGL. DirectX won decisively... though since DirectX games get ported to Mac and Linux, they clearly can be ported. What I don't know is how much rewriting they require...

[Dark Jaguar]

I just read a months old bit of info about Fable (having tried to avoid any info for some time, but I had to read a little something just now). This may be old news to the rest of you, but the fact that Fable is going to have multiplayer questing with other people, AND their own custom characters from their games able to be dragged in, is just too cool! I can only hope they add some Live support so people can matchmake to find people online to quest with. Since multiplayer is already in there, it shouldn't be too much more work to add in online play... I think :D.