The price to be able to Performance Ratio

The Wii will be the most affordable console on the market today, but it falls short of the visual capabilities and blockbuster sport selection that the Xbox 360 pro game console enjoys. Add to that the fact that you can buy the entry model of the Xbox 360, or arcade version, for approximately the price tag on the Wii, and the only reason that you might want to select the Wii could be for some great titles like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Resident Evil 4. However, there are many video games not available for that Wii than for it, and so the option relies on your style of video games. The Ps3 resembles the Xbox 360 game console with regards to graphics, even though its sport selection is even worse compared to the Wii’s. The majority of the video games available for that Ps3 can also be found for that Xbox 360, just about the most notable exceptions being Metal Gear Solid 4. Among the primary reasons to get the Ps3 is for its BD push able to play next-generation Blu-ray discs, although that is more inviting for that high definition films than for that video games.

If you wish to obtain the full package, then turn towards the Xbox 360 premium console. You’ll pay $50 more, although you will receive Netflix help, backwards compatibility with most original Xbox games, plus a decent 60 Gb hard disk. Netflix will help you to rent films by where you download them for the hard disk, and you’ll be able to watch them over the course of a couple of days by yourself time. With all the Xbox 360′s DVD playback, audio CD, and Web capabilities, viewers the Xbox 360 game console can be a home theater in one package. With all the largest sport selection out out of all the next gen systems as well as the greatest graphics lacking multi-thousand dollar PCs, the Xbox 360 game console is the greatest value for its price between the Wii and Ps3.

So a few days ago Dolphin 2.0 was released. Dolphin is a Nintendo Wii and GameCube emulator for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it works quite well. How well? Here’s a video of me playing the Wii version of Resident Evil 4—which, yes, I do own, thank you very much.

Yes, the CG intro plays twice, but I’ve been fighting YouTube since noon today (it’s now 4:15pm as I write this) trying to get the video to process and I’m not about to start all over again.

It runs at a full 30 frames per second, full screen @1920×1080 (even with Fraps in the background), and the only hiccup I’ve experienced is sometimes the audio is maybe half a second out of sync during cutscenes. Maybe that can be fixed in the settings, I don’t know.

And yes, I’m terrible at the game. The point of the video isn’t to illustrate my amazing skills, but rather to show off what the emulator can do. I don’t have a Bluetooth dongle on my PC, so I had to map the Wiimote+Nunchuck controls to my mouse and keyboard. I just need some practice is all, and these controls will work just fine:

• The Nunchuck joystick (actual movement) is mapped to WASD on the keyboard

• Z on the Nunchuck (used for running) is mapped to Left Shift

• C on the Nunchuck (draw knife) is mapped to E

• “Shaking” the Wiimote (reloading, escaping, and quick knife attack) is mapped to R

• – button on the Wiimote (brings up your inventory) is mapped to the Space Bar

• 1 and 2 on the Wiimote (map and options menu) is mapped to 1 and 2 above WASD

• Aiming with the Wiimote is mapped to the mouse, where Left Click is the Wiimote’s A button (shoot, attack, action) and Right Click is the Wiimote’s B button (draw weapon)

I think that’s about it.

My interest in the iPad just went up significantly: For $12.99 you can get Resident Evil 4 [iTunes link], iPad edition? We’re truly living in the future.

We’ve given you the first plot details and pictures on Friday, but now the first trailer for Resident Evil: Afterlife (aka Resident Evil 4) is online. It’s pretty cool (well, it shows more of the same), mentioning the movie was filmed with the “James Cameron / Vincent Pace Fusion Camera System”, the “World’s Most Advanced 3D Technology”.

The movie will hit American theaters (both 3D and conventional) on September 10.

Here’s the trailer (good quality, 2:04min.):

We spent two posts covering the announcement of the fourth installment of the Resident Evil movie series last summer, and today we can give you the first five pictures and some plot details. Titled “Resident Evil 4: Afterlife”, the movie is scheduled for release in American theaters (both conventional and 3D) on September 10.

Director Paul W.S. Anderson already helmed the first Resident Evil from 2002, and Milla Jovovich returns as Alice.

Here’s the official plot:

In a world ravaged by a virus infection, turning its victims into the Undead, Alice continues on her journey to find survivors and lead them to safety. Her deadly battle with the Umbrella Corporation reaches new heights, but Alice gets some unexpected help from an old friend. A new lead that promises a safe haven from the Undead leads them to Los Angeles, but when they arrive the city is overrun by thousands of Undead and Alice and her comrades are about to step into a deadly trap.

More pictures:

We’ll post the first trailer as soon as it hits the web (it’s been announced for Saturday).

Via MySpace

The beauty of the Internet is that it demands instant analysis of every single development to come out of Peoria. The Nintendo 3DS—out of Kyoto, which is not Peoria, I’m afraid—was announced overnight, time zone permitting. It will debut at E3 in June, and it will forever change the way you and I… do something. Something video game-related, methinks.

If one thing’s certain, it does mean that 3D is here to stay. I’m sorry. Say what you will about Avatar, but it made quite a bit of scratch. Then CES came around, in January, and every single TV manufacturer held presentation after presentation, laser light show after laser light show, trumpeting their fancy 3D TVs. None of the TVs are compatible with each other, so if you buy Company A’s TV and your neighbor buys Company B’s, y’all can’t get together to watch the World Cup in 3D—the glasses won’t allow it.

The GameCube barely displaced any water—what did it have, those Metroid games, Resident Evil 4, a couple of Mario games? It did well enough, but compared to the PS2 (and Xbox, I guess) the GameCube was sorta a disappointment. Granted, comparing any other video game system to the PS2 is like comparing a light bulb to the sun, but you can only beat what’s put in front of you.

Wii! Yup, Nintendo got tired of the hardware race, so it slapped a Bluetooth sensor bar to white shelled GameCube, called it Wii, then sat back and let the money a-roll in. It completely changed gaming. Now, rather than relying upon the “hardcores” to buy the latest Earthbound, Nintendo could convince Grandma and Grandpa, and your girlfriend, to play Wii Sports till their arms fall off.

You’ll note that it took Sony and Microsoft a few years before they realized, “Hey, this motion control business is quite nifty. Maybe we should get in on it?”

And they have! I have no time for motion control—you can pry my mouse and keyboard from my cold, dead hands~!—but clearly there’s money to be made here. If Sony and Microsoft can’t make money selling Fling Paint, then there’s no money to publish things like God of War and Fable.

So this 3DS thing (here’s the full English press release)… Nintendo describes it as letting you play games “with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.” As someone who wears glasses—I’m blind as a bat, and nowhere near as cuddly—, let me be the nine millionth to say “Obrigado!” The 3D TVs at CES were largely pants, but I did get to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in 3D (thanks to some sort of Nvidia trickery) a few weeks ago. It didn’t blow my mind or anything, but if given the option, provided it’s affordable—I’m not buying a $1,000 monitor and glasses and a new video card!—then why not? Nothing wrong, per se, with a little added depth as I try to left-click over a Bad Guy’s face.

The 3DS, which should come out around this time next year, will be backwards compatible with your current DS library. My DS library is quite small (Chrono Trigger and those Final Fantasy remakes), so I could give a toss about backwards compatibility, but I’m sure there’s those of you who have more than a few games, games that you wouldn’t want to “lose” when upgrading to the 3DS.

Upgrading may not even be the right word, since the 3DS is totally new hardware. It’s not like going from the DS Lite to the DSi, or from the DSi to the DSi XL.

The point is, this is Nintendo saying, “Hi guys! Remember how we made motion control cool, bringing it to the masses? We’re going to do the same thing with 3D now. Kthxbye!”

And now we wait for Sony to announce a 3D PSP of some sort…

Winner: Resident Evil 4 (GameCube, 2004)

This decade saw a lot of “big” games, but how many of those games were any good? How many do you think you’ll even consider replaying in five or 10 years? If there’s one, and only one, game of the decade it has to be Resident Evil 4. The game resurrected a waning franchise, justified your purchase of a GameCube, and was actually fun to play. How rare. The lackluster Resident Evil 5 only reinforced how well made Resident Evil 4 was: perfect controls, probably the best graphics ever to grace the GameCube, and, yes, the best single-player mode of the decade make this the game of the decade. It’s pretty much non-stop fun, which is really all you can ask a video game to do.

Runners Up

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2, 2003)

You can almost consider Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to be the same game three times, but Vice City wins because it’s our favorite setting of the series so far. Is it fun to go around and blowing up anything that moves? Yes, but it’s actually more fun to appreciate the time and effort Rockstar put into crafting a pretty enjoyable cast of characters and reasonably OK story for our entertainment. Plus, how many game in the 2000s have completely ripped off the GTA franchise?

Guitar Hero (PS2/PS3/Xbox 360, 2005)

Our original game here was Super Smash Bros. Melee because it was, and I quote, “the ultimate party game.” Upon further reflection, that title actually belongs to Guitar Hero if only because you couldn’t attend a party attended by non-gamers between the game’s release and today without running into people banging on the strumming a plastic guitar. This is especially true if you visited certain gentrified sections of Brooklyn. The game was everywhere, so clearly it must have done something right. Publishers may have since shot themselves in the foot by releasing 800 versions of the game in a two-year window, but you can’t blame the game itself for publishers’ greed. It’s fun, and it represents the peak of the music game genre that, in a very real sense, defined the decade in gaming.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2, 2005)

This is our arthouse pick, yes, but for all the hullabaloo of “please re-make Final Fantasy VII for the PS3,” we say: no! Instead, re-make Shadow of the Colossus for it pushed the PS2 as far as the little guy could go. The game was like playing art. Rarely has a sense of scale been so raw in as it was here. A terrific soundtrack, a unique setting, and an unmatched sense of “oh man, we’re going on an adventure” means that youre sure to impress your “games as art” buddies .

Our Take

Devin: I want to throw Final Fantasy XII on here. A lot of people dismissed it because of its cipher of a main character and weird MMO-style combat. But the fact is it was a hugely deep, very interesting, and strikingly beautiful game. I loved it from start to finish, although the final boss was a bit corny.

Matt: You can’t tell me that any of these games above are more fun — I mean LOL, smile-on-your-face, gets-better-as-you-drink fun — than Super Smash Bros. Melee. Yet it probably isn’t the best game from the last 10 years. But it’s still damn fun.

Greg: I’m going to pull a Nicholas here and proclaim that this is all a bunch of nonsense. It’s impossible to claim that any one game of this decade was the most definitive (especially not RE4, dumb dumbs), considering how many games changed the horizon. Guitar Hero and Smash Bros made busting out a video game at a party okay. The Lego Star Wars/Indie/etc. series proved to girlfriends around the world that gaming with your boyfriend can be a fun experience. GTA taught the world to hate linear gameplay. Call Of Duty and Halo taught millions of console gamers the joys and frustrations of well made competitive first-person-shooters whilst simultaneously increasing the average weight of adolescents around the world. WoW brought MMOs into the mainstream. Shadow of the Colossus destroyed our sense of scale, while Katamari Damacy proved that games can be abstract and still sell well. There is no one answer to this question, because the games of this decade were simply too good.

Doug: Wii Sports — hear me out! As most people’s introduction to the Wii, the bundled Wii Sports game serves as the ambassador to a new way of thinking about video games. How many video games from the past ten years will you find people of all generations playing? Nobody’s really playing Halo in nursing homes or senior centers. The simple control scheme and 1:1 movement in Wii Sports made Nintendo’s latest console a hit with people outside the core demographic of gamers, something Sony and Microsoft are still scrambling to replicate.

David Diaz: I think Halo: Combat Evolved should have made this list. It became the benchmark for all console FPS and sparked the beginning of one of the most dominant franchises in console history.

Short Version: Looking for a solidly-built gun accessory for the Wii? This is it right here. Looking for a gun controller accessory that grants you easy access to the D-pad, 1, 2, +, –, and Home buttons on the Wii remote? Keep on moving.

Review:

I opened up the Innex Buckshot Controller for Wii and was instantly impressed by its heft. This thing’s built to last, with an included Nunchuck fused right into the product itself, a satisfying pump-action barrel, and nice rubber grips all around.

The Buckshot maps itself to the Wii remote by using the trigger as the A button and the pump action on the barrel on the B button. The Nunchuck controls are the same, so the built-in Nunchuck corresponds to the control stick, Z, and C buttons.

Sensing an opportunity to buy a new Wii game in the name of work but not wanting to spend too much money, I rushed out to Micro Center and picked up the highly-rated, yet deeply-discounted Resident Evil 4. After all, the gun’s packaging said it was compatible with Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, so I figured I’d keep it all in the family.

I got home, fired up the game, and, whoops, I have no way to access the Wii remote’s control pad, 1, 2, +, or – buttons since the Wii remote snaps all the way inside the Buckshot at which point a metal flap folds down to seal the Buckshot up nice and tight.

No worries, though, as maybe I can re-map some of the buttons from within the game, right? Strike two – it can’t be done. So in the game, you press and hold B to aim and A to fire which corresponds to half-cocking the barrel of the gun and then pulling the trigger. Reloading is done by holding the B button and shaking the Wii remote up and down – kind of tough to do when using the pump-action barrel seems much more straightforward. Also, the 1 and 2 buttons are used for the map and options screen, respectively.

You see where I’m going with this.

I had a lot more fun with Wii Ware title “Wild West Guns” – a simple shooter that features an actual setting for a gun controller (or Wii Crossbow accessory). Trigger shoots, pumping the barrel reloads. Done and done.

So the Buckshot is an excellently-built accessory in a sea of cheap and dumb Wii accessories, but you’ll really want to make sure the games you want to play can be completed without using the secondary buttons on the Wii Remote or feature settings to customize your control setup. The box says the gun is “ideal” for games in the Call of Duty series, for instance, but any of the missions that make use of motion controls, and simple things like throwing grenades and steering jeeps and whatnot will present a challenge.

Product Page: Innex Buckshot Controller for Wii

It hasn’t been the best couple of months for Nintendo. Profits were down for the six months leading up to September, which the company blames on the strong yen and the Wii’s price cut. Net sales, too, were down, some 34.5 percent. Fair enough, and those reasons are likely to explain Nintendo’s situation, but is there something else going on? I know Pat Buchanan, the older gentlemen that he is, always uses the phrase “the chickens have come home to roost,” and I think it’s applicable here. Perhaps Nintendo’s strategy of selling the Wii to the “casual” crowd (housewives and the like, to simplify this) has finally run out of gas?

How many games were released for the Wii that appeal to the more hardcore among us? I’m thinking back to all the games I’ve played this year—Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5, Bioshock, Fallout 3, Race Driver: Grid, Forza Motorsport 3, and maybe one or two others that I’m forgetting—and none of them were available for the Wii. Now, I consider myself a hardcore gamer only in the sense that I’m not going to play something like Mario Party or some sing-along game; I’m not hanging out on NeoGaf debating the merits of Xbox Live vs PSN. So that’s where I’m coming from.

The point? I would say that there have been next to no games released for the Wii that interested me, a gamer who’d rather sit there and try to 100 percent Resident Evil 5 (well, Resident Evil 4… Resident Evil: 5 had too many things that annoyed me) than lose five pounds playing Wii Fit. I’m a gamer, not someone looking to have a fun evening with my grandkids.

I think that’s what it comes down to: Nintendo has made, if I may, mad money over the past few years by positioning the Wii as an entertainment device for the whole family. That’s all well and good, but when Single Professional Woman buys a Wii so she can host a Wii Sports party once a month, what are the odds that she’s going to keep buying game after game?

That’s not to say Nintendo is doomed, of course. I played the New Super Mario Brothers Wii a few weeks ago, and I can honestly say, “Now there’s a game that’ll appeal to the ‘hardcore’ among us.”

But what do I care? I’m most concerned with leveling my warlock in WoW.

Flickr

Some people like chocolate, some like vanilla. Some go for Glenn Beck, some for Jon Stewart. And some dig vampires, while others love their zombies.

Me, I’m just waiting for the day I can buy a chocolate zombie Stewart. Until then, I will sit here eating Trader Joe’s Swiss 72 percent Dark Chocolate (world’s best), listening to The Daily Show in the background and whompin’ the undead in Resident Evil 4.

Hot on the heels of Resident Evil Degeneration, the console classic just arrived in the App Store for $7.99.

…

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas