Got all three… I’ll start with Wii.

Having recently acquired a Nintendo Wii, I am both proud and ashamed to report that I have all three current-gen consoles, all in black. I’ve decided to give my opinion on each one.

I’ll start with the Wii. The Good Things include the fact that the girlfriend can and will play it, and the classic games available on the Virtual Console. Super Metroid is once again taking up a lot of gaming time. I love it so very much. The other games I’ve played thus far are also quite good and a lot of fun.

Now for Bad Things. We know the graphics aren’t up to the standard of the other two games machines, but this is most definitely not helped by the, frankly, shit cable situation. With the console you get composite cables. Memories of composite cables are fading, so I’ll remind readers that they are the yellow, red and white trio of cables. They suck. Composite is only one step ahead of ye olde RF and  gives a fuzzy picture with dull, washed-out colours. So you go and pay Nintendo more money for component cables to get a decent picture. But once you have that, the VC games look crap because Nintendo can’t be bothered to alter them, so at the moment I’m swapping the cables around accoring to the games I’m playing. That would be almost acceptable if the VC games were free, or even cheaper. But you can buy a NES, a SNES and an N64 and their games for peanuts on eBay, so the VC games aren’t such great value, plus you can’t get all the games you would if you bought the original consoles. No Contra 1, 2 or 4, no Mario Kart, no Goldeneye, I could go on . Downloading them for the Wii is more convenient but not that cheap and not yet comprehensive. Why does it take so long to add content if they’re not even taking measures to make them compatible with modern cables?

You only get one controller. The other consoles have this issue as well, but with the Wii it’s particularly annoying because it’s Nintendo pedal it as a family ‘n’ friends machine. Multiplayer is the big seller here; in order to play the Wii as it was intended and marketed, you need another magic wand. An additional Motion Plus controller will set you back fifty pounds. FIFTY POUNDS!

This means (all at time of writing, of course) that to play the £165 console with one friend and half-decent picture quality, you need to spend a total of £235. You can get an XBox 360 Elite with two games and a year’s Gold Live membership for the same sort of money. Another fifteen notes will buy you a 120Gb PS3 slim. And they both come with HDMI cables.

The Wii is a cool machine and I’m glad I have one, but in the current market, they are not cheap and they are not good value for money. I’m knocking Nintendo here, not the Wii. It’s good at what it does and I would recommend it to people, but only if they’re still listening after I tell them that buying the necessary kit and a couple of games will set them back £300.

Smelly Fingers

The cover of Left 4 Dead depicts an unhealthy-looking hand which has just agonisingly clawed its way into our view. As the thumb seems to have fallen off (making needlework difficult), it’s showing us four fingers.

There are FOUR people who have been left FOR dead, so a photographer was charged with the task of finding a cover image for the documentary. He went to the epicentre of the zombie outbreak and took a picture of said hand, cleverly illustrating FOR and FOUR and SOME KIND OF UNDESIRABLE SITUATION WHICH AFFECTS HANDS MAYBE A DISEASE OR SOMETHING YOU’LL HAVE TO LOOK AT THE BACK TO FIND OUT.

Then the bosses decided to make another documentary about people joyfully killing their friends and family just because they got swine flu maybe and Left 4 Dead 2 was announced. So the photographer was instructed to go and take an equally clever picture. He tried to convince his superiors that the title was rubbish. The conversation went like this:

PHOTOGRAPHER: The title is rubbish.

BOSS: No.

PHOTOTGRAPHER: Yes because the 4 for FOR and FOUR doesn’t work very well when you put 2 after it because 4 is polysemic and 2 isn’t.

BOSS: …

PHOTOTOGRAPHER: …

BOSS: 2 means TWO and TOO. Because these FOUR people have been left FOR dead TOO.

PHOTOTOGRAPPHER: You only just thought of that.

BOSS: No.

PHOTOTOGRRAPPHER: Well then what about a third documentary?

BOSS: It’ll be Left 4 Dead 3, like FREE. The THIRD documentary featuring FOUR people who are left FOR dead and fighting to be FREE.

PHITOGRRAGOGRAPHER: What?

BOSS: It’ll be filmed in London so you have to read the title with a Cockney accent. Now that’s polysemia, innit muppet?

PHITOGRGAGRORPHSERRAAR:You’re clearly making this up. What will you do with the Left 4 Dead 4? You already have a cover with four fingers.

BOSS: The hand will be the other way around. Left 4 Dead 8 will feature an octopus.

PHARFOITHIRXUHGIOEZQGFW: What the damn?

BOSS: Bananas.

What’s a games expo like?

There are tons of games expos out there, and all the big mags and websites will already have reviewed the pre-release games, so there’s no point in me doing that. But what I will do is give people an idea of what it’s like to go to an expo. Here’s a description based on my experience of Eurogamer 2009 in London.

Well, you go in and get given a wristband which the door people insist absolutely MUST be put on properly. They have one person to give it to you, one more to help you put it on and then another who will check your wrist to make sure their two colleagues have done their job properly.

Once you wriggle past the door people, you’re greeted with the sight of televisions. Lots of televisions, each one connected to a console, each console containing a game, each game being played by one a the punters.

People who go to expos are an interesting bunch. It’s like a dog show: they’re all dogs, but you can easily see that there are different breeds. You have the people who just kind of wandered in because they have nothing better to do, the techies who want to check out the latest in game design and technology, the people who just want to play all of the pre-release games as fast as possible and the people and those who only went to play one game. These ones simply annoy the ones who want to play on all the games because they don’t give anyone else a go. Then you have the casual gamers who just wander around and who annoy the serious gamers who think the casual gamers aren’t serious enough and so have no right to take up floor-space. You’ll see guys who dragged their reluctant girlfriends along, looking enviously at the guys who have girlfriends who actually want to be there. Finally,  there are the people who paid £6 just to go in say that all the games are shit.

Floating around playing new games is fine, but as they’re  just about to be released, it’s not really a look into the future. For that, check out  a developer talk. At Eurogamer 2009, we saw a demonstration of Brink (looks awesome, by the way) while being told about the new ideas and technology within, plus we had the opportunity to put some questions to the man in charge. Again, different breeds made themselves known. A technology buff asked what software is being used for whatnot, and a Jeremy Paxman wannabe asked why this game was different from all the others. He must have been thinking about something else during the demo, which answered his question at length before he asked it.

Games expos are great places to go if you have no job. In this time of recession and unemployment, game developers literally line up to offer people places on their teams. They have little tables in cubicles so you can have a proper chat about career prospects. This is a fantastic thing.

Another thing which makes them a destination for the unemployed is the prospect of free clothes. In exchange for prostituting yourself as a walking billboard, you can have a free t-shirt with a half-decent thread-count. You may even get two shirts. And some sweets.

Inappropriate Content

I thought this video would illustrate the difference between average gamers, like us, and hardcore gamers. An average gamer would have stopped playing for at least a moment. But not this kid. He’s hardcore.