Hello again folks....long time no see
.
I've been quite busy recently so haven't had a chance to pop in very often, but I thought I could add a quick blog entry today (Foo and Daze are doing such a cracking job, I thought I could leave it a little while myself
).
So now, what do I chat about?.....hmmmmm......seems like a lot of the more "serious" topics have been dealt with....
....and I'm sure most of you could do without being bored senseless about stock alerts and unit shipments from me
.......
.....so......
....how's about a topic which may be old, but which NEVER goes away
.
One which many of us are either guilty of or sick to death of?
Yes peeps.....brace yourself for my tirade against Console Fanbois (sp).
---- (I got the idea after laughing my butt off at the brilliant vidlogs of Yahtzee from over at Zero Punctuation - esp.
the one where he lays into the idiots who send him (for want of a better word) "hate" mail 
).
I'll start by briefly discussing the big 3 contenders:
Sony - I used to LOVE this company. The endless supply of quality titles, the exclusives, the one to have to be "contemporary".....the list goes on.
I had some fantastic gaming moments with my PS2. Games like GT3:A-Spec and MDK2:Armageddon spring to mind.
Then there's the classic GTA series. Vice City Stories was a masterpiece imho. However, whilst playing this game, I realised that it was actually quite repetitive and boring in parts. If you wish to do the missions it mainly resulted in "Pick up Mr X --> Drive him somewhere --> Kill some folk --> Deliver him somewhere else". I quickly realised that the fun of the game was NOT in doing missions, but in randomly carjacking, running folk over and doing stunts. When I used to mention this, the PS2 Fanboys would jump down my throat, "heretic....burn him.....he DARES to insult our beloved game/system" (pitchforks raised, eyes burning with malevolent hatred).
<whisper>Unfortunately, I feel pretty much the same with GTA-IV......however, I can't tell people this because otherwise the thought police will knock down my door and convict me of "free thinking" </whisper>
.
Then Sony pull the whole "Giant Enemy Crabs" and "The UK will wait longer and pay more" fiasco
, and suddenly it's Fanboy War again......with 360 and PS3 fanboys trading insults all over "teh internets"
.
Talking of 360......
Microsoft - First game I played on a Xbox? - Halo. What did I think? Slow and boring. I mean come off it, many levels were "repeats" and you moved as slow as molasses.....almost in reverse. You've got to understand that I came from Quake III and Unreal Tournament ilk from both console and PC......as far as I was concerned, the movement in halo was MIND BENDINGLY, painfully slow.
However, no matter how reasoned my arguments where, it didn't stop a work colleague almost physically attacking me because I had dared to question the console (actually it was the game, not that such a fine point mattered to him) that he had gone out and bought
.
At this point in my gaming life, I had begun to truly appreciate how childish fanboys could be.
Halo 3 - Sorry, but yet again, I feel this is an average game....no more no less....at most a "meh" from me....done a hundred times better in games like Gears of War.
Dare I say as much?.....er......not really. As soon as someone does, they're called a troll
.
Nintendo - It doesn't just end there ^^^. The Big N also has a lot to answer for. Take one example --> Super Mario Galaxy.
Now, now, stop looking at me like that. Put away that knife and just listen.
The game is FANTASTIC, but it's not without it's flaws.
Whilst doing the purple coin missions, I realised that one particular one I'd already completed twice before.....once in "normal" mission, once in a race against "dark Mario", and now I was being told to do it again but this time collecting purple coins under a time limit.
Why?
I'm sorry, but this just seems like Laziness on the devs part to me. I've never been one for completing games again and again and again (some exceptions are retro games like on C64 and any flight sim
).....but apart from this, I generally trade a game in once I complete it. If I wasn't prepared to Re-Do Silent Hill just to get the new endings all those years ago, I'm certainly not going to start repeating games mindlessly now......AGAIN, this is merely my own opinion, something I personally dislike, but for some reason it's an opinion Fanboys would not like me to have. The fact that I otherwise LOVE the game falls on deaf ears - a trademark of the Fanboy
.
Even the new offering of MKWii has serious shortcomings in the way I think they've bodged up the Battle Mode........BUT <puts finger to nose>I didn't say that, right!</conspiratorial whisper>.
So what am I saying? Well, ALL games have their faults. If you do not like a game, it does NOT mean you hate the console. If you own one console, it doesn't mean you should hate the others.
For example, if someone doesn't like flight sims, they're entitled to their opinion......why would I ever feel the need to be insulted?.....the same rule should apply to consoles.
Come to think of it, I have seen this kind of behaviour before. You know.....the "
I'm mortally offended because you insulted the console my mum bought for me" crowd. It's pretty similar to how ho's "defend" their pimps in films.
It's made even worse by the fact that many comments are directed towards a specific game rather than the company itself......and it's not as if the Fanboy owns shares in said company.
In fact, said company couldn't give a rat's ar5e about any of it's own fanboys so what are they defending???????.......boggles the mind
(it doesn't just apply to consoles of course.....ANYTHING can be "fanboy'd" - I myself like the Apple OS, but as good as that is, I do realise that it has many faults (not as much as some others, but they do exist). On top of this, the hardware can be prone to failure, the prices exorbitant (iPhone!!!!) and the company itself as pig-headed and stubborn as it wants to be (esp. wrt DRM and not willing to rectify manufacturing faults). This is the difference between allowing "reasoned thought" where pros and cons are weighed and acknowledged, and being narrow minded about things.
So there is a fine line between an "ardent supporter" (e.g. of a football club - so long as they can reason sensibly) and a Fanboy (all reason has long since disappeared/failed to develop in the first place).
The question is, do you know which side of this fence you lie?
The following is taken from Gamepro......
(cont...)