Lesson #2: Don’t bet Ryan. No matter how bad he seems to be playing. Putting money on the line suddenly makes him a better bowler.

Lesson #3: Once you’ve lost $10 to the kid already, don’t say double or nothing for the second game. You never play well your second game.

Lesson #4: Ryan has a guilty conscience. If you let him, he’ll figure out a way to give back the $20 he won from you. Including betting on the third game.

When the XBox 360 first came out, everyone thought it was the most amazing thing ever. Some still do. When it came out, I was years out of video games. I hadn’t played any since the SNES days. Ah, SNES, you were my hero. So, needless to say, not being a big video game guy, I didn’t go drop $400 on an XBox.

Christmas, the year the 360 came out, Christine bought me a regular XBox, with some games. That was the best Christmas present I think I’ve ever gotten. So I started getting back into video games, specifically first-person shooters, which I’ve always enjoyed, and thought I was fairly good at.

Skip ahead to a year later, along comes the Wii. I had no idea what the hell a Wii was, and had kept reading all about it on sites like Digg, and Slashdot. I finally saw a commercial, a few days before it came out, and proclaimed “We have to get one!” to Christine. She agreed, and we began our quest to find one. We finally did, and purchased it at Toys R Us, followed closely by the Zelda game for the Wii, at Target.

Skip to another six months later, when Christine went to visit her parents down in Georgia. The phone at home rings one night, and it’s Christine. “We have to get an XBox 360 when I get home.” Her 14 year old brother bought himself a 360 for Christmas, and recently got Guitar Hero 2 for it. Christine proclaimed “It’s the best game ever made.”, which was enough for me. We promptly went out when she got home, bought the 360, and drove around to what felt like a zillion stores to find the Guitar Hero game. Which, FYI, is the most amazing game ever made. If only I could finish it on expert, damn you Iron Maiden!

Anyway, so we come to comparison:
The Wii is a lot of fun.. at first. Don’t get me wrong, I could play Wii Tennis, or Wii Boxing for hours every day, and not bat an eyelash. But other than Tennis or Boxing, none of the games have really jumped out and grabbed me as something I can play continually. And you’re probably thinking “You haven’t tried enough games.” Not true, we’ve got about a dozen games, including Wario Party, Red Steel, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Madden 07, Rayman’s Rabid Rabbits, and Trauma Center: Second Opinion. (The other titles escape me, as I’m not at home while writing this.)

While some of the games are a lot of fun, and entertaining to watch people play, they’re only good in environments where there’s a lot of people. For example, we brought the Wii to the office one night (at my last job), and invited a bunch of people up to play. We set it up on a projector, and let people play baseball, tennis, boxing, etc. Everyone had fun, and it was even more fun for us to watch people who hadn’t played before. That was Wii Sports, only. I didn’t even bring the other games with us, because they weren’t really great, or multiplayer.

My biggest complaint about the Wii is, while it may be fun to play the Sports game, some of the other games are extremely complicated. For example, we tried Madden 07 (football, for those who don’t know) a few times. Even playing the computer on the easiest level, it’s too complicated. For example, to throw a pass: you start off as the quarterback, and hike the ball. You use the nunchuck device to run away from people trying to tackle you, while looking upfield for a receiver. The you use the Wiimote to “throw” the ball (literally), to the receiver. Then, you automatically switch to the receiver, and have a second or two to raise the Wiimote and the nunchuck up into the air, to catch the ball. If you’re lucky enough to catch it, you have to pull both controllers in close to your body to “hold” the ball. Once you do that, if you’re lucky enought to not have been tackled yet, you have to run using the nunchuck, while holding the ball.

Sound complicated? That’s just one play. Forget about the rest of the game.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the games are a lot of fun to play. But overall, they should spend more time developing these games specifically for the Wii, and not just developing games for other systems, and adapting them to be “Wii-able”. Nowadays, the Wii just sits in our audio tower, collecting dust. We hardly use it, or any of the games. It really makes Mii sad.

Onto the 360. The first game we got, was obviously the Guitar Hero game, that Christine (and Ryan) recommended so highly. In addition to the games that we had for the regular Xbox, we also purchased Dead Rising, which I had played with her little brother last time I visited. (Very violent, and not recommended for kids, in any way.)

So I spend the afternoon hooking it up, and turn it on. The first thing it makes you do, is go through a set up. You tell it what kind of tv you have (hi-def!), and set the time, and create a profile, and all that. Then you’re off to playing. We plugged in the guitar, and started rocking out. I got about 30 seconds into “Surrender” by Cheap Trick (first track in the game), and began jumping up and down. So much fun! Even for people who’ve never played a guitar before, it’s fun, and easy. And it helps you improve hand-eye coordination.

After a while I switched to Dead Rising, which I remember thinking was awesome. My only gripe when playing with Ryan, was the text on the screen was too hard to read. Apparently, that was only because the TV was old, and small. On my HD TV, I could read the text just fine. Dead Rising is so much fun. Tough at points, but fun overall. I’ve still got some objectives left to unlock, but have already finished the various parts of the game.

Since then, we’ve bought a few more games, most recently MLB 2k7, and F.E.A.R, both of which are amazing. I started a season in the baseball game, playing as my beloved Red Sox, and am currently 22-0, with a team ERA of .63, and a team batting average of .483. So far, doing very well. The F.E.A.R. game takes everything I love about video games (killing people, and blowing things up), and adds a “scary” part to it. It’s a very creepy game, and I can’t play it before we go to bed, because it gives Christine nightmares. (Yes, it’s that creepy.)

So to sum it all up, I prefer the 360:

• Better game selections
• The games that are available are built specifically to work with the console, and are not adapted
• XBox Live works better (and faster) than online play for the Wii
• The “Mii” set up on the Wii is only entertaining at first. XBox profiles make much more sense
• XBox Live allows you to track progress through the games you’re playing (and your friends’ games) online, through the website
• Live video and audio through XBox live, Wii doesn’t do that, yet.
• Download movies and other exclusive content to your Xbox, and watch them right on your TV.
• While the Wii has an internet browser (even though it’s Opera), I find that useless in a video game console. If I want to surf the web, I’ll walk the 30 feet to my computer, or use my Blackberry.
• Better battery life on the controllers.
• Plug-n-play adaptors directly from Microsoft. No need to buy third party devices to charge your controllers here.
• HD, plain and simple, HD = better graphics.

The only real advantage for the Wii, that I see, is that Christine can play some of the games easier. On the Xbox, she has a tough time with games that require use of both thumbsticks. IE; Halo, where one stick walks, one stick looks. She usually ends up standing in a corner trying to climb a wall ala Jim from The Office. Though I gotta say, she kicks serious ass on Star Wars Legos. Now there’s a game they need to make more of.

So that wraps up my review of our gaming systems, Wii vs 360. 360 all the way. Guitar Hero 3, and Rock Band will make it even that much more awesome! I can’t wait.

We’ve also been very busy…playing Guitar Hero II. Lemme tell ya, after playing “Sweet Child O’ Mine” on Medium, I feel like a rock star.

We’ve also been dedicating a lot of time to MovieSnobs. We’re trying to get fresher content up there more regularly instead of just the reviews.

More wedding info to come soon. We’re picking out invitations in a couple of weeks. We’re down to 265 days!

That being said, we bought Call of Duty 3 two weeks ago, thinking “Yea, the second game rocked, the third one can only be better.”  Damn, I wish that statement was true.

I sat down tonight to play some more of the game, thinking I had hours of play left, and so much more to do, and finish.  I was wrong.  Apparently, in 2 weeks, I made it through all but one level, the last one.  So, I sat down, and blew threw the level, in about 10 minutes.  The screen went dark, and a “Dedicated to” message came up. I thought “That can’t f*cking be it, seriously. That’s not the end of the game.” Wrong, again. That was the end of the game. 

Not only was it short (in total, it was less than 10 hours of gameplay), but it was so much easier than Call of Duty 2 (which, in my opinion, the level where you’re in the bomber, shooting down enemy airplanes is one of the coolest video game levels ever).  I felt extremely unchallenged with the third installment of the game.  Maybe I’ve just gotten so much better at playing video games in the last year? Doubtful.  I remember playing Call of Duty 2, and I must have dropped the f-bomb hundreds of times, on levels where you walk around a corner, and get shot in the face.  I dropped the f-bomb once during Call of Duty 3. And it was because I blew myself up with a grenade.

I felt unchallenged, I felt let down. I feel like I won’t give Call of Duty 4 a chance, should it ever come around. How depressing, a game that I fell in love with (Call of Duty 2), can so easily be turned upon, with an utter let down.  Though I only tried the game on “normal”, perhaps I should go back and try it on “uber-gamer” mode, and see how much I complain it was too easy.

To put relate how much quicker this game was to complete:

• We bought Call of Duty 3 two weekends ago, I’m already 100% done with the core objective of the game (given, it doesn’t keep a percentage for you, but I completed the game, I can count that as 100%)
• We bought Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy on the day it came out (September 12th, nearly 3 months ago).  Playing “Legos” nearly an hour every night for those 3 months, and we’re only 88.9% done with the game.  Yes, we’ve gone through and completed almost every level.  But with “Legos”, there’s so much more.  Hidden levels, hidden pieces of puzzles.  It’s so much more of a challenge. 

Yea, any moron can make a guy shoot a gun into another guy’s face. But can that same moron find 10 hidden Lego canisters throughout 18 levels based on kick-ass Star Wars movies? I don’t know, for sure.

Bottom line, I’m dissappointed with the new Call of Duty game.  I really hope that there’s another Half Life game released for Xbox, because as far as I’m concerned, I haven’t loved a video game as much as I loved Half Life 2, since the original Zelda for NES.  Now, that’s quality gaming. Viva la Zelda.

In an unrelated note, I want a Wii, now that I know what one is, and I can totally get excercise by having one.  Dear Santa…

The main reason we loved the original game, is that Christine’s not a gamer, and has trouble with games that use both the left and right thumbsticks on the controller. (Halo, Half Life 2, etc)  So, we liked this game, for its simplicity.  Not only that, but it’s friggen Star Wars, how can you not love it?

So, part 2.  The game starts out exactly as Star Wars (Episode IV) does, the racing ships, the tractor beam, the whole nine yards. Excellent way to start the game.  We being in a smiliar fashion as the old game does, we’re in a sort of “general meeting place”, in the “diner”, which we all remember from the first game. With some welcomed additions.  The diner now keeps track of how long you’ve been playing the game, and how far you’ve come in progress. (ie; elapsed time runs in real time, and percentage done updates after each level.) 

So, we begin the first level, which is similar to the previous game.  A very simple level, just to get used to the characters, and level play.  We start off with the two characters we ended the last game with. (Christine was thrilled to play as Leia again).  We plug along through the first level, acheive our “Jedi Status” for coins collected, and move on.  After level one is complete, we get to unlock Episode V and VI, to play them in any order we want.  Since we’re anal, we decide to only play them in movie order, since we’re such movie geeks.

Some new welcomed features of Part 2:

• Changing characters parts: You can “morph” your characters (at the diner), by changing heads, hats, faces, bodies, arms, legs, and weapons, by using their “Transport” beams. We haven’t tried this yet, but I imagine it’s pretty fun.
• Slap fights.  Now, you can not only shoot enemies, lightsaber them, or throw things at them with the Force, but you can also walk right up to them and punch them in the face.  To which Christine repeatedly laughs, each and every time.

Somethings I didn’t care for, however:

• It’s now much easier to hurt your partner.  There’s an “auto aim” feature that seems to be on by default, that you can’t turn off, which is much more accurate than the first game. So, if you’re wailing away on enemies, and you run out of guys to shoot, it’ll aim at your partner.  Not good.
• The rendering of the black background during the “save” mode seems to be very pixated, especially when displayed for a long period of time. This may be something with my TV, and the way it renders things, but I don’t think so, as the first game looks killer during this same phase. 

Overall, this is a seriously fun game, that was well made.  Absolutely worth the $39.99 I paid for it, and the trips to three different stores.  If you liked the last game, you’ll definitely love this game too.  Although we’re only 3 levels deep in the game, I doubt we’ll have any complaints about it, for time to come.  My only foreseeable complaint is that when the game’s over, there’ll be a long wait until TT puts out another Lego game.

Sadly, Best Buy didn’t have the game yet.  I looked and looked and looked, and was met with a resounded “We don’t have it yet”, from an ever-so-friendly-40-something-who-was-obviously-pissed-his-life-didn’t-pan-out-quite-right-and-is-still-working-at-Best-Buy employee.  So, I bought my DVD, and headed over to Electronics Boutique, which luckily is in the same mall.

Now, I’m sitting waiting for Christine to get home from work, so we can play the Lego game.  I have to say, the first Lego Star Wars game we got, has to be one of the funnest video games ever.  While it’s not very difficult to beat the game, it’s very fun, for people of all ages.

 I was talking with Jeremy the other day, at work, and we decided that the company that makes these Lego games really needs to make more.  We’d like to see the following:

• Lego Indiana Jones games
• Lego James Bond games
• Lego Jurassic Park games

I think the Indiana Jones games would be amazing.  Though, knowing that Harrison Ford hasn’t done anything that’s made him money lately, he’ll probably want $60M for his likeness rights.

 I’m off to download this big new update to iTunes, to see how much these criminals want to download movies.  Speaking of downloading, the new Tivo HD box is out today.  I was psyched when I got the e-mail.  Sadly, it’s $800.  I don’t think Christine would let me spend that much, when our regular Tivo is perfectly functional.  Maybe someday.