So the time came. I finally own an Xbox 360.
It's probably very early for me to be typing this up, but I don't even know if I will ever use it again. There is a small backstory with this. Basically the last gaming console I owned that actually got used was a Nintendo Game cube. This was many moons ago, and I clearly remember camping outside of Walmart all night in my ex wife's Ford Taurus only to find that no one really wanted any so the shelves were piled high with them.
And that was it. For years after that I either had a PC that could run games or simply didn't bother.
For years people have tried to convince me that consoles are (to name a few of the quotes)
Just as good as a PC graphics !
Not loaded with problems and bugs !
Easy sit down gaming without the hassle !
And so on. Now not at any point did I actually believe any of this but recently the opportunity came along for me to own an Xbox 360 and I thought fuck it, why not? Well, there are many reasons why not, and my eyes are the main one of those reasons.
I do look around me and I have had a good look at many comparisson video and screenshot on the net. Of course the PC always looks better but I will admit that recently the 360 games look pretty much identical. Well, today I found out that it just isn't true.
Finally I was perfectly armed to compare the two systems head to head, face to face. Infact, better still I was even able to do so using exactly the same implement to display the picture !
I have my Xbox connected into the HDMI input of my 1080p monitor, and my PC connected to the DVI input of my 1080p monitor. Now I know that most comparissons will basically butter up the differences, but they never quite explain them in the way I would. I decided to compare the game Fallout New Vegas across both formats, switching inputs as I went. The first thing that struck me was that the graphics on the Xbox 360 are very sparse. The games do resemble one another of course (given that they are like, the same game) but the 360 is so terribly inferior that I simply could not bear to play it for more than 30 minutes without feeling rather ill. Why? Well, it goes a little something like this.
The 360 has absolutely and utterly no anti aliasing. So what is anti aliasing? well, it's basically (to put it very crudely) - blur. On the PC you get levels of anti aliasing that you can set to smooth things over. The thing is, it doesn't just smooth things over it smooths them out completely. So some will say I am being anal or being an idiot? not so. Within thirty minutes of playing the game I had to switch off. You see, on Fallout New Vegas there is a huge expansive world in front of you. This world is made up of layered scenery like rocks, buildings, wells, abandoned cars and so on. Now what I did not realise was that when not anti aliased each one of these objects looks sharp. Worse still, though, the edges of them sort of 'glisten' and before long my eyes were shooting all over the place to try and decipher the images in front of my eyes. It was like trying to watch an old grainy movie and before long I began to feel like my eyes were crossing, straining them, and causing me to feel rather dizzy.
Now I admit I do have a problem with my eyes (and I can also tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS, thanks) but to me it isn't something I am prepared to continue to do to my eyes. The reason I wear glasses is because of gaming. Between the ages of 8 and 17 I was a heavy, heavy console gamer. By the time I was 18 I needed glasses.
So, that pretty much rules me out of the console race before I have even gotten started.
To conclude, then, the 360 is not a fucking patch on a decent gaming PC. Sorry, it just is fucking not. It never was (discovered from a comparisson when it first came out) and it never fucking will be. It's a raw, cut down, cheapened gaming PC with shit graphics and expensive games.
Sorry to burst your bubbles, like.
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