Editorial

7:58 PM on 8/24/2010 by Katrina Pawlowski

It’s been a long-running battle of fans based on a lot of nonsense and personal preference, but how do you choose which system to buy a game on? Content available? Support? Online connectivity? Or are you one that consults all of your friends before coming to a decision on which system to use?

I for one fall in the final category, often texting, emailing, or messaging many friends before settling on a system based on who I want to play what with. Here are a few of my own examples.

A few months ago I had some friends discussing retro-gaming. One game in particular - well, actually it’s technically two games, came up in the conversation. Final Fight: Double Impact which featured both Final Fight and Magic Sword. The conversation went a little like this:

Me: “I miss old school brawlers. The ones in the arcades, you know?”
My buddy: “Well, there is that Final Fight game coming out soon, it’s got two of those games all remastered.”
Me: “If it’s online, we should definitely play!”
My buddy: “Man, those were my favorite games growing up. It would be so great to co-op. I only have PSN though...”
Me: “I guess that settles it, PSN version it is.”

He and I then played hours of Double Impact, reminiscing about the good old days, using old secrets from the old game, etc. In spite of his PSN requirement, I did have a choice in which system I liked to use. To be honest, I generally choose XBLA because of the number of my friends that play that way - but it’s really a whole lot of things to consider if you really think about it.

In fact, a few of my friends recently had a similar dilemma with Shank. Today it was released on the PSN, and tomorrow it hits Xbox Live. The thought here became: do we all wait and play together, or some of us branch off to tackle the PSN version while the others have to wait for the XBLA to drop?

If you throw in PC game options, then you get quite the love-hate triangle going. Some fortunate people may just buy several copies of a game to play with all of their friends, while the rest of us have to pick and choose. When have you had to make a similar decision about a downloadable game? Was the co-op your deciding factor, too?

New in Download and DLC:

Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue will be following up the highly successful, though somewhat co-op insufficient Deathspank. Yea, that’s right, already. It’s been a month since Deathspank rocked us, and he’s already back for round two - not that I’m complaining, mind you.

In DLC news, both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 will be getting a new DLC pack titled The Sacrifice. It’s nice to see Valve keep taking care of their fans, even the ones that didn’t but both versions of their games. Crackdown 2 is also going to be playing the DLC game with a free pack, and a premium DLC pack. In these packs includes new Agent suit colors, new vehicles, and new achievement challenges for all to enjoy.

Free for You:

Because a lot of people really pushed this in my last On the Download, I’ll give the Pixel Junk games a little love. Each of the games has local co-op in the PSN demo, and they include: Pixel Junk Monsters Deluxe, Pixel Junk Shooter, and Pixel Junk Eden. Check ‘em out for free, yo.

Author

Katrina Pawlowski
Former Editor

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