20 December 2007

The last real video game I played was The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was a two dimensional RPG that led you through a virtual world full of people, strange creatures and one evil villain. You had a sword, a couple bombs and a bow to fight with. There were puzzles to complete and riddles to figure out along the way. It was fun - seriously...

Since then I have done other things like grad school, psychotherapy, writing, web design, middle management, chess and stuff like that.

During my little break, video games have come out of the dark ages. Gone is the two dimensional look. Now you feel like you're actually in the game. Controllers respond to gravity and position and can offer feedback through vibration - all adding to the experience. But I still had no desire to get back into the game - until I realized that my other passion (all things HD) was on a collision course with the gaming consoles.

I've had my eye on Blu-ray disc players for a while now. They typically run $400 to $500 dollars. But then I realized you get a Blu-ray player inside the PS3 - for $399!

To me this is a no-brainer. I can get a Blu-ray player and a gaming system for the same price as a stand alone Blu-ray player.

Enter the dilemma: Everyone I know has the XBox 360 - which doesn't come with a Blu-ray player. One other piece of information: I'm not really interested in playing the multi-player games online (which is what all my friends do with Halo 3).

So what is the right choice?

• PS3 ($399.00) Gets me my Blu-ray player, great gaming system, bigger hard drive.
• XBox 360 ($349.00 or you can add an HD DVD player for $180.00) Gets me the ability to play Halo 3 (and probably a few other games) online with my friends. I have a Zune so it would be compatible with the XBox 360.

Any ideas?

Let the games begin!