Digital Life Radio

Show Notes 11/23/08

Posted on 26. Nov, 2008 by Jordan in Show Notes

Holiday Shopping Guide – Gaming Consoles and Platforms:

With a wide variety of gaming options on the market bringing confusion to gift givers accross the nation, our hosts attempt to simply the current gaming landscape with descriptions and comparisons of the major gaming consoles and platforms available today. Here’s a quick overview of what they had to say:

Nintendo Wii
Manufacturer: Nintento
Price: $250
Popular exclusive games: Mario Kart, Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Zelda series, Wii Fit, Sonic Unleashed, World of Goo
Target audience: Familys, casual gamers, party gamers
Pros:

Unique and fun motion control gaming interface
Easy to understand use
Backwards compatible with older Nintendo games
Comes with Wii Sports – great packaged game
Great party console – makes group involvement easy
Encourages full body involvement giving players an actual workout!

Cons:

Hard to find – use www.wiitracker.com
When found, most units come bundled in $3-400 packages
Graphics are sub-standard compared to current generation systems
Majority of available games cater to a tamer audience rather than hardcore action users
No included large capacity storage

PlayStation 3
Manufacturer: Sony
Price: $399 (80gb) – $499 (160gb)
Popular exclusive games: Little Big Planet, Resistance 2, Metal Gear Solid 4
Target Audience: Hardcore gamers with HDTV’s, online multiplayer gamers
Pros:

HD output and highend graphics processing lend towards impressive looking games
Multiplayer options are substantial
Includes Blue Ray player and is the highest rated Blue Ray player according to Cnet.com

Cons:

Expensive
Not as many exlusive titles as other consoles like the XBOX 360
NOT PlayStation 2 backwards compatible

XBox 360
Manufacturer: Microsoft
Price: $199 (arcade version no hard drive) – $299 (60gb hard drive) – $399 (120gb hard drive)
[See the difference between the XBox versions]
Popular exclusive games: Gears of War (1 and 2), Halo series, Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, Fable series, Far Cry 2, Mass Effect
Target Audience: Hardcore gamers looking for intense action and combat bundled with great multiplayer and community settings
Pros:

Easy to use dashboard interface for access online content or media files
HD output and highend graphics processing
Install games to hard drive for faster load times
Stream movies from a Netflix account
XBox Live multiplayer ranking system matches you with player of similar rank, keeping the game fair and fun
Backwards compatible with most XBox games

Cons:

Microsoft charges for XBox Live membership
No Bluray player
Media cannot be copied over to your PC. Meaning that any TV shows or movies you’ve purchased will stay on the XBox.

PC
Manufacturer: Various
Price: $200 – $4000
Popular exlusive PC games: Crysis, World of WarCraft, Orange Box, Command and Conquer series,
Unreal Tournament series,
Target Audience: Hardcore gamers looking for a customized experience and nothing but the highest in graphics power
Pros:

Since you can customize the hardware in the PC, games can look far superiour to console versions
PC gaming is highly customizable and lends to precise gameplay
PC game titles are often cheaper than console counterparts

Cons:

Games can’t be rented like console titles
PC’s often have more problems that require troubleshooting
Getting the best graphics performance sometimes requires premium ($) components
Digital Life Minute:
This weeks Digital Life Minute announces the iTunes gift card giveaway. To enter, simply email your name, email address, and phone number. Please include you email address in the body of the email.

Caller – Caleb – Xbox 360 vs PS3:

Caleb is trying to decide between the Xbox 360 and the Playstatoin 3. He’s interested in playing high caliber first person shooter titles with premium graphics. Our pick? The Xbox 360. Some of the best action titles are released for the Xbox 360 (the halo series is a prime example) and the multiplayer components make it an even better pick for social action gaming.

Holiday Shopping Guide – Our favorite games:

Jordan and Jake listed some of their favorite game titles on the show and included a small expose on “open world gaming”. You can listen to the show for the full description, but here’s the list: (Note: we always recommend reading the reviews online for any game title before buying – we use www.gametrailers.com and www.ign.com)

Mass Effect (Xbox 360 and PC) – a perfect open world game that captured our imagination and drew us into it’s SciFi environment. Decisions you make influence the rest of the game, making you really feel like a part of the Mass Effect world.
Assassins Creed (Xbox 360, PC, PS3) – this first person action stealth game, set during the crusades, has an intruiging story and inventive gameplay
Fable (Xbox, PC, and Fable 2 for XBox 360) – A fun action/fantasy game in which you decide if you are going to be good or evil. Shape your character as you play and become the hero you want to be.
Call of Duty 4 or 5 (Xbox 360, PC, OSX, PS3) – the quintisential classic action FPS
Halo series (Xbox 360, PC) – amazing storyline, fast pace gameplay, industry leading multiplayer
The Orange Box (Xbox 360, PC) – this $30 bundle of games from Valve software – offers the most bang for buck you’ll find anywhere. We especially like Portal and Team Fortress 2 out of the included games
Skate (Xbox 360, PS3) – if you’re fed up with the unrealistic Tony Hawk series, skate will please the hardcore part of your heart. Skate offers a more realistic feel to skateboarding in a video game. Rather than mashing a button to do a trick you must use careful control with the thumbsticks to do impressive moves.
Crysis (PC) – a visually stunning PC only title that combines story, amazing graphics, and innovative gameplay (warning: requires a relatively powerful system to play)
The Sims series – A life simulation game
Spore – Starting out as a single cell organism, you must raise your creation up through the ranks of evolution until finally you become a space traveling civilization. Fun game for all ages

Holiday Shopping Guide – Gaming peripherals and accessories:

Jake gives us a full rundown on his favorite accessories for the Xbox 360 and PC. These items are the perfect gift for the gamer who already has the console and/or PC. Listen to the show to hear our full review of these items, but here’s a quick list: (Note: We’re going to be upgrading the website soon and bringing major upgrades to our product review coverage – stay tuned!)

Xbox 360:
Xbox wireless receiver – hook your Xbox up to the home network
Wireless headset
PC:
Favorite gaming mouse – Logitech G9
Favorite gaming keyboard – Microsoft Sidewinder X6

Tech Topic – Blogging platforms:

Jordan and Jake take a repreive from the gaming discussion to run through some of our favorite blogging platforms. Listen to the show for a description of each site and category:

Microblogging – twitter.com
Mediablogging – Pownce – Tumblr
Social networking with blogging capabilities – facebook – myspace
Standard blogging – WordPress – Blogger – Typepad
Videoblogging – youtube -  ustream.tv – blogtv

Next week on the show – Standard desktop and laptop peripherals – we roundup a variety of products and give you our recomendations

We air every Saturday at 3pm ET on AM 1200 WXIT – call in or email us – 828 264 8255 – contact@digitalliferadio.net

Tags: blogging, computer, consols, gaming, holiday shopping guide, pc, peripherals, playstation 3, ps3, twitter, video games, wii, wordpress, xbox, xbox 360