Microsoft XBox 360

I've never really gotten on with games consoles, more specifically, their controllers.  That was until the Nintendo Wii came along which changed things for me and I became an avid gamer for several years until the games became tiresome and the Wii's popularity slowly dwindled.

Give me a keyboard and a mouse and I can cope - give me a controller with fewer buttons/keys and I just don't get on with them.  That was until I got hold an XBox 360 controller that I used on my laptop to play Duke Nukem Forever (yeah I know, it's not a great game but I only paid £5 for it secondhand).

I found I got on quite well with the controller so I finally bit the bullet and last month I purchased an XBox 360 console along with a couple of games - GTA IV, NCIS and Flatout Ultimate Carnage.

The NCIS game is a lot weaker than I expected and it's a bit of a 'no brainer' so I'll keep it for when I just want to play a game without having to think too much.  Flatout Ultimate Carnage is a fantastic game with lots of cars, tracks and crashing to have fun with.  GTA IV is just as good as the previous versions but I haven't done many of the actual missions as of yet as I just keep driving around trying out the different vehicles I come across.

All-in-all I'm having fun with my XBox and the next game I will be getting will be one of the Raving Rabbids games, one works on the standard console but the other requires the Kinect Sensor which I don't have yet, but looks like a great way of playing games!

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Where Have All The Games Gone?

For nearly a year now my Nintendo Wii has been gathering dust and today for no reason what-so-ever I decided to dust it down and power it up!  On looking for a game to play I remembered that as I hadn't used it for a while I sold most of my games so I had nothing to play so off down the town I went...

I went in to HMV, GameStation and Game and was dismayed and confused - where have all the games gone?  There wasn't a single game that took my fancy.  I'd already had a quick look on the Internet so was expecting to find the latest Need For Speed game for sale but in those three stores I couldn't see a single NFS game, let alone the latest one.  :(

As an absolute last resort I nipped up to Tesco Extra and was pleasantly surprised to see a much better game selection (namely a full chart plus a section of random titles) than that of the so called 'proper' games stores.

Not only did I find Need For Speed: Nitro (which claims to have been written from scratch just for the Wii) but I also saw Wii Sports Resort sitting on the shelf with the new sensor attachment thingy so I popped them both in to my shopping basket.

Is the Nintendo Wii reaching the end of its life-cycle?   If stores like HMV and Game aren't stocking many new games and leaving it down to the supermarkets such as Tesco to fill the gap is the reign of the Nintendo Wii coming to an end?  I suppose only time will tell...