I'm a pretty big RTS guy, and I own both and have played them each quite a bit...

C&C is the clear-cut winner in my opinion. Much higher production quality to the game itself and a lot more strategic depth in my opinion.

The previous C&C (Tiberium wars) is actually better then both of them though. It had a much better storyline and three times as much content as Kane's Wrath. Is also uses almost the same exact game engine apart from some interface tweaking, so you can backslide without feeling like you're losing out on anything.

As far as U@W goes...

It does some stuff great, but has huge flaws that disrupt the entire game. For one, the slowdown in it is just insane. I mean, not like a loss of a few frames, the game virtually stops at times; I have never seen anything like it on a console before. Granted, the patches helped, but its performance is not even remotely close to as smooth as C&C. Outside of that, I never feel like I'm interacting with the environment in U@W, Unless you are playing as the one race whole gets their resources from tearing down buildings and sucking up the people inside. (Which never gets old BTW).

Unlike a game like C&C where your place on the map has a huge strategic difference, U@W always kinda feels the same regardless of what map you're on or where you are on it (to me at least). The enemy AI in U@W seems incredibly cheap to me also. At times when I'm playing I'll destroy one of their largest units which would take me an age to build, and somehow another one will appear minutes later. (Which shouldn't be possible if you understand how the game works)

Also, the camera in U@W is just awful. It is WAY too close to the units for an RTS, especially considering the size of a lot of the units involved. You will forget about it from time to time, but it gives the entire game a very claustrophobic feel that frustrated me the entire play through.

U@W does do some stuff right though. There are three distinctly different races to play as, and each one is a lot of fun to use. One of them can build these enormous walking machines that look like they came right out of War of the Worlds. They are totally customizable too, which is one of the strongest points of the game. You literally decide what guns, armor, and accessories each arm/leg of the walkers will carry, and it makes a significant difference to how the fight plays out.

As far as control and interface goes, both titles are great. U@W probably gets a slight edge, but not by much. Both of them have the single best RTS interfaces I have seen on a console yet.

Put simply, I'd strongly suggest skipping both and buying Tiberium Wars if you haven't already. Then personally, I'd move on to Kane's Wrath. U@W is a nice alternative, but I would wait for it to come down in price at the very least.. It is seriously flawed.

I'm definately looking forward to it. Viva Pinata is hands down one of the most creative and memorable games of this generation. On top of that it crosses all gaming lines. Everyone I have ever sat down with it has loved it, including adults, children, and my Wife who hates virtually every other game on the market.

The new one will feature two-player modes, which is a big enough selling point for me without a single other upgrade or new feature over the first one.

As for the guy who asked for an overview, I can give you one, but understand that this is one of those "sounds easy but has insane depth" type of games. You totally get out of it what you put into it. Basically, it's a little bit Pokemon, with a little bit Harvest moon, mixed with Monster Rancher.

You plant, landscape and design a garden of tree, flowers and vegetables in an attempt to entice the animals (pinatas) that walk buy to come in and stay for a while. If you fulfill their needs (food, shelter, etc), they will move in. At that point you focus on getting them to breed. Successful breeding has a new set of requirements, such as certain foods or flowers that they must ingest or sometimes something as simple as a certain type of landscaping. (Like a worm needs a certain amount of dirt, a frog needs water, etc...)

One you have two and they breed, you get a baby (obviously), then you raise him to maturity and start the process all over again. It sounds a bit mundane, but it is anything but. Each new species you collect attracts others and on and on.

There is seriously not one second of down-time in the entire game, you will constantly be fending off attackers, rearranging your gardens, discovering/inventing new plants and pinata species and doing everything you can just to get a glimpse of the next step up the Pinata ladder.

Like I said, it is an infinitely deep game and I have only touched on the basics of it here, there is all kinds of other stuff to do as well. You can dress your pinatas up, you can develop all kinds of new breeds and variations of existing pinatas by feeding them bizarre concoctions of foods and plants, you can experiment on everything in the game to try and get it to mutate (variations they call them) and so on and so forth.

It really is an excellent title and worth full price much less the $20 tag it has at most stores in the US now.

It's an exciting concept for sure, and the screenies look nice (Joker looks great), but while those appear to be powered by the engine and not a render, unless he spends the whole game facing the camera most of those are not gameplay screens as much as like in-game cinemas or just promo shots.

Besides, I think you guys are missing the big picture here... The company that is making this has only released one game to date and it was last gen, Urban Chaos.

Any of you ever play that game? It was certainly not the worst title by any stretch, but it is not something I ever even considered playing for more then a few moments. Point being, it doesn't give me a whole lot of faith in the devs on this one.

Personally, I would have preferred to see someone take the Assassin's Creed engine and build a Batman game out of that. The entire time I was playing that game I kept thinking to myself how well Batman could have worked in that style.

I used to have a 27" CRT HDTV (720p/1080i) and there was a noticable difference when I changed over to HDMI. Not only did I get better contrast ratios and color, the image had less distortion. (I used to get some ghosting from time to time using component cables.)

There is no debate over which is better though, just over whether or not you will personally notice the difference. Was it me, I'd go HDMI just so I knew I was getting the best possible quality.

HDMI is purely digital, component cables are converting the digital signal to analog. Plus, HDMI also carries an audio signal, so it may be one less set of wires you need to run...

And yes, any HDMI cable will work.

Well Age of Empires is constantly being updated with sequels and spin-offs but I agree that it is one of the best franchises out there...

I totally agree on Clock Tower though, that could be an excellent game as long as they abandoned the point and click.

I'd have to say Strider, Stubbs the Zombie and Pilotwings. (But I don't think we're calling this hardware "next-gen" anymore are we?)

As for the Pong comment, i know it was an attempt at humor, but we actually have "Pong next-gen", it is called Rockstar Game's Table Tennis.

I couldn't agree more, the games that have released with split-screen have been the jewels of my collection when I have friends over. Gow, RSV2, COD4, and the recently released UT3 for 360 all support SS.

I will do system linking on occasion as well, but not nearly as often, as even my friends with 360s tend not to have the same games as I do. 360 to xbox link is always good for a thrill though, Star Wars Battlefront and Halo both get a lot of play at my house in that fashion.

That is sad and not all that uncommon, unfortunately.

I personally had an entirely different experience that was annoying, but probably not quite as frusterating as your own.

I had a launch system up until a few months ago, and I never had a single problem with it. I started to get worried about its age (I also wanted the HDMI port), so I traded it in during this promotion Gamestop was having and I got a new one.

Two weeks later it RRoD on me. I hadn't bought the extended warrantly with GS so it took me several days and phone calls before I got them to replace it, but they eventually did. Two days after the replacement, another RRoD...

When I returned that one I made sure I had the newest revisiion motherboard and I bought the exnteded warranty with GS (which I have heard they do not even offer any more due to all the RRoD issues).

My wife just welcomed me with the news the other day that when she turned it on she saw the RRoD on my new system. I never saw it and it hasn't given me any trouble personally, but it certainly woudn't surprise me a this point.

Gotta say though, even amidst all the issues, I still love the console regardless and it is one of my all time favorite systems to date.