I disagree with the idea that gory shooters are reckless and dangerous. People are going to be exposed to violence via some medium every day of their lives in our culture. That being said, I think it is important to parent properly. The parents should be their kid's primary teachers, not the kid's entertainment. If you, as a parent, don't take the time to teach values and to enforce rules/boundaries, then you are the ones putting your children at risk. If a kid has not been taught right and wrong, then of course exposing them to violent entertainment would be dangerous. However, if you've done your job as a parent, Gears of War is nothing but good fun. Do you really think that when previous generations were playing 'cowboys and indians' in their back yards, they weren't imagining violence? People, especially young boys, will entertain themselves with fake violence regardless if they have access to an Xbox.
@DouglassIndust Basically, this is how I see it: If you want better graphics, controls, access to mods, and a more mature community (on average - obviously there are jerks on every system), then you should go with PC. However, the cons of PC are a much smaller gaming community (I find COD better on Xbox than on PC simply because it's too hard to find low latency games on PC), and buggier game releases/compatibility issues (higher user-end hassle to get things to work correctly). I've basically gotten to the point where I buy sports games and competitive multiplayer games on Xbox, and RTS, coop and singleplayer games on PC. To each his own, though.
Heck, if this console design translates to smoother PC ports, I'm 100% in favor of it. I'm tired of rolling the dice on pre-ordering even AAA games and then just hoping that the PC launch will be smooth (ie few enough bugs that the game is playable). I'm also hoping that this will open the door for cross-platform gaming. I know that the mouse and keyboard are an advantage for competitive multiplayer games, but even if they allowed co-op games like Borderlands to be cross-platform, that would be awesome.
@M-S-M-S THANK-YOU for actually mentioning the good THQ games.. I'm tired of game sites saying that Saints Row and Darksiders were the best games that THQ had to offer.. Dawn of War, COH, Metro and STALKER were all superior games.
@mike300zxt @tushwacker More power allows more actions/effects to occur at the same time on screen before the frame-rate starts to drop. Game developers would be able to put more units on screen with more complicated animations/effects if there's more power. For example, Crysis pushed PCs to the max for years regardless of which display you had. The power of PCs allowed for individual foliage physics and superior lighting to anything that we've been able to see on a console so far.
It's a little disappointing that the specs aren't even equivalent to current high-end PCs.. but at the same time, it's not surprising considering that they want to keep their prices relatively low.. I know game developers will squeeze the potential out of whatever specs they have to work with, but honestly, all I really care about is whether or not it will be reliable.. With all of the over-heating/RROD problems that the first gen of the 360 had, I'm a little nervous to buy a next-gen console right out of the gate.
@spookysev How is a review of 2.0 going to convince people to buy the game? This game is worth reviewing because a lot of people were interested in it. If they just pretended that the game doesn't exist, more people would buy it in order to find out if it was good or not..
They sacrifice too much power by going this small.
All I want is for someone to design a desktop tower with backpack straps on one side, a monitor mount on the other side, a keyboard/mouse/headset rack on the front, and a built-in power bar. Then, all I need to do when going to a friend's house is unplug the built-in power bar from my wall socket, secure my mouse/keyboard/headset on the tower, and then carry the whole unit on my back with the straps.
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