You have not been paying attention to the console market have you? I play online with my PS2 all the time. And the PS2 version of Everquest comes out either late this month or in March.
Some console games have mouse and keyboard support, mostly FPS's, that's why a PS2 has USB ports.
I personallly chat on my PS2 all the time, either within games like SOCOM, or using Gaim or X-chat while in Linux.
Some people might accuse PC games of "being the same", considering how PC gamers obsess over FPS's and RTS games. PLenty of diversity in console games, it's not just run, jump and bop anymore.
I've noticed the lack of a print shop/printmaster clone too. It may be due to the fact that Linux geeks may not use such software much and may think that making such software is worthy of their time. It would be a very good idea for some smart coders to start one up. That would be the sort of project even non-programmers could contribute to, by designing clip-art, borders, fonts and the like.
My Linux box is my Playstation 2 so I'm all set for gaming, I could even play Warcraft II:-) (There was a PSone port)
A little card table or TV tray works well for using a mouse/keyboard with a Playstation 2, but I probably tend to use a keyboard and mouse more than most PS2 owners.
I have noticed in your posts that you REALLY dislike gamepads, especially analog sticks. It does take time to get used to them, some people never do. I personally dislike the N64 controller, I bought a copy of Goldeneye last year just to see what all that fuss was about and I couldn't stand to play the game because of the controller.
Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance did not remind me of Gauntlet, but of Diablo. One of the first things I did after starting to play it was to change the control settings so they matched those of the PSone port of Diablo. I liked Diablo so I liked Baldur's Gate DA. I'm hoping for a sequel. (I'm also hoping for a PS2 port of Diablo 2.)
The linearity of Japanese style RPG's lends themselves to a coherent, or semi-coherent plot. One does tend to have more freedom to go anywhere towards the end of the games. Though Square's "Saga" series tends to be rather unlinear.
I'm thinking about a Gamecube too, for Metroid Prime and Animal Crossing in particular.
90% of everything is crap.:-) You've probably seen some of the scores in PC Gamer. Maybe you just need to try different games. You might like the PS2 Wizardry, ICO or Drakan. You might try Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance for the PS2, though it's basically a Diablo clone. Have you tried the online games SOCOM or Tribes Aerial Assault? The only RTS for the PS2 is an Army Men game believe it or not and it actually got better than average scores. You might like Timesplitters for it's map making features.
It seems to me that at some stores certain genre's of games tend to show up more. If you want to find the hidden treasures you just can't go to Wal-Mart.
And it's pretty much a given that one should ignore movie licensed games or games that scream XTREME on both PC and console. There are, of course, exceptions. Spider-man for PSone...Good!
There's more good games out there for my PS2 than I have time to play or buy for that matter.
Actually you CAN create your own art, there's a little program called anime maker included. But no, it's not as elaborate as NWN, but I expect RPG Maker 2 to have more options.
You see, console gamers don't obsess over frame rates and resolutions like PC gamers do. When you say I've got a new Gee Whiz Super FX 1000 3d card that can do x and x, they don't care, because what matters is the GAMES.
RPG's sell very well on the consoles too, well enough that console developers put them out at a very steady clip. Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance did well on the consoles too, if I recall. And I expect the console versions of The Sims to sell well too. There will always be money to be made by developing PC games, but the REAL money is to be made developing for the consoles.:-)
I've played RTS's on a console and they play just fine with the control pad. Also RPG's on consoles are designed to use the pads so there's no problem. Also I would not say PC games are bigger and badder, some of these console games are HUGE. That's why they use DVD's.
I guess console players are also not ccntent playing the same game with mods forever and actually want to play NEW games. But as we know, consoles have MORE games available. Look how thin all those PC gaming magazines have gotten these days and how fat the console magazines have become.
From hearing you PC gamers talk you'd think FPS"s and RTS's were the only games that exist.
Okay I've got a PS2, with a Linux kit so I could actually do serious work on it. (Not to mention that if you're playing all those PC games you've got a Windows box.)
I have mentioned before on/. that I find it hard to understand the appeal of the keyboard for game control isn't it very non-intuitive? Keyboards are for data input, not for games.
Just to let you know, FPS's designed for consoles are designed to use the control pads well. Control has never been an issue with any console FPS I've played.
Mice, I like. and the two best PSone FPS's both support mouse look. (you move with the digital pad and look with the mouse, best of both worlds that way.)
And most PS2 FPS's also support the mouse, USB, just plug it in.
As for mods' console gamers think that developers should be doing the coding. Why do their work for them, you're letting them off easy that way. A company like Squaresoft would be ashamed to put out so few games as some of these PC developers do. The garage development mentality doesn't cut it anymore.
As for depth of gameplay that's an old argument from the old 8/16 bit days. Console games are every bit as immersive and full of depth as PC games, in fact some console games ARE PC games, so they have the EXACT same qualities that made those PC games great.
Console gamers are every bit as hardcore as you are, in fact some console gamers might consider YOU a casual gamer because you don't play fighting games or RPG's like Final Fantasy.
I suspect that your experience with consoles was limited to those of the past, whence comes your ideas about things. You might want to try one out, really.
I have a Playstation 2 Linux kit which means I can:
Email Web Surf Do my taxes with xcalc (1040EZ) Word Process Personal Finances I suppose I could rip/burn CD's with an external CD/R And most certainly software development.
Diablo? Darkstone? Azure Dreams? Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon. Torneko: The Last Hope? Those are the only "roguelike" games I know of on the PSone.
If you have a Linux kit for the Playstation 2, you can play the real honest to goodness Rogue, or krogue for that matter.
Comments from a Linux newbie.
on
Ark Linux
·
· Score: 1
A newbie on/. The horror. The horror. I have an interest in computers but more as I bystander I guess. I've never actually even owned what most folks would consider a "real" computer. (other than an old Commodore 128)
I'm a former WebTV user. (OH ok I still have it asa a backup.) I can imagine the groans. While still on it I somehow managed to hear about some "free" operating system called Linux. It sounded interesting so I began reading about it a bit. In 2001 I bought a Playstation 2 and not long after I bought it Sony announce the Japan version of their Linux kit. Eventually they announced it for the US and other territories too. (after the petition) So I thought that this might be an interesting way to learn more about Linux and computing. I also thought that it might make a better web access device than a WebTV.
So I logged on the Linuk kit's website and began reading and posting a few questions. After getting some answers I decided to go ahead and pre-order the kit AND buy some Linux books. The books were interesting reading even if I didn't understand some of it. (Still don't) But I figured I could muddle my way through it well enough.
The kit arrived in late May of 2002. Since I was without a compatible monitor, I installed blind. (But it turns out that there's a little trick you can do so you don't have to do that.) I typed setcrtmode -ntsc to get the console to display on my TV and then edited a couple of files in vi so that it would boot up in NTSC mode and so that X would display in NTSC Anyways it was working and after a phone call to my ISP I could use lynx. Then I began exploring X, I tried various window managers and eventually settled on KDE. That's KDE 1 mind you. Had e-mail set up within 15 minutes of starting kmail. Discovered that kmail checked mail every minute and that made it lock up every once in a while so I turned interval mail checkin off. I began looking around for things to download of the PS2 Linux site. I was going to try to find an IRC client but I decided to search to see if there was one already installed. There was, x-chat 1.3.7, ircll too. I decided to try a few source compiles that folks said would work. Abiword was my first and my./configure --build=mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu, make and make install worked withoug a hitch. I decided to try a finding an IM client. I chose Gaim, since it would let me keep in touch with my old WebTV friends on their MSN Messenger. I read their documentation and thought "CVS, what's that. Oh they've got instructions? Cool." Compiled without a hitch, version.58 I believe.
I wanted to be able to print with my kit so I thought I'd have to recompile my kernel to add USB printer support, so using a book as a guide, I did that. Of course, I really didn't need to do that because I already had the printer module compiled, I just hadn't seen it. Someone told me where to put the insmod to make it so the module loads on boot. I knew about Red Hat printtool so I used that to set it up and it worked.
Over time I've dcwnloaded a few things, some have worked some haven't. Relatively recently I mentioned wanting to try to hook up a digital camera to the kit and a person recommended downloading a new kernel available on the site. I read around the forums and found a few posts with short guides to installing it, so with those guides and my books I did it. I kept the old kernel around just in case.
So when I got my digital camera, I had read that that the current stable GIMP would compile so I compiled that, did a modprobe usb-storage, did a mkdir/mnt/camera followed by a mount/dev/sda1/mnt/camera and there were my test pics. I had that digital camera working less than 5 hours after purchasing, most of that time spent waiting for GIMP to compile.
So what do I think after all this. Linux has been both easier and more challenging than I thought it would be. some things I thought would be difficult were easy. Some things I thought would be easy were hard. It would probably be easier if I had an x86 Linux box as there would be more rpms I could use, but I like my little black box of wonder. It does practically everything I would want it to do. It may not be fast, it may not be pretty, but it does it adequately for my purposes.
There are things I would like to see that would help out newbies:
Better written documentation and websites. Somethings are sometimes a bit too vague.
Better designed UI' for apps.
More apps for "newbie users", say a Print shop clone. (That might be a way to get newbies more involved in the Linux community, designing borders, clip art, what have you for such an application.)
Less condescenscion from the Linux cognoscenti. Less RTFM, because much of the Linux documentation sucks from the newbie user's experience. I understand the importance of "sweat equity" to some of the hardcore but that sort of thing is NOT going to attract newcomers.
A little less fragmentation, I think it's time to choose the winners and losers among the various apps and utilities. Programmer man/hour resources in the open source community are large but finite. Every man hour spent on some obscure app that no one uses is a man hour not spent honing the "premiere" apps that could use more polish. of course, I may be naive on that point.
So there you have it, one newbies opinions. Tear em apart.:-)
The percentage of N64 games that were M rated was almsot exactly the same as the percentage of Playstation games that were M rated. I don't know why Nintendo has this "family friendly" rep, it's not deserved. I think some of it is nostalgia based, everyone remembers the Marios and Zeldas but forgets that the N64 was also known for it's first person shooters.
This may also be why Nintendo has a rep of being kiddy, their E rated games get all the press while for Sony and Microsofts machines, their E rated games don't get the press their M rated games do. Plenty of kid appropriate games on the Sony systems, even edutainment titles.
More information: I'm 35, been playing electronic games since before you were born. And I do know who Federico Fellini is, I even know how to spell it.:-) I also know how to spell intelligent.:-)
I think you're selling console games short, the average age of console gamers keeps rising and rising. IIRC the average PS2 owner is now 25 years old, which is older than you. I'm thinking you're associating consoles with your younger days and now want to be seen as grown up so you accuse them as being for "kids". I don't think you're recognizing the depth of many console games.
Besides one might accuse PC games of being immature and being stuck in a testosterone laced frag obsessed adolescent mindset.
Amazingly enough Age of Mythology did get ported to the Playstation 2, but it was not released in the US. Microsoft decided that they did not want a valued franchise on a competitors console.
Would you consider X-com and Civ II to be mature games? What about Warcraft and Diablo? Warzone 2100? Command and Conquer? Sim City?
Yes? Every one of those games has been ported to the PSone.
What about Grand Theft Auto 3 and it's sequel Vice City. They are very open ended games, there are many different ways to achieve mission goals.
By the by, I started out with the cartridge FF's too. My first console RPG was actually a port of Might and Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum.
I wish I had some mod points, very insightful. Somebody mod this guy up.
I myself have said many a time, that consoles have ruled the electronic gaming market except the time from about 84-87, from the great crash to the rise of the NES. Twasn't IBM PC that killed the c-64, twas Nintendo.
PS2 games can take you months to complete and there are the multiplayer experinces like SOCOM, Tribes Aerial Assault or Everquest.:-)
I too play complex advernture, strategy and RPG's. I can also surf the web and compile the Linux kernel on my PS2.
Sorry but that whole PC games=cerebral argument doesn't work anymore.
Where have you been for the past 15 years? It's been possible to save games on consoles since 87!
There WAS a port of Flight Simulator to the Atari XE console but for the most part hardcore flight sims are PC only, that might change in the future.
As for contorls being wacky, I consider using a keyboard to control an action game to be wacky. As it is, you can hook up a keyboard and mouse to a PS2, and every console since the Genesis has had a mouse available for it.
Multiplayer split screen games work because you are paying too much attention to your own screen to look at everyone elses. You can do separate screen multiplayer with the original Playstation and it's link cable, and the PS2 via i=link or Ethernet.
I guess you haven't been paying too much attention to console games if you think there's only fighting and plaform games. There is a lot of diversity in console games, more than you might think.
Console gamers don't have Counterstrike but we do have SOCOM.
We don't have mods, oh wait, yes we do, with certain titles like Timesplitters or RPG maker. You can also buy a PS2 Linux kit which allows one to use it as a dev station.
Flight sims? Consoles have flight games, just not the hardcore grognard/Tom Clancy lovin types.
Slashdot Mirror
Tribes Aerial Assault for the PS2 does have online play. I'm not for certain about mouse and keyboard support.
What do you think that a Playstation 2 has USB ports for? Ethernet too, if you have a Network adapter.
:-)
And it also runs Linux.
You have not been paying attention to the console market have you? I play online with my PS2 all the time. And the PS2 version of Everquest comes out either late this month or in March.
Some console games have mouse and keyboard support, mostly FPS's, that's why a PS2 has USB ports.
I personallly chat on my PS2 all the time, either within games like SOCOM, or using Gaim or X-chat while in Linux.
Some people might accuse PC games of "being the same", considering how PC gamers obsess over FPS's and RTS games. PLenty of diversity in console games, it's not just run, jump and bop anymore.
Zenogias.....
I love my PS2's backwards compatibility AND its ability to run Linux.
I've noticed the lack of a print shop/printmaster clone too. It may be due to the fact that Linux geeks may not use such software much and may think that making such software is worthy of their time. It would be a very good idea for some smart coders to start one up. That would be the sort of project even non-programmers could contribute to, by designing clip-art, borders, fonts and the like.
:-) (There was a PSone port)
My Linux box is my Playstation 2 so I'm all set for gaming, I could even play Warcraft II
I thought the Memory bus was 2560 bits wide? Or is that GPU to RAM?
A little card table or TV tray works well for using a mouse/keyboard with a Playstation 2, but I probably tend to use a keyboard and mouse more than most PS2 owners.
I have noticed in your posts that you REALLY dislike gamepads, especially analog sticks. It does take time to get used to them, some people never do. I personally dislike the N64 controller, I bought a copy of Goldeneye last year just to see what all that fuss was about and I couldn't stand to play the game because of the controller.
Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance did not remind me of Gauntlet, but of Diablo. One of the first things I did after starting to play it was to change the control settings so they matched those of the PSone port of Diablo. I liked Diablo so I liked Baldur's Gate DA. I'm hoping for a sequel. (I'm also hoping for a PS2 port of Diablo 2.)
The linearity of Japanese style RPG's lends themselves to a coherent, or semi-coherent plot. One does tend to have more freedom to go anywhere towards the end of the games. Though Square's "Saga" series tends to be rather unlinear.
I'm thinking about a Gamecube too, for Metroid Prime and Animal Crossing in particular.
90% of everything is crap. :-) You've probably seen some of the scores in PC Gamer. Maybe you just need to try different games. You might like the PS2 Wizardry, ICO or Drakan. You might try Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance for the PS2, though it's basically a Diablo clone. Have you tried the online games SOCOM or Tribes Aerial Assault? The only RTS for the PS2 is an Army Men game believe it or not and it actually got better than average scores. You might like Timesplitters for it's map making features.
It seems to me that at some stores certain genre's of games tend to show up more. If you want to find the hidden treasures you just can't go to Wal-Mart.
And it's pretty much a given that one should ignore movie licensed games or games that scream XTREME on both PC and console. There are, of course, exceptions. Spider-man for PSone...Good!
There's more good games out there for my PS2 than I have time to play or buy for that matter.
Actually you CAN create your own art, there's a little program called anime maker included. But no, it's not as elaborate as NWN, but I expect RPG Maker 2 to have more options.
You see, console gamers don't obsess over frame rates and resolutions like PC gamers do. When you say I've got a new Gee Whiz Super FX 1000 3d card that can do x and x, they don't care, because what matters is the GAMES.
:-)
RPG's sell very well on the consoles too, well enough that console developers put them out at a very steady clip. Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance did well on the consoles too, if I recall. And I expect the console versions of The Sims to sell well too. There will always be money to be made by developing PC games, but the REAL money is to be made developing for the consoles.
Do you own a copy of RPG maker? I do, and while it has it's limits it IS a good tool.
I've played RTS's on a console and they play just fine with the control pad. Also RPG's on consoles are designed to use the pads so there's no problem.
Also I would not say PC games are bigger and badder, some of these console games are HUGE. That's why they use DVD's.
I guess console players are also not ccntent playing the same game with mods forever and actually want to play NEW games. But as we know, consoles have MORE games available. Look how thin all those PC gaming magazines have gotten these days and how fat the console magazines have become.
From hearing you PC gamers talk you'd think FPS"s and RTS's were the only games that exist.
/. that I find it hard to understand the appeal of the keyboard for game control isn't it very non-intuitive? Keyboards are for data input, not for games.
Okay I've got a PS2, with a Linux kit so I could actually do serious work on it. (Not to mention that if you're playing all those PC games you've got a Windows box.)
I have mentioned before on
Just to let you know, FPS's designed for consoles are designed to use the control pads well. Control has never been an issue with any console FPS I've played.
Mice, I like. and the two best PSone FPS's both support mouse look. (you move with the digital pad and look with the mouse, best of both worlds that way.)
And most PS2 FPS's also support the mouse, USB, just plug it in.
As for mods' console gamers think that developers should be doing the coding. Why do their work for them, you're letting them off easy that way. A company like Squaresoft would be ashamed to put out so few games as some of these PC developers do. The garage development mentality doesn't cut it anymore.
As for depth of gameplay that's an old argument from the old 8/16 bit days. Console games are every bit as immersive and full of depth as PC games, in fact some console games ARE PC games, so they have the EXACT same qualities that made those PC games great.
Console gamers are every bit as hardcore as you are, in fact some console gamers might consider YOU a casual gamer because you don't play fighting games or RPG's like Final Fantasy.
I suspect that your experience with consoles was limited to those of the past, whence comes your ideas about things. You might want to try one out, really.
My PS2 has a 40GB hard drive in it and a little stuffed penguin sitting on top of it. :-)
I have a Playstation 2 Linux kit which means I can:
Email
Web Surf
Do my taxes with xcalc (1040EZ)
Word Process
Personal Finances
I suppose I could rip/burn CD's with an external CD/R
And most certainly software development.
This would be good, as I liked the graphics of the DOS version of Rogue and arrow keys are simply more intuitive than h,j,k,l
Diablo? Darkstone? Azure Dreams? Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon. Torneko: The Last Hope? Those are the only "roguelike" games I know of on the PSone. If you have a Linux kit for the Playstation 2, you can play the real honest to goodness Rogue, or krogue for that matter.
A newbie on /. The horror. The horror. I have an interest in computers but more as I bystander I guess. I've never actually even owned what most folks would consider a "real" computer. (other than an old Commodore 128)
./configure --build=mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu, make and make install worked withoug a hitch. I decided to try a finding an IM client. I chose Gaim, since it would let me keep in touch with my old WebTV friends on their MSN Messenger. I read their documentation and thought "CVS, what's that. Oh they've got instructions? Cool." Compiled without a hitch, version .58 I believe.
/mnt/camera followed by a mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/camera and there were my test pics. I had that digital camera working less than 5 hours after purchasing, most of that time spent waiting for GIMP to compile.
:-)
I'm a former WebTV user. (OH ok I still have it asa a backup.) I can imagine the groans. While still on it I somehow managed to hear about some "free" operating system called Linux. It sounded interesting so I began reading about it a bit. In 2001 I bought a Playstation 2 and not long after I bought it Sony announce the Japan version of their Linux kit. Eventually they announced it for the US and other territories too. (after the petition) So I thought that this might be an interesting way to learn more about Linux and computing. I also thought that it might make a better web access device than a WebTV.
So I logged on the Linuk kit's website and began reading and posting a few questions. After getting some answers I decided to go ahead and pre-order the kit AND buy some Linux books. The books were interesting reading even if I didn't understand some of it. (Still don't) But I figured I could muddle my way through it well enough.
The kit arrived in late May of 2002. Since I was without a compatible monitor, I installed blind. (But it turns out that there's a little trick you can do so you don't have to do that.) I typed setcrtmode -ntsc to get the console to display on my TV and then edited a couple of files in vi so that it would boot up in NTSC mode and so that X would display in NTSC Anyways it was working and after a phone call to my ISP I could use lynx. Then I began exploring X, I tried various window managers and eventually settled on KDE. That's KDE 1 mind you. Had e-mail set up within 15 minutes of starting kmail. Discovered that kmail checked mail every minute and that made it lock up every once in a while so I turned interval mail checkin off. I began looking around for things to download of the PS2 Linux site. I was going to try to find an IRC client but I decided to search to see if there was one already installed. There was, x-chat 1.3.7, ircll too. I decided to try a few source compiles that folks said would work. Abiword was my first and my
I wanted to be able to print with my kit so I thought I'd have to recompile my kernel to add USB printer support, so using a book as a guide, I did that. Of course, I really didn't need to do that because I already had the printer module compiled, I just hadn't seen it. Someone told me where to put the insmod to make it so the module loads on boot. I knew about Red Hat printtool so I used that to set it up and it worked.
Over time I've dcwnloaded a few things, some have worked some haven't. Relatively recently I mentioned wanting to try to hook up a digital camera to the kit and a person recommended downloading a new kernel available on the site. I read around the forums and found a few posts with short guides to installing it, so with those guides and my books I did it. I kept the old kernel around just in case.
So when I got my digital camera, I had read that that the current stable GIMP would compile so I compiled that, did a modprobe usb-storage, did a mkdir
So what do I think after all this. Linux has been both easier and more challenging than I thought it would be. some things I thought would be difficult were easy. Some things I thought would be easy were hard. It would probably be easier if I had an x86 Linux box as there would be more rpms I could use, but I like my little black box of wonder. It does practically everything I would want it to do. It may not be fast, it may not be pretty, but it does it adequately for my purposes.
There are things I would like to see that would help out newbies:
Better written documentation and websites. Somethings are sometimes a bit too vague.
Better designed UI' for apps.
More apps for "newbie users", say a Print shop clone. (That might be a way to get newbies more involved in the Linux community, designing borders, clip art, what have you for such an application.)
Less condescenscion from the Linux cognoscenti. Less RTFM, because much of the Linux documentation sucks from the newbie user's experience. I understand the importance of "sweat equity" to some of the hardcore but that sort of thing is NOT going to attract newcomers.
A little less fragmentation, I think it's time to choose the winners and losers among the various apps and utilities. Programmer man/hour resources in the open source community are large but finite. Every man hour spent on some obscure app that no one uses is a man hour not spent honing the "premiere" apps that could use more polish. of course, I may be naive on that point.
So there you have it, one newbies opinions. Tear em apart.
The percentage of N64 games that were M rated was almsot exactly the same as the percentage of Playstation games that were M rated. I don't know why Nintendo has this "family friendly" rep, it's not deserved. I think some of it is nostalgia based, everyone remembers the Marios and Zeldas but forgets that the N64 was also known for it's first person shooters. This may also be why Nintendo has a rep of being kiddy, their E rated games get all the press while for Sony and Microsofts machines, their E rated games don't get the press their M rated games do. Plenty of kid appropriate games on the Sony systems, even edutainment titles.
Neither are you. The big sellers in the PC games are mainstream non-grognard games, same goes for the console games.
More information: I'm 35, been playing electronic games since before you were born. And I do know who Federico Fellini is, I even know how to spell it. :-) I also know how to spell intelligent. :-)
I think you're selling console games short, the average age of console gamers keeps rising and rising. IIRC the average PS2 owner is now 25 years old, which is older than you. I'm thinking you're associating consoles with your younger days and now want to be seen as grown up so you accuse them as being for "kids". I don't think you're recognizing the depth of many console games.
Besides one might accuse PC games of being immature and being stuck in a testosterone laced frag obsessed adolescent mindset.
Amazingly enough Age of Mythology did get ported to the Playstation 2, but it was not released in the US. Microsoft decided that they did not want a valued franchise on a competitors console.
Would you consider X-com and Civ II to be mature games? What about Warcraft and Diablo? Warzone 2100? Command and Conquer? Sim City?
Yes? Every one of those games has been ported to the PSone.
What about Grand Theft Auto 3 and it's sequel Vice City. They are very open ended games, there are many different ways to achieve mission goals.
By the by, I started out with the cartridge FF's too. My first console RPG was actually a port of Might and Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum.
I wish I had some mod points, very insightful. Somebody mod this guy up. I myself have said many a time, that consoles have ruled the electronic gaming market except the time from about 84-87, from the great crash to the rise of the NES. Twasn't IBM PC that killed the c-64, twas Nintendo.
PS2 games can take you months to complete and there are the multiplayer experinces like SOCOM, Tribes Aerial Assault or Everquest. :-)
I too play complex advernture, strategy and RPG's. I can also surf the web and compile the Linux kernel on my PS2.
Sorry but that whole PC games=cerebral argument doesn't work anymore.
Consoles win even if it's units. IIRC the PS2 version of the original Summoner sold 10 times as many copies as the PC version.
Where have you been for the past 15 years? It's been possible to save games on consoles since 87! There WAS a port of Flight Simulator to the Atari XE console but for the most part hardcore flight sims are PC only, that might change in the future. As for contorls being wacky, I consider using a keyboard to control an action game to be wacky. As it is, you can hook up a keyboard and mouse to a PS2, and every console since the Genesis has had a mouse available for it. Multiplayer split screen games work because you are paying too much attention to your own screen to look at everyone elses. You can do separate screen multiplayer with the original Playstation and it's link cable, and the PS2 via i=link or Ethernet. I guess you haven't been paying too much attention to console games if you think there's only fighting and plaform games. There is a lot of diversity in console games, more than you might think. Console gamers don't have Counterstrike but we do have SOCOM. We don't have mods, oh wait, yes we do, with certain titles like Timesplitters or RPG maker. You can also buy a PS2 Linux kit which allows one to use it as a dev station. Flight sims? Consoles have flight games, just not the hardcore grognard/Tom Clancy lovin types.