gaming – Kapil's Take

Looking Forward to Gamescom 2023

I recently came across a book titled “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing”. After reading the book, I went on a rampage. I do love minimalism, and I thought this was a great opportunity to discard a lot of random useless junk that I had accumulated over the years.

Coincidentally, while I was in the process of discarding, I also discovered one shocking thing. My monitor had streaks burned into the screen. Every evening, sunlight hits my monitor directly, and I tried to close the blinds as regular as possible, but there were days when I just forgot, especially when I was not working at my desk during those hours. Luckily, a pixel refresh fixed the issue. But to avoid this issue from happening again, I decided to relocate my desk. I have an Xbox Series X and a Plastation 4 on my desk. Both of which I had not played in months. According to my new found initiative to discard as much as possible, these consoles needed to go.

To give myself an excuse for keeping these gaming consoles, I started to play games again. Now three weeks later, I am looking for gamescom 2023. I do not think I have been this excited for a gaming convention, and I honestly do not really know why.

There are a number of games announcements and possible gameplay that I am looking forward to:

Starfield – possibly set out to be one of this year’s biggest games
Alan wake 2
Stalker 2

There are probably going to be some surprise announcements as well. It is a shame that Playstation is not going to be present again.

I am going to be tuning in!

Reasons Why X-Box One is a Better All-rounded Game Console

If you are thinking of purchasing a new game console or upgrading from a previous generation console to a new generation console you have 3 options:

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Xbox One
Playstation 4
Nintendo Wii U

If you are buying for kids, I would say you can stop reading this article and just buy the Wii U, it has tones of kid-friendly games and PS4 and X1 don’t even come close to the Wii U in that department. Playstation 4 and Xbox One is more for serious gamers and for people who are looking to setup a central home entertainment system. So in this post I am going to be mostly comparing Xbox One with Playstation 4.

One thing to keep in mind is whichever game console you chose, know that your old games from previous generation consoles will NOT work on the new generation – at least that is true for X1 and PS4.

Price

Xbox One generally has cheaper deals to start you off with your gaming. You can usually get an Xbox for around $350 (CAD) with one or two games included in the bundle, where as a Playstation 4 will usually cost a $100 more.

Kinect

To be honest, there isn’t much game development that really fully utilizes the Kinect, but if you know anything about the Kinect from Xbox 360, you know that the experience of playing a Kinect dance game was just pure fun. Kinect for Xbox One is supposedly better at tracking multiple players and has sensors with a wider field of view making it easier to track gesture for even tight spaces. I’m including the Kinect for its future potential here.

Games

The games department can go either way since most games are multi-platform anyway, so it basically comes down to the exclusive game collection. If you are a Hallo fan, or even just want to play a Halo Game then Xbox One is your console. The Master Chief Collection is the one thing that made my purchase of the Xbox One over Christmas a worthwhile investment. Then there is Forza Horizon 2 and Forza Motorsport 5 – both amazing racing games. Sunset Overdrive is also one of my favourites. These games will keep you entertained. Another noteworthy mention is TitanFall. When I first played Titanfall it blew me away – I think it is the best multiplayer first person shooter game I have ever played.

Of course Playstaion has inFamous, Uncharted and The Last of Us, so we can call this a tie. But a game console is no longer just for gaming and here’s why:

Live TV

You can connect your TV Cable Box to Xbox One and be able to access the TV Guide directly on your Xbox One. You can also play games while you are watching TV, if you are into that sort of thing.

Home Media Server and Cloud – Plex and One Drive

Here is where I think the Xbox One really shines. Plex was one of the reasons which pushed me towards getting an Xbox. Now however, Playstation also has Plex. But Micrsoft One Drive still only works with Xbox One(not surprising to see why). This is really useful since you can have your phone automatically backup your photos and videos to your One Drive while you are out and about say on vacation or a trip to the each or a birthday party, you can then come home and simply turn on your Xbox One and start viewing and sharing you photos and videos.