Eric W.

Why keep giving him attention? The guy sounds like he needs help, not Internet fame.

You know, most of the "mainstream media" coverage I've seen of the game has been pretty fair and even-handed. Both Slate and the New York Times have had really compelling pieces about the game. So have most other newspapers and Web sites Iread. What's with all the condescension toward the mainstream media, Joystiq? This site is owned by AOL-Time Warner. It doesn't get much more mainstream media than that.

Dude, spellcheck. Vacume? Why is it that you lap the field when it comes to typos in your posts? And your first sentence ends in a question mark even though it isn't a question.

Agreed. Psychonauts was probably my favorite game on the Xbox. Never have I laughed so much while playing a game.

Maybe the extra space on the PS3's Blu-Ray disc will be used to give us longer cut scenes in games. That's what gamers want, right? Get ready for FFXIII, featuring a 2-hour introductory feature film. (Hopefully it'll be better than the Final Fantasy movie.)

BD,

While the single-player experience could be deeper on the 360, I'm hardly bored and in tears. Actually, I'm gaming nearly every day. Admittedly, I'd love a game I could play for hours for days on end and not get tired of (like Morrowind, KOTOR or Psychonauts), but while I wait for it PGR 3 is a blast, particularly for anyone who's lived in London, NYC, Tokyo or Vegas. As are all the Xbox Live Arcade games I've tried so far. And PDZ multiplayer is pretty fun. Kameo isn't bad, and NBA 2K6 is deep, even if it's a not graphical powerhouse. Next up, Call of Duty 2.

And you're right. Some of those titles I mentioned as great single-player games on the Xbox are on other consoles. I returned to video games in October 2004 after not owning a console since SNES. So coming into the Xbox's life cycle late, I was happy with its single-player offerings. If I would have bought a console a year before that, though, I probably would have picked up a PS2. (Also, I disagree about the graphics being marginally better on the Xbox vs. the PS2. At least, based on my PS2-owning friend's desire to come over and play MVP Baseball 2005.)

But my plan is to pick up a cut-rate PS2 or borrow one from a friend so that I can play Final Fantasy VII and a few others.

Hey bd (post 83),

There are quite a few good single-player games on the Xbox. I'm primarily a single-player game person, and I've been happy with Jade Empire, Morrowind, KOTOR 1&2, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Psychonauts (also on PS2), Ninja Gaiden, Fable, the same three GTA games that are on PS2, Beyond Good & Evil, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Silent Hill 2&4... And some people seem to really dig the Splinter Cell games. To say that there are no quality single player games on Xbox (or any system, really) is not to have done one's homework. PS2, Xbox and GameCube all have enough quality games that a gamer ought to be able to find stuff that makes them happy.

Now if only more games would come out for my Xbox 360. I've finished the (fairly lame) single-player mode on PDZ (only buy for the multiplayer) as well as completed Condemned. Where's Oblivion, dammit?

Ethan Thomas in "Condemned: Criminal Origins" is fairly compelling, though some of the reasons don't become apparent until after you finish the game. But it's enough to make me want to go back and unlock all the propaganda reports, so someone must have done his or her job right.

Come on, Rob. 20% of games being returned b/c of melting? What, are you some marketing drone hired by Sony? Don't you think this would be a national news story if this was going on? I don't doubt that some people are having problems with their consoles overheating and not working (though complaints of this either seem to have declined, or have become so accepted no one is complaining about it anymore). But the fantasy that a full fifth of the games manufactured for the console have been rendered inert, however, is patently absurd, unless your store is selling them as microwave-safe plates that happen to contain game software.

For the record, I have five games. All work splendidly in my launch-day, trouble-free (so far, anyway) Xbox 360.

I agree with Black Guy. Those of you who didn't pick up and play Psychonauts missed out and have no right to bitch about the gaming industry shying away from innovation/creative ideas. It's definitely the most fun I've had on my Xbox, followed closely by running around the wide-open world of Morrowind and blasting 14-year-old kids in Halo 2. (OK, more often than not they killed me.)