The first thing that you notice once you’ve unboxed the X41s is how light the headset feels, yet how sturdy it is. The ear cushions are very soft and the headset fits very snugly and the headband is fully adjustable, as is the microphone. The base unit is a well designed piece of kit too. Not only does it act as the wireless transmitter for the headset, but it also has a second audio jack, so a spectator of your gaming session can plug in a second set of headphones and listen to the game audio as well, and has their own volume control for their headset on the base unit.

So on to the audio itself. I have to say it was quite a shock just how much difference there is between the sound quality of the Sharkoons, and the X41s. The sound is far more immersive on the Turtle Beach set and makes a real difference to the gaming experience. The headset has a bass boost button on, and again the difference when engaging this mode is very impressive. The audio itself has a great quality, and the 7.1 surround sound gives an extra feeling of realism to games, and provides additional spatial awareness when playing. I found myself noticing sounds that I hadn’t heard in a game before (L.A. Noire’s ambient sound is very noticeable on the X41s and adds extra quality to a superb game).

The headset itself has it’s own volume control which is very responsive and helps to balance the volume without having fumble around for the controls. The microphone is on a very flexible stem, and it can easily be moved out of the way when not in use. If you do want to use voice chat while playing then the microphone swings down very easily and the stem can be manoeuvred to put the microphone in pretty much any position that you require. The only change to be made to use voice chat is the plugging in of a wire from the headset into the XBox 360 controller. This wire does not get in the way, and there is an inline volume control which independently controls the volume of the voice chat that you hear.

So are there any downsides to Turtle Beach’s offering? Well the set does seem to eat through batteries. You should get around 25 hours per set according to the manufacturer. I’ve been using Duracell Extreme AAA batteries and have gotten around 25 hours per set, but these are expensive batteries to keep buying. I don’t know how long rechargeable batteries last as I haven’t tried them, but they must be a reasonable option, even if the life per charge is not quite 25 hours. Also, some people will find one of the voice chat features frustrating. When using voice chat, your own voice is fed back into the headset, so it can take a bit of getting used to when you constantly hear your own voice in your headset, but that is a small distraction.

All in all I have nothing but praise for the X41s. Turtle Beach have done a great job, and have managed to balance the functionality of the set with the design. The headset is comfortable, functional, and provides superb audio quality. I haven’t seen any interference on the wireless side of the set, and the audio is uninterrupted. Voice chat is excellent, and the option of independently altering the voice volume is a definite plus. Obviously all of this quality and function doesn’t come cheaply, and the RRP of these is £149.99. However the likes of Amazon often have these at a very competitive price, and at the time of writing they are selling them brand new for under £90, which in my opinion is a great price for such a fantastic piece of hardware.

Pros: sound quality, immersiveness of surround sound, no wireless interference, build quality, design.

Cons: Batteries don’t last long, hearing your own voice in game chat.

And so before long the time came to move across and start playing Eve. And it was good, very good. It was the game that Earth and Beyond should have been. Where these 2 differ is that Eve is still going from strength to strength, Earth and Beyond is a distant memory. But again, before too long, I wanted something more, something different. And so I moved on again.

Fast forward to 2009 and here I am again. In those intervening years I’ve played (and left) Guild Wars, Horizons, Everquest 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Conan, Lineage 2, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, D&D Online, Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft and The Matrix Online. For at least half of these, I was also involved in the beta and so saw the game before it was “polished”. But each one of these, in turn, has killed my enthusiasm, and therefore lost my subscription.

And so I look at where I am now. I currently subscribe to both Warhammer Online and Champions Online, both on long term plans. I’ve been with both since day 1, and was a beta tester on both. Warhammer was superb. The idea of Public Quests was a great new thing, the combat was good, the changes introduced made the game better, and it was one of the most polished games at launch that I’ve ever played. Scratch that. It was the most polished game at launch that I’ve ever played. It’s the game where I’ve discovered my hunger for good PvP, and I keep going back to that. You’re immersed in the feeling of being involved in a conflict from Level 1. I got in with a good guild from early on and have been with them ever since. I’ve been with WAR now for over a year, and that’s a long time for me!

Champions is still new. It’s great as it’s like City of Heroes but better. Lots of fun, and allows that child inside who always wanted to be a superhero to come out! I’m still getting used to it but it seems like it’s going to be a lot of fun.

But already I’m yearning for the next thing to come along. Now I can guarantee that I’ll sink a lot of hours into Star Wars The Old Republic. And I quite like the look of both Star Trek Universe, and Stargate. My reason for already looking to the future? Warhammer is becoming a bit samey. WAR is the game that I’ve come closest to the level cap in any game I’ve played (my main is a 39 with a level cap of 40), but progress is now desperately slow. I appreciate that this is due to the kind of things I spend my time doing now (zone captures mainly) and I can accept that. What I can’t accept is the fact that the imbalance that has been in the game since day 1 is still there. If you play for one of the sides, you can build a group of 6 players that is pretty much indestructible due to the combination of skills. That’s all well and good if you can do that on both sides, but you can’t. It’s just not possible. And it’s a game breaker.

My guild in WAR has gone from over 100 members to less than 50 in less than a fortnight. People are flocking away from the game. I’m still with it, but will I renew at the end of my current 3 month subscription? At the moment, I’d say probably not.

So where does that leave me? Perhaps a return to WoW? Perhaps a move to something new (Aion has peaked my interest but I don’t think it’s a long term game for me). Perhaps a move to a different genre (I played the beta of Fallen Earth and didn’t get on with it but I’ve heard so many good things I might have to try it). Maybe I’ll find something else that I’ve not discovered yet that might just tide me over until SWTOR arrives. Who knows. 1 thing I do know is that I’ll find a home somewhere, and when SWTOR arrives, I’ll be packing up wherever I am and moving my MMO time to that…

As a former player (and corporation director) of Eve, I have to say I’m not surprised this is happening. As in real life, it’s very easy to become disgruntled in an online game, especially when part of a player-run organisation such as a corporation. Again, as in real-life, there are then a number of things you can do. The most of extreme of which is to run off with everything you can get your hands on. To my mind it just adds to the realism that CCP (the company that runs the game) has tried to build their universe around. With this in mind, I can’t blame them for not stepping in to resolve things either. Yes a “crime” has been committed, but then let the law enforcers of the universe deal with it, not the “masters” of the universe (no He-Man gags please!).

But who are the law enforcers in the game? Well for crimes like this it has to be the players themselves. But who is going to take on the amassed wealth and power of this corporation to get to the man who stole everything in the first place? You’d need a massive amount of firepower to try and take them down. The kind of firepower that can only be gained by putting in the hours and hours of work needed to build a corporation up to such a level. The kind of firepower that might convince someone else to go and do exactly the same thing.

Moral of the story? Keep your friends close, and your disgruntled ex-employees even closer!

Also, for the record, last year saw me playing on my XBox 360, PC, and to a lesser extent, my Wii. Don’t expect me to include any PS3 or DS titles as I don’t own these platforms. So, without further ado, here we go….

Also rans:

These are in no particular order, but are the games that almost made the top 5, but not quite!

Team Fortress 2 – yes I know it’s old, but it’s still masses of fun. I discovered this one night whilst online with Dan from Is There Food. We had gotten bored of running round Liberty City and so thought we’d give this a try. And it was a bit of a revelation, defined by the moment I saw myself running into the room to try and steal my team’s flag. That spy caught fire very quickly!

Braid – one of the surprises of the year for me. I didn’t know much about it until I tried the demo, and then immediately bought the full title. Brilliant idea, fantastically implemented, and really gives you some of those moments of complete enjoyment when you finally work out a puzzle.

Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts – like Marmite, you either loved or hated this game. Personally I think it’s superb. Take a franchise of days past and re-invent it. It would have been so easy just to release another platformer, but the new game mechanics and numerous ways to complete a level really give the player freedom. Superb fun.

GTA IV – appearing in virtually every game of the year list I’ve seen. Very gritty, good story and great fun shooting people while racing through the city on a moped!

Lost Odyssey – the only JRPG I managed to play last year (despite there being 2 more on my shelf), but what a game it is. Beautiful looks, good writing (as you’d expect) and very good turn-based combat. Definitely look at this if you’re a fan of the genre.

So now to the Top 5:

5. Fable 2 – I was never a big fan of the original, but Fable 2 was very enjoyable (I say that but I’m only about 25% done with it!). A great look with vistas that look like they go on for miles, simple but fun combat, great quests to keep you running round, and lets not forget the trusty dog as your guide. What’s next from Lionhead?

4. Fallout 3 – again one that I’ve only scratched the surface with, but that I know I’m going to get massive enjoyment from. Leaving the vault at the start of the game gives you a real feeling of seeing a world for the first time. Then stumble across abandoned and ruined towns on the way to your first quests, get ambushed by bandits, then feel the satisfaction as you loot their dead bodies. Brilliant fun, and one I can’t wait to get back to.

3. Prince of Persia – one of the few games I managed to get all the way through in the last 12 months. Yes the combat was simple, and no you couldn’t die, but that doesn’t make it a bad game. The aim of re-inventing the series has been well and truly met, and with an ending that leaves the door wide-open (it couldn’t be more open in fact) for a sequel, I look forward to the next instalment in the series.

2. Warhammer Online – now this one even surprised me. As someone who has played through nearly 60 levels of World of Warcraft, I was very pleasantly surprised by WAR. Public quests were a great introduction, and the Realm vs. Realm combat really gives you a feeling of living with the bigger battle that’s going on. I think it’s telling for me that when I do get time to play an MMO now, it’s always WAR that I fire up, and WAR hasn’t had a look in since my WAR account became active. Superb, and I look forward to many, many more enjoyable hours here.

So that leaves me with my number 1 for the year. A surprise to some (least of all me) given that, up until about 2 weeks before this title was released, I wasn’t even going to buy it! So, drum roll please….

1. Left 4 Dead – the most fun you can have on an XBox 360 with 3 friends. What a superb title that really shows other games how to do suspense. Couple that with the AI Director for the game, and no 2 encounters are ever the same. The tension as you see the swarm round a corner, and know that you’ve not got much health or ammo, but you can see the safe house. It has to be experienced to be believed. This is the only game I have ever (yes, ever) played that has had me cheering and grinning from ear to ear when you finally manage to be evacuated from a level. Absolutely stunning game, and one that I always look forward to playing. This will be in my collection for a long time to come.

So what think you, dear reader? Any that I’ve missed? Any that have made my list that you thought were complete twoddle? Leave me a comment, or better still, write your own list and let me see it….

• Fable 2 – 6.8 GB
• Banjo & Kazooie, Nuts and Bolts – 6.6 GB
• Left 4 Dead – 5.0 GB
• Midnight Club LA – 6.0 GB
• Fallout 3 – 5.9 GB

One thing I’ve not done yet is to set up my avatar. However those smart people over at Microsoft have already published details of how you can use your avatar outside of your XBox, and have provided a handy URL to get a png version of your in-game personage. If you browse across to

http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/<Your Gamertag here>/avatar-body.png

then a lovely png image of your avatar will be displayed for you. Once I’ve set mine up I’ll add him to this post…

Update: So here I am, in avatar form….

Only an absolute fool would argue against the fact that Sony won the last generation with the complete dominance of the PlayStation 2. Hand-in-hand with that was the fact that most platform-exclusives were only available on Sony’s console. Move forward to the current day and the picture is very, very different. With the headstart that Microsoft had on the current generation, the majority of exclusives are now available on the XBox 360 (and a lot of them with releases under the Games for Windows banner show Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to gaming). And franchises that were once the domain of PlayStation owners only, are now either on multiple platforms or, in the case of Beautiful Katamari for example, have completely switched and are now only on the XBox 360. But what has lead to this switch, and what is the effect for gamers like you and I?

Gaming is a big-bucks industry
The cost of games production is now far higher than ever before, and whilst not quite at the level of movie production costs, producing a triple-A title is now a multi-million pound project. Because of this, development studios and publishers want to maximise their return in terms of potential audience numbers, and the easiest way to do this is to launch on multiple platforms. This is something that is indicative of how “new” the current generation of consoles still is. In the last generation, the dominance of PlayStation 2, and the fact that the console now has an installed base of well over 120 million units, meant that launching a platform exclusive for the PS2 wasn’t really an issue or a risk. Even if only 10% of the owners bought the game, you were still selling 12 million copies, which is a massive hit in terms of games sales. However, with the current generation there are nowhere near the number of consoles in the market, and certainly no single console that is dominating the figures quite so heavily, and so multi-platform is the only viable way forward for the vast majority of games (there are some exceptions which we’ll come to soon).

Can an exclusive sell a platform?
Now this is a tricky one. If you consider game genres, then there is no single console that has a genre exclusive to it. You always get driving games on all the consoles. The same with shooters, puzzle games, sports simulations and platformers. Sure there will always be a different slant on the genres for each platform. The 360 has Halo 3 whilst the PS3 has WarHawk. The Project Gotham franchise will always be exclusive to Microsoft, while Gran Turismo will be the same for Sony. And while there are subtle differences between the games, they all boil down to the same thing within their genre. So do people really go out of their way to buy a platform just for a specific game? I guess there are some people who always will (and be labelled as fanboys for doing just that), but for the vast majority, they will pick the best game in the genre for the console that they own, and they’ll get hours of fun out of that game.

Even if we introduce the good old PC, this argument is still true. With the runaway success in the MMORPG genre that is World of Warcraft, one can’t deny that this has led many people to upgrade their PCs, but how many people have gone out and bought their very first PC just to play WoW? I’d wager that the figure isn’t that high.

Cross-platform gaming
With the expansion of XBox Live to include PC-gaming, there is now the possibility of sharing online games irrespective of whether you play on a 360 or a PC. Shadowrun is a good example of this. Players can use either the PC or 360 to play the game, and when they connect to a game lobby they may be the only player in there on that platform, but they won’t know any different. This does involve extra work in terms of balancing each platform version so that one doesn’t have an advantage over the other based on the platform, but the thought of being able to have the same experience across different platforms is an exciting one. Unfortunately take-up on this has been slow to date, with no major titles following in Shadowrun’s footsteps, but the ground-work is there and the emphasis now is back with the developers and publishers to utilise this, but Microsoft are the only manufacturer to be able to offer this due to the dominance of Windows on PC, and you can expect take-up on this cross-platform gaming to ramp up over the next 18 months.

Fanboyism
Unfortunately when you start to talk about platform exclusives, you’ll always awaken the fanboy in us all. I personally prefer Project Gotham to Gran Turismo, and am happy to tell anyone this. My opinion has come from playing games in both franchises and selecting the one that feels best to me. That’s all it is, an opinion. But there are some people that will take it beyond this. A little while ago Capcom announced that the now-released Devil May Cry 4 would be available for both the PS3 and 360. And what a hornets nest that kicked up. Previous titles in the franchise had been PlayStation exclusive, and Capcom suddenly found themselves on the bitter end of the fanboy’s abuse. Being accused of “betraying” the community that had stuck with them through the franchise, there were even calls for people to boycott the franchise unless it was released only on Sony’s platform. Fortunately Capcom stuck to their guns and released for both platforms, and unsurprisingly for such a well known franchise, sales were healthy.

A shift in focus
So with the current generation of platforms, it seems there is little to choose between them in terms of games. So how do the new breed of consoles manage to differentiate themselves? It seems that each of the manufacturer’s have decided that this generations platform-exclusive should be something other than the games. For Sony, it’s the inclusion of a Blu-Ray player. With Nintendo it’s the new way of actually playing the games with the motion sensing technology. And for Microsoft it’s the inclusion of the pervasive online presence, achievements and the video marketplace. But does this really move people towards a particular platform? Blu-Ray won the High Definition format war thanks, in no small part, to the number of PS3s that hit the market. The Wii is considered to be a “party games” console and is regarded as being most fun when there are a lot of people in one room. Microsoft will tell you that being able to chat to friends no matter what game they are playing, and having a persistent online presence, is the way forward. And for these three reasons, each of the manufacturers attracts a slightly different audience.

So what next?
So where does this leave the platform-exclusive title? Well it’s far from dead and buried. I doubt Microsoft would swap the Halo franchise for anything that either Sony or Nintendo have in their stable for the current generation. But we’re now seeing 2 new breeds of exclusivity emerging. There is the timed-exclusive. With this, a title will appear exclusively on a particular platform for a limited period of time, before it appears on any other platforms. Against this there is the platform-exclusive downloadable content. Microsoft have ensured that the only place that you can play the “full” Grand Theft Auto 4 experience is on the 360. With multiple chapters of downloadable content coming exclusively to the 360 in 2008 and 2009, Microsoft are using the launch of GTA4, once a Sony exclusive of course, to increase it’s lead over the PS3. They have had to pay the price for that exclusivity ($60 million according to most sources), but as I said at the start, the budgets for producing games are into the multi-millions now.

So what about you? Has a particular title taken you to a particular platform? Do you look for the best version of a particular game, or just the best one in the genre on the platform that you own? And what platform exclusive title do you think could win this round of the console war?

I have to say that as someone who has only really scratched the surface of Bioshock (yes I know!) it’s re-ignited my desire to get back to the game and give it a good play through. I remember the first time I picked up the demo and had a play and was absolutely gobsmacked by how well it played, and the feeling as you walked into Rapture for the first time that you had found a deserted city. It actually felt like a city. One that used to be living and breathing (albeit underwater) but was now eerily silent. I also fell into the trap that I’ve read so many others fall into in that you get to the end of the opening cinematic and you wait for something to happen, the switch is that seamless!

But enough of my reminisces! Go and give the article a read, and if you still own it, go back to Bioshock and marvel at the beauty of the game with the knowledge that everything you see is there for a reason, and probably caused one or two arguments along the way…

I’d had the warning signs. A couple of weeks ago I found that Tiger Woods was starting to freeze sporadically. But it only happened maybe 3 or 4 times in total. And then this week brought the dreaded red lights. And then the disbelief. The feeling that says “it’ll be alright. I’ll just turn it off and back on and everything will work.”. If only it were true. Some advice I can offer about arranging the repair though. Don’t, whatever you do, try and organise it through the XBox Support website. I did this, and when I rang up to query where my packing label was to send the console back, was told “oh you should have rung us, the website doesn’t really work” (not the easiest thing to make out in broken english!). Great. Thanks for that. Perhaps, rather than telling that to your customers, you should be telling this to the website team so they can fix it?

So UPS have been and taken my console away to the repair centre, and I now have 4 weeks without my XBox. Very annoying. I guess it’ll give me some time to get some levelling done in Lord of the Rings Online instead, and when the console comes back, finish the fight I most certainly will…