Consoles used to be a painful thing. If you had one, you missed something from the other. Now that rarely happens anymore. The Wii is the only different console and, at least for my taste in games, it’s not very good. I bought one and only my daughter uses it. I have to find better games, I suppose. But the image quality does piss me off a bit. Also the gameplay with the Wii mote is not as interesting as I would thought because it’s not as precise. That’s why the came up with the Wii Motion Plus. Of course, there’s 1 plus (better accuracy of moevement) and two minuses (shove more money for it and few games use it).

Gran Turismo is one of the few where you get screwed like these (at least one of the few interesting ones). The latest iteration of this game is only available for the PSP or PS3. Another one used to be the Metal Gear series, but that’s about to change. Main difference is that GT is developed by Sony and Metal Gear is from Namco. Namco needs to make more money so this BS of sticking with one console is not working out for them anymore. We’re even getting a Final Fantasy game on the Xbox 360 this year.

The thing with GT is that it has always been the king of “simulation” racing games. To be honest, the closest I have seen was Sega GT or Ferrari F430 Challenge for the Dreamcast… until now.

M$ has been working on Forza Motorsports. I remember the first one which came out for the Xbox. But it wasn’t there yet. It didn’t have all the tweaking GT had and the gameplay wasn’t that real, to be honest. Specially the engine sound, that wasn’t very good.

Recently they’ve released Forza Motorsports 3. I’ve never even taken a look at Forza 2, but this one is a big change. The graphics are amazing and the gameplay is great. There’s a ton of cars and it’s a lot of fun to play. As much as I used to love playing GT. Maybe more because it has some enhancements. But it doesn’t end there, suddenly out of the blue EA released Need for Speed Shift. In my opinion, all of the Need for Speed games sucked. I never played one that I liked. They were too arcade like for me. I’m more into a real driving experience. As close to real as possible without it not being so hard that it wouldn’t be entertaining, of course.

Need for Speed Shift is another amazing games. In terms of crash simulation, it looks like the best of the three (GT doesn’t even have that yet). The graphics of Need for Speed Shift are probably the best of the three too. Still, it does retain some arcadish elements. There’s not as many cars as the other too and the handling is a bit more fictional. Cars go faster than it would look like in the real thing and cornering is a lot easier with NFS as opposed to Forza and GT.

I haven’t played NFS thoroughly yet but one thing I miss from GT on the other two is that it’s not that easy to get out there an play with the big boys. First you need a licence. And that you get by doing some trials which really, it’s a forceful way of getting you to train. It’s kind of annoying but at the same time makes the experience more rewarding, I don’t know why.

Anyway, GT has to up their game because right now, they’re the ones behind. Supremacy is over.