Should I buy a PS3

[®onnie ®ude]

I currently own an XBOX 360.

I play wrestling games, Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil, Mass Effect 3, Red Dead Redmption and am a big fan of Co-op games and role-playing games.

My Xbox Live handle is Ronnie Rude, if anyone is interested in playing together.

However, I really am considering getting a PS3. I'm not a fan of Call of Duty, Halo or Gears of War and I'm running out of options on XBOX 360.

I hear on black friday I can get a PS3 bundle for only $200, and I'm wondering if it is worth getting. What's worth playing on PS3 as opposed to XBOX 360?

Is anyone else on the same boat, or ever was?

What system do you play, and why?

[James]

I'd say it depends on the storage size of the PS3 itself, as there are several. If it's a 160 GB PS3 (I think that's the new standard now, I've got a 80 GB myself) or larger, then yeah, it's a good deal. Even better if it's a 500 GB console, although I think bundles with that cost an extra $100...still, with that and Assassin's Creed III together, it looks juicy.

For games, the PS3 is more suited to RPGs, so that's what I'll stick to for recommendations. There's Demon's Souls and Dark Souls (while the latter may be a 360 game too, I always felt, again, it was more at home on the PS3--I prefer Demon Souls on the whole, but Dark Souls has better co-op in my opinion), Disgaea 3 and 4, with two other series titles due out summer next year, with the previous titles (and other NIS games) downloadable over PSN, if you don't have a PS2/PSP to play them already. There's also Tales of Graces f, which had an annoying story for me but hellishly fun combat, and like the new Disgaea titles, the west is expecting to get Tales of Xillia next year, and its sequel soon after. Heavy Rain was also pretty fun.

On the topic of PSN (specifically, the PlayStation Store), that's another big selling point for me. It's like Wii's Virtual Console (or XBox Arcade as it were xd) in that there's a ton of classics on it that you can download and play, whether they be from PS1 or 2, or some from non-Sony consoles, like the Dreamcast. It's a pretty huge list overall, so I'll let ya check it out over Wiki.

As for me, I've got a 360, PS3, and a Wii, though I use the 360 the least as I have the fewest games for it (sans Fable 2 and 3 and Tales of Vesperia) and for whatever reason it doesn't hook up to the internet, which is a pity. I love my PS3, and I got the Wii last, but I'm warming up to it pretty quickly due to the Virtual Console, as well as Punch Out!!, which I love to death. I'm still debating whether or not I want to mod it to play Fatal Frame IV, though. I don't think I have any preferred console, as all sorts of great games come out for different systems, but even with as shitty as my laptop is, if it's available on PC, that's what I usually opt to get it for, due to modding opportunities (which admittedly can be ridiculously annoying at times, lol).

[Al]

In terms of multiplayer games, the 360 tends to top out the PS3 for dang sure, whereas the PS3 is usually the better system for singleplayer games. For example, back when Oblivion first came out, the 360 would occasionally run choppy when loading a new cell of the map in the open world portion, whereas the PS3 would have a very short loading time between areas and said cells.

As for actual hardware/additional functions...that depends on what you already have. For me my PS3 is my blu-ray player/Netflix machine when I have the time to watch stuff, but for the most part I download games off PSN (usually older games to show my support for certain developers, such as Vanillaware). That'd probably be my main issue with the PS3--in that you have to get an older model for it to be backwards compatible, and given that my mom sold my old PS2, I've had to emulate many of my old games on my PC as a result.

In terms of graphics, if you care about 'em, the PS3 tends to use more various colors and is able to top a bit more detail than the 360, but not by much.

I'm trying to hit more of what James hasn't said, and since he took most of the good games, I have to yell at him for missing one of the greatest. How could you forget Valkyria Chronicles?! I know you still haven't touched it, but you've seen an entire playthrough of the dang game on 4PP. xD

Eh, that'd be the main thing for me. You will have a ton of backlog this far into the gen and really the hardest part will be deciding what games you want to try first. VC may be my favorite PS3, but I'm a huge strategy RPG fan so that is to be expected.

Uncharted is probably one of the more well written games out there for characters, to which words alone really can't do justice, though not for the greatest "surprises" or "plots." It's a third person shooter, a bit smoother than Gears of War, but potentially as boring during certain points. The more fun bits come in at platforming IMO, since each game has an almost all new environment that is different from the last.

Demon Souls/Dark Souls is another title I've had loads of fun with. James touched on this, but I have to add in that the game really begins after you beat it for the first time. After that you can invade other people's playthroughs/have your own invaded, which really adds a lot of diverse gameplay to the game.

Disgaea...eh. 3 was good gameplay-wise and had some fun characters like Champloo (a demon chef who is a parody of Emeril Lagasse in America), but the cameos weren't that great. Disgaea 4 has better DLC and a solid main story, but can still be a bit expensive to get the most out of.

If I remember right there are 12 free games on Playstation PLUS, which you get for free for the first month of use, but I can't remember what those are aside from Little Big Planet.

Honestly the best thing to do would be looking around and seeing what catches your interest game-wise, since someone I know quite well (my brother) tends to buy every system when it's new, but never gets games he likes to keep around. Then again, we got lots of use out of GameFLY that way...eh.

Overall I'd say yes, simply because there are a good amount of exclusives by now that make the system worth having if you can afford it. Plus a good number of games are pretty dirt cheap by this point, too.