Today, my luck faired somewhat better. I turned networking back on and the Heavenly Sword update actually worked. My unfortunately-Bluetooth remote has been paired. Now for the long wait that System Update 2.43....been two minutes....0%....five minutes....3%. Again, I no longer consider PSN free. It costs game time. A lot.
So who thinks the 360's fall update will take this long? *looks upon a dead sea of no-hands*
Maybe the 7Mb upgrade I'll be on soon will help.
More notes on Heavenly Sword: disappointing. This in no way should be considered a flagship PS3 game. Ninja Gaiden puts it to shame graphically, control-wise, and gameplay-wise. It lacks finesse and polish; Nariko feels like a spider missing legs. On the lighter side, some of the sequences are great in concept, but the characters and accompanying voice-overs wreak of cheese. At least you can turn off the motion control on the projectiles. That part reminds me of Abby's ghost bullets in Jericho, which kick ass.
As for 360's, it's not easily grasped how poorly Microsoft designed the original 360's. Without taking a 360 apart, a million pictures on the internet aren't going to give the appropriate feel of how small the original heatsinks are. We're talking a tri-core 3.2 Ghz processor, and this thing is smaller than the stock heatsink on my 2.66 Ghz dual-core in my PC. The
x-clamps on the bottom should have been square. At least they've
fixed it.
Lastly, the Wii. I think I've given up; I'm not buying into it anymore. Metroid is my favorite Nintendo franchise, and I can't will myself to bother with MP3. I've spent much time in the past on MP1&2, completing everything on the highest difficulties. And regardless of what the gaming sites say, MP2's multiplayer was a blast...it just needed online. Back on track; this last round...it's just not reeling me in.
In short: I don't like the Wii Remote. Wii Sports is great, but I just haven't seen or played anything else that makes "fun" use of it. The "light gun" with Umbrella Chronicles is okay, but I don't find myself ever wanting to play it. It seems whenever the option to use a 'cube controller is present, it's the only choice.
My real problem with the Wii is the same as everyone's gripe: No captivating games.
So to recap my experiences:
Playstation 3: Operating system/Network sucks
Xbox 360: Hardware sucks
Wii: Game software sucks