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This Ain't A Console War, It's a Genocide (Sales Figures! Ooooh!)
Bunnyman:
--- Quote from: 0bsessions on 15 May 2007, 06:28 ---PC gaming is the absolute, far and away worst place for the casual gamer. It's a landscape pretty much dominated by MMOs and FPS and they really don't wander far out of that pair of genres. The selection of even viable PC games is few and far between, much less a variety of them. Pretty much everything available for PC ends up on consoles these days as the console market is exponentially larger.
--- End quote ---
Actually, the PC is far and away the best place for casual gamers. The vast majority of homes in the industrialized world have a computer, even if it is a five-year old Compaq so loaded down with spyware it takes seventeen minutes to boot. Where else can mom play a few rounds of bejewled or junior play Lifesavers Pool or whatever's on PopCap? Kids hanging out in the computer lab at lunch aren't going to play Gears of War; they're going to dig up a flash game on Newgrounds. While there are certainly console casual games (Wii Sports/WiiPlay being the most recent obvious examples, but XBox Live Arcade's offerings also being notable), PCs have vastly more penetration, due to their other, 'productive' uses.
I think you have a different definition of 'casual gamer.'
0bsessions:
You're working off a flawed perception of the term. The generally accepted definition of a "casual gamer" is someone who has more than a passing interest in video games, but isn't considered "hardcore" in any particular genres. Your textbook casual gamer is the type who won't go out and play an MMO or check out the new Ninja Gaiden/Resident Evil, etc, but will pick up the yearly edition of Madden or enjoy a pickup game of Halo.
ScrambledGregs:
Actually, 'casual gamer' is kind of a nebulous term now that Nintendo is trying to reach out to everyone and get them interested in videogames. Granted, the kind of stuff that sells to this new audience--your Wii Sports, your Nintendogs, your WiiFit, your Brain Training What's Its--aren't videogames in the same way that I think Resident Evil 4 or the upcoming Smash Brothers are 'traditional' videogames. Yet they still are.
The PC is a shockingly good platform for casual gaming because of all the simple, free games you can find online. Even stuff that costs money can be easy to pick up and play, like Bejeweled clones or most of PopCap's games.
Ozymandias:
Hey, Tommy, if the Wii is the first console you've ever purchased, it might be worth your while to get some old GameCube games, then. See if you enjoy them.
Storm Rider:
Well, if you enjoyed RE4, there was the RE1 remake for Gamecube and Resident Evil 0, which I assume is some sort of prequel but I honestly know nothing about. Also, Eternal Darkness. It's 5 years old now so it looks a little dated, but it's still got a level of atmosphere that no other game I think has matched since. No other survival horror game has a meter measuring how fucking insane the stuff you're encountering is driving you, much less a meter that actually starts to affect how you perceive the game. As your sanity goes down, walls start becoming covered in blood and portraits start turning into scenes of murder and shit. It's mindbending and at the top of the short list of games-as-art in my mind.
Other good games for the Gamecube not involving Mario or Zelda:
Metroid Prime 1 and 2
Soul Calibur 2
Killer7 (apparently, I never played it)
Viewtiful Joe
Timesplitters 2
F-Zero GX
Wave Race: Blue Storm
I also think all 3 Prince of Persia games were released on Gamecube as well, but go ahead and skip 2 because it was badly marketed to the point of idiocy. They threw Godsmack on the soundtrack or something equally ridiculous, made his hair longer, added a scantily clad female villain, and so on. You might like Tomb Raider Legend and Gun, but those are a bit harder to recommend because, well, they aren't as good the ones listed above.
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