The bee-yooo-tee-ful Kodak Theatre is now quiet and empty, a condition brought about by the obvious lack of programming on this fair night and the simple fact that long ago the Kodak theatre employees would have surely called the police on you if you insisted on staying long after all the conferences had ended. Honestly! I can't take you blog readers anywhere! As purty as it is you can't stay here and play DS games all night long! So what happened here? In an excercise to sorely test my self-editorial skills I shall attempt to write a brief impression of each conference. I'll surely fail so if you're bored and just want to humor me you can flip down to the bottom to get my final concise word.
Microsoft seems to have turned into the what everyone wants to force Nintendo to be, a company with a solid insight into the future of gaming and plenty of games for every genre and gaming sensibility. They attacked from almost every side of the gaming community. They immediately launched into Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5 and Gears of War 2 -- all just awesome looking titles that demand your attention when they are being demonstrated.
Hardcore gamers - check
They hit upon new XBox Live games and content like Galaga Legions, Geometry Wars 2, Portal: Still Alive (!) and new content in the form of GTAIV stuff as well as community developed games for download. They announced an agreement with Netflix in response to their weak movie presence which could be huge in the near future. This further solidifies their online dominance to a vast audience of gamers of all types.
Online gamers - check
They announced a new Banjo and Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and a proper sequel to their suprise smash hit Viva Pinata. They also included an odd You're in the Movies game in which you splice yourself and your friends into films as well as an update to the Scene It! game.
Kids and casual fun gamers - check
Then they went on to hit on every level with announcements of sequels to Guitar Hero and Rock Band as well as a new singing game called Lips which allows you to sing along to any song on your iPod or Zune.
Massive trendy games and popular technology tie-ins - check
Then suddenly it happened! The next Final Fantasy would be on the XBox 360! This was an actually stunning announcement and drew a lot of positive reaction from the crowd.
End on a bang and to leave them mumbling excitedly all the way out the door - check
Oh wait! There was one more thing...
...the hell? This was the one moment in the presentation in which there was much confused mumbling which was quickly followed by polite and erratic applause. You know...the kind of accolade you give to a drunk person attempting to tell you a joke in the hopes that they will just go away? Yeah. Everyone is a tad iffy about the whole change. Most think it's a Wii-ification and others think it's MS's attempt to make the online XBL look more like the much maligned Vista OS.
Overall though I was very happy with the presentation and it seemed to have a little something for everyone. Even though it was long-ish, the whole affair seemed to move along fairly well but that may be due to my heavier interest in the 360. In fact I'm pretty sure it was...DON'T TRUST ME!
Whoof! This seemed like the longest presentation in the world even though it wasn't any longer than MS's. Again, it might due to my lack of PS3 goodness in my house but it also might be because I was very ill whilst watching the whole affair. At any rate let's forge ahead and try to hit this quick and dirty as to be brief.
The Good - Resistance 2 is crazy beautiful. I'm not a big sci-fi oriented FPS type of guy but immediately I wanted to stop everything and playt his game once I saw the showdown with that giant monster. You don't understand! It's you, a super soldier, against the monster from Cloverfield!!! My God it looked awesome! Nice job! Star Wars - The Force Unleashed is great! God of War 3 holy crap! Loco Roco and Patapon sequels for the PSP! Great PSP support! Online DC game could be cool! A montage of awesome games coming out that I had to go back and quickly figure out what was what. In that montage I saw something interesting.
Well this looks interesting. It puts me in the mind of Operation Darkness. Silly me and my proclivity for grabbing on to odd little side games that nobody plays.:P
The Bad - Yakuza 2 (AKA Ryu Ga Gotoku 2)? While it's nice to finally see this game come out it's been a loooooooong time and they would have been better served to immediately try to get Ryu Ga Gotoku - Kenzan! out right on its heels. Throwing in the announcement that Sony is offering a new exciting bundle...for the PS2.:| Dude I've heard of hedging your bets to get money from every port but seriously, do this stuff away from the crowds. This kind of stuff just makes me worry about you Sony. Speaking of which...
The Ugly - Sony aired various testimonials from programmers insisting that the PS3 was not hard to program for and that they love programming for it because you can just keep getting more and more power from it. Now if you know any programmers that indeed work on games for the PS3 then you know that this is completely untrue. I constantly have to hear from my friends on how painfully awful it is and exactly why in ways that I don't fully understand as I'm not a programmer. Oh Sony...if somebody insists over and over again that they don't have a problem without anybody prompting them to do so then they probably do.
Overall though - just tons of games that are very exciting even though I don't have a PS3 which speaks volumes. Hmmm...no Tekken 6 though.
Oh man here we go! It's the program that seemingly everybody was whining about. Indeed I will admit that I really don't enjoy my Wii system. To top it off I thought last year's presentation was the worst I've ever seen as they spent most of it concentrating on the perplexingly awful Wii-Fit board. But that was last year so let's let bygones be bygones and move on.
I actually enjoyed Nintendo's presentation. It was incredibly brief which, although I'm not sure was the greatest idea, did make the whole affair move along quite smoothly. Although the presenters weren't great, they did juggle them around a bit so their presence didn't seem to wear as much as the other presenters.
There was much Nintendo fun-nessness to be had. Raving Rabbits, Star Wars - Jedi, Wii-Sports resorts, that scary Wii-music thing with all that electronic sax and flute noise, and then lots and lots of exciting DS goodness. Good lord lots of DS goodness!:D Also...GTA IV for the DS?!?!:o Good Lord! Although I was still very sleepy and not at all well, as soon as Animal Crossing came up I almost fell out of my chair in excitement. Jeez! What is it about that game? I love it so much!:cry:
But...what about the hardcore gamers Daemon? What about our needs?! :cry:
Here's the reality. Nintendo didn't abandon the hardcore gamers, the hardcore gamers abandoned Nintendo years ago. Remember that N64 that you didn't play as much of because the Dreamcast had shiny games with hot chicks and blood which you then quickly abandoned for the PS2 which had even more blood and more detailed hot chicks? Why didn't you buy any of that 3rd party software?
Remember that Gamecube system which was actually very solid and awesome but you didn't buy? In fact you spat on it and called it kiddy whilst beating hookers down and blowing up the heads of aliens. Guess what happens when you ignore and abuse somebody? They pick themselves up, get a haircut, buy some new clothes, and go out looking for new friends that will accept them for who they are. Guess what happened?
They found friends. Lots and lots of friends. Friends who thought nobody thought about them either. Guess what? These friends have lots of disposable cash -- and lots of kids. So now the folks in Wii-land are supposed to take you back and worry about your needs? Didn't we give you a Zelda and a Mario? You want one every year?! Have we ever done that?
So am I surprised that Nintendo didn't address the need of the "hardcore" gamers? No. Why should they? Hardcore gamers have demonstrated quite clearly that they don't care about them and Nintendo has always -- ALWAYS -- been about Nintendo. They are notorious for their lack of concern towards third party developers and that's that. So here's fun Nintendo stuff to play with. Shut up and have some fun you killing machine you.
The funny thing is that there are in fact serious gamer games coming out for the Wii. If you do something as simple as to look at the E3 listing of games and select it to filter all the Wii games you will see awesome things like Mad World, Megaman 9, Castlevania Judgement, and a new Tales of Symphonia among others. Sound like normal adult games for all gaming types doesn't it?
So overall, even though I didn't really like most of what Nintendo had to offer, I could clearly see why lots of people would and so I give them a big thumbs up and I reserve a different digit entirely for all the furious hardcore gamers that won't stop whining about the mother they abandoned long ago.
Awww crap I really typed a lot again didn't I? Well I'm feeling much better so I'm riding on a high of sorts I suppose so lets sum it up for those of you that skipped ahead.
Microsoft - The leaders of the core gamer crowd -tons of cool games - Something for everybody - all things to all people - Very exciting.
Sony - The foundation of the core game crowd - a decent amount of really cool games - not as many exclusives in order to differentiate themselves from the 360 lineup but they're getting there - they need to move ahead faster and get more stuff out before MS develops a new system.
Nintendo - In a world of their own making and boy it feels good - Nintendo just gleefully plays around and makes tons of dough laughing at the hardcore gamers that spurned them - The DS is a unstoppable juggernaut - some interesting Wii-sclusives (my word! I made it up!) from third parties coming up but buried under Nintendo's hype machine. Go play!
So who won Daemon? That's what everyone wants to know right? Isn't it obvious?
Everyone.
No that's not a cop out. You might not have noticed but we are in the middle of a gaming renaissance. If you stop and think about all the great games that you'll never have time to play because there are so damn many of them then you'll go crazy. No matter what system you have there's plenty of games to play and have a great time with. So get out of here and go play some games you crazy kids!
Now for that pesky cat that posted my last blog...
Awwww...I can't stay mad at you, you little ball of fur. :oops: