Basically Nintendo has released a console that just barely competes with a generation that is considred by many to be on it's way out. I have already switched most of my gaming from PS3 to PC for a number of reasons. Current consoles just don't have great graphics or performance & nothing I've seen so far on the Wii U even matches let alone surpasses the other 2 consoles running on technology several years old. I know release games rarely show the potential of a system but it's not promising.
As for the USB 2.0, sure it may be OK for the next couple of years, but they've hardly future-proofed themselves. How long it this console going to be around before they release the next one? The technology in THIS machine has to provide for I'm guessing 5 to 10 years of future gaming. It is in some ways commendable that Nintendo have allowed customers to make their own decision on how much storage they need & what they are willing to pay for it, but finding another spare power point around the TV is going to be a real problem.
Nothing here is cutting edge, processing power, the touch screen, the hard drive storage or connectivity... essentially this would have been a fairly good system if it was released a few years ago. The question is, is it built to last? As soon as the next gen does come out for Microsoft & Sony, Nintendo is dead in the water, resigned to the nostalgic Mario crowd. New games will just require too much to run on the Wii U's already outdated system. They just better move a truckload of units in the meantime.
High speed wireless internet without data caps is still not everywhere yet. Down in New Zealand, the orcs keep the hobbit population low enough that economies of scale don't work too well plus we're pretty far away & have limited pipelines to get our 1s & 0s from the rest of the world. I'm sure there are plenty of other gamers around the world facing similar problems. Whether you're looking at processing in the cloud or processing on a machine at home, getting that data to a handheld device is still a long way off.
I have a 7" Android tablet that I sometimes play games on but its dual-core processor & dedicated gfx card still struggle once you start adding a few 3D elements to a game (try Wind-Up Knight if you want to push the limits of your Android a bit). But I don't mind when I got it for a great price & still haven't paid a cent for a game yet. I had a few minutes with a Vita the other day & the controls felt cramped. The graphics were OK on the Need For Speed game they had in the shop but nothing special. If a reasonably new PS handheld can't match the graphical capabilities of an aging PS console, then I don't have high hopes for processing inside a handheld device.
Graphics & smooth gameplay are pretty important to me which is why I do most of my gaming on my high-end pc now. Screen size matters too. If they can bring out an oculus rift/augmented reality type device that runs off a handheld it would maybe pique my interest but I don't have high hopes. Primarily I want to sit down to a game uninterrupted for a solid session. If I only have an hour, it's not enough to get into a game properly. I need quality-time not any-time.
I loved this game for it's realism. I want to spend more time in this world, but I'm not sure what to think about a zombie mode.
I pretty much built a new pc just to play this game with full graphics since I couldn't get a solid framerate with high settings on my old pc. I really want to like whatever story they can add to it, but zombies seem kind of cheesy & opposite of the gritty realism that attracted me to the game in the first place.
It's hard to argue for more complex female characters when the industry needs more complex characters in general. There are many games where the protagonist is a walking stereotype no matter what the gender. Some have character development for the main protagonist, but fewer yet actually have fully developed chracters around them.
I think one of the main things to note about games is that people want to role play (even when it's not an RPG). The characters we are seeing are often not just stereotypes (or tropes), they are ARCHETYPES. We don't always want to play characters that reflect real life. We have a real life! And often it's not very exciting. Forget the images of nerds in the basement, gamers are real peple but we still have hopes, dreams & fantasies that we know we can never achieve in real life.
A classic male fantasy is to brave the odds, overcome your own fears, beat the bad guys & rescue the damsel in distress. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! Thousands of stories have been told throughout history so that people can indulge this fantasy. Stories told by old men, books & movies have repeated this archetypal fantasy time & time again, why should games be any different? We should still be thoughtful about how the characters within this story are portrayed, but the archetypal story itself is not the problem.
What game developers need to ask is, what is the female fantasy? Do women want to play out a slightly modified version of the male fantasy or something differnt? Traditionally games like The Sims & Farmville have been popular amongst female audiences, perhaps it's the female fantasy of controlling the world immidiately around them (I'm sure to get a feminist attack for that).
The important thing to remember is that not all people share the same fantasy & we don't necessarily want to play the same one out over & over again. Game developers need to find socially responsible ways of fulfilling both male & female fantasies (not always in the same game) & flesh out more complex male & female characters.
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