My previous blog says that I'm bored of Wii. Nowadays, that couldn't be further from the truth. I took it round to my friends house and we set it up in her living room and played for a few hours. Then, her parents came home (kind of apathetic about gaming) while we were playing Trauma Centre (a supposedly hardcore game) and were intrigued by it. Because we were stuck on an operation, they offered advise and soon the whole family were gathered round watching us play and they all took in turns doing operations and stuff. It was pretty awesome.

Besides that, I've been doing weekly Wiisports tournaments with my brother and I've finally completed RE4, so I've unlocked a few more hours of orgasmic gaming with the Ada missions. On top of that, I'm SO psyched for upcoming titles. I'll definately be getting:
Manhunt 2
Super Paper Mario
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Dewy's Adventure
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2
Super Mario Galaxy
Medal of Honour
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles.

The genre's are pretty diverse as well. They're not ALL first-person shooters and they're not ALL 'kiddy' games. It's the perfect mix for me. I think I made the right choice making Wii my first choice console this gen. WEEEE. Can't wait for Christmas :D

I hardly ever play Wii anymore. I occasionally try and work out this puzzle I'm stuck on in Twilight Princess (I don't believe in using FAQ's), get bored and do something else like play guitar. It's the same thing with pretty much every Wii game. Turn it on, play for 15 mins, get bored, switch off.

Maybe it's because I'm kinda pissed off with Nintendo right now. You know they're heading for trouble when Miyamato, their creative genius says casual games are the future. As I'm typing this I'm conguring up horrible images of what that quote means. Cooking with Link? Princess Peach's Dress Shopping? Epic, hardcore games are what give me goosebumps and the Wimote only enhances this when used correctly, but I fear hardcore games will soon be a distant memory and we will be submerged in Mario Party 8, Mario Trampolining, Mario Pizza Delivery and other tripe.

I also can't stand how Nintendo can slap their loyal fans in the face with a minimalistic online experience. Yes, I know it's 'free' and I have no right to complain, but the fact is that the Playstation Network is also free and has a lot more going for it DESPITE the fact that Sony takes a huge hit on every PS3 sold, whereas Nintendo make a profit on every single piece of hardware and software anyone purchases. So, despite this the PSN has free downloadable demo's (usually over 1GB), movie and game trailers and full games with a lot more on the way. The online isn't that bad either. There's a bit of lag here and there, but at least you can socialise with your friends which is the POINT of online play. I mean, why play online when you can't communicate? You may as well be playing against an AI.

I understand that people will say something like how friends codes, and lack of voice chat protects children from playing with people they don't know. Surely parental controls could cancel this out? Isn't that what they're THERE for? If parents don't want their kids to play online, then they can set up a parental control that blocks it. This gives us the freedom to play how we want, while protecting the younger gamers.

The fact that the PSP has a better online service than Wii proves that it is a complete joke. Sony's game division is losing millions while Nintendo is currently reporting record profits while saying that a PSN-esque online service is 'too expensive'

So, Pre-E3 I was pretty excited because I knew there was gonna be a hardware suprise from Nintendo (external hard disk? Visor? Remote controlled pie?) and I KNEW that we'd see more of Galaxy, Brawl and hopefully Metroid. Maybe the annoucement of a Starfox game for Wii, Mario Kart, Pikmin, F-zero... Something, awesome right?

How wrong I was. Something that IS awesome about Nintendo is their unpredictablility. They were on form when they wowed us with Wii last year, arguably not so much with Virtual Boy 12 years ago. And, in my opinion, they once again made a complete mistake with Wiifitness.

I may be a little presumptious with that statement, but it was what my instinct said to me when I first saw the thing, so it's what I'm going with. Playing with Wiisports is one thing. You can have a beer while doing it, you can compete with your friends, you can sit down, talk and insult eachothers mothers. With Wiifitness I don't think you'll be able to do that. And, to get most out of the game, your friends will have to come over and play it regularly when they're NOT drunk so the whole body mass thing can work out. That's what I don't get - it's meant to be aimed at casuals, right? Yet, the competitve aspect with bodymass is the selling point. In order to get the body-mass data you need to play the game regularly.. Why the hell would a casual do that? Again, it's not exactly pick up and play like Wii Sports. It's pick up, take body mass reading and excercise. I fail to see how this is fun.

Of course this is just my opinion and I hope for Nintendo's sake that they don't fail on this but... I dunno. If they can implement the matt into hardcore games it might work. I don't know what those things are capable of, but imagine if you could use it as a surfboard in SSX or run on it in some olympic game, or use it to run in an FPS... THEN it could potentially be cool.

Nintendo are right when saying they need to bring people in who havent played games before but at the same time they don't want to push away the fans who have made them the success they are today with games like Wiifitness. They should try to attract both hardcores AND casuals. I just hope that after the big three come out we're not left with thousands upon thousands of self-help 'games'

Right now, there are so many games I want to own (old and new).   I have 19 systems, so I have a hell of a lot of games to choose from.  I am in love with my Wii and I would love to get my hands on The Godfather, simply because it looks damn cool and, from what I've heard, the voice acting is immense... and I'm a complete sucker for really good voice acting.

    I want quite a few other Wii games as well. I'm really psyched for Manhunt 2. I absolutely adored the first one.  It's probably one of the most immersive, atmospheric games I've ever played (it's right up there with RE-make on the GC).  I also want Spider-man 3 because..... Well, like most social outcasts I really identify with Peter Parker and doing webslinging with the Wiimote just HAS to be cool.  There is no way it can't be.  It has to be done!

   There are the other, more obvious Wii games that I need to get when they come out (particularly Mario Galaxy, which looks to be an amazing game) but I can't be bothered to discuss them in detail. So, onto other systems:

PSP - I have recently regained my love for Sony's portable console.  It really is not as bad as people make it out to be.  Sure, there are some design flaws (like how a third of the CPU will forever be  unused to give extra battery life) but I will favour the PSP over the DS anyday purely because it has more depth and is a more polished experience.  I REALLY need to import Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops because it isn't out for months over here and the UK and it looks to be a Killer App.  I adore the Metal Gear Ac!D series, so I know what amazing experiences Kojima Productions are capable of creating on the PSP.  I also want to get Liberty City Stories, Medal of Honour, Lego Star Wars, WTF, Lumines 2 and the new Wipeout game when it comes out. I know you can get Liberty City Stories and Lego Star Wars on the PS2, but my PS2 is on its way out (the disk drive keeps making weird noises) and I want to preserve what life it has left to play FF12.

Virtual Boy - I'm a big fan of beautiful failures, and personally, I think the Virtual Boy is one of the most interesting pieces of engineering in video game history.  It has a pretty solid game library, and I have collected 14 games (22 were released alltogether) and now it's just a matter of hunting down the rarer ones, which can be ridiculously expensive.  The game I want most is an FPS called Insmouse No Yakata.  As you can guess from the title, it is Japanese and it's meant to be really atmospheric and tense because you have to run through this mansion with monsters chasing you.  You're playing this on a system that only displays red, but when you play it in the dark at 3am its incredibly immersive. The speakers are right by your ears and, according to reviews I've read, you actually hear the footsteps of the monsters getting closer as they chase you.  Sounds awesome to me :)

PS2: Though my PS2 is on its way out, I still want to get all the games I've missed out for it. Some of these include Bully, Katamari, the Kingdom Hearts series,  God of War 1&2, the Devil May Cry Series and many other sleeper-hits that somehow got passed my ever-so watchful eye. Speaking of which, if anyone knows any sleeper hits for the PS2, would you please inform me of them? I love niche games :)

Gamecube - I need to buy all the Resi games for this unloved system as well as Batallion Wars, Killer 7, the sequel to Rogue Leader (forget the name) and I also need to re-buy Starfox Assault and MGS: The Twin Snakes because I stupidly sold them when I needed money.

   There are loads of other ones that I'm forgetting right now, but this blog is getting kind of long heh.  In the next month or so I really need to finish Twilight Princess. Whenever I get stuck in a dungeon I tend to put it down for a few months and play something else.  It's a great game, don't get me wrong, but the dungeons become very monotonous very quickly for me.  The storytelling is fantastic though and apart from the dungeons I really have no complaints about the game. So yus, end of game-tastic blog, me thinks. t00dles x

After at least a month of not playing my 360, on a boring evening I decided to plug it in and waste a few hours on Gears.  To my suprise, it crashed on the 360 logo.  I shrugged it off and booted it up again and was greeted with 3 red lights.  I was very angry.  I paid a lot of money to get the system at launch and it is just out of warranty, meaning I'll need to pay £80 to get it repaired, which I cannot afford to do at present because I'm a student.

   So, instead I have decided to dedicate all my gaming time to Wii and other consoles (I'm really in the mood to dig out my dremcast) and say an almighty 'screw you' to microsoft until I can be bothered to sort a this out.

Hmmm Wii indeed. On Friday, us brits find out how much we'll be paying for Wii. I'm seriously hoping it's £150. I'm gonna be a student as of next week. I can't afford much more. Can I even afford that?
   I have a mobile phone contract with O2. A part of this contract is that I get a free phone every year. Last year I opted for a great Pocket PC called the O2XDAIIi. I love it. I figured I'd simply get a new phone and sell it to make enough money to buy Wii when it comes out.
   Guess whats happened? I like my new phone. It is still an XDA, but its a minuture version of it. The specs are worse too (199mhz vs 550mhz, 32mb flash vs 64mb flash) but its so small and light... It even has a pull-out keyboard.  Texting someone while moving using a touch screen is an impossible task.  The keyboard appeals to me.
    The annoying thing is I can't sell my XDAIIi because there is a scratch on the screen and general bumps and stuff around the edges... So what is gonna happen? Is my love for gadgets greater than my love for games? I hope not...

First off, let me just say that I'm not a fanboy in any shape or form. I try to play all consoles. Of course, I favour some over others but thats just an opinion...
   My problem with the PS3 is the lack of choice sony gives us. They force blu-ray on us just like they did with DVD. I mean, what if we, as gamers don't want a blu-ray player and just want to play games? Thats how I view it. I mean, here in the UK HDTV's aren't popular at all. I know nobody who owns one. So, whats the point in paying £420 for something we can't fully take advantage of?
   The 360 looks a lot more attractive. It gives you choice. You can have a HDD if you want one, or you can choose not to and still have the choice of upgrading later on. Hear that, Sony? CHOICE.
    The thing that angered me most was Sony's blatent theft of Nintendo's motion sensing. They didn't tell many developers about it before E3 which prooves in my mind that theu thought of it after Nintendo and it seems like a desperate move to me.
  Sony were once a good company for our industry. They popularized both CD's and DVD's and made them the industry standard. Will Blu-ray do the same? No, I don't think so. Too few people will see the benefits of the format and the complete lack of originality in Sony is what annoys me the most. I doubt I'll be getting the PS3 until it becomes a rare collectable console :wink:

D'ya know what pisses me off? How people say HD is such a big frigging deal. It really isn't. The Sega Saturn was capable of HD for christ's sake.
   I've just recently hooked my 360 up to my monitor. In Oblivion, the graphics are slightly more breath-taking. In COD3, they look worse. The lack of detail in the textures is a lot more obvious to me. It just sucks! It might be better with blu-ray movies but I'm not going to pay all that money just for a bit of an improvement over DVD.
   I guess I feel let down because when I was a kid, there was the huge 2D to 3D jump in gaming. There's been nothing as huge as that since. The Wii is the only console so far that at least tries to do something new and brave.
   I guess thats what I miss about gaming - the braveary. The stupid risks companies took. The early-to-mid 90's is littered with beautiful failures. I don't know why I love it so much. I just get excited by new, revolutionary technology. Not higher resolutions.