E3 08: Nintendo & Sony Press Conferences

I can sympathize with these poor chaps above, they're the core gamers and just look how excited they are. It's almost palpable. Let's dive right into the other two conferences.

Nintendo once again took the casual money making route, I can't really fault them for what's bringing in the mad cash. If I had a home and portable console that printed money, I too would do what they did. Alas, since I don't have it as good as they do, and I haven't really been a huge fan of the way games are going on their console, I found myself mostly bored and pondering exactly just how much dust I can expect my Wii to gather in the next coming months. Madworld is slated for 2009 so I can't look forward to that, I think all I have is Megaman 9 and perhaps some VC titles like Super Mario RPG.

So what did they announce? Shaun White Snowboarding kicked it off, I don't have a balance board so scratch that off, also it didn't look all that thrilling and fun. Wii Sports Resort, which also is slated for 2009, not that I'm looking forward to throwing Frisbees to a dog anyhow. It comes with Wii Motion Plus however which is supposed to make Wiimote movement in games 1:1. To be honest, some demonstrations looked 1:1 but some of them didn't. Also, thanks for further segmenting your market Nintendo, now 3rd party developers have to ask themselves if they want to utilize the Wii Speaker, the Balance Board, the Wii Zapper, the Wii Motion Plus, perhaps pull a Samba de Amigo and come with peripherals of their own. Like what the hell guys? I won't be picking up Wii Sports Resort but I'll look into the Wii Motion Plus if and when a good lightsaber game is created or the Mario and Zelda teams show something off that utilizes it in a way that excites me. I'm not a fan of Animal Crossing so the new Wii title did nothing for me, I find no pleasure in decorating a town and chopping down trees and fishing. I definitely don't want to do it with other people, I would feel terrible having dragged them into the mess with me.

On the DS front nothing exciting, another Guitar Hero game which apparently is selling like hotcakes so good for those guys. A GTA title is coming out, but I've yet to see the DS pull off a completely 3D game that I enjoyed thoroughly. Finally the man himself, Miyamoto came out and there was all this darkness and fog and smoke and everyone was thinking Kid Icarus, but no, the big unveil was Wii Music. Everyone they had out there playing and messing around with their products were all so damn cheery, so I thank them for the Diabetes. Hopefully they're cooking up a Post-E3 Wii Insulin product for me. It also ships with a new peripheral for the Balance Board, some comfy Diabetic Socks. Thanks Nintendo!

Enough about them let's move onto the next disappointment, the Sony Conference. First off, Resistance 2 looks fun, although the demo intrigued me the first couple of minutes and then watching whoever was playing mozy around a building and a bridge while just shooting bullets now and then at the Leviathan dried up that well. As sad as it is, I give them props for making the charts and bar graphs the most interesting by using LittleBigPlanet. That game could revolutionize business meetings across the globe in a few years time.

They focused on the PSP which I zoned out during, then they talked a little bit about the PS2. I think the only title I'm left wanting to play for the PS2 is Persona 4. There was some PSN discussions, they're getting TV and movies like XBL, and there's a nice looking Ratchet and Clank game coming out in August I believe for $14.99. What else? Gran Turismo TV, I guess if you own a PS3, GT5:Prologue, and are a fanatic of cars, you'll enjoy that. Then it was time for more PS3 trailers, they treated the crowd to a CGI teaser for God of War 3 which surprised nobody that the game was in development and because there wasn't any game play shown I didn't get any excitement from it. They also busted out a trailer for inFamous which looks cool, I was a big fan of the Sly Cooper games. Finally they showed off a game which I hope for now is tentatively titled Massive Action Game. I'm guessing it'll be a mix of SOCOM meets Battlefield, they showed off what I believe was a CGI trailer so once again it didn't get me all that excited.

It seems as if the Internets are praising Sony for their conference but I was really disappointed in it. Still not enough games were shown off, especially in the exclusives department. What's Jaffe up to? Where's some footage of God of War 3? What's the ICO/SotC team up to? What happened to White Knight Story? Enough CGI/game play trailers, get someone out on the stage, put a controller in their hand, and start playing something that woos me and gets me pumped for the PS3. They defended their lack of titles because they have a 10 year cycle in mind for the PS3, so they went on about how you never saw the best PS2 titles until Year 3 or Year 5 or Year 7, etc. Lastly, drop the damn price, stop keeping the price at $399.99 and just cramming more things into the box to try and entice us to nibble at that price.

I guess I'm declaring Microsoft as the E3 winner just because what exclusives they have coming out this year showed more promise than the trailers I saw for Sony's stuff. Nintendo isn't even on the radar for me at the moment. Last year was about amazing 1st and 3rd party titles all being jammed into my temples during the 4th Quarter, I think this year is going to be just as good but is all about the 3rd party games. I'm not complaining and neither should anyone else, since that's the case it should be win-win whether you own a 360 or PS3.

E3 08: Microsoft Press Conference

E3 has officially kicked off and anyone who's a gamer has their eyes aglow as companies shows off and dish out what they'll be serving for the Holiday 08 - Spring 09 schedule. Microsoft held their press conference first and I'm just going to go over what I liked and disliked about their conference. Let's start with the positives...

They brought with them what seems to be another strong lineup of games for the upcoming holiday season, as far as their first party lineup is concerned I'm most looking forward to Gears of War 2 and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. I want to play Fable 2 but the new footage they showed didn't reach out to me and give me shaken baby syndrome as I'd hoped it would. Their third party lineup is as strong as ever, bringing over a once thought Sony exclusive, Final Fantasy XIII as well as promising that GTAIV exclusive content and Todd Howard announcing that Fallout 3 would also get the exclusive DLC treatment. There are far too many games to list coming from third party developers that have me excited, but it's nice to see that are a few exclusive titles to the system that should also be a lot of fun. Oh yeah, and I really hope that Rock Band 2 puts Guitar Hero IV to shame. No consumer out there wants 3 or more sets of plastic drums, I say 3 as if to include Rock Revolution, but I just more or less like including them into the fold as a joke onto itself. Have you seen that 6 padded disaster of shapes? I say Harmonix should be the ones to stay, they brought Guitar Hero to the market, then they brought the rest of the band into the market. Let them control the market, they'll do no harm.

I was ecstatic not to see a motion sensing controller that had been rumored since an interview about the latest Banjo Kazooie game. I'm so glad Microsoft didn't go that route, just let Nintendo have it, let's stick by the old standby controller. It's never let us down before. Finally, I like the idea of partying up with people on Live, I think up to 8 people, and being able to play casual social games like 1 Vs. 100 and also if the Party Leader is a Netflix user the entire party can watch TV shows and movies together. That's pretty damn cool. Anyone up for MST3K'ing some god awful movies? I'm totally down.

As for disappointments I'm not all that thrilled with the new look of the dashboard and the whole Avatar thing. Once again, let Nintendo and Microsoft dabble in it. I'm wondering what's going to happen to all the Gamerpics and Themes I spent Microsoft Points on, was that all just free money I've given away now when the new dashboard update rolls around? If that's the case, awesome. I'm not going to further rant about their other endeavors into casual territory, I think Lips isn't half bad since you can play music off of your Zune or iPod, but the rest that they showcased didn't wow or have any effect on me. In the category of games that have long been M.I.A. is Alan Wake, I really wanted to hear something about this game, maybe see some new footage and get a release date even if it was in 2009. Besides Resident Evil 5 there really isn't a whole lot known about what we can expect to play in 2009. Hopefully some RE5, Dead Rising 2, and Alan Wake if they're on the up and up.

Well that's all from me for today, feel free to leave a comment, did your brain asplode when FFXIII was announced? Mine tweaked for a moment. Next year I'd like to see Hideo Kojima both announcing that MGS4 will be hitting the 360 around Holiday 09 and that him and Suda 51 are also working on a game for the console.

Beautiful Katamari Review

So I happened upon another game that could be beaten and washed away within 5-6 hours, it being Beautiful Katamari. My brief time with the game was very love/hate the whole way which is unfortunate. I'll start with the positives.

The intro/outro videos for this game are 110% pure unadulterated zany Japanese meets LSD. I loved every second of it, watching the King of All Cosmos and his wife playing tennis in space, where he does the ultimate power serve and rips a black hole in the galaxy that swallows everything up but Earth. So what's the guy to do? Send you off, the Prince, for the 3rd and final time to Earth, to once again pillage with your katamari to rebuild all the planets consumed and then finally create a Supergiant the size of which comes out at about 1,000,000 km. I also enjoyed the simplified hi-def graphics, in most of the stages it seems nice to look at but not much more, but the last two stages you'll put that simplified graphical engine to the test as you're rolling up entire countries on the Earth and then entering space to continue your rampage. The last stage was easily my favorite because of that, in 10 minutes time you go from rolling small candies and thumbtacks to rolling cars and groups of people, then onto buildings and pieces of land, then entire countries and clouds and tornadoes, until finally you've consumed Earth whole. Finally, I feel I must mention the soundtrack as a positive, you're either going to really dig the quirky Japanese tunes or loathe them. I found them amusing and they kept me rolling on into the night.

So what are the negatives? Well the game works somewhat like the first two but with a twist, that being a request system. Wherein the King will need you to meet some requirement depending on the planet you're rebuilding. For instance Mars you must raise the katamari to a temperature of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. While Saturn you must pick up as many circular/ring objects as you possibly can, you are also given a time limit and a particular size the katamari must be before time runs out. I didn't really care for the request portion of the gameplay. Most of the time you're worrying about just making it the right size in the time limit, but then to throw on top of that particular items in a world that's strewn with thousands of random things. It just made things more complicated than they needed to be, this game was always about the simplistic fun and pleasure of rolling up everything in sight with no regard for anything. I also found camera issues when rolling my katamari underneath objects in the game world which pissed me off as I would lose about 30 seconds trying to figure out how the hell to get out of where I was. 30 seconds might not seem like much but most of the stages have a time limit of anywhere from 3-5 minutes. As much as I loved the last stage it also pissed me off to no end, you're given 10 minutes and the first time through the stage I couldn't meet the size requirement so I failed and had to restart, the second time I made it to the part where you're rolling in space and trying to get it big enough to plug up the black hole, I thought I had the entire time to do that, turns out that the last minute you're supposed to go roll your katamari into the black hole. So once again I failed the mission and had to restart completely and start from scratch picking up thumbtacks and the like again. So the final level clocked in at half an hour because of these stupid mistakes and misunderstandings.

The other main complaint is that they charged $40 for this game and put the other $20 of the game on XBL, so there are a bunch of achievements that I can't get unless I buy the last 1/3 of the game. Worst of all is that these points you're spending don't even net you actual content off the Marketplace ,they're small 300kb unlock files that will unlock things that are already on the disc. I think that's really weak, I know they were trying to sell it for $40 so that more people would give the game a chance, but they should have just went gung-ho and charged $60 or given the entire game for $40. Right from the get go this game was going to have a very slim niche market and they knew that, so why not just grab all the cash from the fans of this stuff and screw the naysayers? They really were on some kind of drugs if they thought they were going to tap into the market of people that play Gears/Halo/CoD4. So yeah, there's 1/3 of content on the disc that I can't play unless I fork cash over and I'm not going to be doing that.

Unfortunately I went into this game expecting more Katamari greatness as I loved the PS2 ones, but I feel like this series has worn its welcome out, if this group of people could conceive these trippy visuals and the awesome idea in the first place, I really think they could have brought some new innovations to the gameplay. But because they've been milking the same old since the beginning and the gameplay being brought is much too thin for what you're paying I'm going to have to give the game a Thumbs Down. Back then paying $20 for this on the PS2 was a no-brainer, but being in the next generation, they really should have used all this new technology and thought up some new ideas to keep the game fresh for those of us who have played this twice before. If you've never played a Katamari game before you might dig it more than I did, try the demo I suppose.

Final Verdict: Thumbs Down

Goodnight, sweet Prince. May you continue rolling that katamari in the gaming heavens.

The Bourne Conspiracy Review

I pressed start, and five hours later was watching the credits roll. I usually bitch and complain about games like this, the only exception being Portal which completely kicked all sorts of ass and felt just right in length. But this is also an exception though not for the same reasons unfortunately, mostly because the game would've crumbled upon its foundation had it lasted any longer. To say that repetition sets in rather quickly would be an understatement.

The game opens with explaining how Bourne came to be floating upon the Mediterranean sea with bullets in his back, and then plays out the events of the first movie/book I assume. There may have been some leeway in there, I'm not entirely sure. There are three types of gameplay that you'll experience, the first being hand to hand fighting. It's very well done from a cinematic perspective and really has the feel from the movies fight scenes, and kudos to High Moon Studios for the cool environmental attacks that feel just right. Other than that, you can button mash the regular enemies on the Normal difficulty and you need a tad bit of skill for the bosses who require a much larger dose of ass kicking. The combat is fun for about the first 1-2 hours and then you pretty much know what to expect all the time.

The second type of gameplay is that of a 3rd person shooter, this is also fun but nothing special. I found that the aiming reticle was too sensitive and I'm a head shot maniac so I found myself running out of bullets a lot trying to achieve a head shot. I would've ran out by just shooting them anyhow, as these meat shields can take anywhere from 5-9 shots to the body before keeling over. It's fun for what it is, but there's better stuff out there. You can also use Bourne vision to see explosives that maybe your eyes looked over, or to figure out where to go next if you're lost. Yes, Bourne is a $30 million dollar Tom-Tom as well. Speaking of Bourne, why did Matt Damon not lend his voice and likeness? He publicly said because the game is too violent, I say there weren't enough 0's in his paycheck. Also in the game Bourne follows a weird code of honor, wherein he won't attack U.S. military when they're armed, yet in an interactive cutscene in which you disarm them, then it becomes perfectly okay to punch/kick them in the face and toss them over the roofside and slam their faces into stone pillars and A/C units. I suppose I'll follow that mantra as well.

Finally, a little after the halfway point there's the driving scene that you may or may not remember from the film, I don't think this driving scene follows the movie all that much. The car controls okay and if it weren't for the booming soundtrack and sirens and just general loud noises and ambience it would be rather boring. You're basically checkpointing around the city while dodging the police, which isn't that difficult. They'll turn on their sirens when they see you and then watch you zoom on by. It's only if you happen to crash into them on accident that you're screwed as this Cop Meter fills up like crazy and the cop will just sort of stall and block you. Also I touched on it earlier, the cutscenes have QTE during them, so keep your hands on the controller. It's mostly standard fare although I did find the interactive cutscenes in which Bourne had a sniper rifle rather cool, but on the other hand it would've also been just as cool to handle the sniper rifle myself but in the context of the scene the player wouldn't have been able to pull off all that Bourne did. My two favorite levels in the game would have to be escaping the U.S. Embassy and the level where The Professor attacks the house you're hanging out in. I kid you not, that's his codename, The Professor. What does he teach? Pain and misery with a side of wisdom.

So my final verdict on this game is to try the demo first, as it apparently lets you try all three gameplay types, if you happen to dig it and can see yourself getting into it for 5 hours then give it a rent. Nothing more, and if you have no interest in Bourne books or films then I'd say just skip it. I'm very torn on my final decision, I'll give the game a Thumbs Up Rental. I also though loved the movies and thus wanted to play the game. Take it all with a grain of salt dear readers.

Final Verdict: Thumbs-Up Rental

Dark Sector Review

So in this game you play as Hayden, some sort of covert operative who also happens to be a polygon pushing pretty boy, something about his face didn't sit quite right with me. It was as if someone from a WB drama series wandered into the game and decided to be the main character. Anyway, he's on a mission to stop some crazy who's hellbent on releasing a virus upon the world. Story isn't something this game has a whole lot of, and when there is some the scenes are well directed but the story isn't anything special. One nice touch however is the black and white prologue, which then is Wizard of Oz'd once Hayden is also infected with the same virus he's attempting to put an end to.

What's the virus/infection do? Well, the main bad guys Number 2 man apparently became a badass looking cyborg type straight out of Guyver. All you get is a metallic arm and control over a glaive. So the game is 3rd person action, the camera sits behind the main character ala Resident Evil 4, though I'm not sure if it was because I was sitting close but the camera seemed a little too up close and personal with the main character than I liked. I wish it would've been pulled back just a hair more. Anyway, you go from Point A to Point B killing everything in your way, which consists of about 6-7 enemy types. There's a few boss battles along the way, nothing as memorable as the many many bosses that were in Resident Evil 4. But to counteract that the glaive is a lot of fun, whether you're putting some aftertouch on the throw to make sure you nick that bad guys head clean off, or using it to harvest the elements around you such as fire, ice, and electricity.

The game also does a good job of introducing new powers at just the right intervals of time, right when you've got a hang of the latest power, a new one is usually right around the corner. Things like a shield that is in front of you for a short time deflecting anything being shot at you, stealing guns right out of the enemies hands, or picking things up off of the ground / tables with the glaive. The game definitely puts an emphasis on the glaive as it seems to get the job done much better than the weapons you're given, and unless you buy your weapons from the Merchant who lives in manholes, why I have no idea, then you can only use the enemies weapons for about 1 minute. Apparently their weapons are chipped to realize when someone is handling it and has the virus, so this chip explodes and renders the gun useless.

The graphics are nice, I found the indoor, dank, sewer type areas to be the most impressive as compared to the outdoor levels. But still that's nitpicking, overall the game looks great. The sound is also top-notch, the weapons have a nice punch to them and my only complaint would be some of the explosions don't pack the same punch. I took down a few choppers along the way and for some reason it sounded as if they had landed either in a field of pillows or a field of tempurpedic mattresses. Aside from that, no complaints.

So what sort of rating does this game get? Well, after playing one night I was 8/10 through the single player, and I didn't even log in that many hours really. There's multi-player which I haven't tried, and I highly doubt there's a huge online community playing it constantly and having fun with it all the time. I would personally stick to just the single player portion and with that I would say this game is a Thumbs Up Rental. Worth seeing and checking out for a few bucks, but nothing more. If ever there is a sequel, they should go with full blown Guyver looking dudes and have gun fights, the glaive, and on top of that have these Guyver looking dudes have all out brawls maybe in the similar vein to Zone of the Enders 2. Then also in true Guyver fashion have the badguy clutch his hands around the Guyver's little weakness sphere in his forehead. I guess I never paid enough attention to those movies to figure out why molesting that sphere in his forehead caused him great discomfort.

Summary For The Lazy: If you've played Resident Evil 4, Gears of War, all the best in this current revival in 3rd person action games, it wouldn't hurt to give Dark Sector a whirl. While it lacks that secret sauce that those two former games had, you'll still have a good time for a few days playing it, and you might as well while you wait for RE5 and GoW2. Thumbs Up Rental.


On a side note, for a silly B-movie series, the two Guyver movies had cool actors playing the main character, first there was Mark Hamill, then there was David Hayter, it's been 14 years since the 2nd movie, how much longer must we wait? Maybe it's better this way, they'd probably throw Shia LaBeouf into the role. Screw that.

Final Verdict: Thumbs-Up Rental