Other E3 Tidbits – Where was Versus?

Square, for its big announcements, managed to shuffle some things under the rug. The Kingdom Hearts PSP game and Final Fantasy XIII Versus were no-shows. I find the latter an odd absence considering that it’s supposedly further along in development than XIII. Even the official XIII Versus site shows it off like a child of neglect next to its multi-platform sister, a status I’m sorry to see since I, personally, am more excited for it than the mainline game.

Rockstar North announced a PS3 exclusive game named Agent, to keep up the nice trend of the PS3 having some games all to itself (be ready for my review of InFamous and sister editorial on the now established genre of sandbox gaming).

Finally, PSP is being revitalized: A Soul Calibur game (with Kratos), the once forgotten Gran Turismo PSP, LittleBigPlanet PSP and the future in the form of the PSP Go. The design of the PSP Go (see attached photos) takes its cues from cell phones more than anything else, and with a 16GB flash memory drive standard, it seems like it’ll be capable of doing what it’s idealized to do. With Square also releasing the original FF VII (still no remake on the horizon), for the PSP and PSN, the PSP Go would be a wonderful machine if Sony had only hit a more ideal price mark than the current $250 tag that the Go is slated to sport.

E3 2009

Where to begin? Ever since I first read about it in the pages of PSM, going to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has been a dream of mine. This summer, I finally managed to get in, and it was just about everything I’d dreamt it was. Booth babes smiled brightly at most (if not every) booth and setup, there were hundreds of game demos to play on site, swag galore and announcements that actually stopped my breath.

First off the big names: Microsoft & Sony. Both unveiled their own adaptations of the juggernaut, Nintendo’s Wii motion controls, to varying effects and intents. Microsoft’s “Project Natal” is purely camera based, and reads player motions to control the onscreen Microsoft Avatar. As of right now, it can make you XBOX Live avatar dance. It would seem that Microsoft aims to tackle and sup from Nintendo’s casual market with their similar colored (at least on the low end models) box.

Sony, on the other hand, did it right. The developers demoed their own motion control, a wii-mote like prototype that works in conjunction with the PS Eye. While this technology does not read one’s entire body, it does offer truly 1:1 motion reading. From basic hokey ideas, like “throwing spells” in an RPG, the developers moved onto showing the more extensive capabilities of the device’s precision. The best example was the use of a sword in a virtual arena against a dummy avatar. The developer using the controller was able to be so precise as to call specific parts of the enemy to hit, even going so far as to poke the enemy in the eye.

Some other highlights?

The incredibly snug feeling PSP Go. If you ever hold the PSP and wonder why it’s as wide as it is (which I do), the PSP Go solves that. I am throughly inclined to imagine that the lack of a disc drive (the thing boasts a 16GB flash memory standard), will only help the battery life. if the Go functioned as a phone, I may have fallen out of love with my iPhone on the spot.

Final Fantasy XIII unveiled a new and much more robust trailer than any yet seen. I’ll be devoting a full article to just that video alone, but the big news came when everyone’s jaw was still on the floor from the FFXIII video: an announcement video of FF XIV Online (14 for those of you unfamiliar with roman numerals). Yes, it is going to be another Online iteration of the series (possibly in the same world/universe as XI since the video had the world “friends must once again join hands”). The biggest bit of this surprise? PS3 Exclusive. In a world where the trend has begun to look like what Sony has, Microsoft has (but not vice versa), Sony unveiled this news in the same week it released its mega hit, Infamous (expect a forthcoming, glowing review of the game from yours truly as well).

The last news I’ll address in this article is Beatles Rock Band. I first heard the news of Beatles Rock Band back when it was a rumbling rumor and I immediately thought it was a cash cow whoreson of a piece of crap that would make me rue having paid Harmonix for even the original Rock Band. I eat those words today. The Harmonix developers presented their latest game with such reverence of their source material and aplomb that I can’t help but humble myself and admire them. They’ve recreated historic venues of Beatles performances (Shea Stadium, the Ed Sullivan Show, the rooftop performance, etc) to stunning accuracy. They’ve filled the game with an incredible showing of the Beatles’ most beloved hits and some other tracks you probably forgot you loved (they demoed Get Back, Tax Man and I Am the Walrus), and presented some of the more unique aspects of the game that made me love it even more.

In a proper application of “casual gaming inclusion” the Easy difficulty now has an automatic no-fail characteristic so that “noobs” don’t ruin play sessions. In a further effort to bring casual gamers to the fold who may be in it just for their love of the Beatles, Quickplay has every song unlocked from the get go. The coolest thing, that really got to me in terms of Video Game artistry, was based on the Beatles’ later career. While the Beatles started off as a major touring band, the later part of their career was spent in the studio crafting some of their most important tracks. While the Harmonix people recognized that those tracks, and the studios are important settings to recreate, they took the opportunity for something grander. So the studios become “dreamscapes.” As you play through, say, I am the Walrus, the setting warps and becomes a fantastical visual journey representing the song’s tone and message (even sober the visuals were a lot to cope with). Needless to say, I’m excited and psyched.

I have two more days of this to go through, so more will come, but for now, Be very excited for what all platforms have to offer in the coming months. To the people of High Voltage games, I’ll devote a more full bodied preview of your games (which I was impressed by) in a focused preview/impression article. The Nintendo people, although absent from this article, also had their own games that caught my eye, but today was just shy of too much for me to handle and I need to rest up for the next two days of this extravaganza. Stay cool, keep gaming.

For continued E3 coverage, check back here each night of the event. For more up to the minute tidbits, follow me on twitter: abuballoo

Back from Hiatus in Time for E3

Hey there POWSO-bots, Balloo here  after an all-too-long hiatus. I wanted to put up quick word that yours truly has managed to secure access to this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). I’ll have write ups of the days’ news and shenanigans here every evening of the event this week (assuming I’m not exhausted), along with photos and whatever else I can provide. I may even be twittering while I’m there, and if you’re inclined for more up to the minute (and casual updates), feel free to follow me (abuballoo). Keep gaming, stay beautiful.

Let’s Start the Show.. er, Game

To start off video game blogging, I have to get the basics off my chest, because with so much stuff past and behind me, I won’t feel right about starting up a blog unless I cover the recent news and my thoughts on them to some degree. So here goes a lot of stuff which, if you read video game news and blogs often enough, will be old trade for you, as well as my general thoughts on the current console generation so you get an idea of who I am as a gamer:

Wii play PS3 but you can hold your 360:

So, in case that header doesn’t give it away, I am a Wii and PS3 gamer, but not so much for the 360. I had the opportunity/capital a few months ago for a 360, but decided an iPod touch was a more worthwhile investment (given the iTunes app store, I’d say that’s paying off pretty well actually).

I’ve had a Nintendo Wii since launch-ish and I have a bit of a love hate relationship with it. I had eight games for it at one point, but have since whittled my collection to three (Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Zelda: Twilight Princess). I’m a fan of Nintendo, but the fact that I skipped the Gamecube generation with nary a regret should show that I’m hardly a fanboy. I’m not quite in the middle of the “casual games vs hardcore games” debate, I prefer hardcore gaming to an extent and have not liked the “casual trend” on the Wii. The casual trend would be great if it weren’t pulling everything down with it. I’m fine with Nintendo making games like Wii Sports and Wii fit for the world and their grandparents, but when the whole casual trend starts to drag down even the historically “hardcore” games, like Zelda and Mario, that’s when I start to cringe a bit and my Wii, while still beloved, has not been turned on in months.

I liked Mario Galaxy and beat it 100%, but in playing it I felt nowhere near the kind of challenge or depth of gameplay that Mario 64, Mario World or Mario Bros. 3 offered. The gameplay was one huge series of safety nets positioned under a bunny hoppable gap. What I mean is, I never felt like any of the challenges were too difficult (not being a snob, but even the harder challenges never took more than three or four retries), but the sheer number of lives you could easily find yourself getting in the game only removed any semblance of challenge the old games had that made them so wonderful and immersive. Part of crafting a truly immersive experience as a game goes (nowadays anyway), is about making you feel the tension of trying to succeed and putting you on the edge of your seat like when you played Super Mario Bros and had to make that super long jump in level 8-2 with only one more life left. Modern gameplay has improved this ability of immersion through different approaches to character deaths (hospital visits for Niko? Snake crying out in gut wrenching agony?) and by making more human characters we can get to know and understand. In spite of these advances, Link and Mario are still mute. Maybe that’s a “style” but when you compare those two to Jak of Jak and Daxter who was mute for his first adventure, at least jak walked away with more of a genuine and identifiable personality at the end of his first adventure. It’s been more than twenty years now and all I know of Link and Mario are that they’re recognizable caricatures.

I love, love, love my PS3. I skipped the Gamecube, stopped messing with Sega halfway through the Genesis’ lifecycle, and have not yet bought a Microsoft console. Yes, I’ll admit, if I’m a fanboy, I’m a Playstation fanboy. I was offered a console as a gift back in sixth grade, and already owning an N64 (which I loved) I decided that new Sony console, with the cool “Bandicoot” game that had somehow stolen the Final Fantasy series might not be a bad idea. I bought it as a novelty, I was a major Sony basher in the PSone days, and then I got my PSX with Crash Bandicoot and FF7. The system worked the way I, back then, expected consoles of the future to work, and it worked that way in the present. After I got my PSone, I never bought another N64 game again (I’d already played Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, Goldeneye and Turok, there’s not I missed anyway). My N64 collection stopped at eight games. My PSone collection easily surpassed thirty crossing all genres (the Playstation Greatest Hits line made jumping into the Playstation game a lot easier than Nintendo made catching up with their lines).

In spite of this, while I was excited by the prospect of a PS2, I didn’t jump the gun on it and lineup for one, I actually got one purely by accident because of a good report card. My mom happened to be at the Wiz (an old electronics chain that has since gone under) and a store clerk, out of the blue allegedly, told her a PS2 preorder had been cancelled and was up for grabs. Remembering my good grades and that I had one of the older playstations at home, my mom jumped on the opportunity (this was one week after release no less) and bought me a PS2. History repeated itself and I fell in love with the PS2 as a DVD player and a game console. a lot of the best games I’ve ever played (a list I hope to get around to laying out for my blog at some point) have been on the PS2, and I still play a lot of them to this day.

I played the waiting game on the PS3 though. Whereas DVD was a surefire next step for the format of movies, buying a PS2 for that added benefit made sense. I wasn’t sold by the Blu Ray player aspect of the console (and I didn’t really take as much offense by the “arrogance” of Sony in their early marketing cycle for the PS3, I’m not that sensitive as you’ll realize). What did keep me from jumping the gun was the price tag and the lack of games. I could have dealt with the price if the PS3 had more to offer in the games library. Heavenly Sword and Resistance: Fall of Man were not enough (by mere first impressions anyway) to surmount the price tag. More than a year later, when the 80 GB SKU finally appeared in Fall 2007 with a price drop, I finally made the move, and haven’t regretted it in the least. I love having the option to buy blu rays, and the library Sony now has available is incredible. In just eight months I’ve happily built my game library on the PS3 to some twenty games, and only one of them disappointed (Iron Man).

Why no XBOX 360?

Okay, get ready for it:

Owning a PS3, I really see absolutely no point to paying ANYthing to play online games, and even though achievements never mattered to me, I now have trophies (again, for free). Also, the PSN as far as online games go tend to experience less lag than what i’ve seen of XBOX Live, and the people I meet via the PSN are not, generally, the kind of bottom feeding mouth breeding assholes you run into in a game of Halo. What’s that though? I just mentioned the game that you think is a reason for me to buy a 360? After all, I did like Resistance Fall of Man (It’s also among my favorite games ever). So why wouldn’t I like Halo?

Because I hate it. I hate everything about it on the disc, and everything attached to it around and outside of the disc as a byproduct of its existence. I hate the gameplay (it plays like a cadillac missing a wheel trying to cross an ice bank at 80 mph), I hate the story (let’s just make Super Mario Bros a FPS, it could work if we just make the goombas purple ankle biters), I hate the character (people hate one dimensional cliches on film, how did Master Chief sneak by with such widespread approval?) and the kind of people it attracts (douchebag frat boys and racist foul mouthed eight year olds). No, I don’t hate Halo because I’m “bad” at it, I hate it because I think it’s entirely overrated. I rock shit in Resistance and Call of Duty 4, and when I play online in those, I don’t have to deal with the kind of people you encounter on XBOX Live.

On top of things, a prudent consumer would notice that the cheapest Xbox SKU is $150-200 cheaper than the PS3, but this is for the junk Arcade SKU with no H
D capacity. So, with the 20 GB model, which is a skimpy HD, you’re only saving a hundred dollars. After paying for a year online, you’ve only saved fifty, and missed out on the extra capacity to boot, not to mention that you bought a machine that has the same likelihood to brick as the odds that Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton will make a tabloid headline on any given day. The biggest seller: the game selection. The games I would want the 360 for are either multiplatform to begin with (Devil ma Cry 4, GTA 4, Burnout Paradise, Call of Duty 4) or coming over to the PS3 eventually (Bioshock and Eternal Sonata). On the flipside, right about the time that I bought a PS3 was the time that PS3 finally busted out the exclusives I could get behind ecstatically: Ratchet and Clank, Folklore, Uncharted, Resistance, and Metal Gear Solid 4. So the PS3 sits proudly under my TV being used regularly for video playback and gaming (doubly so since my SKU has the oft neglected backwards compatibility). As for all the glitz and features of XBOX Live, none of them are particularly attractive to me, I dig the idea of trophies, but XBOX Live just seems too prepackaged and capitalistic, like the fact that almost everything on the live marketplace costs money whereas lots of stuff on the PS Store is free.

Anyway, that out of the way, here’s my rundown of some of the latest “bombs.”

Final Fantasy XIII on the 360:

This is the big one. I don’t really care. I feel like most of the people who would really be affected by this one way or another would have already bought their consoles. The people who don’t care are probably just going to push the sale in favor of the 360 a bit more. Sony still has a lot going for it exclusive wise, and it didn’t lose FF XIII, it just has to share it. The biggest thing people seem not to be noticing is that the same thing happened with GTA IV and nothing noticeable occurred as fare as hardware sales were concerned, even if the 460 version did sell better. The difference here is that Microsoft doesn’t have exclusive DLC this time to wave as its banner to rally people to it, and the online service doesn’t matter much in this case since it’s not an online game. Achievements, once the last foothold of argument, are now being viewed as being equal, if not inferior to trophies by many.

The main thing I think will sell FFXIII on PS3 more, potentially: FF XIII Versus. I’m mildly Obsessive Compulsive and I think that a lot of gamers would buy both iterations of this FF generation on the same console ideally. I personally think, based on the trailers, that Versus is the more intriguing looking of the two. If Sony marketed Versus effectively, when the crowd that own both consoles has to decide which version to buy, they’ll support Sony for the sake of symmetry, let’s face it, we’re simple people. The biggest stroke would be if Sony could pull a GTA IV in this issue and secure some kind of content interaction or link between FF XIII and FFXIII Versus. Even something small like item or level bonuses based on your save data from the other game would sway enough gamers to pick the PS3 edition, or console if they were waiting still to buy it when FFXIII comes out in 2019 (not a typo) or whenever after it’s finally done playing the delay game.

In the end, I don’t think it matters, props to the 360 owners who get to play it, so long as it doesn’t disappear from PS3 completely, I can respect Square Enix having some business savvy since they are a business.

Rip Offs?

Microsoft is totally stealing the Mii’s from the Wii and calling them avatars in an attempt to make them sound cooler than they really are. They’re not, they’re a cartoony version of the kind of Sims PS3 owners will (eventually) get with Home, but Microsoft is going to charge you for their clothes and not let you do anything with them but… well, have them apparently. At least the Mii’s actually appear in a lot of your games on the Wii and Playstation Home will bring a vast arena with lots of things for your virtual person to do.

Oh wait, and Microsoft unveiled Lips… Yeah, Sony’s getting ripped off here. Good job actually stealing something COOL this time Microsoft, but way to screw it up and make it fuck ugly and promise features that will probably not work the way you’re leading people to hope.

I’ll just let this section go into my opinions of what i know/care about that was announced at…

E3

Fat princess: Looks AWESOME, it isn’t “fat-bashing” just because the character is too big to walk. Your objective is to save her, and people actually do get too obese to walk. Having a fat character in a video game is no more fat-hating than it is racist to have black people in video games. Since no one’s bashing Halo for having that dumbass general in it, I don’t think anyone should be bashing Fat princess. Why are all the opponents feminists, or at the least, women?

It’s kind of a shame God of War 3 didn’t have gameplay footage, but oh well. We got a tasty helping of Resistance 2 footage and Sony’s lineup is no less sweet. Wii’s offerings: Wii Sports Resort and Wii Music: really? If Wii Fit is really being used in NYC gyms, then I see no reason why schools won’t actually try to expense classroom wii’s to teach music instead of actual instruments or, say, textbooks. Speaking of the Wii, why are people still clamoring for a hardcore game? Aren’t most of these “hardcore gamers” the ones that complain about “waggle” and own other consoles where they can get hardcore games anyway? Just turn around from the Wii games rack and look over the PS3 rack, or the 360 rack is you’re really that desperate.

Wii motion plus! Yay, we’ve gotten what we were promised two years ago, and we only have to pay an extra forty of fifty bucks for it with Wii Sports Resort when it debuts. Not only am I pissed that Nintendo screwed over its own opportunity (and ours as gamers) with not keeping Lucasarts in the loop on WMP, because we could have had Force Unleashed with 1:1 light saber play (which was our dream from the get go), but we’re also being forced to buy it with a shitty game. Basically, we’re paying extra for what the Wii should have been in the first place, which would make your Wii cost just as much as a 360 when you really do the math, to hell with the “free game” you got. Wii sports wasn’t THAT good. Rock Band definitely makes a better party game.

LittleBigPlanet

Is it a hype machine that needs to be deflated, or is it world changing? Kind of both in my opinion. Here’s why:

There’s good hype and bad hype. An example of the latter would roughly be say, a movie by Warner Bros. that looked all right, but the WB started doing a media blitz on. Commercials aired every network commercial break, ads were up on every available surface in public, MTV specials aired, product tie ins and sweepstakes announced like wildfire but no one in the public of the disinterested sort who doesn’t stand to profit fiscally from the success of the product really gets on board (except those mindless cretins who jump onto any media blitz bandwagon). Good Hype is when the hype, like with the Watchmen trailer, is not coming from the studio or those who stand to profit. It’s coming from people who are only interested in the product as a performative piece. It just means excitement among the masses is high without the corporation forcing the idea into us as much as it can.

Media Molecule is definitely getting the latter of those hypes. Lots of people are murmuring about it, but Sony hasn’t done much to throw it our faces (yet), and while Media Molecule has its newspage, it only really started making announcements recently (the Kratos Sackboy looks awesome), and most of the hype has been from those on the outside trying to peer over the fence. While this game may not change the way we play
video games (after all, it’s about designing levels in the style of which we’ve been playing for decades now), it’s certainly bringing something big and new to that formula. If you can raise your heads for a Halo game as a major event, then you should definitely be able to for this then. If you can’t, then go recover from your frontal lobotomy or live out your days of idiocy somewhere grassy and away from society before you hurt yourself.

It’s one thing to have everyone connected and be able to join other people in a game of Call of Duty. It’s a bigger thing to be able to meet your friends in a game of CoD4 as well. However, being able to join other people and your friends as you play through a platformer with unique style and look is big too. Even bigger is being able to meet and join your friends playing through those levels that you, they or other people have created. LBP isn’t akin to proving the world isn’t flat, it’s more akin to the discovery of a new land (maybe even one so grand as the Americas): we have a lot more before us to do with this age of gaming and the technology we have.

That’s all I’ve got for the moment. I’ll be working on my top ten favorite games ever list, and hopefully figure out how to embed links into my articles so whoever winds up here or actually reading this thing can see what I’m referencing. Stay cool, Keep gaming.