It's hype time

Anyone remember Warcraft III?  Remember how after so long, and after only getting expansions to Warcraft II a new game finally came out?  Remember this?



Well, it's that time again.


No, this trailer came out in '07, Iron Man stole their idea.

Blizzard released a beta for Starcraft 2.  I haven't played it, and don't have any real desire to.  I'll wait for the release, and I already have it pre-ordered. They've slated the release for the first half of this year.

I can't tell you how excited I am for this game.  I've been waiting for a very long time for this.  I've been waiting far too long for any good RTS to come from blizzard. (Curse you, World of Warcraft!  I want my Warcraft III expansions, dangit!)  I hear a lot of good things.


This is how you make a space marine game.

I think I'm gonna be sick

 

Ugh, what is this space-marine game and what the heck is Samus doing there?

Do developers really think that Metroid Prime 3 sold the most out of the trilogy due to its (sub-par) space marine 'story' added in?  It was the worst part about the game, and one of the many things that keeps it from being the best (for all it has working for it.)

That being said, some the rest of the screenshots look pretty promising, and I do think I'll still buy it.

Wait, what was that? Did someone say something?

Within the first hour of the game, you're introduced to a handful of characters, including a number of folks from Samus' past. Without giving too much away, the game begins when Samus answers a distress call from a partially destroyed space station. Once she arrives, she finds that the Galactic Federation has already arrived and is composed of her former crew members. A voice-over shown in a flashback explains that the now-bounty hunter had left the Federation due to an "incident," surely to be explored later in the game's story.

 Really? Well, it might still be good, despite the cutscenes.  I'll wait and see.

This focus on cut-scenes and dialogue was striking and unexpected, if not alarming. In these opening scenes, Samus speaks more, and is spoken to more, than in all previous Metroid titles combined.

....Okay, on the other hand, I think I'll rent it first.

killing enemies will no longer provide you with health or missiles. Instead, tilting the Wii Remote vertically and holding "A" can replenish your supply at any time. The same can be done for health as well; if it dips into the red, tilting the remote and holding "A" will replenish one energy tank. Also, weapon and suit "upgrades" won't be found through exploration. Instead, in the sections I played, the Commanding Officer of the Galactic Federation (whom you'll be working alongside) "authorized the use of" morph ball bombs.

*cries*

I'm still here!

Sorry about the bit of a gap in posting times, I've started a new full-time job, and don't have a lot of time to dink around on my computer anymore.  Luckily, this is my first day off, so I've got some time to look around and catch up on the Nintendo summit.

People are Funny #4, the next step?

So, American television went entirely digital last year, and after enough pushing "HD" this and "HD" that, along with HDTVs becoming cheap enough that families can spend their vacation money on one, the industry must be feeling secure.

What's next though? People are starting to buy HDTVs and they are getting cheaper. Why, the next move is 3-D of course! With James Cameron's Avatar passing Titanic for highest grossing film of all time (which isn't too hard when $10 each 3-D tickets constitute around 81 percent of total sales) the industry is ready to shove a new over-expensive completely superficial technology at us! I mean, it makes so much sense! The reason that 3-D didn't take off in the 20s or 70s or whenever else they've tried this nonsense had nothing to do with the fact that not everyone has two fully-functioning eyeballs, nothing to do with the many people who already have glasses, no, it's because the picture wasn't good enough!

This will fail. It will fail miserably. I will laugh when it does, just as I did when I read the article above claiming that TV makers and networks, not consumers, are ready for 3-D. I'm actually a little bit giddy; I've been thinking about the possibility of disrupting TV and movies, and this will only alienate more people.

To change their article title: Internet bloggers say market is ripe for Disruption

On 'immersion.'

Many people complain because many games on the Wii don't let them 'forget they're playing a game' like what Mass Effect or Oblivion do. I recently played Oblivion. I got 'lost' in it. At times I forgot I was playing a game. I spent entire days lost in the immersive world that it provided.

I hate that game. I had fun, sure. I enjoyed it immensely. However, there was never any sense of accomplishment. I would play the game for more than five hours at a time and, while doing many things, I never felt as if I ever really accomplished anything. I got to a point where I simply fast-traveled to finish off the guild quests (I had already finished the main one) and then when I finished those, I just said I was done and left. I still have lots of things to do, I've barely started the Shivering Isles, but I was done. After over a hundred hours spanned over several months, I had finally had enough. And I have no intention of picking the game back up anytime soon.

Meanwhile, I've started playing Bejeweld Blitz on Facebook after my Mom convinced me to start playing. That game is fun. I was surprised since I was finally able to grab some semblance of accomplishment. Which is ironic, since the game is impossible to 'beat.' Reading up on Malstrom's opinions and doing some thinking on my own, I've realized what I think a game should be. After beating Oblivion, I started playing Castlevania on my Wii's virtual console. That game is really fun. Just a few days ago, I was playing level 15. I lost count of how many times I died, but it was well over fifty. When my brother (the hardcore gamer) came in and I told him this, he laughed. I believe his exact words were, “and you're still playing?” Yes, I was still playing. I kept playing (with breaks) until I passed that Medusa head-infested nightmare and sent the Grim Reaper back to the afterlife. I am currently in between attempts to defeat Dracula himself.

So why do I enjoy Bejeweled Blitz and the original Castlevania more than I do 'game of the year' Oblivion? Easy. They have that sense of accomplishment. What does that come from? A good old fashioned challenge. See, that's the thing. In Oblivion, once I got around level 21, the game stopped being hard. In fact, it stopped being hard around level 6 and 14, too. However, there was a spike in difficulty in level 10 and 20, which ended up being annoying more than anything else. See, the game was far too easy and far too long. There's no fun when I can easily kill anything in sight, when I can storm a cave/ruin/etc. and easily dispatch every creature/bandit/etc. inside.

Anyone else remember the days back when beating a game in six hours was an accomplishment, rather than a criticism? When games like Castlevania had you dying constantly? There was no 'immersion,' since dying kept you objective. Why are games that do that today (such as the ones on the Wii) now deemed 'casual'?

Alright, People are Funny #3

I'm officially making this a series, since there's just too much good stuff out there. I'll be posting stuff like this all the time, so I might as well distinguish it.

Is he serious? Is he sarcastic? I don't care; he made me laugh, and deserves my hits to his site. 'if you are in the game industry you ignore Nokia at your peril' and yet the Wii is not just doomed, but already 'dead'.

The Wii 'was cheaper, it had that breakthrough gesture interface and it had a catalogue of amazing Nintendo first party games that were must haves for any keen gamer.' Yes, because everyone attributes the monstrous sales of the Nintendo Gamecube to their 'amazing first party titles' and 'cheaper price.' Why would these two be any part of the Wii's success when they didn't help the Gamecube at all?

It just gets better with the more I read of his articles and their comments.

Enjoy.

Sony is almost not losing money with each PS3 sold!

Big news, apparently.

As I titled my last post, people are funny. The comments on the linked story are priceless. How can Sony 'break even' when they stop losing money? Over the four years since it released, Sony has been losing money on every one of its 31.7 million systems sold. Apparently Sony is now losing 'only' $18 on each unit, so how does Sony 'break even' by being at least $300mil in the red?

No, to break even, Sony would have to not only start making massive profits on each unit sold, they would have to sell a ridiculous amount of PS3s to cover their losses.

People are funny

Y'know, I think all the 'Hardcore' and 'Industry' people have finally realized that the Wii isn't a fad, and isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Why else would there be all sorts of hubub about the Wii2 or WiiHD? Why do people insist that it's always coming out next year despite Reggie and Iwata saying otherwise? Because they've changed tactics. "Wii is a fad" and "Nintendo is going 3rd party next year, all hail the year of the Playstation" have become "Wii HD will come next year, the PS4 will come to deliver us from evil." Xbox 360 and PS3, despite doing reasonably well, have bombed (especially compared to the Wii,) so everyone's given up and is instead looking forward to the "next gen" consoles, the "Xbox 720," the "PS4" and the "WiiHD" (which is the same thing, just HD, because Nintendo's a generation behind, of course. I have no idea what 'next gen' Xbox/Playstation systems would even have to offer; they're already HD, would they just be complete computers now, except you have to pay for everything you get free on a PC?).


Nintendo is making a new console? I'm so shocked, especially since history has shown that they start working on the next console virtually on release day of their latest one. You mean we can assume that they did the same with this one? I mean that's what they do with their games; Mario Galaxy 2 was in production just after Mario Galaxy launched. Zelda Wii was in production almost as soon as Twilight Princess was out the doors. Nintendo just likes to keep things secret, so that we're oblivious through the 2-4 years it takes to make a game, rather than demanding it get released Tomorrow. You mean they have the same policy when it comes to their consoles?



Everyone loves to hate on the above video with "dyr hyr, Reggie sez peoplez don't want HD again, LOLXORZ!!11!" or their other such nonsense, but it seems nobody seems to have heard (or didn't they didn't want to hear) the part where Reggie says this:

"We've gone on record to say that the next step for Nintendo in home console will not be to simply make it HD, but to add more and more capability, and we'll do that when we have totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii, and we're nowhere near doing that yet."

Now, what I've italicized, and especially bolded, does that sound to you like someone who is planning to announce a new console in two months? I dare one of you out there to count how many people actually quoted and acknowledged that last part of Reggie's statement.

Moving on to what I haven't italicized, doesn't that sound like what that supposed 'leak' quotes Iwata with, that the next console would be more than just HD? How exactly do their quotes equal "New Nintendo console with more than just HD being announced at next Game Developer Conference"? Why would Nintendo do such a thing, despite what Reggie (and Iwata) says otherwise? What on earth would possess Nintendo to even consider releasing a new console, against all business sense, with the Wii and DS both still selling like hotcakes?

No, what Reggie's saying, what Iwata's saying, is that they don't plan to release a successor to the Wii (or DS) anytime soon. What they're saying is that they assume that by the time Wii and DS sales decline enough that they do release new systems that enough people will have HD TVs that HD will be the standard (and not just the standard of rich young adult males), so of course it will be HD. That will be expected. They're trying to think of something completely new to bring to the table (as they did with the Wii).

I understand now why Malstrom has so much fun laughing at these people.

Well, well, well, what have we here?

This is interesting. Apparently there is a new Fantasy RPG coming to the Wii called The Last Story. Name sound familiar? I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that Mistwalker, the game's developer (who created the likes of Blue Dragon and Lost Oddesy, both of which I've never played) was founded by none other than Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up until we see more about the game, but even so, the potential here is staggering to think about. A new RPG made by the guy who was in charge before Squaresoft became Squeenix.

*sigh* We'll see.

A little break

Rather than some more ranting about some video game, Today I'd like to take a break with some thought provoking questions we should all consider:

* Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are getting weak?
* Why do banks charge a fee on “insufficient funds” when they know there is not enough?
* Why doesn’t glue stick to the bottle?
* Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard?
* Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white?
* Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?
* How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures?
* In winter, why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?
* How can there be self-help “groups”?
* Did you ever notice that if you blow in a dogs face it goes mad, yet when you take him on a car ride he sticks his head straight out the window?
* If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
* When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?
* Do people who spend $2 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water know that spelling it backwards is Naive?
* How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign?
* Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take the time to take the dirt out of them?
* Why is a professional who invests your money called a “broker”?
* If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown too?
* Can you buy an entire chess set in a pawn shop?
* Why is an electrical outlet called an outlet when you plug things into it? Shouldn’t it be called an inlet
* Why do we scrub Down and wash Up?
* Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They’re both dogs!
* If a cat always lands on its feet, and buttered bread always lands butter side down, what would happen if you tied buttered bread on top of a cat?