Wednesday, June 3, 2009

E3 2009: Sony Conference

They started late, way too late compared to the other press conferences, with a female announcer urging the audience to take their seats and switch off their mobile phones, twice!

While MS didn’t show any graphs or sale figures, Sony kept singing about the sales and the strength of the PlayStation brand. They dedicated some minutes to the PS2, praising its price and its long life. But seriously, if they want to place it against the Wii for casual, family gaming, why are there no worthwhile new games for it?

After the statistics, Uncharted 2 started with a big bang. This game is gorgeous. It simply looks amazing and with the most realistic, life-like animation I have ever seen in a video game. And you can actually like Nathan Drake, he is a cool guy with funny comments. The inclusion of a female companion in the demo confirms that the campaign can be played cooperatively with a friend.

Then came MAG (or Massive Action Game) which is a 256-player game. The demo showed a massive game, but you only get to see your squad and commander. So, while the game is huge, it’s manageable and easy to progress in. The commander was certainly playing in god mode because he was taking damage from everywhere and his health was at 100% all the time. But this is acceptable for a stage demo. This game has potential, but I wonder if I get it how it will fare with my slow internet.

I will try to forget what came next, until the moment Kojima came on the stage… What the **** was that Sony? You spent too much time… Way too much time on the PSP Go. The Polyphony dude with the translator was incredibly boring and his translator was incredibly stupid. I think he was really an amateur or he had what the guy was saying pre-written in the notes he was constantly reading. And then they showed the trailer, why not show the trailer from the start?! And what’s wrong with Sony, they are praising the PS3 for powering the massive 80x40 feet screens in the theater, but all the footage was shown from the inside of a screen on the screen, reducing the practical size of the screen to less than quarter. Great thinking Sony! Stupid!

Next came MGS: Peace Walker. I think it makes since to put it on the PSP considering that the MGS: Portable Ops game was also on the PSP, and both games have something similar, they both star Big Boss and are post-Snake Eater. The trailer was nice and it has the same self-conscious remarks that are found in all MGS trailers. But there is something I don’t understand, in the trailer, several clones of Big Boss were shown, with eye patches!!! I don’t understand this. The Les Infants Terribles project started in 1973 or 1974 which is after the 1970 setting of the game, and also how can you accelerate the growth of a clone that much? This isn’t Attack of the Clones, you know! And also, why would they have eye patches? The bullet that Ocelot fired at Naked Snake wasn’t coded in his genes, was it? I guess we will have to wait and see.

The PSN and PS Home parts were as boring as the PSP parts (minus MGS of course) and I simply don’t care about them. All I care about PSN is that it’s free! Oh, and I guess that the $250 price of the new PSP Go is way too much, compared the price of the existing PSP 3000 which is $170.

The new Rockstar PS3 exclusive game, Agent was given as a mere title with no footage at all. What about LA Noire?! Is it dead?

Then came the great Assassin’s Creed II, the game is simply amazing. I wish they just fix the boredom that I suffered in the first game, and it will be great, considering that the first had great gameplay mechanics but it lacked diversity and freshness (after a while, that is). The double hidden blades are badass! I can’t wait to play this on the PC.

A new Final Fantasy is announced, this time it’s XIV and is exclusive to the PS3 and is a MMO.

Then came the big surprise of Sony, the PlayStation motion sensing controller… I guess when MS showed Project Natal yesterday, an alarm went off in the secret PlayStation, and an announcer with a nice female voice like the one in Team Fortress 2 said, “Alert, the final checkpoint is being contested.” I guess Sony flew their prototype weapon straight from the labs to the conference hall, and with a lab rat to do the demonstration. If I have one word to describe the announcement, that it was RUSHED.

The technology is similar to Natal in some sort. You use the already available PS3 EyeToy as a camera and you hold two prototype sticks like the Wii controllers and whatever you do with them is translated on-screen. The tech demo showed serving tennis balls, with realistic physics, using sign posts and baseball bats! They also showed how the controller can be used as a gun, a sword and a shield, a whip and finally a bow and an arrow. The motion is swift. As I said, it’s basically the same as Natal, minus the voice recognition, but with you holding two sticks in your hand. So, it’s the same shit! Unless I see games on this thing, this is as nice a gimmick as Natal and Milo. Show me the games, dammit. And what proves that the whole thing was rushed is that the thing doesn’t even have a name or even a codename. But it was said that it will launch next spring?! Now, that’s strange. Launch to do what exactly, if there is no announced software to benefit from it.

So, now you see what I meant with motion sensing, it’s useless for the most part, and I still remain skeptical.

I think that Natal has an edge over the unnamed Sony tech demo, for the fact that it tracks your whole body motion. Sony seems to have created an ugly mutant from mating Natal to the Wii. Copying what others are doing isn’t the best way to go, Sony. But on the other hand, Natal is going to need some kind of trigger or controller to control some in game actions at some time. That’s why I hate motion sensing… It will force you to focus on way too many thing to streamline the experience rather than making a great game with traditional controlling.

At that moment I was desperate… The clock was ticking and they still haven’t showed up the big guns. Uncharted 2 and MAG are big, but they are not Kratos-big. So, when they showed up yet another PSN game about racing, I was close to giving up and calling it a day.

Then came the moment… The Team ICO announcement… Ueda’s new masterpiece is called The Last Guardian, and guess what, it’s the same game like the one I posted its video last month. But this time the trailer had better graphics for the creature with feathers. They are still using the same music from Miller’s Crossing. They also showed gameplay. The game is definitely more like Ico than Shadow of the Colossus. And I think we will be seeing the same relation between the little boy and the creature as that between Ico and Yorda and Wanderer and Agro. I am really happy. The creature reminds me of my cat a lot, you got that right, Falcon!

After that, they showed Gran Turismo 5. I felt real bad for the Forza 3 developer who claimed last night on the MS conference that Forza 3 was the most realistic looking racing game ever. Well, I guess he is crying in the corner now! Too bad I am not into racing games. Honestly, I did try, and I even own Gran Turisom 1 and 4, but racing is not my type of game. The graphics are photorealistic. Period. And the cars now show damage. There is still no release date…

Then came the angry Spartan. Kratos is back, baby. And this time he is angrier and stronger than ever. I mean, he has just killed a chimera with it’s own horn! Ouch! The game is coming next spring, and it will be the final game in the series. How cares now about Dante’s Inferno? I guess Wolverine is shitting his pants now after seeing this video… Kratos is not friendly with copy-cats, and he kills people with their own prosthesis.

And with that the conference was over.

Hold on a second… Where the heck is my price cut? Where is Heavy Rain? I saw it in the PS3 games montage, but why there was no demo for it. This is one of the AAA PS3 games. Strange! And where is the announcement for MGS: Rising for the PS3 as well as the X360. The game was confirmed to be coming to the PS3 as well as the X360 from external sources but I expected that Kojima will show something on the PS3, exclusively, for the sake of the good old days of developing MGS4.

That’s it ladies and gentlemen. Sony’s E3 2009 conference.

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E3 2009: Nintendo Conference

Yeah, I watched it! It was super short: at 1 hour and 15 minutes. But I didn’t know that beforehand, of course.

A new Super Mario Bros., a new Super Mario Galaxy, a new Metroid game, some Wii ******* (whatever) titles, some DSi titles for girls about fashion and so. They showed The Conduit, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles and Dead Space: Extraction.

Surprisingly, I didn’t see Red Steel 2 in action, but I read that it was shown yesterday on the Ubisoft press conference.

Resident Evil brought memories back as the setting is in Raccoon city during the events of Resident Evil 2… Man, I loved that game.

I wonder how Nintendo managed to fool the world and sell that many Wiis! I really want to know.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

E3 2009: EA Conference

The conference was great. I skipped the Mass Effect 2 presentation as I haven’t played the first and I didn’t want spoilers. The Dragon Age cinematic was good, but the Star Wars: The Old Republic CGI trailer was just amazing! It could have been aired as a 3 minute animated episode like the original Clone Wars TV series. It was that good. And to quote Gametrailers, “This is better than Episodes I-III put together!”

Dante’s Inferno seems to be going on nicely. If X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a God of War-rip off, then Dante’s Inferno is actually a perfect target for legal action from Sony! Sony even admitted it and they said that they welcome the competition.

APB had great graphics but I am not into MMO games.

There was a massive section about light casual girly games (real girly games, no jokes here), Wii and iPhone games and finally EA Sports. I really don’t care for any of these things.

The Saboteur trailer is the same one I saw yesterday, it’s really stylized, but when they showed gameplay, I lost my interest. The game needs more work to distinguish itself from other games. It really feels like Mercenaries, with a little GTA here and there.

Brutal Legend seems amazing, if only it was coming to the PC.

Speaking of the PC, Crytek’s CEO made the Crysis 2 announcement, which I predicted in my E3 prediction page (yay!), and it’s going multiplatform but with each version taking advantage of its platform. There was no trailers or screenshots, but he said that more info will be available later this year.

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E3 2009: Microsoft Conference

As you saw is the previous post (it’s MGS, so it gets a separate post. OK?) the conference was really great. Here are my impressions.

The conference had a bad start, I don’t care about The Beatles really. So, these were 15 minutes wasted from my life… Then came Tony Hawk, another waste… I am sure that other people like these things, I just don’t like them.

I wasn’t able to watch the Modern Warfare 2 gameplay that came next as my streaming video on IGN was interrupted and by the time I switched to Gamespot, it was over. I have been trying to see it again, but I failed. IGN is not working and the footage is so far not on any other site. So, I can’t comment. UPDATE: Here it is!

Cliffy B is called to the stage, I thought “Oh, here goes Gears of War 3” but no, he is announcing a Live Arcade game, fine by me. If only the game was that good (it wasn’t) and it was buggy! Near the end of the demo, the player was floating on the air where the destroyed boss have been. This is really embarrassing!

What’s this? Zombies? I thought I was watching a trailer for the upcoming Dead Rising 2. The sound effects were just wrong, they were from Left 4 Dead. I thought that this was cheap from Capcom. But wait a second, it’s Left 4 Dead 2!!! For a November 17th release. I have a mixed reaction here. This is definitely a must buy. And I think I will be buying it, when it’s released. But this got me worried over the future support for Left 4 Dead, the original one. If you look at Team Fortress 2, you know what to expect from Valve. But when you release a game every year, what will happen to the old game, will we see new levels (we haven’t seen any till now, and the SDK is still in beta, so no user-generated levels till now too. So, comes November 17th, will the original Left 4 Dead be dead? The game did offer very low value for money when it comes to levels and campaigns, but it offered incredible value for the fun factor of playing the same levels over and over again and again and each time you will have fun. I really want to see more from the original before I see a sequel. But if the mighty Valve chooses to grant us a sequel, let’s hope it’s for a reduced price for the current owners of L4D. And the trailer looked like it was in CGI, or they are using a new engine other than the Source Engine. The concept of chainsaws is great, but the one who is using it will simply be slow, how they are going to balance this for the remaining 3 team members to keep things moving fast? We will have to wait and see. Valve have the talent. I just wish they would announce Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and Portal 2 too. I am dying for this.

I hate the fact that Splinter Cell: Conviction is now a X360 exclusive. I still have to play Chaos Theory and Double Agent, the previous two games in the series, though. But I didn’t like the departure from the gameplay style of this new game. This was more Jason Bourne than the Sam Fisher that I liked from the first two games in the series. But I think, ultimately, UBISOFT is going to release this on the PC.

Next up, was Halo. I haven’t played Halo 3, so I don’t know how the fight ends, so I have morbid fear of having the game spoiled for me. But luckily there was no such thing. The gameplay footage of Halo 3: ODST was great. But I thought that it would be a team game in the manner of Star Wars: Republic Commando. Maybe it’s because the footage was early near the start of the game, so you haven’t met the members of your team yet. But it looks really promising, and after all, it has Halo on it, so it will sell like crazy, but Bungie makes great games.

The reveal of Halo: Reach confirms the rumors and here we have a game about the early days of Master Chief during the Fall of Reach which was told not in the previous games but rather in the novelization of the Halo universe in the novel, The Fall of Reach, which is considered the first of the 4 Halo novels. There were no further details other than a 2010 release date. A beta key will be included with copies of ODST. Good.

I don’t like racing games that much, so Froza 3 didn’t catch my attention.

Now, Alan Wake, that’s more like it. I am glad that the game is nearing release (Spring 2010) and it does look good. It has the same Silent Hill atmosphere but with a Max Payne style. But what was Alan’s flashlight? It’s beam was too powerful and highly focused!

The surprising Kojima announcement is discussed in the previous post, so I am not going to repeat the same stuff here.

As for the Xbox Live, Last.fm, Netflix, Facebook announcements, I simply couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Live is not available in my country, and until MS has the decency to respect my country, I am not interested in the service, besides, all this requires special internet broadband speeds that are simply science fiction where I live. As for Facebook, I am the site’s public enemy #1.

Now, let’s talk about the Natal Project. Natal? What’s wrong with Natalie? No, seriously… I love controllers. They provide accurate and responsive controls to all games, regardless of the genre, and I am not going to mention the magnificent keyboard and mouse combo. This new project is simply a camera that reads your body motion and translates it into commands for the X360 to integrate into the software. There is also voice recognition software that identifies the person and possibly, his/her emotions. The press conference showed some applications in both gaming and social Xbox Live activities. I am not going to talk about the Live activities, as simply I won’t use it and I won’t have a video chat with my friend to help me choose what dress to wear! LOL!

The showed games were all concepts with nothing that is actually in production. Both Stephen Spielberg and Peter Moylenaux (of Lionhead) made an appearance and discussed the future capabilities of the device. Moylenaux even made a concept project about a virtual boy called Milo that the player can interact with, emotionally.

Now, I may seem like a backward, stone age person, but I don’t like this new direction. About the Milo thing, first, it will be a world of hell to the developer to record all the pre-recorded audio for the virtual character, because voice generation software can’t simply simulate human emotions. Now add the needed animations and facial expressions and you will understand what I mean. Besides, didn’t you think that Milo was so close to HAL? I mean, it’s scary. And if I want something to talk to, I will get a real person, or I will simply talk to my cat, which is easier, and the little furball understands it all!

Don’t get me wrong. The technology is wonderful, and it has an edge over the Wii, namely the graphical power of the X360, and also over similar PS3 stuff like the Singstar camera. But what this technology needs is careful implementation into games. When the Wii was announced, it was praised as a game changer for the console market and as a revolution (the old name for the Wii was the Nintendo Revolution, back in 2005) in the video game industry. Now after almost 3 years of being in the market, the number of really imaginative games that took advantage of the technology are less than 10. The rest are mediocre at best.

So, if you want to sell me this technology, show me its integration into games, good games, and I am sold. But until then, it’s a nice gimmick.

Finally, I would like to illustrate my stance about controllers to my dear friend Falcon. I think that controllers are here to stay. They are wonderful at what they do, and they work for everything. The new motion sensing techniques failed for the Wii and failed for the PS3 (miserably). Motion sensing can work for some games, but not all. Imagine playing a RTS with this, it’s useless. A fighting game like Street Fighter or Tekken, how the hell are you going to do the insane combos? Finally, it’s potentially disturbing. I know that you will accuse me of nice things regarding testosterone deficiency… But I won’t be comfortable playing a game like God of War or Manhunt with motion sensing. It’s very, very disturbing. Imagine doing the motion necessary to snap someone’s neck… That’s not why I am playing games. I don’t want this. Also, the transition of controlling in a game like Battlefield or GTA where there are on foot sections and others with vehicles. How can you motion control this? Or are you going to sacrifice vehicles and mounted turrets for mimicking firing an AK in a game. And imagine the disadvantage this is going to introduce in multiplayer games. If you are not fit or if you are sleepy and tired, then you are pwned! But I have to admit, playing a Star Wars game or a samurai game with this technology will be interesting.

I also would like to stress on something, everyone is so irritated that gaming needs a wider audience. I don’t agree. Gaming is a hobby that has its fans, not all people are gamers or capable of being gamers, so don’t punish the real gamers by forcing them to play using pathetically simple controls to please the non-gaming base. This is what Nintendo did with the Wii, they profited from the sales, but the real hardcore gamers got very, very few good games. The rest of the garbage are made for lonely mothers and grandmothers. I am not an elitist, but if the controller is the barrier that prevents these mindless masses from destroying my hobby, then I will protect the controller with everything I have got. Gaming is not a casual hobby, it’s something that you either have it or not. No body buys a digital SLR camera for $$$ and then complains that there are way too many controls on it and they need to be simplified like a point and shoot camera. Why didn’t he/she buy a simple camera from the start and saved him/herself the trouble, instead of forcing the industry to change itself to accommodate his/her needs, regardless of the real photographers who benefit from the added complexity?

Just think about it.

MS is not stupid, I just hope they do it right and not to chase a quick buck.

Finally… (no, really) we didn’t get Halo 3 for the PC, or Gears of War 2. This is just sad.

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Monday, June 1, 2009

Metal Gear Solid: Rising

The Microsoft E3 2009 conference has just ended and Kojima has announced that the MGS franchise is coming to the X360. For the fanboy claims, MGS did appear on other platforms than those made by Sony. MGS: Integral appeared on the PC, MGS2: Substance appeared on the Xbox and PC and MGS: Twin Snakes appeared on the Gamecube. I am not counting the GameBoy version and the iPhone one. So, it’s not a Sony-franchise. OK? Capiche?

But what makes me puzzled is that how Kojima can make the game on the X360 when you know that MGS4 occupied a full Blu-Ray disc, to the extent that it wasn’t possible to include both the English and Japanese voices on the same disc. How is the game going to fit in regular DVDs? It’s either going multi-DVD or the game will simply have to sacrifice something. I don’t think Kojima is stupid enough to cut some of the stuff on the PS3 version to compensate. Oh yes, the game is multiplatform for sure. Who says? Me.

According to Kojima, the game will feature Raiden. But I am a bit suspicious about the change of the game subtitle from Tactical Espionage Action to Lightning Bolt Action. I don’t want a Devil May Cry-clone. I want a Metal Gear Solid game. MGS2, which also featured Raiden, was simply awesome, and the ninja parts were great, but it wasn’t the whole game.

I guess we will have to wait and see. The countdown on the Kojima’s Next page will end in about one and half hours. Soon enough.

As for MGS4 on the X360, I don’t think that it will come. And I am quoting the live blog of Gamespot about the MS conference, “So much for MGS4 on the X360”. End of the story.

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