Pagoda of Gaming

So Edge did it wrong, totally. Let’s start off with mistake numer one, listing the GOTY on the first fucking page. You bum-love the thing so much, give it a damn drum roll first, dudes, srsly. So here’s how it’s going to go: I’m doing the 2007 Edge awards (from issue 184), except I’m putting the right choises in, right as in my choices, and adding in some minor stabs at Edge as we go along. First thing I did when I got home with the mag was to go through it with a permanant marker and added my own little comments. And we begin with the Alternative Awards, games that missed the gold, silver, or bronzes of the real awards but still deserve a mention, like the stupid awards in your high-school year book like who had the best hair or who was most likely to become a porn director. I should say right now there’s only one Wii game that got an award, and it’s only for it’s box art. I’m not a reviewing press person so I don’t get hardware and games mailed to me by people who want their praise from me, so I didn’t want to have a £200 peice of kit sitting there doing nothing for the next billion years, hence no Wii, hence no Wii games played, hence no awards. These are my awards after all, they don’t come with a golden statue or additional press controversy or pissing off fanboys at a national level. They are about as useful as a list on someone’s retarded bebo page. These are all my opinions based on what I’ve played and observed over the past year. Granted, I’ll forget something. Also, because it is the new year already (so this is a little bit late) I’m going to forego the annoying texty bits and leave you with the pure and simple lists, and an invitation, one that allows you to challenge my decisions, so I can respond and tell you I’m right.

The Alternative Awards

Best Use Of A Beta - Crackdown (360)
Best Use of Annoying Leper/Poor People - Assasin’s Creed (360, PS3)
Most Dissapointing Game - Hellgate London (PC)
Best Use Of Subliminal Messaging in Box art - Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Best Movie based on Game Franchise - Hitman The Movie
Easiest 1000 Gamerscore - Avatar The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth (360)
Best Game that the Yanks Got But We Haven’t Yet For Some Fucked Up Reason - Rock Band (360, PS3)
Best Use of an Importer - Pokemon Diamond & Pearl (NDS)
Best MMO Patch Of The Year - EVE Trinity (PC)
Most Use Of Man-Hours - World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade(PC)
Best XBLA or PSN Game - Settlers Of Catan (XBLA)
Most Secretive Game - Alan Wake (360, PC)
Game That Should’ve Had More Development Time - Mass Effect (360)
Game I Should’ve Played More - Company of Heroes (PC)
 

Read the rest of this entry »

All this is quite hard for me to put into words, it’s been over a week since E3 started and almost ended, so I’ll try and remember what I can. Let’s start with the big three:

Nintendo’s conference and showing at E3 wholly convinced me that I made the right choice in unloading my Wii when I could. This could’ve been the show that made me regret what I did, but it did not. The major titles they showed; Metroid, Mario, SSMB, Mario Kart, have no effect on me what-so-ever. All the stupid Wii stuff; Wii-Fit, the “zapper” stuff, no feelings of elation or regret at all. What surprised me the most is that they didn’t speak about Pokemon, their number one franchise, about to don the streets of the UK very soon, made no appearance. Nintendo, I now wash my hands of you, talk to me again when you do a Pokemon MMO that’s not on a handheld or a console. I predict a future of success for Ninty for a while, peaking sometime next year then a steady decline unto Wii-2 or whatever. That success, I will not be a part of.

Microsoft did pretty much what everyone expected, that being focussing on games. Surprisingly they announced nothing that would be happeinging post-2007 in their conference, except for a single powerpoint slide with a bunch of logo’s on it. Halo 3 was barely shown, though I can imagine that is simply because everyone is already sold on the game, publicising the game any more might hurt it’s reception when it hits the stores, and the lack of single-player information should eventually help the “wow” factor of the game. I am annoyed that they announced the stupid Viva-Pinata party game and not a fully fledged Pinata game, that was for me the biggest let-down of their show, of which there was little of.

Hey Vegeta, What does the scouter say? IT’S OVER NINE-THOUSSSSAAAAAAANNNNNNND!!! WOW FUCK YEH! Sony brought their game back in full force. The conference put a nice human face on the company and made it look like they knew what the fuck they were doing, which I may add is a total 180 from last years Rigde-Racering, Giant-Enemy-Crabbing, Real-Time-Weapon-Changing incident. I’m now sold on PS3, and i must say, a little on the PSP too. Alot of the games they showed looked really interesting and may I say gorgeous. I’m simply not going to be satisfied playing that console on a standard definition TV, but I am working on that. The new PSP redesign is making me want to wait to see if I then want one. I’m a little bit annoyed that there was no price drop for europe (though rumor’s say that that might be happening soon) but the “starter pack” thing sorta helps with that. The MGS4 trailer happened and it was awesome, AWEOSME-AWESOME as a matter of fact. Heavenly sword, Assasin’s Creed, Lair, Warhawk, and others whose names escape me all convince me that the PS3 is now worth owning. Sony am winrar, I’m sorry I ever doubted you…. well only a little.

The PC side wasn’t let down either. Crysis is going to kick ass and take names, all of Valve’s stuff looked amazing, and there were a bunch of other titles that look interesting, Hellgate London springs to my mind. My only dissapointment here was that there wasn’t any weird-assed peripheral thing going about, simply because of the new lack of “E” in “E3″, I never buy the shit but it’s things like that that separate the PC apart from the. The WoW news wasn’t spectacular, but what the hell, Blizzcon’s happening in about two weeks. No showing of Alan Wake and no showing of Warhammer Online, but hey, not everyone could have been at this event.

So in my opinion the winners of this year’s E3 went like this:

1. Sony
2. Microsoft
3. PC
4. Nintendo

I’m annoyed that some big titles had little time in the spotlight or were nowhere near the spotlight, GTA4 springs to mind. The event overall was very much like that. It was like there was stuff there, but not all the stuff and none of the extra stuff you’d get from the old E3 (read: the showmanship, the booth-babes, the retards waiting in line for stuff). In essence this wasn’t an E3 at all. I wasn’t glued to my firefox as much as I have been in recent years. Oh well, maybe that’ll change next year. And finally…

My game of the show award goes to none other than ROCK BAND. The huge stream of information on that game just engulfed any mention of Guitar Hero. Downloadable albums, new content every week, video after video after video. I have to say that my highlight of the show was watching the Gamespot live finale when a “band” of developers from harmonix took to the stage and ended Gamespot’s live coverage of the show, can I note that this was happening whilst the set and equipment was being packed up around them. It was amazing and I cannot wait to get a guitar into my hands again, or a pair of drum sticks even. You can check out said show ending rock out HERE. Game of the show runners up go to Mass Effect and Bioshock, both of which I look forward to playing to death, just not as much as Rock Band. The “I-Wish-It-Was-There” Award goes to none other than Alan Wake which has been in hiding for over a year now.

Helluva show, hope it comes back next year, only greater, like a pheonix or something. Here’s the MGS4 trailer to wrap things up.

Roll on PAX and Blizzcon!!!

‘Nin Out!

(Note: This is the 66th post, ominous eh?)

I know that this post is a lottle late, but what the hey, let’s get started.

First off we have Kotaku’s Kotakutalku interviews. Here’s a link to the related tag. There you’ll find a tonn of interviews with the big names in the buisness the likes of Jack Tretton and Peter “Awesome” Moore. To be honest they seem to be the most realistic interviews that came out of E3 this year. Just scroll about the page and I’m sure you’ll find something to entertain you.

Next we have about the only thing that G4 has contributed to this E3 and it’s a playthrough/interview with the guys doing Left 4 Dead. Check out the video over on Kotaku HERE.

There’s all the 1up Show coverage over HERE, you can basically watch the 88th to 92nd episodes of the show and get an overall gist about what E£ was about this year. Very nice time filler.

Tiny amount of information, barely a teaser, for Condemned 2, again over on Kotaku. HERE. Alos on Kotaku is a video/impressions of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, which is looking very nice. Alot of bloggers and journalists have been calling it “Michael Mann the Game”. I agree, HERE. Finally there’s a bunch of stuff on the Eye of Judgement that I’m personally stoked for, check that out HERE.

And that’s it really, though I’m sure by now that you’ve found the information that you wanted to see, but this is a taste of what I’m looking forward too. Enjoy.

‘Nin Out!

So the Press Conferences are all over, I’ll analyse those after the show, and all that’s left is to Dig around the internets for information regarding everything that I personally care about.

So first off we have some information on GTA4, though not alot, specifically on multiplayer. Seems that there’s a nice 1v1 Deathmatch mode where you have to scour the city for your opponent whilst trying to hide yourself. More information HERE over on Kotaku.

Several Blogs have a fucktonn of information on Rock Band. Firstly, there’s a bunch of new tracks been revealed:

The Who “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
Mountain “Mississippi Queen”*
David Bowie “Suffragette City”
Black Sabbath “Paranoid”*
Blue Oyster Cult “Don’t Fear the Reaper”
The Ramones “Rockaway Beach”
Rush “Tom Sawyer”*
Bon Jovi “Wanted Dead or Alive”
Nirvana “In Bloom”
Stone Temple Pilots “Vasoline”
Weezer “Say It Ain’t So”
Foo Fighters “Learn to Fly”
Metallica “Enter Sandman”
The Hives “Main Offender”
The Strokes “Reptilia”
Queens of the Stone Age “Go With the Flow”
(*cover)

Classic tracks are CLASSSSSSICCC. Looks like a very nice list so far, especially the lack of covers on this list.
There’s a Hand’s On with the Drum Kit over HERE on kotaku, certainly clears my mind about alot of things, nice pics too.
Some info on DLC, aparantly there’s going to be new songs released every week after the game ships. Including whole Albums worht of songs at once. The first entire album available will be one from the Who and there will be a Metallica album with the retail game and more Metallica albums later. More Info HERE.
Two videos here, one of the party EA put on to promote Rock Band the other aparantly contains a video of some people playing Bon Jovi’s Dead or Alive, it currently doesn’t work, but it might later on.

Tonn of Fable 2 information HERE. Not going to go into it, but it sounds very ambitious.

Finally I want to point you to Gamespot’s Live shows, HERE, It’s got a HUGE amount of stage demo’s and interviews with Developers and Industry People. I suggest that you check out the Mass Effect, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, Heavenly Sword, Fracture and Kane And Lynch stage shows, they certainly show the games off really well. They’re also broadcasting until about midnight today live with even more stuff. Take a dig around and I’m sure you’ll find something you’ll want to see.

I’ll be rounding off the end of the show tomorrow, til then…

‘Nin Out!

And here we are, at the final big press conference of the event. We’ve had one that was entirely expected and one utterly dissapointing. All that’s left is Sony’s foray. They really need to come out of the gates with some awesome stuff if they are to stay alive for the next year. Hell I might buy a ps3 this summer if all things go well. Let’s see what happens.

Ok, Jack Trenton’s on stage. Something’s wrong, there’s no sound coming out. Ah, looks like someone found the volume button. Lol, trenton looks like a Hobbit. Sounds like one too. I bet he’s good at delivering rings into volcanoes and stuff. He’s talking about the PSP. Video Montage of releases coming soon. Socom, Wipeout Pulse, Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow, NBA’08, God of War: Chains of Olympus, Silent Hill Origins, Patapon, Tiger Woods 08, Sonic Rivals 2, Sims 2: Castaway, SWAT: Target Liberty Final Fantasy Tactics, Castlevania The Dracula X Cronicles. Little bit of an applaud. Can’t really see the montage, they’ve got a borked video set up on stage that’s four screens. So gamespot’s cameras are focused on all four screens instead of just streaming it from one, I hope it’s not like this all the way through the presentation.

Lol Tretton’s doing like a PSHome machinema thing, He jut happens to run into Kaz within Home. Tretton made a Ridge Racer Joke. Now there’s a Japanese man that can talk english. Kaz announces new PSP. Looks deadly similar the old PSP. 33%lighter, more efficient battery, faster load times, 19%slimmer, can stream media from it. Plays Spiderman trailer on the PSP, pushes a button and it displays on the overhead movie projector at a nice resolution. can do this for all video content and games, that’s pretty cool. Talking remote play from PSP, pulling files from your home PC over the internets etc. And Kaz is gone. New PSP comes in Black and Silver. PSP entertainment pack: 1Gb stick, umd movie, daxter and silver model.

WTF Chewbaca? It’s a Wookie holding a PSP. IT’s hugging Jack. White PSP with a Darth Vader on the back, November $199, bundled with the SW:Battlefront game for PSP. Game looks decent for a PSP game… I guess. That was a weird star wars.

Talking PSNetwork now. 2 Million users on it so far, it’s a start I guess. Downloadabe games, here’s Phil Harrison to talk about them. Blah Blah Blah. Slight jab at MS for Arcade file size. 80 games and game packs in development for Downloadable games. New Puzzle game, Echocrome. Inspired by Wooden puzzle games and Rubix cubes. Very Paper Mario esque. It hurts my mind, but in a good way. Wipeout HD. Pain. Warhawk. Socom. All Downloadable. Looks like a good direction for them for the Downloadable games.

Back to Playstation Home. Out in Autumn. Phil’s running home on a Moblie Phone (not the 3D stuff mind you). XMB integration into sony phones? Replaced home lobby with an open air Mall looking place. It’s all very pretty and stuff. Myspace fags will love this. lots of new private spaces. Talking some stuff about Singstar, Blah blah blah, buy more songs blah blah blah blah blah blah. Myspace faggotry in singstar old news is old blah blah blah. Live Media Blogging, take a photo on phone auto uploads to your Home space. Webpage for your home private space, looks like Myspace. Can now launch games directly from home more in the Xbox liveway, goes straight to the multiplayer game level. Motorstorm used as an example. Lol, phil is failing at Motorstorm, can any of these Execs actually play games? Quit from the game and it goes right back to where you were in home. Open Beta in the Fall.

Jack’s back. Going to talk PS3. Wants to widen the install base, wants to deliver more content. New PS3 model coming this Xmas. 8GB, packed with motorstorm. Current PS3, 60GB one, dropped by $100. I hope we get £ cuts in the UK. Lair is 25GB on disk. Talking Blue Ray. Jabbing it at HDDVD. 200 new games this year? we’ll see. 15 Exclusives from 1st party next year. 3rd Party Montage go! Sony is Exclusivising NCsoft, making MMO games for the PS3. Haze Exclusive to the PS3, rolls trailer. Looks genericish console shootery. Quite cinematic TBH.

Talking Epic. Signed big deal with Epic and Midway. Maximise potential for Unreal Engine for PS3. UT3 PS3 Exclusive for consoles. Allows adding PC mods to the PS3 game, pretty cool. It should look pretty awesome on the PS3.

Third Party Montage Go! CoD4. Assasin’s Creed (old trailer). Kane and Lynch (new Trailer). Resi 5 (same trailer as the one at the MS press con). Burnout Paradise. Madden 08. Harry Potter ATOOTP. The Simpsons Game. GH3. Medal of Honor Airborne. Rock Band. MGS4, Kojima’s on stage (with a smartly dressed translator). 20th Anniversary of Metal Gear this year. MGS4 will be the grand finale of the series. Snake’s story will end in 4. Hideo won’t be working on any more MGS’s after this one. MGS4 will roll up all the storylines from all MGS’s that were left open. He promises a kick as game. New Trailer.

Real time footage from the PS3. Pwetty Pwetty. Liquid’s Back. Nanomachines fucking everyone up. Metal gears are all Jumpy Jumpy. Raiden VS Vamp. Ninja Raiden, he’ll fuck up your shit. This is one of the best fight scenes I’ve ever seen. Hey Vegeta, what does the scouter say? “IT’s IVER NINE THOUSAND!!!!!!!” Simultanious worldwide release Early 2008. Just a trailer for now. Demo Next week in some cinema in tokyo.

First Party games with Phil now. Ratchet and Clank trailer. Folklore now. rolliing trailer. Heavenly sword. NBA ‘08. Little Big Planet. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, New IP from the Sly Cooper people. “Infamous”, reminds me of Crackdown crossed with Heroes. More Cinematic than Crackdown. Your character can go good or evil. New Gran Tourismo, “5 Prologue”, precursor to GT5. Pretty graphics, whatever, give me burnout instead.

Jack’s back to wrap it up. Realtime Killzone 2 trailer shows. looks very close to the video shown last year. Remake of last years trailer by the look of things. Maybe not. Looks epic yet slightly generic shootery. Co-Op campaign? Destructable Environments. Fantastic Lighting effects. High Applause. Wow the developer of Killzone it TINY. Or is Phil just really tall?

Jack’s back to really wrap it up this time. Blah Blah Blah, he’s summing everything up. And it’s over.

Well that was not bad, nothing like the disaster of last year’s event. I’m pretty Pshched to be going after a PS3 now.

Full impressions later. CYOTFS.

‘Nin Out!