Why I Don't Gamble And Other Fun Tidbits

Let's Call It A Draw, Shall We?

E3 2009 was a little over a week ago, but I'm back to do some fact check on my ill-advised predictions - also known as "completely random guesses". Thankfully, more than one of my thoughts could be totally open to opinion, so I get to squeak by without having the majority of my predictions simply being flatout false. Breaking things down by company, I failed with Sony the most - and I blame that on being completely unable to figure out what they'd do after last year's snooze-worthy "Year of the PS3" presser that featured a whole lot of video montages and not much else. 2008, what a horrible year for E3... Anyway, let's break these down and see how I did.

MICROSOFT:
Motion Control Announced: DRAW: I'm calling this one a draw because my thought was that the 360 would soon find itself with a handheld answer to the Wiimote. Instead we got Project Natal, a camera-based motion control system that promises unbelievable fidelity that will allow motion-based interaction unlike anything we've ever seen before. Lots of people in the gaming world thought Natal was groundbreaking, and if it functions as shown, perhaps it will be. But when it comes to gaming that doesn't involve a more traditional controller, I'm usualy pretty skeptical - even more so when it involves some sort of camera, something Natal isn't the first at trying. Sadly, the video Microsoft showed seemed more like lies hype than anything else, especially the section where the kid scans his skateboard into the game. I found it amazing that the Natal was not only able to determine the pattern on the side of the board it couldn't see but also somehow ignore the kid's fingers that were gripping the sides. Also, I don't trust Peter Molyneux's video featuring Milo, the virtual boy that seems shockingly lifelike and reacts according to not just your motions but your body language and facial cues. If Molyneux is known for anything, at least to me, it's selling you one thing and delivering roughly 32% of it, and I cannot believe the video wasn't trickery. It's up to him to prove it. Stuff like that always makes me doubt a device's true ability once it's actually released - and we got a sneak peek of how Natal might need a little work when they showed how the device allows you to make your avatar copy your own moves, which instead of being spot-on sent the poor little guy into a series of nightmarish twists and bends that the human form was simply not meant for. On the upside, it did create E3's most beloved meme for 2009...

Casual Games For That Motion Control: CORRECT!: As I figured, you can't have a motion-control-based way to play games without a series of useless minigames to make you live up to the gimmick. Microsoft showed a series of these sorts of games which included one where you kick and bunch a series of dodgeballs and another where you...throw paint. It seemed like some people really dug these shots of what Natal could do, but for me they seem like something that would amuse me for about 45 minutes and then leave me wondering why the hell I just spent $100+ on this gizmo. What the Natal needs is a game that allows for something more universally accepted by gamers, like a shooter. Imagine being able to use real hand-signals to your squadmates or really throw a grenade and have its distance and arc based on your actual arm motion and speed. That's a lot more impressive and fun that using my body to form the illusion of an elephant.

Halopalooza: DRAW: I was wrong that Bungie was done with the Halo franchise - and honestly I'm disappointed they aren't moving on to anything new. What was the point of breaking off from Microsoft again? It must get pretty boring making the same franchise games over and over and over. But I'm not a developer, so maybe I'm wrong. But Sure enough, ODST wasn't the only game Microsoft announced, and now we have Halo: Reach arriving in 2010, and we got to see it in a very short teaser clip. Go me.

360 Portable: INCORRECT!: Maybe it's just simply fact that Microsoft will never enter the handheld console war. Maybe that's actually a wise decision given the fact that Nintendo and Sony are no longer alone in the battle, now facing off against the likes of the iPhone. Warming the bench might be the best place to watch the carnage...

SONY:
God of War III in 2009: INCORRECT!: One of my many PS3 longshots, Sony finally came out to announce that Kratos will follow his pattern of showing up in March and will arrive in 2010. Bummer. I really think it's a mistake seeing as how Sony still didn't show any killer titles for this year's holiday season, even somehow ignoring titles like the new Ratchet & Clank - Insomniac usually gets all sorts of Sony love, not so much this year. Weird.

Fat Princess Now: INCORRECT!: I really do hate Sony sometimes. They tease the hell out of Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake on the PSP but don't even give a release date for the original PS3 version that people (like me) are foaming at the moutch to play. If the PSP version comes out before the PS3 one does, I may have to cut a bitch.

Sony Motion Control: CORRECT!: Sony had their own motion control reveal, though it didn't even have a name attached to it. Seemed boring. Have I mentioned how much I hate motion control?

New Twisted Metal: INCORRECT!: This one hurts, dear reader. I was really hoping Sony would shock and amaze by showing off a new cutting-edge edition of the Twisted Metal franchise, but sadly David Jaffe kept his word. 2010 perhaps?

NINTENDO:
Kid Icarus: INCORRECT!: Okay, fine - it's never happening, I get it. Bastards.

Boring Shit I'm Supposed To Be Excited About: DRAW: Perception and personal opinion make this one hard to declare as either correct or incorrect, but for my money a lot of what Nintendo had to show off was...rather "Meh". I could almost hear the crickets when the WiiFit sequel was announced and while a lot of people are pretty jazzed about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, I think the game looks kind of boring if not a game entire worth the $50 price tag. Once again, internet play is nowhere to be found for a game built around multiplayer action. And while it's cool to have Mario and Luigi jumping around together through levels with bland visual design, the Toads that players 3 and 4 are forced to use are sort of a punch in the mouth considering the rich world Mario games have to pull from. Toads? Who the hell wants to play as a couple Toads!? Why not Birdo and/or Yoshi? While NSMBW is a nice game to add to the pile, I'm not sure it's a killer surprise that many were hoping to hear about. Honestly, the game looks like a rehashed DS title, and for Nintendo that's becoming somewhat typical lately. *coughanimalcrossingcough*

The Trinity: CORRECT!: Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a huge reveal, and it shows the Nintendo at least is willing to give some sort of love to the fans who demand more than cameo apperances in minigame collections. The biggest surprise though had to be the announcement of the new Metroid game that's being co-developed by Team Ninja - who saw that coming!? Retro may have indeed moved on but Nintendo's moving quick to bring some mysterious new twist to one of their most beloved series. Zelda got a quick mention but it seems like 2010 is going to be when we hear more about that.

So there they are - all my predictions for better or worse. I think I came out alright...

Things might be changing in the Bannendrome soon, though not here so much as in my real-life home. The wife and I are working on adding something to the place that may or may not involve the number of people living here expanding by one. This means a lot of things but most critical of those (to me, naturally) is that we're locking down the household budget, and one of the first things to dry up is the once-disposable income I gladly used to increase the amount of games I have laying around. It looks like once Ghostbusters rolls around, I'm done with purchasing any new games for a very long time. I've said such things before, but this time things are a little different and this is the real deal - and between you and me, I'm okay with it... I do have a pretty severe Backlog of Shame I can use to keep me busy and it's great timing that I now live in an era where the lifespan of a game I already own can be extended via downloadable content. Games like Burnout Paradise are adding entire new portions to their worlds and a personal favorite, Fallout 3, not only has two bits of DLC I have yet to enjoy (The Pitt and Broken Steel) but also has two more episodes on the way in the forms of Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta - in particular, Point Lookout is happily including the overlooked mutated redneck population of the Capital Wastes, which was always sorely lacking. It's stuff like this that will be much more affordable and help me get through those tough times when the rest of my pals are out enjoying the latest release while I'm still working on Resistance or maybe finally having the free time to master those LittleBigPlanet creation tools.

As for news on why this clamp-down on cash is afoot, I'll hopefully have word to pass along in the weeks and months to come...

Monday's Report | E3 Rises From The Dead

Like A Lovecraftian Horror, E3 Returns!

You can almost smell it in the air; the fresh scents of nerd sweat, booth babe perfume, and shiny new electronics - E3 2009 is here. Technically it'll be here at 10:30am PST, when Microsoft gives the keynote address to really kick things off, but the point still stands. Normally, the presentations put on by the big three of the console world are supposed to deliver thrills, surprises, and incredible hype - fail to do any of these things and you're labeled an out-right failure. So why is it that all the big news has largely been spilled already? In 2009, moreso than ever before, companies have either already made many of their big announcements public or had their big news leaked and then forcibly confirmed (hello, slim PS3). It's a bizarre way to do business, to be sure, and almost takes the wind completely out of the sails of the Expo. What's the point? The biggest disappointment is that I have the sneaking suspicion we're going to get almost nothing in the way of that one big "OMG!" moment from any of the big three. We'll natually get the things the companies want to be those big OMG moments - but those when they're along the lines of something like Nintendo's somewhat depressing reveal of WiiMusic, they tend to fall flat, if not just create a meme that surges through the gaming universe like thunder. I can see that same thing happening when/if Microsoft and/or Sony unveil their suspected motion controllers and releated software. Such announcements seem deflating - especially when they're coupled with software that the audiences knows full well will be underwhelming at best. Word on the PSP Go! and slim PS3 are sort of weird for me since revised versions of hardware rarely if ever generate any sort of excitement for me - and since the slim version of the PS3 is supposedly NOT coming with a price drop, what's the point aside from saving Sony some production cash? I'm more than fine with my big and chunky 60GB PS3, even more when I remember that I have a version that still is able to play PS1 and PS2 games before the feature was unceremoniously torn from the guts of the later SKUs... One of the small benefits of early adoption, I guess. Even still, I can't help but hold out hope that something big is looming just out of sight - something that has managed to remain undetected by the seething internet horde and from shoddy corporate obfuscation. I have no idea what such a secret would be, but it's got to involve software. A big first party game that has been kept locked away from anyone not directly involved in its development - even within its own company. For me, my big money is on...well, hell with this, let me just get to my predictions. That's what we're supposed to do when we talk about E3 anyway, right?

MICROSOFT PREDICTIONS:
The Era of "Xaggle": One of the worst-kept secrets was Microsoft's keen interest in capitalizing on the Wii's unique motion control that anchors the entire development of the console's catalog. The idea of Microsoft introducing such waggle-based gaming has been swirling for at least a year, and if they're ever going to make it official, I think it's got to happen this year. Still, and I have to make this completely clear, it's a terrible idea. The Xbox 360 has its own audience, and while Microsoft is obviously trying to cater to the Wii crowds and mimic Nintendo's strategies in many ways, this one will be an absolute failure. Be careful what you wish for, Microsoft, you may want to be like Nintendo, but for every success like the Wii or DS there's also a Virtual Boy or R.O.B. - and this one might just be yours.

Casual Living: Acting as a bookend to the motion control, I'm betting Microsoft is going to "show off" a host of new casual-style games that run through XBLA, probably utilizing avatars and helmed by Rare. They're going to be party games - and that means a shit load of minigames, which have long since worn out their welcome on the Wii.

The Circular Tease: Bungie might be walking away from Halo after ODST, but that doesn't mean Microsoft is going to let their most popular and iconic franchise go out like that - expect an extremely short teaser clip showing absolutely no in-game footage for the next chapter in the proper Halo series, developed internally by Microsoft and aiming for a holiday 2010 release. They're going to try really hard to nail the viusal style of Bungie, and they're going to fail. It's going to look like a weird mish-mosh of those glossy metallic colors Bungie painted everything with colliding head-on with the dirty grime of, say, Gears of War.

Power In Your Hands: Microsoft probably won't announce a new handheld console ala the Portable 360, but I suspect that the new Zune will tie directly into your Xbox Live account and possibly even allow you to play some or maybe even ALL your XBLA games. That would be bad-ass.

SONY PREDICTIONS:
Gods Die Earlier: I'll just get this out of the way because it's what I hope for the most out of anything at E3 this year, but I'm hoping and praying that Sony announces a 2009 release date for God of War III. Traditionally, GoW games have arrived in March, putting the newest chapter of Sony's greatest saga in 2010 - and thereby making me sad. But I'm holding out hope that Sony is much more interested in making a direct impact in a holiday season that's oddly lacking any real competition from the usual likes of Marcus Fenix or Master Chief.

The Princess Has Arrived: Sony will announce that as soon as their presentation is over, Fat Princess will be released on the PSN. My head explodes with delight. The end.

The Era of SixAxis 2 "Saggle": Motion control - it's like a plague of bad ideas that's eating all the crops. The SixAxis never really took off, no matter how much Sony would like to imagine otherwise, and to introduce yet another version of it, even if it's packaged in a new peripheral is nuts. Like Microsoft's trip into waggle-ville, expect Sony to package with a suite of poorly thought-out party games that will keep your interest for roughly 42 minutes and never touch it again.

Dave Jaffe Is A Liar: I don't know that to be true, but I'm hoping he's a liar. He's on record saying that his new company has no announcements to make at E3 this year, which (in theory) could include info on a new Twisted Metal game. Like the God of War in 2009 prediction, this has less to do with fact or even a gut feeling so much as it does pure wishful thinking. It's been almost ten years since the last proper TM game, and my mind wanders when I think how much the new leaps in technology and growth in online play could make Twisted Metal into a truly incredible online experience. *sigh*

NINTENDO PREDICTIONS:
From The Clouds, He Comes: How long have people wanted a Kid Icarus game? It's been a few years, easy - and then when Pit showed up in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it was like the floodgates let loose and Kid Icarus mania swallowed the fanbase whole. Sadly, Nintendo doesn't seem to share the same level of glee over the property, and anything regarding a revisit of the material has largely been internet lies rumor. But, like Microsoft's waggle controller, I suspect that if there's going to be big Kid Icarus news, it's got to come this year - it's just a feeling I have.

WiiBoring: Nintendo seems preoccupied with their casual catalog, and while WiiMusic was the failure that maybe WiiFit should have been, we all know Nintendo's got a fuzzy learning curve and a taste of casual cash fresh in its maw. Expect something incredibly lame - WiiWhistle or WiiBreathe or some other mundane, everyday activity perverted into a motion-controlled batch of minigames featuring the Miis. F@$%in' minigames...

The Big Guns: To bring back some of the steam the Wii has lost in the last few months, Nintendo needs to bring in the services of its #1 employee and global mascot - Mario. And I'm not talking about Mario showing up in a sports game or some other tangent title, I mean a real Mario game. Mario Galaxy was one hell of a title, and normally I wouldn't expect some sort of follow-up to arrive so soon, and perhaps an announcement will simply foreshadow, but don't be shocked if a new honest-to-god Mario game is shown. The same can be said for Link. While Spirit Tracks is inbound, I wouldn't be surprised if a Wii tie-in is announced - to make it more interesting, I'm guessing it'll return to the Wind Waker visuals the handheld titles have used for a couple years now. As for the third part of the holy trinity, Samus will be missing this year. With Retro done with Metroid, the best we're going to get is the Metroid Prime Trilogy - which doesn't offer much of anything to those who played all three games before aside from some fringe goodies I cannot get too excited about. But to each their own...

OTHER PREDICTIONS:
So Dark The Con Of Duke: This is like 1,000,000:1 odds, but there has been more than one person suspecting that the whole 3D Realms implosion earlier this year was actually part of an elaborate scam - the finale of the industry's biggest joke, if you will - and that E3 will be where they and Take Two not only show off but out-right announce a firm Fall 2009 release date for Duke Nukem Forever on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. I think a lot of this idea comes from people who have been deeply wounded by the DNF experience and cannot believe the way the whole train wreck ended, but if this were to actually be true, it would have to be the grestest prank ever played on the community. It would be astounding - and frankly, I do not believe that a company that took 12 years to make a FPS could ever think up and then properly execute such a con. But I've been wrong once or twice before...

Plasmids Inbound: I hate when games are seemingly forced into putting multiplayer in a game. Not only does it seem to simply not fit some games, but more often than not the online portion is horrible and no one plays it anyway - including all the people that cried for it to be included. I hate those people. Even with that being said, I imagine Bioshock 2 not only showing off the game's online portion, but having it blow people away. It would be a fitting revelation for a game that I whole-heartedly believe doesn't need any sort of online component.

Alright, that's all I got for now. Don't forget to check out all those live blogs out there this afternoon when E3 gets underway so you can all witness how little I actually know about anything, and also don't forget that America's part in the 1 VS. 100 beta begins at 10:30pm EST tonight on Xbox Live! Play it and I'll hopefully see you there!

E3 Presentation Review

As of about an hour ago, Sony wrapped up their E3'08 presentation, and that means that now each of the big three in the world of games have had their say - so now it's my turn. In a lot of ways, I felt that this year felt understated, full of news we've heard elsewhere, and a whole lot of catering to that darned "casual" base. In terms of big-name titles, again, we've heard it all before this week, and it was kind of sad that none of the companies decided to use this chance to announce something crazy - something preferably "hardcore" that would send people into a frenzy. There is one exception, but I'll get to that in a minute. Let me just go ahead and breakdown how I felt about each company's presentation, and what their various announcements mean to a gamer such as myself, who thinks of himself more along the lines of hardcore, if not at least devoted to the gaming culture...

NINTENDO: Of the three, the biggest disappointment had to be the Big N. While there was plenty to be proud of, with the Wii and the DS both being licensed machines to print money, the company did little to make people think it hadn't forgotten about the fan base that helped to pull them from the wreckage of the GameCube. Of all their various announcements, the only one I'd even have a big of interest in is Animal Crossing: City Folk, which will feature all the things we'd expect from a game that should create a community feel - this goes hand in hand with the new Wii Speak, which finally allows for chat, only in a group environment, making a mic open to a whole room. It's an odd take on the whole chatting concept, though from Nintendo I expect it. And while I'll be sure to play Animal Crossing, I was disappointed that Nintendo didn't mention a single game that hinged on any of the Holy Trinity - Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Metroid. Not only that, but I know a lot of folks (me included) were rather pissed and disappointed that no mention of a Kid Icarus game was made. Also, no new IPs, at least not any that aren't part of the current Nintendo philosophy. I mean, it's nice that Nintendo is doing well again, but it would seem that the way we've seen them go towards the casual market is here to stay, with the occasional scraps thrown to those who expect the glory days of Nintendo. I mean, Animal Crossing is cool and all, but it's not something like a new adventure for Link or the resurrection of a long-forgotten classic. All in all, Nintendo's outlook is oddly familiar, and doesn't look to change anytime soon.
BANNEN'S GRADE: C-

MICROSOFT: Now don't go hatin', fanboys, but of the presentations, Microsoft's was probably the best - but only by default. Microsoft opened E3, and they took that oppertunity and ran with it. Honestly, most of the show wasn't exactly a surprise. We all knew Gears of War II was going to kick ass, and sure enough, the demo of it certainly impressed. Actually, let me take this time to say that I think one of the big things I noticed was that Microsoft showed a lot of in-game demos and videos of their big games, both first party and third. This is a stark change of pace from Sony, which didn't show a whole lot of anything. If nothing else, Microsoft has some serious confidence in their library, and aside from all of the stuff I don't care much about - like the new Avatar thing and the Xbox Live redesign - the games look great, and that means a lot once the Fall rolls around and "Must Haves" start raining down like crazy. The pocket book is gonna hurt this year - and that's between all the consoles, not just the 360. Of course, Microsoft also ruled E3'08 because it had the ace in the hole, the one bombshell announcement. Final Fantasy XIII. Now that is an announcement. Personally, this doesn't mean much to me because I gave up on FF a long time ago, but I know it means a lot to many, many people. This is huge. Now, when it comes to big third party franchises, Sony's pool of exclusives big names is shriking. Along with GTA and Resident Evil, Final Fantasy is now a big game you can get on the 360 the same days it's available on the PS3. That's pretty important, and it stands as the one big surprise of the whole event. Well played, Microsoft.
BANNEN'S GRADE: A-

SONY: Sony's presentation was a confusing one. Of all the systems, I truly believe it has the chance to bring the most cool exclusives come this holiday, and yet the only games it chose to really focus on was Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet. I understand highlighting them, but I was stunned that more time wasn't spent on Killzone 2 which, aside from a ver brief glimpse during a montage, didn't make an apperance to speak of at all. I was also kind of pissed to not see more on inFamous, which could be the breakout sort of surprise Crackdown was for the 360. In general, Sony's presentation was just more looks at what we already knew about, and fairly underwhelming in that respect. Home, something I've slowly given up on over the last year and a half, was talked about ("your patience will pay off, I swear!"), and a new video was shown of it open world design, but no word was given on its progress or when we could expect the wider open beta to arrive for the masses - not even so much as "this Fall!" was said about it, and that makes me think this is something that will either come out in 2009 or not at all. It's funny, because Microsoft's new Xbox Live upgrades mimic much of the social networking Sony wants Home to do, and the new Live will be up and running in the Fall. Sony got totally faced on this one. For me, I was waiting for word on God of War III, and hoping it would be Sony's bombshell, maybe releasing this holiday to pull some folks away from their Gears fix who might otherwise not gel to Resistance 2's business. Sadly, all Sony had for Kratos was a very short teaser that showed zero of the game. Again, no date was mentioned. When all is said and done, Sony had the door left wide open for dropping some sort of epic bomb, and simply decided not to. It was a tame affair, and described nothing new. At least the big speech about Sony's profits was enjoyable, highlighted with a funny clip from LittleBigPlanet...
BANNEN'S GRADE: B

STANDOUT GAME: Sure, Gears of War II looks awesome, and my heart pines for Ghostbusters, the game that really stood out (primarily from Microsoft's presentation - another title PS3 breezed past) was Fallout 3. Sure, I already reserved my copy of the game, but that was simply because the pics I had seen looked neat-o. Now that I've seen the game in motion, I can hardly wait to get my hands on it. The "Bloody Mess" perk is this year's "Enrage Plasmid"!

That's it for my take on E3'08 and the big three. Hopefully, more surprises will appear at the next few events. Fingers crossed, maybe at PAX!?