During the whole PSN fiasco I joked about how my nephew (12 years old.. or is he 13 now? Meh, I never bothered to keep track) who is a die-hard Call of Duty fan and PlayStation 3 owner, would go through terrible withdrawal symptoms from not being able to play CoD online and would probably sell his PS3 for a 360… turns out that’s exactly what he did!

Of course, from what I hear from him and from the manager of my local EB Games store, a lot of people seemed to have lost their patience with Sony and jumped ship. Not only did my nephew sell his PS3 and get a 360 but his friends followed suit. Okay, so it’s not hard to imagine a bunch of spoilt 12 year-old kids making such a decision, but the impression I got from the EB Games manager suggested that a lot of older gamers were doing it too.

I do find it strange that people would be so willing to trade in their system along with all of the games they bought for that system… not to mention all of the time they invested playing those games, especially where online multiplayer is concerned with all of that stat tracking.

My nephew has basically purged himself of everything PS3 related and is started on a brand new slate with the 360. He got Halo: Reach bundled with his 360 so he and I have been playing through that on the weekends over Xbox Live, and of course he’s been playing a lot of online multiplayer in Reach and re-bought CoD: Black Ops for the 360.

It’s a shame people make such rash decisions without thinking it through… and my nephew really didn’t think it through considering he told me that he wants to buy Killzone 3… to which I had to tell him that Killzone is exclusive to the PS3… much to his disappointment.

In any case, he seems to be enjoying his 360 a lot and has been telling me how much better it is than the PS3, though I wonder how long that will last…

However until that happens, it’s up to us to nitpick while we still can. In this entry I’m going to go into some detail on the U Controller’s features, what needs to change on the controller and why. Some of it will be things that are universally agreed upon, other things will by really nitpicky, but whatever.

To begin this entry, let’s have a look at the version of the Wii U controller shown off during E3 2011…

Nintendo is betting it all on this controller and the video game concepts it will give birth to, just like they did when they unveiled the Wii Remote years ago.

A look at the Wii U Controller as it is

Now that you’ve gotten a good look at the controller’s front, let’s go through all of its features.

On the front of the controller there is a large 6.2" 16:9 resistive touchscreen which works with both your finger or a stylus, however because it is a resistive touchscreen and not a capacitive touchscreen, it’s not capable of multi-touch, a common feature in newer smart phones and tablets as well as the PlayStation Vita. The quality of the screen is said to be very good, quite a lot of people who got to hold the controller in their hands commented how the images on the screen looked superior to what was being shown on the HDTV the Wii U was connected to… I’m guessing the screen is just a standard LED-LCD screen since smaller screens tend to generally look better than larger screens.

Above the screen is what Nintendo calls a “sensor strip” that includes a camera of unknown resolution, though I assume that it may match the native resolution of the controller’s screen which I theorise is 854×480. I don’t know what else this “sensor strip” may do but I’m sure we’ll find out in the future… presumably it may house two infrared lights on either side and act as a sensor bar just as the rumours had told us a month or so ago.

Moving along to the rest of the features on the front, there are two analog circle pads on the left and right of the controller, a d-pad, four digital face buttons (A, B, X, Y), a + (plus)/start button and a - (minus)/select button as well as a home button, power button, battery life indicator, microphone hole and two speaker holes on either side for stereo sound.

On the top side of the controller you have the two digital shoulder buttons (ZL and ZR), a stylus holder with a stylus that comes with the controller, a 3.5mm headphone jack, volume slider and what looks to be the same kind of proprietary port found at the bottom of the Wii Remote. In addition to that there also appears to be an AC adapter hidden under a plastic tab.

The back of the controller is pretty empty of any features but has two digital triggers (L and R) and a red sync button. Finally, on the bottom of the controller there is another proprietary connector which is much different from the one located at the top of the controller. Internally, the controller features an accelerometer, gyroscope and rumble feature.

All-in-all, it’s a feature packed controller, almost to the point where it could potentially be used as a portable handheld system, however Nintendo quickly dispelled any of that and bluntly told everyone at their conference that this is NOT a portable handheld system and can only work in proximity to the Wii U console.

The controller relies on a constant wireless signal coming from the console itself to display the video on the controller’s screen. From watching a few videos of people showing of the demo units and comparing them to the video on-screen, there is no discernible lag between the controller’s screen and the HDTV… of course this will probably vary depending on the quality of your HDTV.

I find the entire concept to be an excellent idea and it’s something that Nintendo has been thinking about doing for quite a long time, though it’s only recently that the technology to allow streaming video from one source to another with minimal or no discernible lag was possible.

Changes that need to be made

As I said at the very start of this entry, I realise that the controller design revealed at E3 2011 is a prototype design but I’m still going to have to nitpick through it.

To that end, after a billion hours in Photoshop, I’ve created a really crappy mock-up of some of the changes I’d like to see with this controller design based on the full image of the controller I posted up earlier in this entry…

The first thing I would do with the U Controller is to try and reduce its size any way I could. Reducing its size will not only make it look more comfortable, but it will also make it easier to hold vertically as well as allowing players to reach the touchscreen with their thumbs while holding it normally. Another reason why reducing the size of the controller is extremely important is because not everyone is going to be able to hold a large controller comfortably in their hands, particularly children.

While the circle pad works perfectly fine for a portable device like the 3DS, I don’t agree with Nintendo on its implementation on the U Controller. There is no way that those two circle pads are going to be a viable replacement for analog sticks. I really hope that on the final design, those circle pads are replaced with decent analog sticks.

Specifically, I’d like the feel of the analog sticks to resemble that of the ones found on the GameCube controller and the Xbox 360 controller rather than the Wii’s Nunchuk controller. Ideally, I’d also like the analog sticks to have a digital click to allow for better cross-platform compatibility. I realise that’s a lot to hope for, but if Nintendo is serious about recapturing the “hardcore” gamer crowd, this is one of the things they’re going to have to do.

On the other hand, while some people may find it strange and unusual, I do like the placement of both of the circle pads (or analog sticks) being above the d-pad and face buttons so I personally wouldn’t change that part of the controller despite what others may think of it.

The second major change I’d make to the front of the controller is the placement of the power button, battery life indicator, microphone hole, + (plus)/start button, – (minus)/select button and home button. Currently all of these are placed under the screen and are very hard to reach. I feel they should be repositioned either side of the sensor strip to allow easy access, particularly for the plus, minus and home buttons which are completely inaccessible in their current position under the screen.

On the back of the controller (not pictured) you can find the L and R triggers. On the current design the buttons are digital which I feel is a big mistake. The best thing Nintendo could do with these triggers is to take inspiration from the GameCube controller.

One of the best things about the GameCube controller is the analog L and R buttons that also had a digital click when you depressed them far enough. This mechanism was a brilliant idea and Nintendo really needs to bring it back for the triggers on the Wii U controller.

Finally, and this is probably the most important point that I’m going to lay down here… screw white, the console and the controller MUST be black.

Actually, last year I mainly focused on which of the big three console manufacturers “won” E3. This year I’ve decided to post up two entries, one that will resemble the style of last years and another one focusing on all of the things that were shown off during the event that weren’t mentioned during press conferences for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. I want to give some love to the PC gamer fans out there too.

So, here we go…

Out of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, who took the crown to be king of E3 2011?… Well… this year turned out not to be anywhere near as definitive as last year. Basically the following image sums everything up pretty nicely…

Yeah… not as megaton as we had all hoped for, though I still look at this years E3 a little more optimistically than most…

Microsoft Press Conference

Microsoft generally comes to E3 each year with a pretty standard set of games to show off and really nothing too extraordinary unless it’s the reveal of new hardware. Their conference this year was very similar to their showing last year, a mix of traditional games among a number of Kinect titles and some expanded options for the 360 OS. The difference this year is that they didn’t have anything too strange… remember their Kinect launch event last year? Ugh, yeah… I’m sure anyone who can remember wishes they could forget.

A year on from the unveiling of Kinect, Microsoft is set to try to bring a wider variety of titles under the Kinect flag. It’s going to be interesting just how many people will end up taking advantage of the Kinect features in Mass Effect 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier or if anyone really cares enough about Fable: The Journey despite Peter Molyneux assuring afterwards that the game is definitely NOT on-rails.

There are some new ideas being thought out for Kinect, but you can’t help but think that if Microsoft had bundled some type of control interface shaped like the Wii Remote + Nunchuk or the PlayStation Move + Navigation controller, then it’d make things a lot more simple for a lot of developers… just take the Ghost Recon: Future Soldier demonstration on stage.

Overall, there’s really nothing that compelling that was shown off during the conference, though I do look forward to the Halo: Combat Evolved remake and to see where 343 Industries takes Halo 4.

You can watch the Microsoft Press Conference through GameTrailers.com:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Now here’s a closer look at the key moments of their conference in the order they were shown…

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Microsoft seems to have a thing for starting their conferences off with another helping of Call of Duty. Last year it was Black Ops, this year it’s Modern Warfare 3… I didn’t care back then and I still don’t care right now. Though I am kind of amused at each iteration of the series becoming more and more like a Michael Bay movie than the last. Of course, most CoD fans themselves will skip the single player experience and spend all of their time playing multiplayer, making this entire presentation completely pointless. Of course, who cares what I think, Modern Warfare will sell millions even with Battlefield 3 as their competition. One thing I can say about the game though is that it looks stunning… though so does Battlefield 3.

Tomb Raider

Unlike Modern Warfare 3, the new Tomb Raider managed to show off a game that was not like the previous in the series. There is definitely something different about Lara and it’s not because this game is a prequel to all the others that came before it. This new Tomb Raider borrows a lot of the cinematic flare I’ve experienced previously with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Dead Space 2. Some fans of the series may not like where this may lead the game and the series in the future, however I feel that this strange cross-pollination is a good thing just as long as this Tomb Raider is able to keep enough of what made past games so enjoyable as well.

It’s a strange balance that they’re going for and although the demonstration did look pretty good, when I think about it, it did seem like too much of a guided experience than perhaps what players would be used to. Hopefully this isn’t true of the full game because unlike most other Tomb Raider games, I’m actually interested in buying this one. And again, this game looks visually awesome too…

EA Sports for Kinect

I’m not going to go into too much detail here since very few people who read this will care. However, I’m sure Kinect functionality on EA Sports titles will be quite a winner with a lot of casual and expanded gamers out there so EA is right on the money. Added to the the added functionality to standard EA games such as The Sims and they’ve got an easy winner happening… but onto more important things…

Mass Effect 3

As mentioned in the introduction to the Microsoft conference, Mass Effect 3 for the Xbox 360 is getting Kinect functionality. I’m sure a lot of Mass Effect fans are groaning right now and wondering why Mass Effect even needs such a thing. From where I’m sitting it seems like Microsoft is trying to convince developers to add Kinect functionality to their more traditional based games to try to convince the “hardcore” audience to embrace Kinect as something that’s not just for the expanded audience.

The voice commands during conversations seemed more than just a little silly, however I was intrigued by the ability Kinect gave players to command their companions during a battle. That said, most gamers aren’t going to want to talk to their TV for any reason during a game… maybe if Kinect added head-tracking to create that windowed 3D effect we’ve seen demonstrated on a lot of tech-demo’s it would’ve been a little more interesting.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

Where Mass Effect 3 focused on voice commands, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier went with the “use your body as the controller” motion controls aspect of Kinect. Suddenly you’re all going to become Tom Cruise in Minority Report, except without any sensor attachments on your hands. You’re going to be zooming through menus and enhancing your weapons with ease all with your bare hands.

It’s great that they’re trying to do all of this stuff, but aside from being a nifty tech demo or seeing it in a movie, I can’t really see something putting down their controller to suddenly start making hand motions for all of these menu interactions. Worse still was when they had the demonstrator try out the gun he had just customised on stage… I don’t want to relive it, it was horrible. I often wonder why people are so against motion controls starting with all the motion control hate Wii got back in the day and this demo just opened my eyes.

The guy looks like an idiot as he tried to fire his weapon, however I also felt that if Microsoft had made some kind of a Kinect specific controller, this would’ve all turned out to be a million times less silly than it looked on stage with the guy using his bare hands, opening and closing them to fire his weapon. There definitely is a fine line when it comes to motion controls and that line is determined but that really is a different article for another time.

Metro user interface for Xbox 360

It’s not a game and to be perfectly honest I don’t really care about the Kinect or Bing functionalities which are coming with it, all I’m really interested in is the fact that the Metro UI is coming to the Xbox 360. I just hope it’s sooner than later because I’m a big fan of this user interface and its implementation in Windows 8. Added to that the news that Microsoft will be bringing Xbox Live seamlessly to Windows 8 users makes this even more exciting for me… though on a purely video game related front… who cares. Push A to start playing…

Again, the problem here is if you’re a person who is willing to talk to your TV, however I can see the advantage considering that very few people have any kind of keyboard associated with their 360. It’s a lot easier to tell talk to your TV and say “bing porn” than to deal with the controller based on-screen keyboard or to fumble around and try to find whatever keyboard you happen to be using with your 360 or if it’s plugged in or turned on or whatever. Not that you’d look up porn on your 360.

I also like the YouTube integration coming to Xbox Live, however if it wasn’t for the fact that I have my PC hooked up to my HDTV, using it as second monitor, I personally have no use for YouTube on my 360. What I really like out of what they showed coming with the Metro UI was the Live TV services that Microsoft is pushing all around the world through the 360.

I’m also aware that this is a brilliant marketing strategy by Microsoft to indirectly get people aware of what Windows 8 can do for them in the future…

UFC Undisputed 3

I’ll be perfectly honest with you here… I really don’t care to see big sweaty men fight and wrestle with each other and all that… now if this were Foxy Boxing on the other hand, that’s something I could get into!

However, when they played the video for the game I was absolutely astounded by how well animated the characters were. It’s one of the few moments when I saw a video game and couldn’t tell if it was some kind of live-action FMV or actually the game engine itself. This is an excellent example of what can be achieved when you spend a fuck tonne of your time and money creating the animations for the character models in your game.

Gears of War 3

I’ve tried to be a fan of Gears of War but it’s never really grown on me… I don’t hate it, but I don’t really like it either. To be honest, I don’t really know what to think of it or how I can manage to get someone I know on Xbox Live to play some co-op with me since most people I know don’t seem to like the series.

Anyway, there’s really nothing new to report on the Gears of War 3 front since they showed it off last year. Another small demonstration on stage with Ice-T for some reason. Game looks really good visually as is pretty much everything being released these days… what more can I really say?

Ryse

It looks like last years reveal of Project Kingdoms has made a comeback to E3 with a proper title and a more clear idea of what the game is all about… which is hacking and slashing away at everything that comes near you. It looks to be another one of a long line of on-rails Kinect games that requires the player to kill everything in their path and kill some more. I’m interested to see more of this game just to see if it will actually be successful in sparking an interest in playing or even buying the game. Who knows, but it looks like a lot of developers are trying their hand at different kinds of Kinect games just as other developers tried to see what they could do with Wii.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

Everyone knew it was coming and it’s going to be interesting if 343 industries can manage to remake the original Halo without making it seem awkward. I do hope that after they finish with the remake of the first Halo, they’ll go back and create a remake for Halo 2 as well instead of saving it for November 2014. I also feel that they should really save Halo 4 and the new trilogy for the next Xbox system, but I’ll go more into that when we talk about Halo 4 later on.

Forza Motorsport 4

Yet again, another visually beautiful game that now has Kinect functionality added to it thanks to Microsoft’s aggressive campaign to convince the “hardcore” that Kinect is also for them too. Though aside from a nice trailer they didn’t really go into too much detail, however if you dig a little deeper you’ll find that head-tracking is one of the things that you’ll be getting if you have a Kinect hooked up to your 360 while playing Forza. That said, the lag seen on that video is horrendously bad…

Fable: The Journey

When I first saw the demonstration of this game it looked like just another on-rails Kinect game, however we’re assured that the game is definitely NOT on-rails. Again, I personally think this is yet another title that could benefit from some kind of Kinect specific controller to help developers out… just a little. I certainly don’t want to be leaning in all directions just to make my character move when I could easily do that with my thumb on an analog stick.

Minecraft

One of the more interesting announcements to come out of E3 is that Minecraft is coming exclusively (in terms of consoles) to the Xbox 360 and will (like pretty much everything else) use Kinect functionality. Though nothing more was said about that, instead our attention was put onto the more casual Kinect titles…

Kinect games

I’m not going to bother having different sections for the Kinect games… I know, I’m terrible but like casual and expanded audience games on every other platform, while I think they’re great nothing about them interests me personally at all. There were lots being shown off including Disneyland Adventures which will be great fun for kids and families. Then there was a closer look at Kinect Star Wars which seems as uninspiring as it did when it was first shown off at last years E3… yet again, another Kinect game that could’ve used a Kinect specific controller set. Also, there is one aspect about that game that does piss me off though… it has pod racing, but it’s not PROPER pod racing like in Episode 1 Racer we had years ago. It’ll be some crappy “tilt to drive” control scheme and LucasArts will say “hey, look at this, we gave you a pod racer game like you asked!” NO YOU DIDN’T!

Anyway, after that the Cookie Monster introduced Tim Schafer to the stage who has been busily developing Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster. That game is overflowing with colourfulness and cuteness and is going to be a kindergarteners favourite game very soon. Also, I’d just like to say for the record that the little kid who was part of that simulated family on-stage was really, REALLY creepy. I don’t know why but that kid was creepy.

One of the more interesting things shown that is Kinect related was Kinect: Fun Labs, an application available on the Xbox 360 that will allow you to try out different Kinect fuelled experiences video game developers and regular people out there on the internet have created using Kinect’s abilities. One of the Kinect enabled creations shown off on stage was an avatar creator that was essentially a much more advanced version of the little application you got on your 3DS to make your own Mii using the inward facing camera. The camera on Kinect on the other hand is able to capture not only your face but your proportions and clothing as well.

Other neat Fun Labs applications were shown off and however I’m sure there are a lot more interesting things to be seen in Fun Labs that they didn’t show on stage. If I had a Kinect I’d go and see for myself, however I’ll have to wait for the day when that one game that convinces me to buy a Kinect is finally released.

Okay, getting tired of talking about Kinect games now… but you can’t deny that there’s a lot of people who are going to enjoy all of those sports titles and Dance Central 2… just not me. Now onto something a lot more interesting…

Halo 4

He’s back… though perhaps not in the order than I wanted him to return. As I said before in the anniversary section above, I really don’t think Halo 4 should be released or even revealed so soon. To be perfectly honest, I want 343 Industries to focus all of their attention on remaking Halo 1 AND 2. The first remake can come out this year and then the remake of Halo 2 the next year… then they should have revealed to the world that Halo 4 would start a new chapter for the Halo franchise on a new system… Microsoft’s next generation system.

I feel that this would’ve been a perfect and killer launch title for the system and would also put a final closing marker on the Human-Covenant war depicted in Halo Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach. Halo 4 doesn’t belong on the Xbox 360 simply because it should be marking a new beginning for Halo. Of course that’s just my opinion but whatever…

Sony Press Conference

Sony’s came to the conference with as much fire and vigour as they could muster considering what they’ve been through the last couple of months with the hacking of PSN. They clearly had quite a lot to go through in their conference and they didn’t waste time. Again, Sony pushed support for 3DTV just as they did last year, showed us more PlayStation Move enabled content and also introduced us officially to PlayStation Vita.

The marketing spin they laid on thickly last year was shed in favour of showing us more games and how they were unique on PlayStation 3 compared to other platforms. In fact, Sony has convinced me that perhaps with PlayStation Move, I’ll buy some of my multi-platform games for my PS3 instead of my 360 like I usually do.

To add to the mix, Sony had a few small surprises in the form of their PlayStation 3D Display and PlayStation Suite as well as the big surprise of the low, low price of the PlayStation Vita. This is a very different Sony from the one that came to E3 last year since they kept Kevin Butler in his imaginary hole this year and stuck to the real content.

It was a very good showing which is why I’ve tied Sony in 1st place with Nintendo. Read on to find out in more detail what they showed off and then to the Nintendo section to find out why they tied with Sony…

You can watch the Sony Press Conference through GameTrailers.com:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Now here’s a closer look at the key moments of their conference in the order they were shown…

PSN apology

After a lengthy video clip showing off everything Sony has to show off at this years E3, Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America took stage to offer a few words about the whole PSN fiasco that had occurred earlier this year. I’m really glad this was the first thing Sony came out and dealt with before they tried to show off their line-up for the rest of the show and they did it wonderfully.

Despite what criticisms people may have for Sony, they did handle that whole PSN hacking situation as best as any company could do under the circumstances and we’ve all come away from this whole thing with a new appreciation for Internet security.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

Like the first two Uncharted games before it, Uncharted 3 looks brilliant, though to be perfectly honest it is starting to show its age compared to some other games out there that are being released. I’m sure there’s going to be a number of really large scenes in the game that’ll blow us all away but I’m talking about the smaller finer details such as some of the small animation inconsistencies and such. Nothing to make a big deal about but after three games you tend to scrutinise these things a little more.

The whole 3D aspect of the game would be nice if I had a 3D HDTV, but I’m not planning to buy one of those any time soon since they’re a waste of money and I have a perfectly good HDTV in front of me right now. Also, I hope multiplayer is a lot more compelling than what was in Uncharted 2… I didn’t really care for it in that game. Of course, just as the trailer depicts, the single-player experience is obviously going to be totally kick ass so you won’t have to worry about whether you’ll enjoy the multiplayer or if you can be bothered with 3D or not.

Resistance 3

Oh boy, here’s another series on PlayStation 3 that just keeps on getting better and better. The next instalment of Resistance, like a lot of other games coming out, looks awesome… and thankfully Resistance is moving away from that whole dull “next-gen” grey/brown filter and actually adding some damned colour and life to this next game. This game really does show off what the PlayStation 3 is capable of when a developer who knows the system inside and out makes a game for it… and after all these years, Insomniac Games REALLY does know what they’re doing with that system.

Also I’ll say it again, while this game supports 3D, I’m sure most of us aren’t going to be able to experience it unless we’re really aching to go out and buy a 3D HDTV or have one already. On the other hand, games like this really want me to go out and buy a PlayStation Move + Navigation controller since I know how well traditional games can work with the Wii Remote + Nunchuk… that and I’m not a fan of the DualShock controller, never have been.

So yeah, I’m definitely going to be buying that Resistance 3: Doomsday Edition that includes the PlayStation Move and Navigation Controller bundles with the game as well as that neat gun shell accessory… which I probably won’t be using, but who knows, maybe it’ll be awesome and I will use it.

God of War: Origins Collection

The announcement of this collection is kind of amusing for me simply because of the trend I’m noticing of former PSP games being turned into PS3 games. But that’s a good thing, I’d much rather play God of War: Ghost of Sparta and Chains of Olympus as well as other former PSP titles on the PS3 than on their original platform. Hopefully games such as Valkyria Chronicles II and III will jump ship too… one can only hope.

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection

Of course, the collection everyone really wants isn’t the God of War one… it’s the HD remaster of Ico and Shadow of Colossus. I’m so glad Team ICO is putting in the effort to bring us this collection because my PS2 version disc of Ico has stopped working and I never actually owned Shadow of Colossus. Now everything will be set right… also, for the many people who missed out on both games, this is a second chance to own the magic.

I do want to ask though… where’s The Last Guardian?

PlayStation 3D Display

Now here’s something different and interesting that Sony is trying to do with it’s whole 3D campaign. A cheaper option for people to get into the whole 3D gaming and movie craze that’s been going around. The price of 499USD sounds pretty good since it includes a nice 24″ display as well as a pair of those 3D glasses, a copy of Resistance 3 and a HDMI cable. Not only that, but it also has the ability to eliminate two player spilt-screening by allowing each player to view a different image through their 3D glasses.

It’s great, I like it… however it’s definitely not for me. I already have a 40″ HDTV that may not be capable of 3D video playback, but it’s still a very nice TV. Also, I really have no use for eliminating two player split-screen games with the technology combo of this TV and the glasses because I only really play single-player games on my PS3. Finally, the biggest thing about this TV is that it is purely a display and cannot be classed as a television since it doesn’t have a digital receiver to allow it to watch broadcast television.

That said, this is perfect for people who want to kick their kids off of the main TV onto a secondary TV so they can play their PS3. I’m sure other people could see other reasons to buy this however I foresee this being sold in very limited quantities since it’s too much of a specialised device.

NBA 2K12

While Microsoft teamed up with EA Sports to show off what could be done with Kinect, Sony has teamed up with 2K Sports to do the same with PlayStation Move. Kobe Bryant came on stage to do his thing for NBA 2K12 and reminds us just how awkward these whole celebrity appearances can be. I’m still trying to figure out why I should care about Ice-T making an exclusive song for Horde mode on Gears of War 3. In any case, it’s nice to see the Wii Remote being used in HD gaming.

Medieval Moves: Dead Man’s Quest

During the demonstration for this game I made it a particular point to look really closely at the demonstrator’s left hand while he was playing. It was empty which means no Navigation Controller to control where you want to go… which means this is yet ANOTHER on-rails game being shown off at E3. So yeah, nothing really impressive here… unless there really is something impressive about this and I’m just not getting it. Please let me know if that’s the case.

It is interesting to note that the motion controls for this game are a lot more… theatrical than most. It was more like he was playing a Kinect game than a Wii clone…

inFAMOUS 2

It’s kind of strange to have inFAMOUS 2 return to E3 2011 considering the fact that the game was being launched that very week. I consider E3 to be more about what’s coming in the future and not what’s just about to hit right now… by E3′s standards inFAMOUS 2 should be old news by now and should never have been part of the conference, but I guess it is a series Sony is trying to push out there.

I won’t bother trying to add another little section for it, but Sony is really pushing Move content on to as many titles as they can, much like Microsoft is doing with Kinect… though I thought LBP2 already had Move integration from the beginning… oh well.

Starhawk

I like the idea of transforming mecha since I’m a huge fan of Macross, though I’m still not much of a competitive gamer any more so I’m on the fence about Starhawk. Perhaps if there was enough to persuade me to buy it I just might. Actually I’m kind of interested to know just how much success Sony has had with games like Warhawk and MAG that are totally based around the online element. Must be good business if Warhawk is getting a sequel…

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

I’ll admit it straight up… never in my life have I played a Sly Cooper game and I know absolutely NOTHING about the series or what it’s about or what makes it so great. If anyone wants to educate me about it, you’re welcome to.

DUST 514

Here’s something interesting, an FPS MMO set in the EVE universe which will come exclusively to the PlayStation 3 but will also feature support for NGP (which you all know by now is called PlayStation Vita). I’m interested to see what kind of connectivity the game will actually have with Vita, though from the looks of the handheld system itself it may actually be a full portable version of the PS3 game so you can get into the MMO action on the go. Very nice…

BioShock Infinite

BioShock Infinite looks as gorgeous as ever with its vibrant colours and really nice art style. I’ve bought the two original BioShock games for the Xbox 360… as as fate would have it I also own both of those games for PC through a Steam sale bundle. The only thing that’ll really make me buy this game for the PS3 is if it has Move support… oh look, it does. Well, here we go, I guess I’ll be getting BioShock Infinite for the PS3 now, though maybe I don’t need yet ANOTHER copy of the first BioShock.

If Sony can do this with more multi-platform games then they can successfully get me to stop buying multi-platform games for the Xbox 360… But wait, BioShock for Vita? You have my attention…

More Move games…

They’re just rattling through a bunch of games that’ll have PlayStation Move support so there’s no reason to really go through them all in their own sub-headings. However, as I said above, Move support is a very persuasive tool to get me to look at buying multi-platform games on the PS3 instead of the 360, so the more the merrier, I guess. Lots of exclusives and lots of Move supported games. Very nice, Sony.

With titles like Saints Row: The Third, two Star Trek games, SSX, Need For Speed: The Run and Battlefield 3 which includes Battlefield 1943, Sony’s got a lot happening for them at the moment… Also, if that Star Trek game plays and feels anything like Mass Effect 2 then I’m very interested.

PlayStation Suite

I’m not 100% sure but I’m pretty sure I first heard a little about PlayStation Suite when Sony announced their new Android based tablets, the S1 and S2 which would be running a customised version of Android Honeycomb and would give people the ability to play PlayStation games on the devices. I wonder if Sony is maybe thinking about expanding this to other non-Sony brand Android devices such as the slew of Honeycomb tablets being released on the market this year.

I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see where they take this thing.

PlayStation Vita

Finally we get to the really good stuff… At first I was sceptical of the NGP, now called PlayStation Vita because I thought that with all of the power and input devices crammed into what can only be described as a thick brick of a system, it’d end up costing people an arm and a leg. However, Sony has learned many hard lessons over the years with both the PS3 and PSP and they’ve surprised me in a very good way at the price of the system.

While the system does come in two models, a WiFi only variant at 249USD and then a 3G/WiFi version priced at 299USD, I’m going focus on that WiFi only version since I’m sure very few people are going to be willing to sign up on a 3G contract for it.

The price of the WiFi only model is exceptional for many reasons. To begin with, it’s pretty damn good value for everything you get both hardware wise as well as all of the online and wireless services Sony has packed into the system, but more importantly it is the exact same launch price as the Nintendo 3DS which means that Sony is right on Nintendo’s heels for this next generation of portables. Now all Sony needs to do is come up with a variety of games that will rival the line-up coming to the 3DS in the near future.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss

I have to say, they chose one hell of a game to show off for their introduction into what Vita is all about and what it can do. Uncharted: Golden Abyss looks stunning and you can’t even tell the difference between it and Drake’s Fortune on the PS3.

While the game looked great, I was a little taken aback by the touch controls and what can only be described as an oversimplification of the gameplay mechanics for Uncharted. Of course, you don’t HAVE to use these touch controls as was demonstrated so I guess when it comes time for me to play the game, I can easily just keep my hands away from that touchscreen.

That said, while most of the action orientated touch elements of the game don’t interest me, I can see the benefit of reloading and picking up weapons with the touchscreen since Vita doesn’t have as many buttons as the DualShock. I’d really like to see what other features they have for the game especially the rear touch-panel and how they’ll use that in the game. In fact, I’d like to see how a lot of developers end up using that rear touch-panel for all of their different games that will be developed for the system.

Ruin

Now here’s another cross-platform game coming to both Vita and the PS3 which seems very interesting. I’m really liking the level of interaction Sony is forging between these two systems and how you can seamlessly switch from one platform to another and continue the game. While DUST 514 talked about it, Ruin is showing us exactly how it’ll work and it’s looking great.

ModNation Racers

I’m not really a fan of the ModNation Racers series but all of Vita’s control inputs is a great thing for this game… and I really don’t have much more to say about it other than it looks to work exceptionally well for the system. Oh, again, nice PS3 to Vita interaction again by allowing people to access all of the ModNation Racers PS3 content on the Vita version. Not only that but Wipeout 2048 is also jumping into the mix and allowing 8 player races together using both the PS3 or Vita as their system of choice.

LittleBigPlanet Vita

While I’m standing by what I said about the touch controls for Uncharted, I’m actually really enthusiastic about what I’m seeing with LittleBigPlanet on Vita. I never really got into the PS3 versions of the games because I didn’t really like the controls, however with what the trailer showed off at Sony’s conference, this looks to be something I could possibly like a whole lot more than previous versions.

Street Fighter X Tekken

At this point in time you’re kind of thinking it’s Capcom and Street Fighter VS the entire world… well, these crossover games are really popular with a lot of people and it’s very understandable why. Of course, I really have no interest in Tekken and have never been a fan of the series so that means I have no interest in this game either… oh, well… at least the translator for this year wasn’t bored.

Looks great though, and adding Cole from inFAMOUS into the mix is a good thing for PlayStation fans.

Nintendo Press Conference

Compared to the other big console companies, Nintendo’s E3 showing was pretty small and lacking in big third party offerings. Instead they focused on their home grown stuff and started off the show by celebrating the 25th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda. For me this was a pretty big thing and the announcements they made were pretty significant.

The middle of the conference was all about the Nintendo 3DS with Iwata and Reggie tag-teaming to show off the first party titles Nintendo will be bringing to the mix later this year. A lot of great games were shown off including a short trailer of third party games. The best thing to come out of this part of the conference was the return of Luigi’s Mansion on the 3DS. It was a very misunderstood game on the GameCube so I’m glad it’s making a return.

Finally, Nintendo saved it’s third and final part of the show for it’s new upcoming home console called “Wii U”… I know most people weren’t convinced and in many ways I’m not either, but there’s a lot to talk about with Wii U and overall I think this is a really good direction Nintendo is going in provided they can pull it off perfectly. There really is no room for Nintendo to stumble now because they have a lot of competition in Sony and Microsoft that they can’t ignore.

Overall, Nintendo scored equal 1st with Sony due to Wii U, the amount of good looking games coming to the 3DS later this year and the celebration of Zelda’s 25th Anniversary which we’ll get to enjoy more of as the year progresses.

You can watch the Nintendo Press Conference through GameTrailers.com:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

The Legend of Zelda: 25th Anniversary

Okay, I’m a pretty huge fan of The Legend of Zelda series, so when Nintendo’s conference starts off with a live orchestra playing through a medley of the well known themes for the series and then finishing off with the theme for the upcoming game, Skyward Sword, it naturally brings a tear to my eye. As much as Super Mario is Nintendo’s most popular and well known character, I feel it’s The Legend of Zelda series that is Shigeru Miyamoto’s greatest triumph, so the celebration of its 25th anniversary is a really special thing for me.

Shiggy elaborates on how each platform is receiving its share of Zelda love. The 3DS has Ocarina of Time 3D but also, just announced, the 3DS virtual console will also be getting Link’s Awakening DX and is available on the 3DS eShop the very day of the conference. For those of you who don’t know, Link’s Awakening is considered to be one hell of a good Zelda title despite it being created for a handheld. I look forward to it being available on the 3DS since I never got to own a copy of the game legitimately.

But wait, there’s more! The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords will be coming to the DSi store in September and will be FREE. We’re talking about the GBA version of the game which includes local multiplayer… I don’t think they’ll modify the DSi version of the game to play online multiplayer which is probably why it’s free.

It gets better though, because Shiggy also goes on to announce that there will be 25th Anniversary Zelda Symphony Concerts being held around the world. I really, REALLY hope that one of the cities this concert will be held is Melbourne so that I can experience it for myself. Not only that but Nintendo will be releasing two music CDs. The first being the official soundtrack for Ocarina of Time 3D and the second being a symphonic soundtrack based on the concerts occurring later this year.

They didn’t go into any more detail, however we are also told that there will be other Zelda related things occurring over the year to celebrate the 25th Anniversary… wow.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

I wrote a hell of a lot about Skyward Sword in last years E3 mega entry so I won’t go into too much detail here, however I have noticed that the game has come quite a long way since it was first revealed last year. It’s hard to say for sure, but things do look a lot better and the game seems to play a lot better from what I’ve seen of people playing the demo at E3 through videos on the net. I really can’t wait to get my hands on it when it comes out because it’s going to be so damn awesome. I really do feel like Skyward Sword has the potential to be THE best Zelda game released so far for a number of reasons.

Before I go into that though, I really like the gold Wii Remote bundle that they’re going to be putting out with the game. Not only is it a really neat thing to have but it’ll also allow players who either don’t have the WiiMotion Plus accessory available or have the older version to upgrade to the built in version in this Wii Remote. It’s just too bad that they didn’t include a gold Nunchuk as well.

Anyway, I lied… I said I wouldn’t get down to too much detail but I really HAVE to talk about some of the things I’ve learned about the game during this year’s E3…

Story and setting

We’ve known since last years E3 that Skyward Sword is the origin story of the Master Sword, however with the new information we’ve gotten from this years E3, it looks like it may be the origin story for a lot of other elements. It’s been revealed in the latest trailer and the demo Skyward Sword demo stations around E3 that Link will be able to ride on a large duck-billed bird with red feathers in the skies surrounding his home town of Skyloft. For Zelda fans this is very significant because of the red bird emblem that has been on every Hylian Shield since Ocarina of Time. Not only that, but this may very well be the origin story of Hyrule itself and the establishment of the royal line which Zelda is a part of.

In Skyward Sword, we discover that Zelda is the daughter of one of the more important people in Skyloft, possibly the town leader (who I think resembles both the King of Hyrule from previous games and also Rauru, one of the sages from Ocarina of Time). As it is with The Legend of Zelda games, Zelda finds herself kidnapped and Link begins his adventure to get her back safe and sound. It’s all pretty basic stuff, but the more I see of Skyward Sword, the more connections I’m making with previous Zelda games.

Remember back to Twilight Princess at the later stage of the game when you discover from Ooccoo that there was once an ancient civilisation that lived in the sky and their descendants were the Hylians of that time. It looks like Eiji Aonuma and the rest of the Zelda team are using existing lore very well to craft the story of Skyward Sword and create a much more compelling game. I’m also interested to know just how this “Demon Lord” Ghirahim fits into the mix.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Skyward Sword also interests me very much. Each enemy encounter has been described as being a puzzle within itself because you can to think about how the enemy is defending itself and find the weak-point in their defences to defeat them. As I watched the many videos people have taken of themselves playing the demo, I suddenly realised that the sword combat in Skyward Sword reminds me a lot about the gameplay mechanics for Punch-Out!! It’s such a great comparison, a boxing game where instead of mashing the buttons you use your wits, figure out an opponents weakness and the opening to those weaknesses and then exploit it to win.

I’ve also gone into great detail in last years E3 entry about how much Skyward Sword borrows from Wii Sports Resort, but from what I hear coming from Shigeru Miyamoto during E3, it seems like this game may be borrowing from another game as well. Recently this game was described as being one giant dungeon where every area would have its own puzzles and challenges no matter where you went and that the game would encourage you to go back to areas you had already been to once you obtained new items. Does this not sound familiar to some of you out there? It certainly does to me because this is EXACTLY the kind of thing you do in METROID.

Not only that but we also found out that Link is able to find parts to upgrade his weapons and gear throughout the game. The more I think about it, the more I love it because it’s combining the things I love from one video game series and combining them with the things I love from another video game series.

But before I get too carried away talking about the Metroid connection, I’m really digging the fact that Link has a stamina bar for certain power actions Link can perform such as his ability to dash and his spin attack. I also like how they’ve given your shield a stamina bar as well so if you use it too much it ends up breaking. I really like that concept because it encourages players to think about their battle tactics and to actually dodge attacks. It’s certainly going to make long boss fights a lot more interesting, especially the ones near the end.

The use of WiiMotion Plus is excellent in this game and the best I’ve seen yet, not only does it give you some very interesting controls, but the enemy AI also uses the data being sent to anticipate your attacks and try to block them. I really can’t wait to play this game later this year.

Nintendo 3DS

Iwata came out on stage and teased us a little about Nintendo’s upcoming home console before leading us into the line-up for the Nintendo 3DS. Last year the 3DS wowed audiences by giving them an experience they hadn’t had before, however the hype has faded and now all people really want are the game and for developers including Nintendo themselves to hurry up and start releasing them for the system.

Seriously, the 3DS has been too damned quiet on the gaming front until just recently with the opening of the 3DS eShop. The system needs to show us what it’s got otherwise it’s going to be crushed by the very powerful competition that is the PlayStation Vita.

As Iwata left the stage, an on-stage video presentation popped up showing us upcoming 3DS games such as Mario Kart, Star Fox 64, Super Mario, Kid Icarus and Luigi’s Mansion 2. By the end of the on-stage video presentation Reggie came up and teased us a little more about Nintendo’s upcoming home console before going into more detail about the 3DS games we just saw.

Mario Kart

Another system, another version of Mario Kart… though I’m glad they’ve brought back the coins from older versions of the game but also added in some nice quirky features into the mix. Hopefully the online system available for the 3DS will make online Mario Kart races a lot easier than they were on Wii and the Nintendo DS.

Star Fox 64

It’s a shame that we’re getting excited for ports of old Nintendo 64 games, but I think Nintendo is realising for themselves that the best Star Fox is the one that came out for that system and there’s really nothing they can do about it but re-release it for the 3DS. I don’t really see online multiplayer being all that great considering that multiplayer on the original game wasn’t very good either. I wonder if flying using the motion controls of the 3DS will turn out to be any good… but Nintendo… DO A BARREL ROLL!!

Super Mario

There’s no denying that everyone loves a good Mario game and that there is rarely a bad one made. The version of Super Mario coming for the 3DS is bringing back the Tanooki suit so it’s definitely got a lot going for it. As I watched the trailer it seemed very reminiscent of the New Super Mario Bros. variations that have come out in the past (and future), but because it added in more motion toward and away from the camera thanks to the 3D effect allowing players to feel the depth of the environment, I did get a slight sense of Super Mario Galaxy in there too.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

While a lot of the other games shown off so far have had many sequels, Kid Icarus is one game that’s going to be harder to figure out because of its rarity and late return to the front-lines. The latest trailer released for the game showed off and a few cinematic moments and the meat of the gameplay which seems to be based off of Sin and Punishment (if you don’t know what that is, use Google).

I’m also interested to see just how well the 3-on-3 competitive multiplayer aspect of the game works and if that’ll end up being popular at all. It certainly does look pretty fun. As for the AR Card stuff, I can give that a miss… never really cared for that part of the 3DS experience.

Luigi’s Mansion 2

The final game on the 3DS line-up is the sequel to the old GameCube launch title, Luigi’s Mansion. I felt that the original game was so misunderstood and Luigi got a lot of unfair criticism over the game just because it wasn’t another Mario game. I’m glad that Luigi has returned to clean out more mansions of creepy ghosts and it looks to be a good fit for the 3DS… though I think it could work pretty damn well on Nintendo’s upcoming console as well.

More 3DS games

Before the Nintendo conference set off in its third and final leg to introduce its new home console, a trailer showing off future third party titles was shown. The games shown in the trailer were Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Ace Combat 3D, Tetris, Cave Story 3D, Resident Evil: Revelations, Driver: Renegade, Pac-man & Galaga Dimensions, Tekken 3D and Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D.

Reggie also went on to speak about the new 3DS eShop which opened the day of the conference, but really there’s nothing that special about it. It’s basically the same thing you get on Wii and DS and will feature 3DSWare games as well as Virtual Console games for the 3DS. Oh and for a limited time you get a 3D version of ExciteBike for free so grab that while you can. Oh, and there’s a free 3D Pokédex as well, though that’s no big deal.

Wii U

Finally, Nintendo goes on to unveil the next generation of its home console line, the successor to Wii called “Wii U”… and already you can tell the audience doesn’t know if they should clap or not but they do anyway. I’ll come out and say it, it is a very awkward name. While I found the original “Wii” name to be very novel unlike most people when Nintendo announced it many years ago, I can’t really say the same thing about Wii U… it just doesn’t feel right. Wii as a name was clear and simple and one syllable. Wii U sounds like some kind of grammatically incorrect name that I have trouble saying aloud because it just doesn’t sound right. I’m not talking about any of the stupid urine jokes people make either, it just doesn’t sound right. I wish they had just gone with a simple “Wii Plus” or something like that, would’ve been much easier on all of us.

But enough about the name of the system, what really defines Wii U is the controller. Some people call it the Tablet Controller or the Wii U Pad, I think I’ll use the name “U Controller” to describe it from now on. So as you can see above there’s a set of images that show off the U Controller and how it will work with and without the TV as well as how the Wii Remotes and all of your other Wii accessories are still coming along for the ride in the next generation.

When I first heard about the rumours and saw mock-up images of what people were coming up for the controller, the images I liked the most were of the controller looking like a tablet. So when Nintendo finally revealed what the controller actually looked like I liked what I saw, though upon closer inspection there is a hell of a lot of improvements you could make to this controller to make it a lot better than its current form. Of course, I’m saving that for another separate entry entirely so you have that to look forward to in the coming days. In the meantime we’ll look at the controller as it is.

In late 2005, an interview was held with Shigeru Miyamoto where he envisioned a console that didn’t need to use a TV. When the U Controller was finally unveiled it seems as if this dream has finally been realised. The introduction trailer showed us pretty clearly how you could easily switch the TV to another channel or off and play your games entirely on the controller’s 6.2″ screen which is streaming its content directly for the console itself.

Not only that, the screen itself is a resistive touchscreen that allows the use of a stylus as well as your hands, though unfortunately it’s not a multi-touch screen like many of the tablets and smart phones out there in the market at the moment. The reason for this seems to be because Nintendo wanted to be able to allow people to use a stylus with the controller which, as far as I know, isn’t possible with a capacitive touch screen unless you buy one of those really thick stylus pens which are horrible to use as a proper stylus.

Aside from the obvious tablet-like shape and huge screen in the middle (not the mention the two slide pads), the controller was obviously made with a more traditional form of gaming in mind and Nintendo has come out to say that it wants to bring back the “hardcore” audience back into the fold while still catering to their newer expanded audience. In an effort to do this Nintendo has made sure that the hardware inside Wii U is somewhat more powerful than what is found in both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Speaking of Nintendo and the competition, Iwata announced in the conference that the new Smash Bros. will have some kind of cross-platform functionality for the Wii U and the 3DS. This seems very familiar considering what Sony is doing with the PS3 and PSVita. I guess we’ll see how things work out on that front and whether it will be as popular as it seems to be on Sony’s side of the fence.

All of this is great and I love where Nintendo is going with their new home console, however…

Nintendo has a lot of problems to deal with

First I’m going to focus on the hardware inside the console itself. Nintendo has finally jumped into the High Definition realm with Wii U and will feature 1080p games… though it’s not known if these games will be 720p games upscaled to 1080p which is what 99.9% of the games this generation were on the 360 and PS3 or whether they’ll be true native 1080p resolution games. Either way, Nintendo is catching up on the hardware performance side of things and Wii U’s hardware, while not finalised, is said to be somewhat more powerful than the competitors consoles.

The problem with this is two fold. Firstly, having a console that’s somewhat more powerful than the competition is great because now developers can port over a tonne of content from the 360 and PS3 over to Wii U without too much effort and add in some extra functionality based on the U Controller. But that’s really not going to benefit anyone who has already invested all of their money in either of 360 or PS3… why would they want to buy games they already have on Wii U? Nintendo is trying to re-capture a lost audience with Wii U but all this will really do is give their existing audience something they didn’t have before.

The second problem to come out of this is that when Sony and Microsoft do end up revealing their next generation of home consoles, there’s an extremely good chance that whatever they come up with will end up eclipsing Wii U in terms of hardware specifications. Wii U will eventually end up in the same position that Wii was in this current generation and third party developers will shift their focus on Sony and Microsoft, only making games for Wii U when they want to exploit a certain niche.

Moving on to the issue of Nintendo and online services… from what we’ve been hearing it doesn’t sound all that great, mostly because Nintendo haven’t bothered to say much of anything about their online service for Wii U other than the fact that they’ll let third party developers decide how they want to do things. I don’t want to have to deal with Friend Codes on Wii U but at the same time I don’t want to have to have a number of different user accounts spread amongst various games just because Nintendo doesn’t want to have to deal with a unified system. I really don’t see Nintendo’s online paranoia fading away, especially after the whole PlayStation Network incident.

Then there’s the whole issue of keeping their promises about what the console is going to achieve. Remember when Wii was first unveiled and Iwata promised us that the console would be connected 24/7, the system would update its firmware all by itself without prompting as it was turned off and every day you’d wake up and there’d be some new content in one of your games? Never happened… there were quite a lot of promises made with Wii that never ended up happening.

Talking about the controller itself, I’m sure Nintendo will come up with a lot of great ideas, though if what happened to Wii is anything to go by, you can bet that most developers are going to end up coming up with some really uninspiring uses for the U Controller… though maybe not. The strange part of this whole dynamic with Wii U and the U Controller is that the functionality of both devices working together is possible with the PS3 and PSVita. Of course since both of those devices are sold separately it’s a lot harder to tailor-make games to use both of them at once… but that’s not really stopping them from adding a thick layer of cross-platform functionality between the two systems. It’ll be interesting to see how Sony’s plans will effect Nintendo and their plans for Wii U.

Finally, it doesn’t help that the third party game reel that was shown off had footage of PS3 and 360 games rather than the Wii U version so certain games. In fact, the only official Wii U game being shown off was LEGO City Stories (basically it’s LEGO Grand Theft Auto) and New Super Mario Bros. Mii which is pretty much just New Super Mario Bros. Wii with new levels and playable Mii characters… in HD.

There’s a lot of great things you can end up doing with this system and I can’t wait to see is revealed in the months to come, but at their showing at E3, Nintendo didn’t really have anything that compelling to set them off on a higher level than Sony. However, I do like the road Nintendo is taking with Wii U. I also like how they made it a point to get EA on stage with them… Dead Space 3 on Wii U? I’d like to see that…

Round-up

So here’s a very basic summary of what I spent too much time writing about above.

• 2nd: Microsoft
  Microsoft did nothing to convince me that Kinect is something I should invest in in the near future. They basically repeated the show they did last year with a newer line-up of games… and sure, Halo CE Anniversary and Halo 4 is great and everything, but it’s nothing THAT exciting.
• 1st: Sony and Nintendo
  In contrast to Microsoft, both Sony and Nintendo did a lot more to convince me to invest in their future projects. Sony made me want PlayStation Move enabled games and Vita looks like one hell of a portable console. Nintendo also gave me a lot to look forward to on the Zelda front as well as their future home console, Wii U.

So there we go…

And there we have it, the end of this entry… but wait, there’s more! I’ll be posting up a more detailed entry about the U Controller and also a second part to this E3 entry focusing on games not shown at the Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo conferences.

Hopefully I can get all of that up sooner than later and still have time to play some vidya, but in the meantime, I hope you guys enjoy this entry.

Of course, I’m not saying this in a “woe is me, for the government will never acknowledge that gamers are adults” kind of way… I’ve actually come to the realisation of the obvious. We’re not getting an R18+ rating down here because we really don’t NEED it to begin with… though not for the reasons the people who oppose the rating for video games in this country would have you believe.

So here we go…

What are we fighting for?

Everyone in the gaming community is up in arms every time a story breaks about how one of the Attorney Generals of this country says more review is needed before anything can happen or that they have a moral objection to an R18+ rating or whatever. You don’t really need to follow the trail of this debate which has been raging on for over a decade because all you really need to do is read one news story about it and you’ve got the jist of what’s going on… which is absolutely nothing, it’s a stalemate.

On one side you have people who believe that introducing an R18+ rating will bring in a flood of new games that are more violent and graphic than ever. The entire world is waiting with baited breathe for Australia to allow them to pervert their children in as many ways possible and corrupt their fragile little minds. Corporate bullying of the state is one thing, but the majority of this group seem to think that video games will turn their children into murderers or just simply disturb them to the point where they go catatonic or start taking drugs… but hey, what they’re saying is probably true. I’m an avid gamer and I turned out pretty warped… and thanks to the fact that in a few years I’ll be becoming a teacher, I’ll be further corrupting their children’s fragile little minds. Awesome.

Then on the other side, you have the supporters of the R18+ rating that come in a different assortment of flavours… Those who either want to just balance things out… after all, we have an R18+ rating for movies, why not video games too? Those who oppose any form of censorship, the people who wants to be recognised as an adult by the state and for them to stop looking down at you like a child just because of your chosen hobby. Or maybe you’re just worried that one of your favourite games is going to be refused classification and we end up getting a lame edited version. Oh, and also the few people who use the “think of the children” argument on this side too… after all, having an R18+ rating for video games will make it harder for kids to get a hold of the more violent video games out there, right? Maybe, who knows…

What’s really happening…

I’ve complained a hell of a lot about this in previous entries, but as I said before, I’ve begun to realise how pointless all this debate really is! I mean, take a look at the list of all of the games that have been refused classification in Australia in recent years and show me a game on there that isn’t above mediocre quality. Now, I’m sure by now every single person has latched onto Left 4 Dead 2, and I agree, this is a top quality game that has been caught up in this mess… Though, (and no offence to the people who bought L4D2 on consoles) who in their right mind would want to get Left 4 Dead 2 on a console when they can just get someone to gift them a copy over Steam which allows them to play the fully uncensored version of the game? Well, that and the PC version is superior in every way to begin with…

The truth of the matter is that every game that MATTERS has gotten through into this country no matter how violent, gory and riddled with sexual references they may be. I mean, a perfect example is Duke Nukem Forever which features all kinds of sexual references (Fuck yeah, double blowjob by schoolgirls!), and then scores of violent video games where we massacre pixel-born characters with various weapons to the point where most of us would be considered to be mass murderers if the law classified the people in these games as REAL people.

What are we really missing out on? Nothing! And if one of the games on that short list is a game you’re interested in, what’s REALLY stopping you from getting it? What, just because it’s not on a store shelf you suddenly can’t buy stuff online and have it imported? All PS3 games are region free and so are many Xbox 360 games. PC is no problem at all with digital copies of games downloaded through networks like Steam. No one can do anything to you if you’ve been gifted a game on Steam… or you could just pirate stuff if you’re into that.

If the state wants to release all the graphically violent video games in this country under the MA15+ banner, then I say, let them! If there are people who want to believe that we’re endangering our children with the introduction of an R18+ rating, let them continue believing that! Everyone can think whatever they want whether they are for or against the R18+ rating… but for me personally, I’m getting all the games I want, though at a higher price than I’d like to be buying them for, but that’s a different issue entirely.

What we SHOULD be afraid of…

That said, there are things we should be worried about and really be up in arms about… for example, the plan to censor the Internet. We really don’t want that, especially when it comes to the fact that a lot of us like to import our video games using online retailers and eBay. After all, if the Internet censor is implemented, what’s to stop the state from blocking those who haven’t figured out a way to get around it from buying certain video games that they may object to?

Another reason why we should be worried is that it’s going to cause the Internet in Australia to be extremely inefficient and slow it down quite a bit… and I’m not talking about less bandwidth, I’m talking about latency… basically it’ll make online gaming a bitch. (Oh yeah, and if anyone wants to know what the difference between bandwidth and latency is… basically, if we were to use the analogy of two people through balls to each other… Bandwidth is how many balls a person can throw to the other person at once time. Low bandwidth means a person can only through one or two balls to their partner while high bandwidth means they can throw five or six. Latency on the other hand is how fast they can throw those balls to the other person assuming that no matter how fast the person threw the balls, the other person would be able to catch them. Got it now?)

Anyway, censorship of the Internet is a bad thing for gamers for many reason and for the general populous of Australia or any other country for that matter. If you want to fight the good fight, I personally think that’s a more important battlefield than the R18+ matter which, in my mind, is more symbolic than anything else.

Throughout most of its history as a video game company, Nintendo has always had some sort of connection to a western developer creating games under the Nintendo banner. At first this “champion in the west” was British based developer Rareware who most of us have come to know from the games they developed for Nintendo during the 90s. However, Rare’s time has passed and a new champion, this time from Texas, has taken their place… Retro Studios.

Before talking about Retro, let’s have a small look back at Rare…

Rareware

The 90s was the golden age for Rare and the games they created for the SNES and N64 took them to the height of their fame. Their partnership with Nintendo offered them many opportunities, and for awhile it was good. As gamers, we got a lot out of it… Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye and Banjo-Kazooie to name their big three. Unfortunately, the partnership that produced all those wonderful games ended after 7 years as a number of key employees left Rare, essentially gutting the company.

In 2002, the company that once stuck so close to Nintendo became a first party developer of Microsoft after the founders of Rare and Nintendo sold their stock to Microsoft for US$375 million total. Quite a deal for everyone concerned. Nintendo was able to lose a bit of dead weight and Microsoft gained what it thought to be a powerful ally in its push into the console gaming industry. It seemed like a good move at the time and would allow Rare to expand into areas that it wouldn’t have been able to with Nintendo… I’m sure that was the plan anyway…

However, as much as we all like to remember Rare for all they accomplished back in the 90s, it seems the company that had so much life in those days has become more of an undead zombie as of late. The name and logo are there but in a new form and the Intellectual Properties it has created over the years are floating around… somewhere… but there really isn’t much going on with Rare any more. Microsoft has mostly delegated them to utility creation with the Xbox Live Avatars and Kinect development. Aside from their effort to bring back Banjo-Kazooie in 2008, they really aren’t bothering to do anything with their established franchises or created new ones… but how can they? The development studios under Rare have been continually downsized by Microsoft, making them unable to create the larger games as they did in the past.

Everyone who made Rare something special are now gone and the company is a shadow of its former self… it is truly a sad place to be in for what was once considered to be a great console developer. However, back at Nintendo, there are many gamers who see a new development studio as being “the new Rareware”…

Retro Studios

Retro Studios was founded in 1998 by former Iguana Entertainment (the folks who created the Turok series) founder Jeff Spangenberg and allied itself with Nintendo, promising a number of mature games for Nintendo’s next generation system which became the GameCube. At the time Retro had four games in the works, including an American football simulator called NFL Retro Football, a vehicular combat game called Car Combat, an unnamed action-adventure game, and an RPG called Raven Blade. The studio was in shambles and none of these games where getting anywhere, it looked as if the studio was digging its own grave not long after it had been born…

It actually amazes me that Nintendo decided to grant Retro Studios a chance to develop a Metroid game, though from what I hear, it mostly had to do with a prototype first-person shooter engine that was shown to Shigeru Miyamoto in early 2000. Whatever it was, it set Retro into a new direction which, at first, was a rough road. After a short Metroid Prime teaser was shown during Space World 2000, all of the games they had been working on previously had been cancelled to make way for the development of Metroid Prime during 2001. Later, in early 2002, bought out Retro Studios for US$1 million, essentially creating a replacement for the void about to be left by Rareware.

When talk began about a new and unknown studio working on Metroid Prime, a lot of people were very worried and didn’t know what to expect. It had been a number of years since the release of Super Metroid in 1994 and this game was being handled by a Western developer as what appeared to be a first-person shooter! Lucky for us, it turned out to be one of the greatest games released on the GameCube and indeed for that generation. Later Retro goes on to creating two more games in the Prime series as well as The Metroid Prime Trilogy… the respect they gained for the quality of these games is well earned.

The future of Retro Studios

However, the fact is that Retro has only really made three games and a compilation all using different versions of the same engine over a period of eight years. It’s going to take a lot more than what they’ve done so far for them to really come close to what Rareware achieved with Nintendo. That said, Retro Studios has proved with Donkey Kong Country Returns that they had what it took be an effective replacement to Rare… the real question now is if they can surpass Rareware.

We know Retro is fully capable of creating quality games from well-known Nintendo franchises as they did with Metroid and Donkey Kong… but we still don’t know whether they’d be able to stand as strong with an original IP under their belt. At this stage, it looks as if Nintendo wants to avoid making the same mistake they did with Rare by giving them too much leeway in creating their own IPs only to have them slip out of their hands if Retro ever leaves Nintendo for whatever reason.

Hopefully we’ll get to see what new game will be coming from Retro Studios during E3 2011 or 2012… will it be a new Star Fox or new F-Zero? Will it be a Kid Icarus now that he’s back on the scene? Or will Retro finally be given the chance to create its own games. At this point in time, I have no idea what I’d like to see from Retro Studios… I have gotten a hell of a lot of enjoyment out of their games so far, so I have faith in what they can achieve… yet I’m always holding my breath with each new game.

So far Retro Studios has been with Nintendo longer than Rareware had, however Rare has a lot more to show for it than Retro. That said, Rare used to be a much larger developer than Retro ever was and is now… but perhaps slow and steady is the way to go for Nintendo’s new champion in the west.

You guys have been following this for awhile now thanks to these previous entries:
I fucking hate this country!
I fucking hate this country! Part 2
I… This country confuses me! (IFHTC! Part 3)

But it looks like there is still some hope left in this country…

This story, titled Game over for children, is written by national political writer Simon Kearney for The Daily Telegraph on 5 December 2010.

CHILDREN will be banned from playing the world’s most popular computer games, including Grand Theft Auto and Call Of Duty, after the Gillard Government approved classifying them R18+.

The federal Cabinet has approved an adult rating for computer games after finding that many classified as suitable for 15-year-olds in Australia had been ruled suitable for adults only overseas.

As many as 50 games are now available to children as young as 15 but should rightly be played by over-18s only.

Some of the world’s top-selling titles, including Grand Theft Auto and Call Of Duty, will fall under the new rating.

Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor will take the Government’s new position to a meeting of state and territory attorneys-general this week to seek their approval in changing the games classification system.

“Children and teenagers shouldn’t be exposed to the gratuitous sex, violence and adult themes that are contained in some computer games,” Mr O’Connor said.

“Over time, we’ve allowed games to get into the hands of 15-year-olds that would not have been available in comparable countries; that should not have happened.” And Mr O’Connor also gave a guarantee he would not allow games that had been banned in Australia to be approved for release under the new R18+ classification, if it is approved.

A change to Australia’s classification system requires the agreement of the states and territories as well as the federal government. Many controversial games have been approved for sale to over-15s after being modified slightly to avoid being banned.

One game, Left 4 Dead 2, is a first-person shoot-em-up, as they are known in the gaming world, that was initially banned, then changed to MA 15+ with a warning of “strong bloody violence”. Following the reclassification, the Classification Board received 17 complaints that the game was no different to the original.

Other games classified MA 15+ that attracted a large number of complaints included Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin.

Mr O’Connor said it was relatively simple for gamers to find ways of restoring the games to their original versions using special codes easily available on the internet.

If the Government gets the agreement of the states and territories, it would need to embark on consultations with the gaming industry, gaming advocates, the Christian lobby and various children’s groups to sort out how the new classification level would work in practical terms.

Mr O’Connor said he was not sure why it had taken so long for the Government to act on concerns that Australia did not have R18+ rated games.

He said the increasing convergence of films and games, including violent movie adaptations of games such as Resident Evil, had forced their hand to have comparable classification systems.

Source: Game over for children | The Daily Telegraph

Long story short, many members of the government are backing a move to create an R18+ rating for video games to mirror the current system enjoyed by films, however there’s still a long road ahead to get things rolling since the rating has to be approved by the Attorney Generals… this isn’t really a democratic process, but I still feel that there is some hope left after this endorsement.

Some of the comments from The Telegraph website on that story are hilarious though… I mean we have a gamers perspective on this, but a few of the comments are made by people who aren’t gamers and have an interesting difference of opinion that I didn’t quite expect.

I had to reconsider my position on MMO’s when BioWare and LucasArts announced Star Wars: The Old Republic… it’s pretty hard to resist… BioWare, Star Wars, the successor to Knights of the Old Republic… and the fact that it’ll be the ONLY decent Star Wars game to be released in a very long time make it something I really want.

Of course, since I have… had ZERO experience with MMO’s, it was going to be a little difficult for me to learn about the basics without feeling lost for most of the first couple of days of playing it. However, thanks to The Lord of the Rings Online, I’ve begun to gain a lot of valuable insights into MMO’s and I’ve begun to understand why they work the way they do.

Back in the day there were a few reasons why I never wanted to get dragged into the whole MMO scene. For one thing, it took up way too much time that I feel could be better spent playing a lot of other games. Right now I have quite a lot of games to finish and if I were to let an MMO take up all of my time, I’d never get any of them finished. Of course, my mind about that changed a bit after I realised how much time I spent playing Pokémon day in, day out… when the Pokémon bug bites, I tend to spend a month or two playing nothing but.

The second reason why I avoided MMO’s has to do with the costs that are involved with a lot of them. I feel that if I buy a game at the store, that’s the only price I need to pay to access everything about it. That’s why I hate useless DLC and stupid Limited Edition exclusives. It’s also why I don’t like subscription fees and such… but I do understand why they exist. I guess for me, nothing has really been worth it for me to want to pay that extra cash for that extra service. Hell, I’m amazed I even paid the extra money to subscribe to a Gold account on Xbox Live.

This is where The Lord of the Rings Online comes in… it didn’t used to be, but now it allows you to play the game for free which is very awesome and I thank Turbine, the developers of the game, for doing that because, frankly, I would never have bothered to try it if it didn’t have a free option. It’s a good system too, I don’t feel limited just because I chose the free option over the paid one. I’m still able to do everything in the game, it’ll just take a longer time for me to do EVERYTHING… which isn’t really a concern since I’ll stop playing it once TOR is released.

But now that I am playing it, I’m having a good time playing with my friends, Bob and Jae. Jae’s been showing me around the world and Bob’s been giving me lots of neat stuff. I’ve also been exploring on my own and spending time doing little quests and killing a bunch of stuff. I chose to start the game as an Elf Hunter… a female one… I was feeling pretty at the time… I like the idea of ranged attacks and killing the enemies long before they’re able to get near me. For TOR, I’ve decided to go with the Trooper class which is pretty much the same deal.

It’s been pretty fun so far, I’m starting to understand why people get sucked into these types of games… when The Old Republic is released I’m sure I’ll get sucked into that pretty badly, but hopefully by the time it is released I’d have finished the backlog of games I’ve yet to finish and take care of any other ones that are on the way. I’ll enjoy LotRO in the meantime and see what else I can get up to in the game. Right now I’m just a humble lv11 Hunter, but I really haven’t been going out of my way to play it… which I think is a good sign that I’m not easily addicted to things.

…now all I have are the memories of better days. In fact, some of them can be found on the Internet itself! I did a little digging around the forum of my old website, The Anime Crisis Center, and discovered some very interesting posts about how I felt about Metroid all those years ago. So, come back with me in time and let’s take a look at those ye olden posts…

Whatever inaccuracies, misinterpretations I had or just generally horrible spelling and grammar I had when I originally wrote these posts are all intact… so it’s kind of a little embarrassing to be going back and reading them, but whatever…

This first one is the opening post in a thread simply titled “Metroid” that was posted in The Anime Crisis Center back in 2006…

I guess I’m trying to be poetic here… or something.

Ugh… Metroid Prime Pinball was fun, and Metroid Prime Hunters was good for what it was… Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was pretty damn cool, though not the best of the Prime series… and who would have ever imagined that Nintendo would have ever released Wii versions of Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, let alone the Metroid Prime Trilogy with its awesome steel case!… I just wish things had gone differently and Other M hadn’t come into existence… yes, I spelt it correctly this time lulz.

I’m STILL waiting for this… ugh.

A few posts after the one above I posted the following response to the idea some people had about Metroid having a plot is a good thing.

In other words, I didn’t want Other M to exist before it did actually exist…

Back in those days I was pretty hard on Fusion… but whatever faults that game had still weren’t that bad. It still felt like a Metroid game, and that’s the least anyone asks for with the series.

I don’t think my views on this have really changed much over the years actually…

Yeah, Leon… what were you thinking? Sheesh!

Here’s a short one…

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this statement… he does die a fiery death in Other M but not before he fucks things up even worse than he already had before…

Here’s part on an interest post made a year and a bit later… The topic being discussed was how Samus was handled in Metroid Fusion vs other Metroid games…

I still believe that subtlety works best with Metroid… I mean, this isn’t Metal Gear Solid, things need to be toned down to a whisper for Samus because she’s a character that (at least what I thought) is meant to be masked behind the visor, therefore all of her characteristics that do show through would be subtle but apparent… and not a whining teenager writing in her pink dairy.

…Actually, reading through more of this thread, it looks like I have a whole discussion on this issue… here’s part of another post.

I loled when I read this because I had practically come up with a similar scenario in my Game Spotlight for Metroid: Other M.

I know I should probably get over this whole thing with Metroid and move on… and you’re right, I should. I’m moving on *looks around* I just wanted to post something really cheaply since I still have one more assignment left to complete for uni. I promise, the NEXT blog entry will be something I actually sat down and thought about for more than 10 minutes.

A lot of information about the Nintendo 3DS has been released over the past week including specs, pictures, hands-on impressions as well as a long list of games being developed for the system. There are a lot of people at E3 who absolutely love the 3DS and were amazed by its no-glasses 3D effect first-hand. People who weren’t lucky enough to attend E3 can only take their word for it… and that’s very unfortunate.

UPDATE: Eep, just a few minutes after publishing this entry I found out about this: Nintendo 3DS’s GPU: DMP’s PICA200.

When the Nintendo DS was released back in 2004 with its oddly shaped silver shell, it was quite the handheld revolution in many ways. With its touch screen display it opened up new gameplay opportunities not possible before and also allowed the streamlining of some existing gameplay. The built-in microphone and dual screens also opened up new ways of interacting and viewing games… a lot changed from old days of the Game Boy.

The DS has been out for six years and has sold approximately 130 million units worldwide. We all know what the DS is capable of but it’s still not clearly known what the 3DS is really capable of. There are many unknowns in regards to the system, but let’s take a look at what we know and the potentials of the technology in the device.

Note: The 3DS system that Nintendo showed during the E3 2010 event was a prototype, so there’s definitely going to be some changes made to the final version of the system.

3D gaming and cameras

Not having seen the 3D effects myself, it’s very hard to comment on them… however, from what I do know, the 3D effect doesn’t come easily and is the entire reason that the 3D slider located on the right of the screen exists. Reports from various sources say that there are moments when the 3D effect can be lost and you end up seeing a double image. Other sources say that you need to be looking straight at the screen without it being on any kind of angle AND have the 3DS at a certain distance for the 3D effect to be viewable. This will certainly make the system a little harder to play for some people, however you can turn the 3D effect down and even turn it off entirely using the 3D slider provided.

Another interesting tidbit concerns the resolution of the top screen. Official Nintendo specs say that the top screen resolution is 800×240 with 400px for each eye to create the 3D effect. The reason I mention this is because of a handful of games for the DS that have you holding the handheld device like a book. As I mentioned above, as soon as you turn the 3DS at any angle that isn’t straight on, the 3D effect is immediately lost. So, when you take those two factors into account, it’s not really helping the situation for developers who want to make games for the 3DS and have them laid out in that book format.

Moving on to the cameras; it’s nice to see the addition of dual cameras on the outside shell of the system. There have been many 3D camera devices popping up lately, most of which have been shown off during CES 2010 earlier this year. Nintendo has revealed to us that you will be able to take photo’s in 3D, but I’m also hoping that the 3DS will also allow people to take 3D video as well… that would be VERY nice if it were capable of doing so. Anyway, the specs on the Nintendo site say that the outer cameras can take pictures up to 640×480 which is nice. We have no way of knowing what the maximum resolution of the inner camera is at this point in time, however there were some tech demo’s using both the inner and outer cameras to demonstrate their various functions.

Dual screens

Satoru Iwata was quick to tell the audience at the Nintendo Press Conference that they had tried to enable touchscreen support for both screens. They apparently tried and failed at the attempt due to the negative impact it would have on the 3D effect enabled on the top screen. It would’ve been ideal to have both screens set up as both touchscreens and 3D enabled but there are obvious technological limitations that are yet to be overcome.

As I’ve stated in the 3D section of this entry, the top screen resolution is 800×240 with 400px for each eye to create its 3D effect. The actual viewable resolution is 400×240 for the top screen and a resolution of 320×240 for the bottom screen. In comparison, the resolution for both screens found on the DS are 256×192. The size of the top screen found on the prototype shown at E3 is 3.53″ with the bottom screen being 3.02″. In comparison, the bottom screen is actually smaller than the 3.12″ screens on the DS lite and 3.25″ of the DSi… in fact, it’s closer to the 3″ screens found on the original DS… which is strange considering the much higher resolution.

From the looks of things the vertical height of the bottom screen is the same size as the top screen, however I feel that the size of the bottom screen, in my eyes, is unacceptable considering what we’re used to with later versions of the DS. I’m hoping they change this in the final production model of the 3DS; I really don’t want to have to deal with any kind of downgrade when switching to the 3DS.

I personally feel that the bottom screen should be 400×240 just like the top screen and have the vertical height that is at least identical to the screens of the DSi… unfortunately, many developers have had the development kits for the 3DS for quite awhile and the bottom screen will keep its current resolution setting.

Controls and other features

The button layout for the 3DS is similar to the various versions of the DS with the obvious major difference being the D-Pad being moved to the secondary position and a new analog slider at a primary position. Many who have tried out the system itself have commented that the analog slider feels very nice to use with its concave design, large surface area and movement resistance. It’s been stated that the analog slider on the 3DS is far superior to the analog nub found on the PSP… which is a HUGE sigh of relief for everyone concerned. The D-Pad itself looks to be of the same design as the D-Pad found on the Wii Remote… hopefully it uses the exact same materials as well, I happen to like the way the Wii Remote D-Pad feels.

On the right there are the usual A, B, X, Y buttons as well as a power button which I assume functions with a delay timer so the player has to hold it down for a few seconds to turn the system on and off. This will make some people feel much safer in case of accidental button presses. The Start and Select buttons are now located underneath the touchscreen and appear to be touch sensitive buttons. In between the Star and Select buttons is a Home button which is an obvious influence from the Wii. I’m sure there are quite a lot of Wii elements added to the 3DS which we haven’t seen yet.

The front end of the system has a single 3.5mm headphone jack as well as power and charging indicator lights. On the DSi, players had the ability to turn the wireless for the system on and off using the options menu; on the 3DS the wireless switch is built into the hardware and is located on the right side of the system. On the left side there is a volume slider as well as an SD card slot similar to the one found on the DSi and DSi XL.

The backside of the system has the 3DS port which is also capable of taking in DS games, however I don’t know exactly how the port works to allow both… it may have to do with the notch found on 3DS game carts. Along with the game port is a slot to hold the stylus which is apparently going to be a telescoping stylus that is 4 inches when fully extended. However, one of the more interesting features of the 3DS seen so far which many people have mostly ignored is the addition of an IR port located next to the stylus port. From the looks of things, Nintendo liked the IR feature of Pok&ecute;mon Heart Gold & Soul Silver so much that they’ve got plans to use it in the future… or it could just be something that’s only featured on the prototype models.

And of course, the top section features stereo speakers as well as the 3D slider, inward facing camera and obviously the 3D screen… if you hadn’t noticed by now. Finally, the touchscreen itself, located on the bottom section, may not have any real changes made to it since the technology is the same, however judging from the higher resolution screen and smaller screen size than the DS lite, the sensitivity of the touchscreen may be higher to compensate for the change.

With all of that said, I should remind people that the design of the 3DS shown at E3 2010 was only a prototype and that the final version of the 3DS may have some changes which will effect the layout of the buttons and other features.

Motion controls

An interesting addition to the 3DS and one that wasn’t actively demonstrated at E3 are the motion controls. According to official specs, the 3DS has an accelerometer and gyroscope which gives it the same functionality as the Wii Remote with Wii MotionPlus.

The odd part is the effect the motion controls will have on 3D screen. As I’ve explained before, the folks who got to handle the 3DS in their own hands commented about how fragile the 3D effect could be at times. I find it odd that the 3DS would have motion controls with a device that loses its 3D effect whenever the system isn’t viewed straight on and at a certain distance.

Nintendo has stated that they’re aware of this issue so it’ll be interesting just what they’ll do about it with the final production model. However, if this issue isn’t dealt with it will mean that developers would have to work their way around it if they want to use both 3D and motion controls in their games at the same time.

System power

No official specifications have been released for the 3DS hardware, however there is obviously a substantial power increase from the DSi judging by the videos, screenshots and first-hand experiences from people who have played the system. Many speculate that the 3DS is on par with the PSP or is perhaps even more powerful than the system considering the fact that the 3DS has to display visuals on two screens as well as creating the 3D effect on the top screen. Other speculations suggest that the 3DS may be as powerful as the PlayStation 2, Dreamcast or possibly even as powerful as a GameCube or Wii.

From the looks of some of the screenshots released for the 3DS, it seems like this is quite a capable system that is ultimately limited by the small resolutions of its dual screens.

Above are two images showing screenshots of Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D “The Naked Sample” and compares them to screenshots of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PlayStation 2 and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for the PlayStation Portable. For this comparison I have preserved the resolution of each game to give a better idea of what you’re seeing… though, obviously the shots of the 3DS game won’t be exactly how it should be seen since it should have a 3D effect.

I’m not going to go into the intricate details when looking at these comparison shots since “The Naked Sample” isn’t a final game and was only shown as a tech demo for the 3DS… that and, as stated before, we can’t really see the 3D effect that the 3DS is design for. However, the screenshots I have posted up are so you can decide for yourself where the 3DS fits in all of this…

My personal belief is that the 3DS may turn out to be a mini GameCube… but I don’t have any proof to back up that statement; just my hopes…

Wireless connection and online

Nintendo did spend a few short moments at their press conference to talk about the new wireless features of the 3DS. Like the DSi, it will support IEEE 802.11 with WPA/WPA2 security settings. It’s obvious that it will support both B and G standards, of course there’s no way to know if it will support the new N wireless standard… would be nice, but there are doubts it’ll go that far.

The internet access is said to be a lot easier this time around with the 3DS having the ability to automatically connect to open wireless sources it detects without the need for configuring any settings. It’s also been stated that the 3DS can also access the internet as well as other 3DS systems to transfer game data even when the specific game isn’t in the system, all while in sleep mode. I’m thinking this could also mean that Nintendo could use this feature to spread firmware updates to 3DS systems not connected to the internet for whatever reason. If true, it would mean that anyone who has any “less than legal” devices or modifications for the 3DS will have to make sure to keep that wireless switch turned off permanently.

I’m hoping to see some interesting additions to the 3DS online system… but most of all, I’m hoping that Nintendo somehow does away with its crappy Friend Code system and moves towards a more Xbox Live type service… but free, of course.

Final thoughts

From what I hear, there wasn’t much in the way of playable games shown off during E3 2010. There was a port of Star Fox 64 as well as Nintendogs + cats and some nifty playable and non-playable tech demo’s. The different screenshots released during the expo showed off different types of visuals. Some were closer to the quality of the original DS while others looked like they were close to being roughly GameCube quality. Many have commented that the model for Pit from Kid Icarus: Uprising looks exactly the same as how he is seen in Super Smash Bros. Brawl… though we won’t know for sure how similar the two models are until we dump them both into an editing program and compare.

Having the 3D effect as well as the motion controls and analog slider is definitely going to open up many new gameplay possibilities… but for the most part we’re all going to have to play the waiting game to find out what developers really have. I’m sure there’s going to be an initial period where the games are only going to seem like small steps up from the DS, but I am hoping that at least a couple of them will show that the 3DS can do things the DS could never dream of.

There are still a lot of unknowns concerning the 3DS, but I’m sure we’ll end up finding out about most of them in the coming months… though the system won’t reveal all of its secrets until it’s finally released and all those tech-heads out there can take it apart to see exactly what’s inside.

While we do wait for the eventual release of the 3DS, Nintendo fans have a lot to play in the coming months on both DS and Wii… so it’s not like things are going to be dull.

As you can probably tell from the above image… Nintendo continues to laugh at the measure of their own success and their ability to print more and more money. It’s an unstoppable force unlike any we’ve ever seen and will one day consume the entire universe. Who will stop them? How can they be stopped? This is madness!

Of course, there were a lot of other great things being shown at E3 and this entry will go through everything that I have absorbed for the past few days…

In this entry I’m going to focus on the obligatory “Who won E3?” rankings out of the big three companies… so to tell us who won E3, let’s take a look at this next image which is OVER NINE THOUSAAAAANDD KB…

So why did Microsoft come third, Sony second and Nintendo the overall winner?…

Microsoft Press Conference

Microsoft came out in full swing with a pre-E3 event officially revealing Kinect (formerly “Project Natal”) with the help of Cirque du Soleil. The result was Microsoft giving everyone quite the acid trip that apparently a lot of press who attended did not want to be an active part of… Luckily, Microsoft didn’t have that level of ball tripping in their official E3 conference. They started out with a line up of traditional games including Call of Duty: Black Ops, Metal Gear Solid: Rising, Gears of War 3, Fable III, Kingdoms, and of course Halo Reach. The tone then changed and Microsoft opened the doors to a more casual focus with Kinect. They showed an impressive array of features and games for Kinect then finally revealed the new, slim version of the Xbox 360.

The first half of Microsoft’s showing was very standard, showing off very traditional based games that’s we’ve all known about for quite awhile. There wasn’t anything really surprising or wonderful about that part of the show, it was all just steady as she goes.

On the other hand, the latter half of the show had Microsoft delve into an area where its more “hardcore” fans don’t want them to go. Along with Sony, Microsoft is following Nintendo’s lead and reaching out to the expanded audience with Kinect. It is an admirable goal and I hope they find their own piece of the market to compete with Nintendo, however… I have no interest in any of the casual expanded audience games for Wii… and I don’t have any interest in any of the casual expanded audience games for Kinect or PlayStation Move for that matter… so as great as it is, Kinect isn’t showing me anything I’m particularly interested in.

For these reasons, Microsoft comes third in my books. They have a solid line-up of traditional games, but they’re all titles I have known about for quite some time. E3 is about showing off new games to look forward to that we haven’t heard about before. Microsoft didn’t do it for me… sorry.

Oh, and the most boring part of the show that I didn’t really care about is the whole deal with ESPN… great if you’re into that sort of thing, but I’m not.

You can watch the Microsoft Press Conference through GameTrailers.com:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

Now here’s a closer look at the key moments of their conference in the order they were shown…

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Black Ops was pretty much as you would expect, dark, gritty, brown and full of people from third world countries you can shoot down at your leisure. As always, the visuals look impressive and there was some nice attack chopper action at the latter half of the presentation. Microsoft also announced at the same time that they’ve made a deal that will have all future CoD games released on the Xbox 360 before any other platform.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising

While Rising was shown off during the Microsoft conference, I’m actually more interest in the possibilities of PlayStation Move support in the PS3 version of the game. In any case, Hideo Kojima and his trademark trendy glasses hit the stage and presented us with a trailer that showed some gameplay that involved a lot of slicing and dicing. Whatever Raiden could get his hands on was soon cut into small pieces… people, vehicles, buildings… watermelons.

The trailer focused purely on the action elements of the game which made it seem like a hack n’ slash of sorts but also demonstrated some precision cutting. The idea of Rising seems to be to allow players to perform the impressive moves the likes of which are seen in the cutscenes of MGS4. It’s not all action based though, it’s been suggested that the game will still feature stealth gameplay that will be quicker and more ninja-like than what we’re used to with Snake.

Rising is going to be the story that ties the events of MGS2 with MGS4. I’m sure we’ll discover at the beginning of the game how Raiden ended up with his artificial body as well helping to explain more of the mysteries and loose ends that still plague parts of the Metal Gear universe… at least concerning MGS2. I can’t wait to play it; you can never get too much Metal Gear!

Gears of War 3

To be honest, while it does look good, there really isn’t anything that’s new and fantastic about Gears of War 3… I don’t really know what else to say about it aside from, “oh look, they added some female main characters”… which isn’t really that big a deal. In any case, the series is strong and the fans are getting a good game. Oh right, and also four player co-op which is always good to have.

I still have to finish my copy of the first Gears of War and then start Gears of War 2… which means I’ll eventually get Gears of War 3, but the thing that really sucks is that I can never find anyone to play co-op with.

Fable III

Much like the previous games shown, Fable III is just what you would expect. Peter Molyneux hits the stage and shows off a trailer for the game which shows a different period that involves pirates, yay! Molyneux explained to the audience about some of the additions and changes to the game for its third instalment.

Again, like with Gears of War… I haven’t actually finished the previous games and I know it’s something I really need to do. I may eventually get Fable III, but it’s not a priority for me.

Kingdoms

Not much is known about Project Kingdoms aside from the fact that it’s a game made by Crytek and seems to be based around Gladiatorial combat. A short teaser trailer of the game was revealed during the show and I’m sure we’ll hear more about this soon in the near future.

Halo: Reach

Halo: Reach is Microsoft’s biggest game of the show and is truly a game for Halo fans since it’s based around a pivotal moment in the Halo universe history… if you’re not a big enough fan of Halo on the other hand, then Reach probably won’t make that big an impact for you. The gameplay for Reach looks pretty standard for a Halo game, though there are plenty of differences that have been shown off in the last few months.

The trailer shown during the Microsoft conference showed off more of Reach and ended with a climatic space battle that went down very well with the crowd. Halo fans are going to have one hell of a time when Reach is finally released.

I kind of wonder where they’ll go with Halo after they complete the development of Reach…

Kinect for Xbox 360

People who aren’t part of the regular traditional gaming crowd are abuzz with the news of video games without a controller. It’s an expanded audience dream come true and I honestly think it’s a much better option than Wii in this instance. I personally feel that Kinect has more to offer than just expanded audience games however. The combination of dual cameras, the heat sensitive sensor and the microphone can also be used to enhance certain traditional based games as well.

Perhaps, when developers begin to consider Kinect based enhancements for some traditional based games, I may end up buying Kinect… but at this stage it doesn’t seem very likely at all.

Microsoft began their Kinect presentation by showing the audience the different gesture and voice commands people can use with the Kinect enabled 360 dashboard (which reminded me strongly of the Wii Channels Menu) and some new features to go along with it… at this point Microsoft began to lose my attention…

ESPN on demand

Microsoft then moved onto further additions to the Xbox Live service for gold members… ESPN on-demand joins Xbox in ‘exclusive partnership,’ free for Gold members complete with a bunch of neat features, etc, etc. AWESOME… if I cared at all for it… but I don’t.

Kinect games

Luckily for Microsoft they finished their ESPN gibberish and went onto talking about the actual GAMES for Kinect. A little girl came on stage to demonstrate her love for a tiger cub named “Skittles” with made the audience go DAAAAAWWWWWW with a game called Kinectimals. Another game called Kinect Adventures showed off the ability to track body movements, however the game to really do that spectacularly was Kinect Dance Central. There were a whole array of Kinect specific games being shown off and they were all perfect for a family or a bunch of people who are really, REALLY drunk.

There were some traditional based games shown such as Forza, however the limits of the Kinect functionality became obvious when viewing the on-stage demonstration since you could only control the steering and didn’t really have any controls of the pedal or gears for that matter. The Star Wars game that was also shown featuring a Clone Wars scene also seemed restrictive this way… though the footage shown of that Star Wars game seemed to be concept more than anything else.

It’s easy to see that Kinect is going to be extremely popular for its target audience, however as I said before there’s nothing of interest in this line-up for me.

Xbox 360 Slim

“Sup dawg, I heard you like Xbox so I put an Xbox inside your Xbox”… and that’s how the new design of the Xbox 360 was revealed. I like the design, though it still looks like the design of a Dell PC tower to me… many people have commented that the 360 slim looks even more like a PC tower than ever before. As I’m sure everyone knows by now, the 360 slim has a 250GB HDD and built-in wireless 802.11n… and instead of a Red Ring of Death you’ll have a Red Dot of Death…

The audience were lucky enough to get a free 360 slim… the bastards. If I had the money to waste, I’d get a 360 slim, but I don’t… speaking of which, if I had the money to waste, I’d get a PS3 slim as well but there’s nothing I can really do about any of that.

Nice way to end the show though…

Sony Press Conference

Sony began their conference talking about 3D television, its relation to the PS3 and how it’s the wave of the future. To prove their point they showed off Killzone 3 and then announced a number of other games to feature 3D support coming soon to PlayStation 3.

From 3D they went on to focus on PlayStation Move and Sony’s plan for it debut, it’s pricing and the game to support the motion control system. Sony then showed off a never before seen Move game called Sorcery, then moved onto Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 and then Heroes on the Move.

Kevin Butler then took the stage and rambled on about some stuff… I know there are many fans of Kevin Butler but I’m not one of them. He talked too damn much and it was halting the showing of more games… but the talking didn’t stop, they just kept on going straight into the topic of promoting the PSP, yada, yada, yada…

After they had finally shown off some PSP games, they moved back to the PS3 and a selection of new games coming for the system including LittleBigPlanet 2. After talking a little bit about LBP2, the new premium only service called PlayStation Plus was revealed, its pricing and just what the service was about. After that the games finally rolled in again starting with Medal of Honor, then Dead Space 2 (one of my favourites), Portal 2, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Final Fantasy XIV, Gran Turismo 5, inFamous 2, and finally ending the show with Twisted Metal.

The reason that Sony is in second place is because of the huge variety of games they showed off in their conference… but the biggest factor may have to do with PlayStation Move itself… I’ll explain more later on in the entry.

You can watch the Sony Press Conference through GameTrailers.com:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Now here’s a closer look at the key moments of their conference in the order they were shown…

3D experience

Sony has been known to use the PlayStation as their platform for persuading people to invest in certain technologies. This E3 they’re committed to try to bring people into the 3D realm… of course that involves people owning a PS3 or another device capable of playing 3D movies, not to mention a 3D enabled TV which can become quite expensive… oh and that need to wear 3D glasses which is a novelty that people do enjoy once in awhile.

Sony seems to be invested pretty heavily in this, which is no surprise since it supports other parts of their business very well… to be honest I like the idea of 3D with games, but the steps I have to take to achieve this for the PS3 are a little too expensive to justify… that and I have a perfectly good LCD TV which has served me well for quite some time.

It’s actually a little funny watching all of the effort Sony put into their presentation to show off the 3D experience they want us all to have after watching the Nintendo conference which only ended about an hour before this one began…

Killzone 3

To prove the strength of the claims Sony has been making about 3D and its place in our future, a 3D enabled presentation of Killzone 3 began and the audience was asked to put on their 3D glasses. I really wish I was there to experience it for myself; I’m interested to see just how the 3D will look with games…

Even without being able to witness the 3D experience myself, the visuals for Killzone 3 still looked impressive as always. I think what really interests me isn’t the 3D itself, but the inclusion of PlayStation Move controls for the game… I’m interested to see how they turn out and if it is as good as I’m hoping it is I may end up getting the game. Oh, speaking of Move…

PlayStation Move

Sony is proudly proclaiming that this changes everything… actually it just gives PS3 owners the ability that Wii owners have been enjoying for quite a long time now… and I’m sure a lot of PlayStation fans are sick of the comparisons to Wii, but it is what it is (especially when you see stuff like this). However, thanks to its very close comparison to the Wii Remote, it also means that like Wii, Move is able to be used to control more traditional based games with great ease… it also helps when developers have been doing the whole trial and error testing on Wii for all of this time to perfect how motion controls should be working with these sorts of games.

Sure, Sony is releasing a lot of expanded audience type games just as Microsoft is about to with Kinect, however Move has the ability to be easily utilised in games such as Killzone 3, SOCOM 4 and…

Sorcery

Sorcery was very interesting… it was like a Harry Potter game the way it should be made and it really shows EA how things should be done. It was actually a little strange watching the demo of Sorcery being played on stage, especially when Nintendo had demonstrated Skyward Sword in their press conference which ended just an hour before Sony’s started. The comparison really did cement the fact that while these two technologies use very different methods to achieve the result… the result is strikingly similar.

I wonder how the resulting relationship between PS3 and Wii games will unfold now that Sony is about to release Move.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11

I’m not really much of a sports game fan, but this Tiger Woods game did demonstrate how well it works with PlayStation Move and it’s similarity to the control method found on Wii. I’m sure a lot of people will appreciate the HD visuals a lot more than the SD Tiger Woods counterpart.

Heroes on the Move

Ah, now this game is very interesting… well, in a way. I’m not a fan of any of the characters involved, however the concept is something gamers have wanted for a very long time… but for Mario and Sonic. It’s an interesting concept… I wonder if they’re able to combine these characters faithfully to how their fans remember them from previous games.

PlayStation Portable promotions

This is about the time Kevin Butler came on stage and started talking endlessly about stuff I didn’t really care about… worse still is that he start on this whole rant about gamer pride which I found really lame…

They went on to show off some of their new PSP promotional material to try and get more interest in the PSP. They were really preaching to the choir at this point and it didn’t seem like they were really doing anything of consequence to help expand their audience for the system. Despite this I do admit the PSP is doing very well and is enjoying some pretty good success. A few games were shown off but finally they went onto something a lot more interesting…

LittleBigPlanet 2

LittleBigPlanet 2 is on the way and it’s set to become an even more in-depth game making tool than the first game ever was. Sony showed off some of the new features present in LBP 2 on-stage at their conference… it reminded me that I have been horribly neglecting my copy of the first game… and I should really play more of it when I have the time.

PlayStation Plus

Sony finally revealed official details for their premium online service… to be honest I didn’t pay much attention during this part of the conference. However, from what I took in, it’s not really a service most people would be interested in unless they’re hardcore fans of the PlayStation 3.

Medal of Honor

Medal of Honor is making a move to try to step on Call of Duty’s toes in its new outing. The games do look very similar… brown, gritty and full of people in a third world country you can shoot down at your leisure… it’s going to be extremely popular with a lot of people. Oh, and here’s a trailer for the game released during E3.

Dead Space 2

This is one of my most anticipated games though I do realise that there are a lot of people who didn’t even bother to play the first game! I just can’t understand how people can purposefully not play games that must be played…

I can’t wait to play Dead Space 2 in the dead of night with my surround sound up just as I played the first game. I also can’t wait to see where the story takes us in the sequel to the first and how the events of Dead Space: Extraction tie into the first game.

Sony also announced during the show that the special edition versions of the game will include the PS3 version of Dead Space: Extraction… though I also hear that Extraction will be available to download from PSN as well. Extraction will obviously be using PlayStation Move… but it’s yet to be seen if Dead Space 2 will have Move functionality too… if it does then I may just have to buy Dead Space 2 for the PS3 instead of the 360… and this is one of the biggest reasons why Sony is in second place for me. They’re convincing me to possibly NOT buy my games for the 360.

Portal 2

I’m purposefully not going to say anything about Portal 2 except to say you should watch this trailer, you monster. What more needs to be said? It’s Portal.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Assassin’s Creed II had quite the ending and while Brotherhood is said to be an online multiplayer experience, the story of Ezio does continue in this instalment and I think it will become a bridge to the events of Assassin’s Creed III.

From what I’ve seen of various impressions of the single and multiplayer parts of the games, there seem to be mixed reviews and quite different opinions about what Ubisoft is trying to achieve… I know I’m going to end up getting this game either way since I’m interested in seeing what kind of additional story elements I can grab from this game…

Final Fantasy XIV Online

Square Enix never lets Final Fantasy rest for a single moment, of course it’s no wonder they don’t since it’s their very own money printing machine. If I had any interest in investing my time in playing MMO’s whatsoever, I would probably be very interested in Final Fantasy XIV Online… but if I were interested in MMO’s, I’d spend all that time on The Old Republic rather than FF XIV.

Gran Turismo 5

If I wasn’t so terrible at Gran Turismo and didn’t lack the interest in cars then it’s a game I would definitely get. When it comes to racing I’m more of an arcade/kart racer than anything else since I don’t take racers that seriously. That said, Gran Turismo 5 looks absolutely stunning and it’s been a long time coming… this game is going to absolutely explode in Europe…

inFamous 2

To be honest, I don’t really have that much to say about inFamous 2, I know it has quite a few fans but it’s never seemed like that huge a game to me. In any case, it’s another in a long list of exclusive titles for the PS3 and is doing a lot to add value to the system.

Twisted Metal

David Jaffe lied to all of us when he said there would be no Twisted Metal for PS3… but whatever. I know the series has been going for a long time now, but I only really played the first game on the original PlayStation thanks to my friends. It was a very fun multiplayer experience and the PS3 version of the game looks to be a lot of fun.

The only problem is that because it’s heavily based around the multiplayer experience I may not get it because I hardly know anyone who plays their PS3 online… which sucks because it really does look like a great game.

Nintendo Press Conference

Nintendo’s previous two years at E3 were dismal failures in the eyes of many, including mine. They focused on the expanded audience and seemed to have forsaken their core audience. Nintendo are very capable of having a kick ass E3 showing as they have demonstrated in years before… this year they have again gone back to that kick ass nature of theirs.

They opened up with a strong title, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, with a full demonstration by Shigeru Miyamoto himself. After the Skyward Sword presentation, Reggie entered the stage and showed off a set of what they called “bridge games” which included Mario Sports Mix, Wii Party and Just Dance 2… All of which I don’t really care about… at all. I will say though, that Just Dance 2 seemed kind of silly after watching Microsoft’s presentation featuring Kinect’s ability to detect full body motion for their own dancing game… Luckily they didn’t spend too much time on these titles and instead went on and talked about a line-up of games coming out for DS and Wii which we all really want.

They started their epic line-up by showing off Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, then jumped straight into GoldenEye 007, Epic Mickey, Kirby: Epic Yarn, Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, Metroid: Other M and Donkey Kong Country Returns. Unlike the other conferences, a lot of what Nintendo was showing was new and exciting to me. Every single game shown off so far and coming up are games that I will definitely be buying. I cannot wait!

Of course, it didn’t end there… Satoru Iwata took to the stage and I immediately began to pay attention. I love his speeches, the way he talks in Engrish, his accent, his very nature. He’s the nice guy you give your attention to because you feel you’d be rude if you were to ignore him. So with all of that attention fixed on him, Iwata revealed to the world the Nintendo 3DS… even better, Nintendo revealed Kid Icarus: Uprising and a long list of first, second and third party titles being developed for the system.

Aside from the three titles I mentioned before, everything Nintendo showed off at their conference was something I ABSOLUTELY want. I got very excited at some of the games shown off during their show… of course, I do understand that if you’re not a fan of Nintendo’s games then most of what they showed during their conference won’t have any impact aside from 3DS… people would have to be mad not to be excited by it.

Well done Nintendo… well done. You are the king of E3 once again.

You can watch the Nintendo Press Conference through GameTrailers.com:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

One more thing before I go on, Nintendo has some exceptionally good stuff on their E3 2010 site; you should try and check it out before it’s taken down and the link is redirected to the regular Nintendo web site.

Now here’s a closer look at the key moments of their conference in the order they were shown…

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Shigeru Miyamoto came out on stage to demonstrate Skyward Sword himself, however the on-stage demonstration did come across a bit of a hurdle when the motion controls ended up failing during key moments of the demo. People who have watched the previous years of E3 will notice that trying to present Wii controls on stage has never worked out well for Nintendo.

Luckily, Nintendo allowed people to play Skyward Sword straight after the conference ended and a lot of impressions spilled out into the net telling everyone how great the controls really were. After watching a few video impressions myself, it seemed very clear that Nintendo had spent a lot of time with the control interface for Skyward Sword. Many video impressions clearly demonstrated the near 1:1 motions being registered without any lag.

The debut trailer for Skyward Sword was also revealed, showing off some nice features of the game which I will talk about in more detail below…

Controls

The controls for Skyward Sword seemed very concentrated and refined compared to past 3D Zelda games. Instead of setting specific items to a selection of buttons, all items are now set using the single B button on the Wii Remote. Hold B and then point on the screen to select an item. Then once an item is set you either use it by pressing a button (usually the A button) or by making a motion of some sort in context with the item. To put the item away you tap B. Extremely simple and it saves players from having to reach for the D-Pad like in the Wii version of Twilight Princess.

Another nice addition is that potions/bottles are easily accessible using the minus button. Tap to allow Link to drink a potion while on the run or hold the minus button to bring up a bottle select screen similar to the item select screen you bring up when you hold B. The plus button on the other hand performs a much more simple function by bringing up the map screen.

Sword swings are, as mentioned before, near 1:1 thanks to the requirement of Wii MotionPlus (which I’m sure will be bundled with every copy of Skyward Sword at launch). Also, just as in the Wii version of Twilight Princess, the Link featured in Skyward Sword is also right handed.

From watching video impressions, players discovered large mushrooms around the demo map area that they could practice on. With each slice that players made on the mushroom, it showed that the game did register many different angles of slicing fairly accurately. Some videos had players making exaggerated moves while other videos showed players performing small flicks. No matter which way the player chose to perform the motion control movements, the game responded well. Oh, and you can also make Link stab his sword forward if you make a stabbing motion with the Wii Remote… hooray.

I did notice in some videos that players did try to trick the game in various ways, mostly by trying to move the Wii Remote faster than the game could register. Extremely fast motions didn’t seem to register very well when the player was trying to execute them in a row, however I don’t really see that as a bad thing since it ends up preventing you from flail your arms around like an idiot in the first place. All you need are small movements and the game will follow them precisely. No need to get nuts… the same thing really applies for every motion controlled Wii game.

Link is able to perform a spin-attack by having the player flick the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in the same direction horizontally. In addition, he is able to perform a vertical version of his spin-attack if the player flicks the Wii Remote and Nunchuk vertically at the same time… very nice. Of course, there’s something even better than a spin attack… Skyward Sword allows to you perform sword beam attacks just like in the first Zelda game and all you have to do is point your sword… skyward to let it charge. Link is also able to perform evasive moves such as rolling, side jumps and a back flip by tapping the A button while moving the control stick in a relevant direction just as he has been able to do in previous games. Also, tapping the A button by itself while Link has his sword out will still let you perform a jump slash.

Oh, and to go with that sword action there is also the shield. Instead of tying the shield control to a button or tethered to the Z-lock like with the Wii version of Twilight Princess, it is now fully motion based. To ready the shield all you have to do is flick the Nunchuk. While the shield is up, the player is able to perform a shield bash by flicking the Nunchuk again just like you’re able to in Twilight Princess.

After some observation I discovered that Link automatically lowers the shield himself during appropriate moments, for example when he’s putting away his sword he will also put away his shield, and when Link requires his left hand he will also put away the shield. I have also noticed that during combat, if Link’s shield his hit hard enough it will fall back into a rest position which means the player has to flick the Nunchuk to ready it again. Indeed, from what I have seen so far of the combat for Skyward Sword, Nintendo is focusing a lot on more advanced combat tactics.

As with every other Zelda game, Link has a large arsenal of different weapons for every occasion. The demo of Skyward Sword at E3 featured the following… A slingshot, whip, bombs, bow and arrow and some kind of mechanical flying beetle. A close inspection of the item select screen also showed three question marks to suggest there may be at least three more items yet to be revealed.

Here’s a closer look at the items Link has…

• The slingshot seems to control very similarly to how you would control it in Twilight Princess. A round cursor appears on screen, the player uses the Wii Remote to aim at targets on the screen and press A to fire. It’s a very quick mid-range weapon when you can’t get close enough to use your sword.
• According to some sources, a member of the development team who was working on both Spirit Tracks and Skyward Sword is the one who added the whip to both games. Once the whip is equipped it’s pretty obvious how you use it since it just takes a flick of the Wii Remote. The whip can be used on enemies and can also be used to collect items at a distance.
• Bombs can be used in many different ways. Players can equip a bomb and then set it down on the spot, or they can throw it to a specific spot in the distance with the aid of an arc displayed on the screen. Alternately, players can now roll the bomb on the ground… I foresee a bowling mini-game in Skyward Sword!
• While the only factor that distinguished the bow and arrows from the slingshot in Twilight Princess was the bow’s superior range, Skyward Sword gives the bow a much different feel and combines what Nintendo has learned from Wii Sports Resort into the mix. The bow is basically Link’s sniper rifle, allowing him to accurately target very far away targets with great accuracy. When selected, players will go into a first person view and just like with the archery in Wii Sports Resort, will hold the Wiimote and Nunchuk as they would with a real life bow. Aiming is controlled by the Wii Remote and from the videos I’ve seen it doesn’t matter specifically how you hold the Wii Remote, it will just work. To ready an arrow for firing you motion the Nunchuk back and to fire the arrow you press C on the Nunchuk. Oh, and to go along with the sniper rifle comment before, you can press down on the D-Pad to zoom… Seems complicated when you explain it but people seemed to get the hang of it very quickly in video impressions of the game.
• Finally, the mechanical flying beetle functions in a similar manner to the Gale Boomerang and hawk does in Twilight Princess. The player is able to aim in whatever direction they want the beetle to fly and then tap A to launch it. While in the air the beetle is controllable by the player and they are able to fly around the area using A to speed up. I’ve observed that the beetle is able to grab items and transport bombs from bomb flowers and attack enemies or destroy far away objects with them. A very handy item…

The different items also add to the tactical nature of defeating enemies. Instead of using the shield bash to deflect deku nuts back at a Deku Scrub, I’ve noticed a video where a player uses his slingshot to stun them so Link could use his sword to finish them off. In another instance I saw another player throw a bomb at a Deku Baba and watch him eat it which ended up blowing it and other Deku Baba’s near him into a million pieces. I’ve also seen people use the Mechanical Beetle to fly into and kill far away enemies. Hell, I’ve even seen video of Link using his bow to stick an arrow through a health heart, possibly so it wouldn’t disappear and he could use it later if needed. All of these factors make me like this game more and more because it allows players to create their own way of playing through certain parts of the game with the tools on hand.

Actually, probably the most interesting feature that is included in the game and is something a lot of Zelda fans have really wanted for a long time is the ability to dash. In addition, it looks like the dash ability functions similarly to Assassin’s Creed and allows Link to climb ledges… though I don’t expect Link to start climbing tall buildings just as Altaïr or Ezio would… I’ve also noticed that whenever Link starts his dash, a green circle will appear that will begin to count down. Judging from this it seems that that circle represents the energy Link has that limits his dash to only short bursts. One more thing, I’ve noticed that when players flick the Nunchuk while Link is dashing he will roll on the ground, but when you flick the Nunchuk while he is not, he will immediately go into a defensive stance with his shield and sword at the ready… Nice.

Visuals

There are very mixed reactions to the cel-shaded visuals of Skyward Sword, Some people think it’s bland, others dismiss the visuals since they are in standard definition instead of their preferred choice of high definition. There are many who seem to react the same way they did to the cel-shaded visuals of The Wind Waker when it was revealed all those years ago… which is a very negative reaction. Of course, there are many other people who really like what they see.

I personally love what they’ve done with Skyward Sword and can see exactly why it looks the way it does. The overall design is very similar to that of Twilight Princess, however Nintendo has obviously taken a page from The Wind Waker’s cel-shaded art style. The combination of the two is a brilliant move in my opinion.

Think about it, the cel-shaded effect of The Wind Waker makes the game virtually timeless. On the other hand, the visual style of Twilight Princess, while being very dark and gritty compared to The Wind Waker tends to age quickly due to its textures, especially when the competition is in high definition. No “realistic” looking game fairs very well on Wii so the best titles are the ones that have some kind of art style to them that takes them away from that form of “realism.”

Shiggy has said that the overall art style for Skyward Sword was made to resemble French impressionists, however they have also stated that the graphics are still being worked on so the final game may change from what we’re seeing so far, though I think it’ll be more of a refinement than anything else. In fact, it’s been clearly stated that if this game had kept the same art style as Twilight Princess then it would have been released by now. I’m guessing that the majority of the game has been finished and that Nintendo are now in the middle of making final touches… of course, the game has a 2011 release date so we’ll all have to be patient.

Story and more information…

From what has been revealed so far, the story of Skyward Sword is set on an island called Skyloft that floats high in the sky in which Link is a native inhabitant. He has lived there for all of his life and knows nothing of the land below, however certain events take place and Link is forced down to the surface. What he discovers is a world filled with evil… I’m guessing that the land below is Hyrule and that it has already been taken over by Ganondorf or some other evil force.

The sword that Link has with him has been called the Skyward Sword by the development staff and they have specifically stated that it will actually BECOME the Master Sword during the events of the game. I think this may have to do with the fairy that resembled the Master Sword shown in the artwork during last years E3. Judging from all of this information, Skyward Sword may be a prequel to all other Zelda games if you subscribe to the Zelda timeline theories… indeed, this may be the story of how the Master Sword became the legendary blade of evil’s bane.

Many people also complained about the overbearing nature of the on-screen HUD that is displayed during the game. Thankfully, the HUD will be removable in the release version of the game. Eiji Aonuma has also confirmed that while this version of the game uses only the motion sensing properties of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, the final build will also include the option for players to use the IR sensor bar and to fine-tune the control scheme they way they want.

I know that was a VERY long write-up just for one game… but it is one of the games I’m looking forward to the most. I just couldn’t resist.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

It’s been a long time coming but Nintendo has finally stopped talking about the coming of a new Golden Sun and is actually revealing it for the first time!

Golden Sun is an unknown series to most people, however there is still a significant cult following. Fans have been waiting for word on the DS version of this game for a very long time… let’s hope whatever advancements are made for this game doesn’t disappoint its fans.

GoldenEye 007

To continue on with the “golden” them, Nintendo showed off the debut trailer for the remake of GoldenEye. Though, from what I’ve seen this game doesn’t seem to be a remake as much as it a re-imagining of the game/movie. As much as we want GoldenEye 007 to be remade faithfully, we all know that’s never going to happen, so I don’t mind the fact that this game isn’t going to be anywhere near what we remember the original to be.

There seem to be many changes being made including a very odd one. Instead of Pierce Brosnan, the James Bond in this remake is Daniel Craig… this is possibly due to licensing issues. The change also means that the tone of the game will be changed considerably to suit Craig’s performance of Bond. Shots from the trailer reflect this as many scenes are set in very grim looking weather conditions and there seems to be quite a few scene changes during key moments of levels.

I’m assuming that this game will also be running on the Call of Duty engine made for Wii since the gameplay seems similar to the World at War gameplay. The original GoldenEye only really allowed melee combat with a karate chop and a rifle butt, however in this new version there seems to be plenty of other methods to dispatch the enemy. I’m sure neck-breaking fans will enjoy themselves quite a lot…

It will be interesting to see how this game actually turns out and whether it will be anywhere near as good as anyone hopes it to be. I’m also interesting to see how the controls will work, if there’s support for the GameCube and/or Wii Classic Controller (Pro)… We’ll be finding out soon enough since the release date is apparently sooner than we expected.

Epic Mickey

Epic Mickey is a game we’ve known about for awhile now but haven’t really seen until now. Warren Spector took the stage to explain the motivations of the game and to show us exactly what kind of game this is. To get a sense of what Epic Mickey is about, a story trailer was released…

This title did start out its life as a multi-platform game, and there are some who have chosen to ignore Wii who feel this is unfair in some sense since it is actually looking quite good (how ironic). However, I can see why Wii has been chosen as Epic Mickey’s chosen platform as it does require a lot use of the paint and thinner gameplay mechanic which requires a lot of aiming on-screen. Such a gameplay mechanic without the use of Wii’s IR pointer would end up being very slow and cumbersome on other platforms… though with the coming release of PlayStation Move, perhaps Epic Mickey may end up crossing to another platform in the future.

One of the key ideas of this game is to put Mickey in a position to become a respected hero more than just a theme park amusement character. I hope Warren Spector and his team can achieve that since it is a very challenging and worthy goal to reach for. I look forward to playing this game very much and hope it turns out to be a game that everyone cannot miss.

Also, I just want to say that the Steamboat Willy level that was shown off during the conference was awesome… I was tripping balls while watching it, I swear… they really captured the essence and style of Mickey’s first outing in the game. Truly magnificent…

Kirby: Epic Yarn

First we had a couple of “golden” games and now here are a couple of “epic” games. Kirby hasn’t been seen in his own home console game since Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards on the Nintendo 64 so when Reggie introduced Kirby: Epic Yarn, it was a great pleasure to witness Kirby’s triumphant return in what has to be the most disturbingly cute game of this generation.

The puffball may not be as he was in previous games; he lacks the ability to suck up enemies and absorb their powers, however the textile based visuals present in Epic Yarn adds very nice gameplay elements to the mix that makes up for that. Plus, it’s just awesomely cute to see Kirby transform into a fish in fresh water, a dolphin in sea water, a big robot on treads… and apparently when you double tap in a direction to make Kirby run… he turns into a race car! Now if that isn’t awesome, then I don’t know what is.

I can’t wait to see what other gameplay mechanics they’ll have in store for this game, but I have noticed that it does include a co-op element, allowing at least a second player to join in the fun. There’s no word if the co-op extends all the way to four players, however… we’ll see in time, I guess.

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

This game has been out in Japan for a long time now and it’s still taking its time to reach other regions. It may be late, but it’s still a very big title that Nintendo is keen to promote. The tag feature has been extremely popular in the densely populated areas in Japan, however I do wonder how successful this feature will be in countries that don’t really work the way Japan does in terms of population density. Of course, the features that use tag mode aren’t really part of the core of the game, but they do add a lot to the experience.

Dragon Quest enjoys great popularity in Japan, but not quite as much outside of the country… I wonder how much more promotion the game will receive when it does come time for release. Oh, and here’s the debut trailer for those who are interested…

Metroid: Other M

Nintendo revealed Metroid: Other M during last years E3 press conference and it ended up being the only shining beacon of hope for the company at the time amongst a collection of expanded audience games. Since then there has been quite a lot of new information revealed about the game as well as some videos showing us how the gameplay works.

It’s hard to tell how this game will turn out and it is following in the shadow of a great set of games developed by Retro Studios. When Nintendo announced that they were going to launch a brand new Metroid game with Retro Studios, an American developer at the helm, people were sceptical as to whether the game would turn out any good. When Metroid Prime was finally released on the GameCube, it blew everyone away and showed that Retro understood very well a lot of the key aspects that make a Metroid game what it is.

It’s been a few years since then and Retro has enjoyed much success with three games completed over two systems as well as a fourth compilation game of the Metroid Prime Trilogy… the torch has now passed over to Team Ninja and it’s coming close to the release date of Metroid: Other M which hits stores in North America in late August. It’s a very troubling time in any games lifespan when it must step prove its worth in a new gameplay style…

Story and structure

Other M is set between the events of Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion and answers some questions that have been brought up by Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission. I also feel that Other M is going to lay down some more stories to be told in the next game of the Metroid series set AFTER Metroid Fusion. Whatever Other M has in store for us, I’m sure it will be interesting… and I really do hope the voice acting is up to scratch as well. A new trailer was shown during E3 though it didn’t really show us anything more than we’ve already seen in previous trailers released for the game.

I have to be honest about this; I am having my doubts about what I’m seeing with Other M. I do understand that the development team wants to humanise Samus by giving her a deeper story for this game compared to any seen in previous games, however I do feel that it is may very well effect the game structure a little too much for my liking. Metroid is best when it’s set in a non-linear format and players are able to get lost without the use of their map and navigation skills. Metroid is about exploring and finding your way around areas and finding new areas that are well hidden. It’s also about not having any kind of linear path and involves plenty of backtracking… a gameplay element I know a lot of spoilt gamers complain about these days.

I fear that the inclusion of this story element as well as the interaction with many characters during the game is going to force the game into a more linear structure than what I think should be allowed in a Metroid game. The fact that Samus’ power-up utilisation is controlled by Adam Malkovich seems like a strange turn of events, but I guess they couldn’t just have Samus lose her abilities all of a sudden like they have using various different methods in past games… it does feel a little too much like Metroid Fusion in that sense though… and that’s not a good thing.

Controls

The fear of linear progression is one thing that concerns me, but another aspect of Other M that I’m really afraid for are the controls. Metroid: Other M uses the Wii Remote on its side in the basic NES format. You use the D-Pad to move, 1 to shoot, 2 to jump and A to go in and out of morph ball mode. In addition, when you point the Wii Remote at the screen it will automatically transition into a first-person view reminiscent of Metroid Prime. From there you can scan specific key spots of an environment and is the only time you are able to fire your missiles. Looking around the environment using the first-person perspective can also lead Samus onto new paths. Lastly, Samus can perform dodge moves if you tap on a direction on the D-Pad at specific moments and also perform melee moves and finishers.

It’s all designed to be very simple, but at the same time it ends up being quite restrictive in the process. For example, the D-Pad seems like a strange control input to use in what is still a 3D environment. I saw many videos that showed Samus moving around quite rigidly. To make matters worth, players seemed to have trouble making Samus point and shoot in the direction that they wanted her too. Of course, because of the rigid nature of Samus’ movement and directional control, Team Ninja has included an auto aim feature. Despite the auto-aim feature, players still had to make sure they pointed in the correct direction for it to lock onto enemies. The precision that players enjoyed in past Metroid games is going to be a lot harder to achieve in Other M by the way things seem to operate in the game.

I also don’t like having the missiles delegated purely to the first-person viewpoint… but the solution to all of these problems is so very simple: simply attach the Nunchuk and allow players to use the usual Wii Remote + Nunchuk combination. With this control option, players will have a familiar anchor with Metroid Prime 3 Corruption.

On the Nunchuk you use the control stick to move fluidly through the 3D environment, the C button to go in and out of morph ball mode and hold the Z button to instantly go into first-person view. On the Wii Remote you press A to shoot, B to jump and down on the D-Pad to fire your missile… AT ANY TIME. Also, to solve the whole aiming issue, the player will have the ability to direct Samus’ fire where ever they point on the screen so they can directly target enemies themselves.

Of course, with the changed control schemes they would have to change the way the camera functions and sets the scene for each area… but it’s a hell of a lot better than what they have right now… at least I think so… and I don’t really understand their reasoning to have the controls the way they are now… aside from trying to use nothing but the Wii Remote by itself.

Final Thoughts

I know I’ve been all doom and gloom about Metroid in this entry, but I feel that all of what I said needs to be said. I hope Other M does turn out to be really good… and if it does turn out to be good… will it have what it takes to out Metroid the Metroid Prime Trilogy?…

Donkey Kong Country Returns

A short time before Nintendo’s conference we got word that Retro Studios may in fact be working on a Donkey Kong game… I was a little hesitant at hearing the news, but now that I’ve discovered that it’s a continuation of the Donkey Kong Country series, it seems alright now.

Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong are back and it looks like there’s some co-op elements thrown in, allowing a second player to join in on the fun. Some videos taken during E3 suggest that the co-op elements are similar to New Super Mario Bros. Wii in away. But the Donkey Kong Country series has never been very similar to any Super Mario games so it’s going to be interesting what other new additions Retro has for us.

On a slightly different note, I also wonder what Retro Studios has in the future after they finish the development of DKCR.

Nintendo 3DS

Finally, Nintendo spends the last part of their conference to reveal the Nintendo 3DS. We’ve all known about it for awhile now, but for the lucky people who got to experience it first hand, they truly got to see what an amazing machine it is. I wish I could have been one of those people… but there is someone in Twilight Lynk who has gone hands-on with the 3DS and that’s Jeff. I’m sure we’ll be hearing about his impressions on the forum pretty soon.

The video shown of the 3DS games so far suggest that it’s similar in power to the GameCube which makes it on par with the PSP in terms of hardware power. That said, it all depends on what kind of games are available for the 3DS to truly become successful. I’m interested to see how the system fairs as the successor to the Nintendo DS and how it’s embraced by different audiences.

I can tell from the reaction to it during E3 that a lot of more traditionalist gamers are happy with the power increase and like the idea of 3D gaming but I’m not quite as sure how the expanded audience will think of the system. How will Nintendo advertise the system to the masses when they have no way of showing off the 3D effects unless someone actually witnesses the system with their own eyes?

They’re also going to have to bring some very new things to the table to convince people of the expanded audience to invest their money into the new system… and it’ll have to be something that the DS can’t provide other than the 3D effect.

I’d like to go on and on about the 3DS, but I think I’ll actually save it for a completely separate entry considering that this entry has become pretty damn huge by this point.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

When Nintendo started playing the debut trailer at their E3 show, I got very, VERY excited. It’s been a long time coming and because it’s a 3DS game it’s become very obvious why they never revealed it at last years E3 like we were all hoping they would. Pit is back and he’s sorry he’s kept us waiting… unfortunately the one liners don’t stop there and appear to be quite common in the game… but I guess that’s the price we have to pay to get a new Kid Icarus game.

From the few short moments shown during E3, the game seems to have a Sin and Punishment vibe to it however I really want to see some traditional platforming in there as well akin to what we’re used to with the original.

Whatever happens, the game does look fun with some pretty cool fast paced action. It looks as if there’s be some pretty epic moments mixed along with some silly moments. I’ve only been able to witness the game in 2D but I’m sure it’s pretty damn impressive in 3D…

More 3DS games

Along with a new Kid Icarus, Nintendo showed off a long list of third party developers that are bring games out for the system. The list is quite long and quite impressive with games like Metal Gear Solid 3D: Snake Eater, Resident Evil Revelations, Assassin’s Creed: Lost Legacy and many, many more…

Not only that, Nintendo are throwing every franchise they have at the 3DS… Mario Kart, Paper Mario , Zelda, Kid Icarus, Star Fox, PilotWings and Nintendogs + cats just to name a few. I’m sure there are quite a lot more games in the pipeline, possibly even some that we’ve been waiting for quite awhile such as another Pikmin.

Not many playable games were present this year and unfortunately some of what was shown were actually ports of Nintendo 64 games, however the future is bright for the 3DS. Hopefully, over the next few moths we’ll get a better understanding of what we have to look forward to when the 3DS is finally released.

Round-up

So here’s an easier to digest version of what was just shown… bet you wish you had noticed this part of the entry before reading all of that, eh.

• 3rd: Microsoft
  Microsoft comes third because they showed off games that we’ve all known about for awhile. Unfortunately Kinect, while being a great new way to play games doesn’t really interest me.
• 2nd: Sony
  Sony comes second because while the games they showed off were mostly ones we’ve all known about, there were some surprises in Sorcery and Twisted Metal. Also, PlayStation Move has sparked my interest as well.
• 1st: Nintendo
  Nintendo wins the show because they had so many surprises in their showing. Not only did they have an array of games including Kirby, Donkey Kong and Kid Icarus, but they also had the strong showing of the 3DS and its impressive third party support.

So there we go…

I wasn’t kidding when I said “epicly long”… if you haven’t died of old age by the time you reach this paragraph then congratulations are in order. However, now that you’re here, why not take some time to post up your own comments about E3 2010.

I’m sure Jeff has some interesting things to say about his experience with E3 2010, since he was actually there in person.