Wednesday, July 16, 2008

E3 Ala Penny Arcade.


Kudo's to Gabe and Tycho for simplifying 6 hours of presentations into 3 panels. Bravo.

E3 Blergy Blarg continued

Sony Press Conference

Having seen Microsoft getting down on their knees for the anticipatory money shot that is the casual market's giant collective wallets. Nintendo and their further groping for yet more Casual hook-ups. What could one expect from Sony. Apparently a history lesson. I myself am a student of History, so seeing the teleological view of Sony's past as recounted by one Mr. Sony Head Dude, left me a slight bit skeptical. However what they did show seemed fine. Some nice looking games, most genres represented, apparently they do still care about the PS2 and PSP, which I suppose is nice. Even if it is just like me saying I'm looking for a lady with a nice personality, when really all I want is someone who's good looking. (Hey I can find personality after I've had a trophy gal for a day or two...) 

So overall I'd have to say that the big winner this year of the conferences was (as stupid as such a premise may seem): 

Uhhh you actually want an answer. Um, I'm going to say Fallout 3 wins. That game looks awesome. Then I'll say Sony. I guess it is true they have the most exclusives. Although that 360 sure has a lot of RPGs coming up soon. So it can have second place for that. Nintendo doesnt really deserve a mention until they put out a game that uses swords to have a bloody bloodfest of a game that takes advantage of the new peripheral they have made.

Although that Madworld game looks fucking tight. Ramming a sign pole through a guy's face... Yes Please! someone give that dev team a cookie.  

So that's the main events of E3. Nothing Earth Shattering this year. But still lots of high quality games to look forward to. I look forward to not being able to afford them while I attend school. Awesome. 

Ciao.

Monday, July 14, 2008

E3 This and That. Egads.

First some ground rules, before I talk about conferences. Any talk of sales figures or more or less partisan-esque fanboyish bragging rights is not going to impress me, especially if you appear to be twisting the figures. Also multi-platform games. Dont act like them coming out means anything.

Microsoft Conference Thingy

Or I suppose I should say the Xbox 360 Conference. Games For What-dows? As a PC Gamer this is insulting. But I move on and live, I dont rely on Microsoft for my PC Gaming, they honestly continue to half ass it and as such I dont look to them for PC Gaming, I look to Valve and Blizzard. But enough of that.

Getting Final Fantasy Games is nice. But I have all the systems, and the PS3 version will rape the 360 version simply because of Japanese release, but Multiplatform releases are not the end of anything. Multi-platform releases should be encouraged.

All the games shown all look very nice is press trailers, but then thats what a trailer does so I wont say much about the games. Well I will say that Co-Op in Resident Evil 5 is gonna fucking awesome.

Apparently the 360 will be getting Wii'd. Avatars, and a stupid number of attempts to grab that precious casual market. Thing is, the casual market already has their Wii's. They arent going to run out and get a 360 for these features because they like their Wii's enough already. Even if the new stuff does appear very compelling. My only question with all of those new and very compelling features (like the party system, and game shows thingies) is how much is all this shit gonna cost? I dont exactly want to drop more money on all these things even if they are just 6 bucks each. All I'm going to say, is: Damn they really want to get blown by the casual market. 

The one answer I didnt get that I really wanted was Castle Crashers release date. The game is gold, it's just waiting to come out. Oh well.

Overall though, good job Microsoft, things look nice for the 360's future. If you only you gave a shit about the PC.

Nintendo Conference

This one's really easy for me. Lots of bragging, and boasting. Lots of "I told you so!" The message to "hardcore gamers" was pretty short though.

The mario and zelda in house dev teams are working on the next versions of those games and we'll have more on them at an undisclosed later date. So yea.

New Wii Sports, A snowboarding game, Animal Crossing, Wii Music. And Activision milking Guitar Hero even more. It's a good expansion of Nintendo's current strategy, but leaves most old school nintendo fans out in the cold for now. 

Although GTA on DS might be really cool. We'll see I suppose. 

The new 1:1 Wiimote attachment could be very cool. But Only if someone makes a good game for it. The Wii Sports Resort is interesting but unless it's $30, i cant see myself getting it.

Gonna watch the Sony Conference and then I'll post on it.

Friday, July 11, 2008

The Problem With The Halo 3 Experience

For the most part Halo 3 is a very, very good game. Although my recent experiences have brought forward some revealing truths behind it. Most of my complaints do not deal with the gameplay itself, but rather the matchmaking system. So I'll hit the gameplay problems first.

- Headshots happen, but only if you use certain guns. What the shit is that? If I shoot a guy in the face with a battlerifle or sniper rifle, then it deals more damage than normal . But using the assault rifle or anyother close range gun apparently has lost the ability to do critical damage by aiming for the noggin. This is most likely for balance because otherwise assault rifles would drop fools so fast at close range that melee would be pretty much pointless. 

-Next up we have a problem with lore conflicting with gameplay. The fact that your shield apparently is weaker around the face. Why? Who the fuck knows? It makes no sense that an energy shield would be weakest around the most vital section of the body, but apparently it is. Basically the shield system should utterly negate the ability to make headshots until the shield drops, but given that you are effectively at no life once the shield fails it would make headshots stupid. However removing headshots would eliminate the need for precision when utilizing sniper rifles, you simply would need to hit the target twice.

-Matchmaking is fucking broken is the next problem. This only really impacts the casual Halo 3 players. Simply put the system relies entirely on TruSkill for ranked matches. This seems nice except each "playlist" maintains it's own unique TruSkill that is independent of the others. Basically you can rank up Truskill of 20+ (over 20 seeming to be very high to me) in one mode, then jump to a different playlist and start at the bottom again. The game sees you in the new playlist as a noob for all intents and purposes despite the fact that you may have played hundreds of games in another ranked playlist. This pretty much results in teams being stacked when one player ends up gutting the entire enemy team. The game should compare experience and Truskill together when matchmaking. True this would be longer but, if I have to fight anymore people who have 1000+ matches under their belt I'm gonna fucking puke, I play it casually for a little fun, but being owned into oblivion is fun for no one but idiots who run around screaming "I PWN NUBS!!!"... More on those idiots in a later post.

Basically that's my problems with Halo 3. When the game actually does get you matched up with opponents of similiar skill the game is a blast and easily one of the best shooters available for consoles. (Although to compare it to PC shooters then it is mediocre at best).

Also I guess my time buying video games is at a close for the summer. I have some credit at EBGames, enough for one new game, so i'll wait for reviews of some good games before I decide what to get. Now I begin the saving up for school. Whoop-dee freak'n doo.

Ciao.

Oh And Go Play More DotA

RyEpUnK on the USWest server if you wanna play with me.