Nintendo
Safety. It’s a luxury granted exclusively to the confident and victorious or, relative to our spectrum, Nintendo of America and their massively successful Wii and DS platforms. Their annual E3 Media Briefing, which had previously been witness to infamous acts of delirious journalistic atrocities, was relatively calm, cool, and, to put it bluntly; unflattering. Pre-show speculation was rampant with what the big N’s plans would include; first party Wii-ware announcements? A hardware storage solution? Kid Icarus? Punch Out!!!? A resurrection of Metroid: Dread? New iterations of Mario and Zelda? Surely one of these had to happen, right? Right?
Not so much. Reggie and Cammie played it safe with a stable of casual friendly titles. Sure, they stressed that Wii was still a platform for casual and hardcore alike (and alluded to the Zelda and Galaxy teams being hard at work on such) but all of the announcements were pretty predictable. A follow up to the wildly inviting Wii Sports was inevitable, thus the birth of Wii Sports Resort. A lot of it looked legitimately fun, (particularly the sword segments) and the new Wii MotionPlus add-on looks to be anything but needless, but it might actually create more problems than it solves. Developers can no longer design games around a universal Wii platform, as games designed for the MotionPlus will surely fragment the market. I mean, not that that matters, if Wii Play is any indication, consumers go nuts over games with pack in controllers, so maybe they know what they’re doing with that one. If nothing else, Nintendo seems to know what they’re doing.
Shaun White Snowboarding came out of nowhere. Having him actually there to promote it was a nice touch, but seeing a game that actually looked fun to play certainly wasn’t a bad bonus. It looked to shed the cumbersome interface of Wii-Ski, all the while providing the player with a slick opportunity to have fun without a severe learning curve. Steve and Greg actually got to demo the game later in the day at Ubisoft and, despite Steve’s inherent ineptness with the Balance Board, managed to get the highest score of the day. The universal accessibility inherent to the Wii flows well into the game’s interface, and it looks to be the first balance board game to fully capitalize on its unique input scheme. Or so it seemed when the 360 kiosk for the same game was all but deserted.
Animal Crossing was expected, if not slightly underwhelming. Given, I have absolutely no experience with any previous iteration of the franchise, but it looked like a newbie mmo-ish device for people totally unfamiliar with online gameplay (which, again, factors into Wii’s casual approach). The amount of time they spent on WiiSpeak, a chat device Microsoft included with Xbox Live in, oh, 2001, was laughable. Welcome to the 21st century, guys. Anyway I’m sure it will serve its overly cute purpose with winning colors, but the general aesthetic (it’s supposed to look like an N64 game?) and lack of a clear goal was a major turnoff to my general gaming interests.
Wii Music is what I’m most worried about. Seeing the drums play in real time was cool as hell and easily one ups Rock Band’s setup, and watching Miyamoto stroll out with the saxophone was equally charming, but it seems to be missing a key component of the gaming curriculum. Specifically, a challenge. Looking to distance itself from daunting rhythmic insanity of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the alleged appeal of Wii Music was simply to make music and have fun. Notes on instruments are played by actions and have little to do with timing. Keeping the focus on the music is an interesting paradigm, and the sheer quantity of instruments included (50) is gloriously terrifying, but I’m not so sure a game without an achievable goal is going to win over the gaming press.
But then again, confidence is the name of the game with Nintendo. They sure as hell know what they’re doing, especially when most of the gaming press seems to feel the exact opposite. Essentially nothing I say matters and, this time next year, everything I wasn’t sure about will have probably wind up with outstanding sales figures. It’s Nintendo’s time to shine and, believe me, they’re well aware of that fact.
Oh yeah one more thing, the press conference wasn’t totally devoid of surprise, as one major announcement certainly issued its fair share of mouth-agape “…oh”s. What announcement was that, you ask?
Yeah. Who knows what the gameplay is going to be like, but snatching the next handheld GTA from Sony is a major victory, regardless of the game’s context. Speaking of which,
Sony
Sony, on the other hand, really knows how to please a crowd. Their pseudo interactive pre conference live demos (hell of a sentence, I’m sorry), were charming in its casually playful approach. Seeing looping video of recent and future titles on ten foot TVs would have been fine, but watching normal looking people play through Metal Gear Solid 4, Pixeljunk Eden, Gran Turimo 5, Socom, and Force Unleashed was alluring way of presenting their intriguing lineup. Anyway, the actual show was a hit and miss affair of excess.
I like Jack Tretton, I think his self defeating sense of humor falls perfectly in line with his teleprompter flubs, but, good god guys, and I know Phil left, but what happened to everyone else? Baring a few cameos from some developer personal, the entire thing was Jack’s show. Variety is paramount to keeping a presentation interesting (the revolving door of faces at Nintendo’s conference was appreciated), but Sony really should have let him parlay the show onto someone else.
The length of the presentation certainly didn’t help matters. Jet lag has distorted my space/time awareness, but I’m pretty sure that thing lasted for an hour and a half. Given it was generally well paced, but they seemed to spend too much time focusing on-hey why the hell am I even talking about this, it is, after all, about the games and not frivolous comments about pacing and personnel.
Resistance 2 looked incredible. The Godzilla-esque rooftop melee was some of the most impressive tech I saw all day, not to mention that actually playing that level looked ridiculously fun and engaging. Despite it’s literally colossal gameplay, hints of subtly were also abound; a brief look at the conspiracy figures surrounding Resistance were briefly visible as Hale flew through a hallway, and some Tyler Durden frame slip action was present at the end of the trailer. In all seriousness, it looked equally impressive as the (rehashed) footage of Killzone 2. I know that was delayed for timing reasons but, really guys, Insomniac will now have delivered four five star titles since Killzone 2 was announced. Yes, the long rumored Ratchet and Clank PSN game made an appearance in the form of Quest for Booty. Not too sure about the game’s length or additions to the formula, but the $15 price point is enough to make me sign up no questions asked. These guys haven’t had a dud yet and are seemingly incapable of a letdown.
Using Little Big Planet as a vehicle to run through some of their less interesting business aspects was a tremendous improvement over the similar run-through with Home last year. LBP is a delightful looking game, and the sheer possibility of unpredictable ingenuity is its greatest strength. I really think it’s their most promising attempt the cash in on some of Nintendo’s casual boom, and we’ll finally get to find out (for real) in October.
Really amazed at the amount of time spent promoting the Playstation 2. A centralized theme to Sony’s conference was their “ten year plan” in regard to console life span. They said it happened with the PS1 (which didn’t exactly last a decade), reiterated this with the surprisingly strong sales of the PS2, and said the PS3 was still laying the groundwork for a similar lifespan. I think the PS2’s longevity is something that weren’t exactly planning on and I give them kudos for parleying it’s seemingly limitless potential into a tool for saying “the best is yet to come” on PS3, but I sure do wish they showed some more appealing titles. Last gen versions of Madden, Mercenaries, and Force Unleashed? Really guys? It’s anyone’s guess as to why the hell they left out Persona 4, especially when you consider the surprisingly strong sales of Persona 3 and its follow-up, FES.
PSP was pretty much what I expected, save a questionable surprise appearance from the Resistance franchise. I mean it looked cool, but the change in developers as well as shift to third person may suggest cash- in more than come-in. I’ll probably buy it, regardless. Patapon 2 and Locoroco 2 had me smiling with childlike glee; I’m a sucker for the aesthetic and I think the PSP could really shine through titles that push art design over polygon count. Disappointed that I didn’t see anything on Dissidia, but maybe it’s over somewhere in Squeenix land.
The PS3 movie/TV service wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but the right now launch date for the service and easy to understand user interface were welcomed additions to the PS3’s more-than-games approach. I doubt I’ll ever actually utilize the service personally (that’s why I pay for Netflix), but I can see it being a solid addition to the PS3’s non disc delivery service.
Which brings me to the relatively underwhelming offering from PSN titles. Pixeljunk Eden, a game so ruthlessly appealing it nearly makes me weep, was given about thirty seconds of screen time, and Wipeout HD was a complete no show. An expansion of Pain that should have been included in the original offering also failed to impress. Still, the previously mentioned Little Big Planet, Ratchet, and the sort of cool looking Fat Princess, indicate a healthy lineup for PSN, despite the relative lack of new titles.
The close out 2009 lineup of PS3 titles looked promising. God of War III teased as expected and, while I wanted Twisted Metal too, was perfectly fine in filling out the Jaffe-inspired-property requirement. The DC universe MMO came out of nowhere, especially when you consider a similar move with Marvel properties was quietly canned for 360 sometime last year. Looks interesting, regardless. If you’re going to try and put a dent in WOW, few better ways exist than commandeering comic properties. InFamous looked pretty damn awesome in its attempts to separate itself from Crackdown. There seemed to be too much of a focus on his apparently ability to shoot lightning, but I have complete faith in whatever Sucker Punch has in store for InFamous.
MAG was a sucker punch. I wondered when someone was going to take the MMO concept and stretch it out over another genre and I guess it was finally time to try it with a console shooter (sorry, Huxley). The 256-player bullet point drew a few gasps from the crowd, but Zipper certainly has the technical prowess to back it up. They didn’t really reveal too much in terms of how they’re going to make this actually work, but it’s still quite a ways off, so I’m sure we’ll find some details over the next couple of months.
