OBLIGATORY HARDCORE GAMER POST E3 Wii COMPLAINT
*I am personally offended that UbiSoft, Activision, and other publishers have chosen to start "boutique" labels catering to a booming new demographic of gamers: stupid people. Already, this demographic has a politically correct title ("casual gamers"), a proclivity for game boxes with family-friendly pastel colors everywhere, and enough copies of Carnival Games to drown like fifteen kitties. And have you ever tried to drown a fluffy, cute little kitty with hundreds of flexible plastic discs? It's hard.
The Wii has not performed as it should have, that is to say, poorly. The system should have at best sold moderately well, mostly to the Nintendo fanboys, who'll buy anything Hudson designs so long as "Nintendo," is slapped prominently on the side of the plastic.
There were potential benefits to this "new-gen" arrangement: Nintendo had an opportunity to become the place developers, slaving away under the auspices of genocidal tyrant companies like EA's and Activision, could stretch their creativity,. While development costs continue to grow at an alarming rate for the HD systems, ensuring a steady stream of Bald Space Marine shooters and sports games to keep the corporate coffers filled, the cost of doing an experimental little thing on Nintendo's strange white box promised to cost next to nothing. And that WiiMote looked so elegant, in stark contrast to the increasingly ridiculous Xbox & Playstation harness-shaped contraptions -- perhaps those financial and input limitations were just the thing to spark some innovative ideas, eh?
*PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFPHT*
As consolation, PSN and the Xbox Live Arcade have gamely stepped it up, providing the kinds of experiences I assumed the Wii would deliver.
The Wii, which should be overflowing with unrealized, epoch-making masterpieces 18 months into it's life-cycle, is today the home of... Ninjabread Man.
And the companies I assumed would throw their creative-types a little freedom to tinker around with gameplay mechanics, narrative presentation, waggle control, and the rest? They secured as many multi-year deals with Hanna Montana as their lawyers let them.
Outside of MadWorld, can you name one high profile Wii game developed by someone living outside of Kyoto?
I PLAY SOME HALO 3 CO-OP AND DON'T HATE IT
*I finally get why Halo is such a monster seller, and it only took me 7 years to understand: game's just dialed in. So far, it is the only console FPS I understand how to control -- the slow, smooth nature of the combat and the tuned analog stick sensitivity are as compatible as peanut butter & chocolate.
Other things I discovered:
*There are a lot of lasers and energy balls and other such nonsense. In a sci-fi shooter, this is par for course. However, Bungie is the only developer that understands that spectral highlighting and particle effects work most effectively when employed with subtlety. Unlike, say, the Metroid Prime series, firing a gun does not fill the screen with light bloom. The brilliance of underselling the flashy graphical effects is that, for once, you can actually see what you're shooting at.
*The shooter genre consists of the same 30 seconds of gameplay repeated over and over again: Move forward - see enemy - shoot enemy - duck behind something - kill enemy - move forward. Bungie gets this, and makes sure those 30 seconds are a lot of fun.
*I can't imagine playing this game solo. Co-op is what made the game fun.
I BEAT METAL GEAR SOLID 4 ONLY TO DISCOVER I LIKED IT LESS THAN METAL GEAR SOLID 3
*I might have more to say about this game later, but the most striking observation I have is as follows: Kojima needs to hire a goddamn editor.
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