For us video gamers, E3 is like a sports draft, election night, and a hot date all rolled into one. Massive amounts of speculation to be confirmed or denied (in real time, thanks to the Internet: you crazy kids who never had to wait for your EGM features don’t know how good it is nowadays), a few surprises, and–if all goes right–a great feeling when it’s all over with.
Microsoft popped out their keynote today, and I’ve got to say that my previous “meh” attitude about the rest of the year has reached nearly debilitating amounts of joy. It’s gonna be a good twelve months for 360 and PC gamers.
Now, I’m not going to pretend that I was there. I would have love to have been there, but I’m not there. I’m not a well-traveled video game journalist. I’m just a fat dude with a laptop and a reliable Interent connection. So if you want professional, in-depth coverage and commentary, check out Kotaku and Joystiq.
If you want my opinion on the big news items from today, read below.
Halo: Reach is indeed in the works. Microsoft rolled out a teaser that would make Michael Bay stand up and clap, and it ended with a Spartan saying “We’re not going anywhere.” The Halo games may be the finest recruitment tool that the US military never realized it had. The trailer implies that Spartans, not Marines or ODST, will be the main player-characters, and I am using the pluarl because I see this as a squad-based shooter. Maybe even third-person. After all, also revealed was the “Firefight” mode for Halo 3: ODST (think Horde mode), and 3rd-person shooter Gears of War did kinda-sorta steal the thunder of the Halo series. If this game ends up being a 3rd-person tactical shooter, remember: you heard it here first folks.
Star Wars: The Old Republic will have full-voice acting. I’m cool with this, so long as you can skip the dialogue and get to the freakin’ quest. In even bigger news, the first cinematic trailer is out and it is beautiful–really beautiful. This is what the prequel trilogy should have been, but no: we’ve got Jar Jar Binks and Darth Vader giving a slack-jawed “Noooo!!!” at the end of it all. I will be picking this game up, and if any game can kill WoW it is this one. I don’t think it will, due to economics of both time and money (that’s a whole new post), but last time I checked there are more people who don’t play WoW than do; this game could bring in those who would have never picked up an MMO otherwise.
Summer of Arcade is back, or: more reasons to stay broke.Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and a re-imagined TMNT: Turtles in Time won’t be hard sells. Shadow Complex from Epic Games looks pretty sweet, for Contra fans, but it damn sure better have co-op.
Metal Gear Solid: Rising is coming to the Xbox 360. Awesome. Five hours of cut scenes punctuated by a few seconds of game play here and there. I loved every part of Metal Gear Solid 3 except for the cinemas and the original Metal Gear Solid truly captured my imagination, but am I the only person in the world who thinks that Metal Gear Solid 2 was the world’s biggest vanity project? Am I also the only person in the world who has not played Metal Gear Solid 4–and is perfectly fine with it? In short: life was fine without a new Metal Gear Solid, life will continue to be fine. Doesn’t mean I won’t buy it, doesn’t mean I will.
Ozzy Osbourne is in Brutal Legend. \m/
Project Natal is going to eliminate the need for the controller…supposedly. I’m sure this will be awesome for at first, but I see too much potential for gimmickry. That, and so many games require complex body motions: can you imagine playing Gears of War with your body? Yeah, I’d have a coronary. Peter Molyneaux, who gave us the Fable series, is involved so we’ll have at least one innovative game, but I see this quickly becoming Wii Remote for the 360.
Left 4 Dead 2 will be released this year. Too soon. Way, way too soon. It will apparently bring lots of cool stuff to the table–more melee weapons and an advanced AI Director–but Valve, would it have hurt you to sit on this thing for a year so I’d feel like I had gotten my money’s worth from buying the first game? Are times that tough? Oh, and this game will be set in the South. Get your stereotypes ready, boys! EE-HAW! Break out the Beam and put your arm ’round your cousin’s waist–we gwine to a shindig!
Nintendo continues to betray its once longtime fans and focus entirely on bringing in new gamers who may or may not stick with the hobby. Okay, we don’t know that for sure. Their keynote is later this week. I’m pretty sure I’m right however. I’ll bet this year they’ll announce Wii Music 2: this time, all you do is put the disc in the machine and dance. It’s like a CD player with Miis! What fun!
So some Internet treasure hunter unearthed shaky proof that Bungie is working on a game called Halo: Reach.
Right now, it’s purely conjecture. After all, Bungie has said that Halo 3: ODST will be the last Halo game, but if there is anything that George Lucas has taught us it’s that there is no such thing as a dead horse. Case in point: old school Star Wars fans facepalm over this new…thing…masquerading as Star Wars (the Clone Wars animated series), but eight-year-olds the world over are eating it up. The core base of a franchise might get burned out from over-saturation and relentless marketing, but there will always be a new fan base. In other words, Halo 3: ODST is far from the final Halo game.
So if Halo: Reach is to see the light of day, what kind of game could it be? I’m rooting for something similar to ODST, a game in which the Master Chief is not the main character. Don’t get me wrong: I love this character, and find him much more iconic and interesting than Gordon “Determind Silence” Freeman, but his story has been told. True, the original Halo trilogy only told of his involvement in the later stages of the Human-Covenant War, but the novel The Fall of Reach (really good by the way; give it a read) told his entire origin, detailing every major event in his life up until that fateful moment when the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace right in front of Installation 04.
I would find Halo: Reach a far more interesting game if it told the story of what happened on the ground in the Battle of Reach. This would be a perfect set-up for a squad-based shooter where you play as a UNSC Marine. Imagine Call of Duty 4 set in the Halo universe and you’ve got an idea of what I am speaking.
No matter what Bungie does, I’m sure it will be pretty cool. The Halo trilogy was very well executed, even if the developers did work largely under the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality.
I’ve often wondered what an MMORPG without levels or classes would be like, if there was some more elegant and seamless way to gauge your progress in such a game. Somebody at FunCom must me wondering the same thing.
Age of Conan may not have been the Kick In The Pants that its supporters had hoped for, but I admire it for trying some new ideas. Here’s hoping that The Secret World will succeed in its ambitions. It won’t unseat WoW, but it might take some players away or at least inspire other publishers to try something other than the hack/slash/quest/turn-in/kill things/repeat motif.
I’ll be following this game with great interest. The official forums look to be chock-full of talks about conspiracy theories and such, and it appears the developers were inspired by works of urban fantasy (they mention Neil Gaiman, which is awesome). Let’s hope the title of this post doesn’t become laughing stock later.
Please be aware that, as the linked-to article says, this story has not been confirmed. It’s entirely possible that Dave Arneson is still with us. I originally wrote the post as if the terrible news were true, but found it in better taste to edit it so it reflects the current state of the matter: unknown.
It’s a sad day for gamers: Dave Arneson, who along with recently-departed Gary Gygax, created Dungeons and Dragons, has passed on according to an unconfirmed source.
You may have never played Dungeons and Dragons, but if you have played World of Warcraft or any MMORPG–or any other kind of RPG for that matter, electronic or otherwise–you need to be thankful for this man’s contribution. He helped to lay down the template that has worked so very well for so very long.
Take a moment and remember the Arneson family in your thoughts and prayers. Death is hard on a family, and if Dave Arneson is still with us then he is still battling cancer; something just as trying.
I only have one complaint about how CGS was handled this year. It’s a pretty big complaint, so I’ll get it out of the way.
The opportunities to play video games at the biggest video game event in North Carolina was extremely limited for all but the hardcore.
Let me explain: every year, there are tournaments for major multiplayer titles. There is always a selection of FPS, fighting, racing, music, and RTS games in which gamers can throw down in hopes of winning big prizes. One expects competitive events at a gaming convention; I would be disappointed if there weren’t any at CGS. However, not everybody who plays video games lives for competition. In the past, CGS has had free play stations set up with at least some of the tournament games, letting those who choose not to compete but still want to hang out and meet new people to play with an opportunity to do so. This year, there were tournaments aplenty but no free play opportunities, except in the coin-op arcade (machines were set to free play and didn’t cost anything) where a DDR tournament hampered the game play environment just a little. Sure, once the tournaments were over, anybody was welcome to play: for the last two hours of the event.
My suggestion to Wayne Community College’s Phi Beta Lambda, the organizers of the event: less tournaments, more free play.
With that being said, I still had a good time. There was a room set up with a selection of old-school games (they even had E.T. for the Atari 2600, so everyone could see how this legendarily bad game failed in everything it attempted), and the aforementioned arcade was a blast: nothing says loving like X-Men vs. Street Fighter or Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (or Battletoads, or Area 51). For those interested in information about the games industry, how to break into it, and the ideal education for doing so, there were numerous panels. Penny Dreadful Productions gave an interesting talk on steampunk cosplay, and the opportunity to take your picture with Darth Vader was worth the price of admission alone. Also, Entertainment System provided some awesome heavy metal/hard rock video game music.
Speaking of those speakers and panels, that seemed to be the focus this year, as if the purpose was two-fold: a major competitive event running alongside a major educational one. This is both a good and bad thing: for those with more of an academic interest in gaming, a full day of informative and thought-provoking talks on the state of the industry and the chance to talk face-to-face with industry professionals and educators is very satisfying. For those who compulsively play for bragging rights and get a real charge out of winning, seven hours of tournament game play with nothing but the most intense gamers around is well worth getting up at seven in the morning on a Saturday. Personally, I’m interested in both, which is why I’m glad to see both more informative sessions and disappointed to see less non-competitive games for current multiplayer titles at this otherwise awesome event.
All in all, CGS 2009 was a good time. I just wish there were more opportunities to play video games non-competitively, though I am happy to see it move in a decidedly academic/trade oriented direction and appeal to two unique audiences. I do have to say that I was saddened to see that Bawls did not show up this year, as that energy drink is the greatest energy drink known to man and it’s hard to find it locally. I mean, if you’re going to be a gamer, you’ve got to have Bawls.
I’ll be attending the Carolina Games Summit this Saturday. For those of you who don’t know, CGS is the premier gaming expo for North Carolina, chock full of not only free-play and tournament video games but also forums, presenters, and vendors. It takes place right here in my hometown, and I’ve only missed one year since they started having it out at Wayne Community College.
I’ll be doing a wrap-up of it next week, but I’ll also be tweeting the event, so be sure to follow my tweets if you’re interested.
It’s too late to buy tickets online, but you just might be able to score some tickets at the door if they are not sold out. You also might be able to buy them over the phone; I don’t know, I am lazy and as soon as I saw that you could buy them online I stopped researching ticket-buying methods. I encourage anybody within a manageable drive to show up. It’s always a good time. Plus representatives from the 501st Legion are scheduled to show up, which turns something awesome into something mind-blowing, face-melting spectacularly incredibly awesome.
So I hope to see you there, and if anybody reading this does see me I’d love to hear you say “Aren’t you the guy who writes ‘The Joystick Cafe’ and has had several pieces of gaming journalism published?”.
First, my most recent article for WomenGamers.com can be found here. It’s an interview with some stand-out musicians from OverClocked Remix. Check it out, and then drop by OCR’s site for some video game music goodness.
I picked this video up from Outer Heaven. Not only is it pretty funny, but it’s rather thought-provoking: just how would competitive multiplayer using Fallout 3’s V.A.T.S. system play? More like a traditional board game I’m sure. I think it could work. For now, we’ll just live with this pretty cool bit.
This video came to me courtesy of EXTRALIFE. Funny stuff, and further proof that Batman is both the most awesome superhero ever and the easiest one to spoof, all at once.
I don’t know about you, but I actually kind of want to go out and get Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe right now because of that video.
Finally, speaking of Batman and video games, here’s the latest trailer for Batman: Arkham Asylum, one of the games I’m looking forward to the most. Even if the game is half as good as it looks, it’s going to be pretty sweet; now, how about that sandbox Gotham City game, eh?
I loved Gears of War 2. I really did. I even fast-talked a friend of mine into impulse buying it. Now, I’m afraid that it’s just a shadow of its former self.
The last time I tried to play multiplayer, I waited…and waited…and waited…and never got into a group. This was after the patch that was supposed to fix everything. Not even Horde mode went live with me, and since this is one of the most popular multiplayer modes EVER, I refuse to believe that it was due to low player population.
Now, I see this crap, and I weep.
Seriously? I think this glitch would have been easy enough to spot–and fix–in development.
I really don’t know if I ever want to buy another Epic game again. They’ve just seemed content to count their money and not bother truly fixing the problems that Gears 2 has–which is a shame, because this could have been the best multiplayer experience of the year (yes, even better than Left 4 Dead) if we could actually, you know, PLAY IT.
Apparently, Microsoft was not ignorant of the fact that the 360 had the potential to scratch up your discs all along. This news has been slathered on every video game blog or website on the Internet, but might I direct you to my favorite gaming blog, Kotaku, to read their take on it.
It seems that a team of engineers was tasked with fixing the problem, and every solution they came up with was either too expensive or too impractical. So Microsoft did nothing–at least that’s what the news people say.
This is a bit misleading: Microsoft did do something, it was just woefully inadequate. They offered up a game exchange program wherein users that had their discs mauled could ship the damaged goods to Microsoft for a replacement; kind of like how you ship your console in for a repair after it red-rings out.
I often wonder how much the Red Rings of Death isn’t brought on by user error; I mean, if you leave your box on for hours on end in a poorly ventilated area with crap laying on top of it, that can’t be good for the hardware. This, however, is a bit of a dick move on Microsoft’s part. I can understand that major hardware fixes are expensive, but it’s not like they don’t have the money to throw away. Thanks to the powers of capitalism, you could have distirbuted the cost of repairs across the retail price of the 360. I know that I would rather pay an extra $50 and get a console that is going to work than save $50 and get a “maybe, maybe not.”
For the record, I have not had any problems with my 360. My theory is that since I have the Halo 3 edition (it’s all Gamestop had at the time, and I was doing a pretty big trade) and the production cycle was shorter on these models, there was more tender, loving care paid to their build; either that or I’m just lucky.
Posted by Brandon 
Posted by Brandon 
Posted by Brandon 
