E3 Impressions - Microsoft

I'd have to say that Microsoft was the clear winner of this E3.

I didn't catch Microsoft's presentation live, so rather than just rehashing stuff that I'm sure you could find elsewhere, I'll just discuss a few of the things that caught my eye.

Let's just get this out of the way: FFXIII is coming to the 360. Meh.

One of the big changes coming is the update to XBL and the 360 Dashboard. The dashboard has been completely redesigned to follow more closely with the look of Nintendo or Apple products. The result is a slick interface that appeals to a different audience than the previous Dashboard. I'll reserve judgment until I see the final version in action; I imagine I'll like it just fine.

As for XBL, Microsoft is adding two new major features: avatars and Live Party. The avatars idea is pretty neat and, again, targeted at a different market segment. Live Party looks very sharp, however. It's basically a way for a group of friends to connect smoothly, game together quickly, and share media easily. One of my favorite features of Live Party is the ability for everyone in the party to stream the same movie at the same time. You can basically watch a movie with someone while they're somewhere else without the hassle of trying to sync up manually.

Other than that, Microsoft didn't say much that I cared about. They talked about some incredible games coming up like Fable 2, RE5, and Fallout 3. I'm really looking forward to those.

Hopefully, I'll actually have a 360 by then.

Also there's this

Best. Trailer. Ever.

Make sure you watch it in HD if you can.

E3 Impressions - Sony

Ahh Sony. E3 does not treat you well. Nothing can compare to your epic failure 2 years ago, but you just can't seem to win.

In all honesty, Sony's presentation at E3 was really well put together and was an enjoyable watch. The problem was content. Their only new announcement was their movie download service which, much to their credit, launched immediately after the conclusion of the presentation. It also allows for you to download these movies to your PSP. Very cool. Everything else was essentially reminding you that all of the games that have been announced are, yes, still coming.

The show started off with a history of the PS1, PS2, and PSP. In every case, he was focused on pointing out that all of these platforms had extremely slow starts but after about 2 years, they really started picking up and have gone on to be successful platforms. Wait a minute, the PS3 has had a really slow start and it's been out for, hold on, two years! I see what you did there.

Not surprisingly, LittleBigPlanet made a prominent appearance, this time being used as Sony's "PowerPoint" tool. They made a completely interactive and well timed presentation that really showed off the engine and was fun to watch. That was definitely the highlight of the presentation for me.

One of my favorite demos was a showing of Resistance 2. That game looks incredibly immersive and polished. It's the type of game that could actually get me to purchase a PS3. Let's hope that the PS3 drops to closer to $300 by the time it comes out.

Beyond that, we saw footage of a bunch of announced games. Some comic book artist did a single one-handed push-up and winded himself. We saw a couple teaser trailers for God of War 2 and some game I'd never heard of called inFamous. They talked a lot about new features for the PS3 in general and discussed the future of trophies. In short, they announced what the 360 announced two years ago.

Overall, a good presentation without a lot of substance. There wasn't really anything that I took away from that show where I was blown away. It'll be interesting to see what they have to say next year.

E3 Impressions - Nintendo

Despite promises of core game announcements at E3, the Nintendo press conference focused squarely on a bunch of shit that I don't care about. The big announcement was Animal Crossing for the Wii. SNORE. I've already played it on two systems and they were identical. At least we know the Wii version will have waggle.

I watched the press conference live, but I only caught the last third or so. In that time, they were showing off Wii music. I think I can honestly say that it's the worst "game" that Nintendo has come up with yet.

Now, I'm generally a huge supporter of Nintendo and what they're doing with the Wii. It's opening up games to an entirely new group of people; I never thought I'd see my mom not only playing a video game, but enjoying it enough that she now has her own console. I find that incredible. That having been said, Wii Music is a joke. It requires no skill to play, there is no winning or losing, and there is no score. The "gameplay" doesn't even require button matching. To play the horn, you quite literally put the remote up to your mouth and push buttons randomly.

The most painful part of this presentation was their demonstration of gameplay. They brought out 4 Nintendo execs, all in their mid to late thirties, and had them play the Mario song on stage. This amounted to four fully grown adults jumping around the stage like retarded toddlers hopped up on sugar. It was so cringe-filled that I actually had to turn it off. The best comparison I can come up with is think of how you feel during the super awkward scenes in The Office. Now apply that to a group of real people. Harrowing.

I heard there was more horrible parts to the conference, but I just couldn't be bothered to take time away from doing absolutely nothing to listen.

Review - No More Heroes

My god, I'm doing a game review. It's madness, madness I say!

No More Heroes comes from the same offbeat team that brought us Killer7. It has a very similar art style to Killer7 but as I've never played Killer7, I'll save the nitty gritty comparisons to you. No More Heroes is over-the-top gory, charmingly quirky, and very funny.

You play as Travis Touchdown, one of the top assassins in the world - number 11, in fact. He is a stereotypical otaku, collecting anime and wrestling masks, and has an impressive porn collection and obvious addiction. Travis is approached by the mysterious United Assassins Association and offered the chance to become number 1.

The story and characters require so much more than I could do justice to here, so I won't even try. Every character, including every boss, has a unique personality and they're all wonderfully... fucked up.

The combat in the game is another high point. Sword swings are accomplished by simply pressing A and whether the attack is high or low depends on how the Wii remote is being held. This adds a level of strategy into the game necessary to get past certain blocking enemies. The really fun part of combat, however, comes from the finishing moves. After weakening an enemy, an arrow will pop up on the screen. If the player swings the Wii remote in that direction in time, he'll do an extra powerful attack that also has the chance to hit other nearby enemies. This usually results in gigantic explosions of blood and death. Very rewarding.

No More Heroes has a large open world portion as well. In between boss missions, the player needs to collect large sums of money to pay for the next boss event. Where this part of the game really shines is in the side jobs. After every boss, a new side job is added and these range from collecting coconuts to mowing lawns. Each job has a unique control scheme associated with it and some of them are very clever.

Alright, let me stop jerking off the game for a bit and get to the bad stuff. At times, the combat gets extremely repetitive: A, A, A, swing, A, A, A, swing. The only really unique and challenging portions of the game are the boss fights themselves which are generally incredible. As well, however unique and clever they may be, doing the same side jobs or assassination missions a million times to get your money gets old fast. An objective based system whereby the player had some specific mission to accomplish before being granted access to the next boss would have been a much more intuitive and fun method of doing things.

And so ends another Chem Lab Meandering Review™. The bottom line: buy this game and you will not regret it. It's charming, fun, and, most importantly, a new experience. It's rare to find something so fresh that also does it so well.

Hicking

While perusing Plenty of Fish the other day, I found something that made me weep for the future of mankind. The profile of a young woman had an interest in "hicking." I immediately figured that it must be a spelling mistake, but that theory was called into question when I noticed that the interest was hyper linked.

Something to note: Interests on Plenty of Fish only get turned into a hyper link after a certain number of people have all put the same interest. Clicking on the link will then show you a list of people who have that interest on their profile.

My next thought was that perhaps this was some slang word that I was unfamiliar with. It wouldn't be the first time and slang is this constantly evolving entity. I went to the standard collection of retarded language, Urban Dictionary, to find my answer. Sadly, Urban Dictionary returned no results.

Now, what this means is that there are enough illiterate, lazy morons on Plenty of Fish that are incapable of correctly spelling "hiking" to have it show up as a valid interest. Awesome.

One Life Goal Complete

Guess what I did this weekend?