E3 2010 in Review: Who 'Won' at E3?

I don't think there's any question that Nintendo has won the show this year. 3DS has captured the minds of gamers. It's not simply that it can play games in 3D, the quality of the graphics is impressive. Without knowing a price, or when it will be released, every gamer I know plans to get one at launch. If the system is available this holiday season, I will be preordering as soon as the option becomes available. Frankly, I don't believe it will be possible to get the system any other way. It will be 2006 all over again. It took months for the Wii's sales to drop off to the point where they could reliably be found on shelves. I firmly believe the 3DS will follow suit.

That said, I can't really agree with the general assessment that the Move is relegated to third place. Move and Kinect each have their own issues, but I find the Kinect's issues more troubling at present.

The Kinect is a remarkable piece of technology, and Microsoft should be given full credit for trying to innovate in the field of motion control. It's unfortunate that Microsoft, the software company as you say, isn't really doing anything innovative with this product. Yes, you can drive menus with your voice and your hands. This is pretty neat, but as reviewers have discovered, the voice commands aren't particularly sophisticated. The 360 makes no differentiation between two voices. The best I can say is that it's implemented well. It's implemented, perhaps, for the first time on a home console, but we've been able to execute Voice Commands on PC for over 15 years, there is no current evidence that 360 will offer much in the way of calibration or personalization. This is little better than a limited Voice Commands you can perform in some Nintendo DS titles. Controlling the menu system with your hand is a classy feature, but its implementation is really no different than that of a Wiimote. Yes, your hand is being tracked rather than an infrared beam, but similar things were done with the Eye Toy seven years ago on the PlayStation two.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: Update

I have a pre-ordered copy of Super Mario Galaxy 2 waiting for me at home. Quite a brilliant way to start the summer don't you think? I expect that I will be writing impressions and a review within the next few weeks and perhaps, I could well have another addition into my favourite video games of all time list.

Red Steel 2 Review

 This is a quick review of Red Steel 2 that I wrote for my unviversity newspaper that I have been meaning to post of quite some time. Enjoy. 

The original Red Steel was a heavily hyped mess rushed out for Wii’s 2006 launch, one that failed to deliver on all its promises of precise aiming, visceral swordplay, and impressive graphics. But non the less, it happened to become one of the Wii’s best selling third party offerings, and now the completely overhauled sequel is one of the best first person shooters (FPS) on the system and a shocking reminder of how good a Wii-exclusive shooter can be. 

Quick note about blog posts

Hello there, as you may have noticed I don't tend to post here as often as I have previously. Due to my recent commitments with university amongst other things I have been unable to blog as often as I would like. However I intend for this to change once my exams are finished and I have more time to write.

I have been thinking about the best way to go about my blogging, aside from writing articles and reviews which can be time consuming, I have decided that a good percentage of my future posts will be concerning news, primarly Nintendo related. As I am aware that it would be foolhardy to compete with terrific sites such as Gonintendo for news coverage, I hope to post news that I and hopefully others will find particularly interesting, as well as my brief opinions and thoughts on the subject.

Anyway, I have revision and work to get back to. In the next few weeks I plan on posting an improved and more in-depth edit of a review for Red Steel 2 that I wrote for my university newspaper. But until then I hope that the news and opinions that I post are interesting and encourage further procrastination.

ABAHB

Worlds of their own: Pokemon

The Pokemon games were among the first that I ever played. Back then I wasn't interested enough to read magazines and I didn't have many friends who followed gaming. But good Lord, they marketed the hell out of that game. Between ads for the game itself and the anime, my brothers and I were already obsessed before the morning when we opened up that box and saw a translucent Game Boy Pocket with a copy of Pokemon Blue version inside the cartridge slot, and promptly flipped out.

Despite the marketing however, my brothers and I never really watched the show or got into the trading card games that much. We saw the first two movies (and loved them to bits) but beyond that, the majority of my experience with the series comes from the “regular” series of handheld titles: R/B/Y, G/S/C, R/S/E, and P/D/P. Many of my friends played for the pleasure of winning and becoming the new champion, but I played for something else. To explore the strange new world were kids left their home at 10-years-old to traverse around the world, meeting new people, catching new Pokemon and achieve something extraordinary (And maybe save the world while they’re at it, too.)