All said and done, I think Kinect is a snazzy piece of technology and represents the future of user interface.  To assume that these first steps will be stumble-free is rather wishful thinking, however.  First black people, now couch potatoes.  Hopefully Microsoft will resolve these problems soon.

Underwhelmed – Kinect -  With games like Kinectimals and Dance Central, Microsoft Kinect was very clearly targeted toward the casual market despite having games like Forza and a Star Wars title (which honestly looked a bit janky).  What Microsoft really needed in their press conference was Tetsuya Mizuguchi demoing Child of Eden – that is the Kinect killer app, a perfect example of what is possible with the hardware.

Hyped – Nintendo 3DS -  At about 1:30 pm, we were introduced to the sizeable third party support for the new handheld.  At about 1:45pm, the gaming press on Twitter was all abuzz echoing a single thought.  Oh my God, it really works.  And then came the software lineup.  Metal Gear Solid 3DS?  Ocarina of Time?  Resident Evil?  Street Fighter IV?  Pilotwings?  KID ICARUS as a launch title?  At about 2:00pm, I was a believer.

Whoa – Kid Icarus on the 3DS – After years of Nintendo fanboys clamoring for a new Kid Icarus game and years of not getting one, we finally do get one.  Is this proof of Nintendo listening to its fanbase?  Hey Nintendo:  we want Earthbound!

Oh Sh*t – Gabe Newell and Valve supporting the PS3 – For the longest time, Gabe Newell hated the PS3.  In fact, he called it a disaster and a waste of time.  That time has come to an end with the announcement of a Steamworks enabled Portal 2.  Aside from steam community support, this also means that any updates to the pc software will get pushed out to the console version as well.  This is an absolute coup for Sony since substantial updates to software on the 360 are mandated by Microsoft to cost money – a philosophy that Valve traditionally does not support.  This is possibly the most important announcement amongst all of the press conferences.

Jumped the Shark – The Microsoft Oprah Moment – Really?  Don’t get me wrong, I wish I was there to pick one of the new shiny 360 slims up.  But yeah, I think this was a little bit too much in an attempt to get that mindshare.

Resurgence – Nintendo - The 2010 Nintendo E3 Press Conference was more than just a reversal of fortunes of the past two years of disappointing software reveals.  It was a sign of life for all of the world’s Nintendo fans, and a return to what Nintendo was known for in the NES and SNES era.  The sheer amount of software easily had more impact than the past two press conferences, starting first with a demo of the new Zelda game followed by the unveiling of an interesting looking Mario sports game.  But it didn’t stop there: alongside was a modernized remake of the N64 classic Goldeneye, Metroid Other M, a return to the world of Donkey Kong Country, an exciting walkthrough of the Disney world of Epic Mickey, and a mind-blowing new Kirby game.  The cherry on top was the unveiling of the Nintendo 3DS to be launched with a new Kid Icarus game.  Sony did a good job, but there was no way anyone could have beaten this lineup.

Game of the Show (Thus Far) – Child of Eden – I have never played Rez.  Watching the delightfully synaesthesic trailer and Mizuguchi-san demoing this game at the Ubisoft presser showed me that I really missed out on a hallmark experience and that I would can’t miss out on the spiritual successor to Rez.  Not requiring Kinect or Move is a plus for me, though I can easily see this being the killer app for the Microsoft motion control system.

Too soon?

An important point that stuck out to me was the range of fighting games that were included in EVO2k9.  Street Fighter IV was a no brainer – it was the main draw and everyone was playing it.  HD Remix A.K.A. Super Street Fighter II Turbo had always been a mainstay at the tournament, as was the same for Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and SF3: Third Strike. Rounding out the list were Soul Calibur IV (a game I totally didn’t even expect would be at the tourney) as well as BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (another surprising choice since it had been out for maybe a month).  In any case, a great set of games for the greatest North American fighting game tournament.  From the perspective of a gamer that had long fallen out of playing fighting games, the killer combination of SFIV and EVO2k9 brought me back to the fold.

At this year’s EVO, the breadth of games is still excellent, but there are some definite, notable changes.  From the EVO Press Release linked on Seth Killian’s Unity Blog, Super Street Fighter IV would be taking SFIV’s spot (no surprise).  HD Remix will also return (also no surprise) along with BlazBlue.  Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, the latest from the Vs. series of games, would make its debut perhaps bumping Marvel vs. Capcom 2 out of the picture temporarily.  Tekken 6 will make its debut this year as well (in my eyes, bumping Soul Calibur IV out).  SF3: Third Strike?  Nowhere to be seen.  The final game will be decided by player vote from a pool of games which includes Third Strike, Soul Calibur IV, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK 2, King of Fighters XII, and Melty Blood(?).  The final game would undoubtedly fall between Third Strike or MvC2, but I will find it extremely odd not seeing either the game that put the Daigo Full Parry in the fighting game vernacular or the pinnacle of the Vs. series of games featured in this year’s competition.  My vote goes to Third Strike.

Personally, I hope the fine folks at EVO sort out the video archive problem with their IGN partners this time around.  While putting the videos online makes sense, I still feel it was an absolute travesty to lose some of the videos that they did (in particular, the 5 vs. 5 tournaments, some of the more interesting pool plays, etc.).  If this stuff is going to vanish from the ether, EVO might as well put the video on DVD.  Hell, I’d buy it!

In any case, the competition will be excellent and I look forward to watching the stream online.  The 9th of July can’t come fast enough!

My obsession with the Final Fantasy series began with the fourth game – the second one localized for western audiences on Nintendo platforms and the first on the Super NES.  My previous role-playing game experience was the original Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior in the U.S.) on the NES, a highly touted and revered game to most of the world – except me, of course.  That’s not to say that Dragon Quest wasn’t a good game: several millions of fans spanning generations of gamers would angrily disagree otherwise.  Still, there was something about the game that I just couldn’t relate to.  Other contemporary games made it relatively easy to follow along with the story – both the Mario Bros. and the Mega Man series were both relatively successful in progressing their own plots along for the player.  While there wasn’t much in the way of actual text in both of these games, the experiences were both linear and directed – making it easy (for me at least) to build up a plot in my head to follow along with.  However with Dragon Quest the player had to work just a little bit harder to get that next tidbit of the story, a consequence of the game being a less directed, more open, and more abstract experience than other games at the time.  Sometimes that extra little bit of work became a lot of extra work – the player could only slay so many happy slimes before it became a chore and the player lost interest.  Which I did.

With my first experience with RPGs spoiled by an impenetrable plot and level grinding ad nauseum, it was a great surprise that I even gave Final Fantasy II a fair chance.  Maybe it was because I was because I was a little older at that point.  More likely, it was because of the fact that 16-bit cartridges actually allowed for a more comprehensible story with actual character development.  While the natural grindiness inherent to RPGs were still there in Final Fantasy IV, it was as if the more developed and mature storyline lessened the impact of that grind: because the characters all had names, personalities, history, and relationships, I actually cared about what was happening to them and where they were going.  As a result, Final Fantasy IV was the first game I could really sink my teeth into and get completely absorbed into the world.  It wasn’t just Cecil Harvey’s quest for redemption that kept me interested.  It was also Palom and Porom’s self-petrification to save the heroes from moving wall trap.  It was Sage Tellah’s revenge-fueled to cast the forbidden spell of Meteor in an attempt to stop the man responsible for the death of his daughter.  It was Monk Yang’s selfless decision to remain behind to try to stop a super cannon.  And then there was the final trip to the moon on a whale-shaped space ship to stop the embodiment of hatred itself.

Nowadays this would all sound very contrived – just another story about a handful of plucky adventurers try to save kingdom-land from becoming a bad world filled with evil.  But to my twelve year old self, Final Fantasy II was absolutely mind-blowing and made me realize that games were capable of evoking emotion – hell, Palom and Porom’s sacrifice actually drove me to tears.  Video games didn’t have to be limited to running and jumping and shooting; they could also be works of art.  And it is because of this that Final Fantasy II/IV will always hold a special place in my heart as the game that opened up the Final Fantasy floodgates – no matter how many times it gets re-released, I will always be along for the journey to the moon.

Next time: Final Fantasy First – the reason why I should have played the Final Fantasy games in order.

I’m excited for this year’s E3; the return to the spectacle of the traditional E3 means that publishers have a lot more impetus to show off their goods and drop megatons upon megatons.  So let’s get started, eh?

Nintendo

• Pikmin 3 will be displayed and demoed for the first time.
• Earthbound finally to the Virtual Console, marking a refocus on the Virtual Console because Nintendo likes money!  Right!  Right?
• New Super Mario Bros. 2 on the DS…it’s about time!
• Nintendo will finally show off different colored Wii consoles, in light of the slipping Wii sales.  And it will be monstrous because consumers are stupid!
• Nintendo will announce either a new Mario or Zelda game on the Wii.  Not both.  If it’s a Zelda game, it will have Motion Plus and/or DS integration.  If it’s Mario, it won’t make it out this console cycle – Nintendo hasn’t put out multiple games to a franchise the last couple of hardware cycles.  Doh!

Microsoft

• The Motion/Camera thing that’s been rumored for XB360 will be announced, and unfortunately will flop.
• Alan Wake and Huxley will emerge from the mire of development, since we have heard next to nothing about upcoming 360 software aside from Halo 3 ODST, which will be demoed and dated for this Fall.
• Valve will make an announcement of Half Life 2: Episode 3 at the Microsoft Press Conference.  The game will be available for PC/XB360 only and will be primarily be digitally distributed, marking the beginning of more substantive games for XBox Live.
• A new iteration of the 360, akin to a slim model or perhaps even in different colors. Because consumers are stupid!

Sony

• The Motion/Camera thing that’s been rumored for PS3 will be announced, and unfortunately will flop.
• The PSP Go!, despite being leaked on Qore yesterday, will be announced and kick off the “Year of the PSP” – a reinvogorated focus on the PSP.
• Gran Turismo 5, God of War 3, MAG, Heavy Rain, and Uncharted 2 all demoed and dated for later this year, marking a star-studded Holiday ’09.  Project TRICO?  Next year.
• Sony will either announce a moderate pricecut of at most $50 (from $399 to $349), or a new value bundle at 399 bundled with both Uncharted:Drake’s Fortune and LittleBigPlanet.  Leaning toward the latter for now.
• PS3 Slim will not be announced, despite all the leaked, atrocious, and probably doctored screenshots.  Why?  They still have way too many PS3 units still in stock.
• The oft-mentioned Sony “Megaton”?  I’m not really feeling a Final Fantasy VII remake anymore, so I’m going to say it’s a non-game related service.  What’s something that’s used by everyone and not on the PS3?  How about Facebook?

Other

• Kojima Productions will announce 2 games, a PSP and a simultaneous PS3/XB360 title.  Everyone by now has seen the ad with Big Boss, Raiden, and the mysterious porcelain mask – it makes sense for the next Metal Gear game to be a Raiden game, perhaps his side of the story during the events of MGS4.  As for Big Boss?  I vote the PSP sequel to MGS: Portable Ops.

How spot-on will I be?  I guess we’ll see tomorrow with the Microsoft press conference.  Let the games begin!

Street Fighter IV: Championship Mode

While there wasn’t too much in terms of character balance changes (that feature will almost undoubtedly be reserved for the next incarnation of the game), the new Championship Mode introduced in the latest Street Fighter IV patch is phenomenal.  The mode is divided up into multiple grades and it mimics the conditions of actual SFIV tournaments – blind character select, multiple rounds, and a payout at the end for winning the tournament.  The entry-level tournament tier you’re placed into is Grade 3 (G3) with the opponent challenge is more or less analogous to normal ranked matches – meaning Sagats and Flowchart Kens aplenty.  With each successful win, you’re awarded Championship Points (CP) which contribute to your overall Grade Points (GP).   When you accumulate enough GP, you eventually progress through the classes of each Grade till a certain threshold when you are then promoted to the next Grade – and that’s where the fun really begins.  When eventually reach G2 (and reaching G2 is an inevitability – there is no point degradation in G3), the first thing you notice is the sad fact truth you are no longer winning anymore; in fact, you’d be lucky to be winning half as much as you were in the previous Grade.  Competition is tremendously disparate and the players are noticeably better: I considered myself competant and played maybe ten games before I was able to squeak out a victory.  Currently I’m at about 2750 GP, most of which was fueled by second and third round butt kickings, but I’m still having a ton of fun running with the tournament folks and their 8000+ GPs.  And even though I still lose a lot, I do feel that I’m adapting to the heightened level of competition.

WoW Patch 3.1 and Ulduar Raiding

The other majority of my gaming time has been spent playing World of Warcraft (of course) and raiding Ulduar with my guild on Gorefiend.  So far, we’re doing pretty well and we’re currently working on the final boss in the instance before we start working on the hard modes and Algalon the Observer (coined by Blizzard as the Destroyer of Raids).  Most importantly however is the fact that I’ve been working hard on the video footage for our first successful kills for the guild, going so far as to even make a YouTube Channel comprising of most of the video work I’ve done.  I intend on editing the hard-mode footage when we get there so there’s certainly still a lot work that needs to be done and there’s plenty of room for improvement.  Stuff to look forward to!

Blizzcon 2009

This year I was again fortunate enough to be able to attain tickets to this year’s Blizzcon convention in Anaheim, California.  As with last year, we booked the hotel and flight months in advance, even before we even knew of when tickets were going on sale.  Thankfully with some dilligence and a new and improved ticket purchasing system, we were able to get tickets to the show floor.  It’s still astounding that even though the convention tickets are 25% more expensive this year (due to the extra convention hall for exhibits), the first batch of tickets still managed to sell out in a mere thirty-three minutes.  Then again, maybe it’s not so surprising with tickets on eBay already going at 300% markup.  Still, I look forward to spending time with my fellow Blizzard fans, regardless of how rabid (and possibly unkempt) they are.

And that’s it for now.  E3 Predictions forthcoming!

At the same time, there is an almost nagging feeling that even though it does so much good, Street Fighter IV could have been so much better.  A recent skim through the SFIV Afterthoughts thread on NeoGAF has me thinking the same thing: what did Street Fighter IV do well and what can be done to make it a better game?

The Good:

1.)  The Characters – Capcom’s decision to bring back almost all of the old World Warriors from Street Fighter II in SFIV was a conscious attempt to harness good feelings of nostalgia from the early 90′s 16-bit era.  Countless memories from countless hours of playing Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, and others with friends or quartering up at the local arcade.  The return of the icons that ruled the era of the arcade fighter in high definition acts sort of like comfort food, giving old SFII players a known quantity to go back to and serving as a nice reminder of the good ol’ days.

2.)  The Art Style – Black ink sprays, splotches and broad paintbrush swooshes accentuate the focus attacks that define the latest generation of Street Fighter.  The new world warriors maintain their personalities, stylized to have an almost hand-drawn look.  The 3D-rendered environments are colorful and vibrant , capturing the full spirit of the franchise in 720p.  Simply put, Street Fighter IV is beautiful, well-polished, and a worthy successor to the best 2-D fighting game of all time.

3.)  The Fight System – At the core of the SFIV fighting system is the Focus System, represented by two simultaneously growing gauges – the Super Combo Gauge and the Revenge Meter.  Filling these meters allow the use of Super and Ultra Combo moves respectively, which always allow for the chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  However the real meat of the fight system is the Focus Attack – Whether its the simple elegance of an attack-absorbing, unblockable focus attack or dash-cancelling that to enable trickier, more damaging (and prettier looking) combos, the Focus System is a player-friendly combat system that has something for both the Street Fighter IV novices and veterans.

5.)  Challenge Mode – The skill gap between casual and tournament players associated with fighting games is leap that requires intense training and dedication.  While Street Fighter IV certainly doesn’t change that axiom, it does a lot to help players bridge that gap.  In addition to the standard Training Mode, SFIV introduces the Challenge Mode – an enhanced training stage which serves as a primer for players to learn basic moves and challenging combos typical to high level play.  Each challenge has a list of commands for the player to perform in such a way that when performed correctly is unblockable, i.e. a combo.  And if the player is successful, they earn some pretty nifty icons and titles to show off to the competition online.  Good stuff.

6.)  The Online Player Request System – One of the aspects of the arcade experience that is really missed is the phenomena of “quartering-up” – it’s a very unique experience having opponents interrupt your Street Fighter II game to challenge you.  Capcom made a wise decision by emulating the formerly arcade-exclusive experience on the home console.  In fact, the first time you play Arcade mode the game allows you to toggle this feature on and off, allowing “a new challenger to join the battle.”

The Not-so-good

1.)  The Characters -  While Capcom’s character choices and designs are for the most part excellent, there do exist a couple lingering questions.  If Street Fighter IV was supposed to instill a sense of nostalgia into the player, where are the two missing SFII characters?  Where are Deejay and T. Hawk?  Why aren’t there any SFIII: Third Strike characters?  And why do we have to jump through the obnoxious hoop of unlocking an astonishing 9 characters?  News flash, Capcom – Lock away the superficial stuff like costumes and icons and titles.  Don’t lock away items integral to core gameplay (cough characters) – that won’t extend the life of the game as much as you think it will.

2.)  Anime cutscenes in Arcade Mode – They are ugly, bad, and campy.  Street Fighter IV has a beautiful game engine – any movies should have utilized in-engine cutscenes instead.

3.)  Arenas – While it seems like there are a fair number of stages to play on, a lot of them are merely night-time versions of the same stage.  Conspicuously missing from Street Fighter IV are the majority character-specific stages.  While Chun Li and Blanka have their native homelands represented, where is Ryu’s iconic shotokan dojo?  Where are the elephants cheering in the background of Dhalsim’s stage?  Where are the Northern Lights twinkling in the skies of Cammy’s stage?  Where is the famous (and beautifully imagined) field from the first Street Fighter IV trailer where Ryu and Ken sparred?  Yeah this is a small complaint, but hopefully this will be remedied with DLC in the future.

4.)  Character balance – You can’t really complain about the fact that most folks online play Ken and Ryu – after all, they are Street Fighter.  However, you can complain about Sagat’s exceptional range and overbearingly powerful moves.  You can complain about the grapplers and their inhumanly high priority command-throws.  You can also complain about the fact that most of the console-only characters feel somewhat unfinished.  While I think that the notion of tiers will always exist in fighting games, it’s Capcom’s job to try to keep that somewhat minimized – it’s clear that there’s a fair amount of tweaking to be done to the individual characters.  So far they’ve done a pretty good job.

5.) The Online – Street Fighter IV’s online play is where a lot of the complaints have been directed toward.  After the success of HD Remix’s online system, it boggles the mind why the same changes did not make the transition to SFIV.  There’s no lobby system for players to hang out and watch and “quarter up” – a must for any modern fighting game played online.  The lack of double-blind character selection in online versus mode, despite what Capcom’s Seth Killian said on the recent Kotaku Video podcast, is necessary – waiting for the opponent to pick a character so that the player can counterpick a character with a favorable matchup is a bit silly.  The biggest strike against SFIV’s online system is the lack of any penalty for disconnecting from ranked matches – I cannot even begin to count how many folks have disconnected on me during my ranked matches.

Despite its problems, Street Fighter IV will be at the top of my playlist for a long time.  We already know that the upcoming Champion Edition patch will address the disconnect issue online.  Hopefully it will address a lot more.

Floating through the fields of Flower

My first memory of Fl0w was that of a free flash game developed as a part of a college thesis that on the surface seemed to be a variant on the classic game of Snake.   A year later that same flash game would make its way to the Playstation Network, becoming one of the marquee downloadable titles on the Playstation Network and placing developer Jenova Chen and thatgamecompany on the game dev map.  While Fl0w didn’t exactly appeal to me (it seemed more like a tech demo than a game), I did appreciate the fact it was a different sort of ‘emotional’ gaming experience that paved the way for more artsy, bite-sized game experiences on both XBox Live Arcade as well as Playstation Network.

thatgamecompany looks to build on its goal of creating emotional gaming experiences with its next project Flower, a unique game in which the player rocks and tilts the Sixaxis to control the wind and carry petals to unbloomed flowers in the lush landscapes.  While Flower‘s gameplay appears similar to that of a flight simulator, Sony is labeling it as the first in the ‘Zen Gaming’ genre – a calm, low impact, highly relaxing gaming experience that is in stark contrast to the high-impact, intense multimedia experiences that have characterized this console generation thus far.

Flower‘s “chilled-out” almost casual gaming experience might seem a bit too targeted toward hipsters and peace activists.  After all, a game whose entire premise is to fly around collecting petals and make flowers bloom does not a hardcore gaming experience make.  Even so, this sort of emotional experience isn’t readily available in the interactive entertainment medium.  And if Flower succeeds in delivering that emotional experience, then it just may be the closest thing this generation to finally quieting naysayers about video games as a legitimate artform.

Next time:  Sexy Librarian-Goddess of War?  Librarian May Cry?  Hideki Kamiya’s next evolution of the action genre.