Mongo Nation

Topics for debate at the close of this year’s E3

By Jeremy Azevedo

Even after all those presentations, press conferences, and closed-door demo sessions, the gaming press still has unanswered questions about E3 2008. Let’s take a look at some of the hottest lingering rumors at the end of the week…

Rumor Number 5: Nintendo is working on a USB hard drive

Wii Ware the f**k am I supposed to keep all this shit?

There was no mention of WiiWare, the Virtual Console, or hard drive’s of any sort at the Nintendo press conference. But with Microsoft and Sony constantly intrducing new SKUs with bigger hard drives every few months, it’s about time Nintendo addresses their glaring storage problems. I hope they figure out something soon, or the WiiWare service is going to die in the cradle.
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My picks for the top 5 games of E3!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Of all the great games that were at E3, there were a select few that just a certain special something…

These games might not be the most buzzworthy games of the show (actually most of them are), but they were the most fun to play as well as having represented the most exciting developments in gaming culture. Check out our picks for the top five games of E3 2008!

Lips

Everybody knows that the third most awesome thing to do whilst drinking copious amounts of alcohol, after fucking and fighting, is karaoke! So imagine my delight to hear that the newest contender in the karaoke game will reportedly allow you to use your own goddamn music collection! I don’t know how this is expected to work, or what the legal ramifications are, and I don’t care. My copy of Singstar only came with like 30 songs on it, only about 1/3rd of which were actually fun to sing. I own like 30 bajillion CDs, so if Lips delivers on it’s promise, it’s destined to become the number one party game in my household without cluttering up my living room with plastic drum sets and other such bullcrap.

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More games that ruled the floor at E3!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Want to know which games from E3 transcend the hype and actually play as well as their PR claims?

Okay then… Why not read our list of the top games from E3 and let us tell you what to buy instead!

Dead Space

Jesus H Christ this game is scary. It’s like that movie, “Event Horizon”, where hell and madness enter a ship through a gravitational drive and drag everybody onboard kicking and screaming into a dark dimension of pain and horror. It’s like Silent Hill in space, which somehow seems even scarier because at least you know what to expect ins Silent Hill by now (faceless nurses: check, inside-out dogs: check, ghost children: check…) Dead Space is an action game at heart, which means you are equipped properly to combat the terror that awaits you, not that this will stop you from jumping out the window every time some new surprise leaps out at you from absolutely goddamn nowhere. Special points are awarded for making very good use of the character model in order to show health and ammo information without an onscreen dedicated HUD.

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The picks might surprise you…

By Jeremy Azevedo

This year at the E3, it has become clear that gaming is undertaking an evolutionary leap forward in terms of how games are played, what kind of stories they tell, and how users can interact with them.

After playing dozens, maybe even a hundred or more games, it was hard to pick just a few that represented the very best.Instead of picking the obvious ones, we selected the games that had the most impact in style, mechanics or unique features. Check out our picks for the top games of the show that we would totally buy:

Battlestations: Pacific

I normally find myself averse to playing WWII shooters as a general rule. There are just so goddamn many of them, and the genre is as confining as it is overcrowded. So it came as a very pleasant surprise that Battlestations: Pacific was unlike any other WWII game that I’ve ever experienced, and a hell of a lot of fun to play. First of all, it’s not really a FPS at all; in fact all of the battles are pretty much by sea or air. You command an entire fleet of US or Japanese ships and planes, and can take the wheel of any vehicle in your command at any time for a fully immersive action experience. You rarely see action and tactical elements combined as successfully as they have been here. The planes handle amazingly well, and even the giant sea destroyers and carriers are a snap to control. The story for the Japanese side is noteworthy for being sort of a “what if” scenario in which the tide is turned midway through the war. It also bears mention that previously classified specifications regarding Japanese sea craft and planes were provided to the developers, lending the game an unmatched level of realism and historical accuracy.
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Sega and Capcom face off for best of show

By Jeremy Azevedo

If Sega was still in the console game today, I’d consider it safe to say that they would rule 2009 on the strength of their upcoming game catalogue alone. They had no fewer than 8 games on the floor (and behind closed doors) that are sure to be monster hits, some of which were even totally brand new IPs!

We’ll start with Bayonetta, an action game with a sense of theatrics so extreme that it makes Devil May Cry look like Connect Four. You play as a witch in 7-inch stilettos (that also double as machine pistols) with magic hair that can conjure up torture devices to destroy invading angels. Sounds crazy, is crazy, and looks all the more rad for it. Next up was Mad World, a black and white (and red) action game that looks kind of like Sin City but plays out more like “The Running Man”, only with 100 times more violence than any anything, ever. Surprisingly, Mad World is a Wii exclusive, much like the similarly violent but totally unrelated No More Heroes that quenched Wii gamers bloodlust this year.

Also showing at Sega was Sonic Unleashed, which features both a night and day play environment, one that has you running around as Sonic at speeds that made me want to take Dramamine, and one that has you playing more of a combat/exploration type game as “Sonic the Were-Hog”. Stormrise brings large scale tactical RTS combat to consoles, and Alpha Protocol looks like the spy version of Mass Effect. This last one in particular was one of the best of the whole show, a cool idea executed very nicely. James Bond can suck it!

Lastly we had Samba De Amigo for the Wii, Valkyria Chronlcles, a tactical RPG with a very unique looking cel-shaded graphical style, and Golden Axe: Beast Riders. I had heard that Golden Axe was cancelled a couple of months back so I was surprised to see it here in playable form, but it was a fun action title nevertheless, despite having nothing on Bayonetta. In total, an awesome showing from a veteran company in their finest form.

Square Enix was showing a new RPG called Infinite Indiscovery that looks to be the next big thing for the company (if it doesn’t fall too deep into the shadow of Final Fantasy XII), but it’s Nintendo DS gamers who are in for a real treat this fall season. In addition to the soon to be released Final Fantasy IV remake, there’s also Dragon Quest IV and the ever so long awaited Chrono Trigger port on the way as well.
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Nintendo’s fairly lackluster showing, and a few big surprises

By Jeremy Azevedo

Today started out with the Nintendo press conference, inexplicably held across town from the rest of the show at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood.

I already knew to expect some sort of announcement regarding the “Wii-Motion Plus”, and possibly something about Animal Crossing for the Wii or perhaps some sort of hard drive add-on to complement the new Wii Ware service. I wonder if you can guess which one was not addressed?

It was strange that there was no mention of the virtual console, Wii Ware, or storage problems with the Wii made at any point during the conference. Instead, Nintendo execs spent most of their time bragging about how they had reached this whole new demographic of casual gamers, and outlining the myriad ways in which they hoped to pander to said casual gamers (which is kind of a tough sell in a room full of hardcore gaming journalists). Nearly every game debuted here seemed aimed at families, save for maybe one. But I’ll get to that later, the one game I speak of was really the only huge surprise of their show.

Animal Crossing: City Folk is one game that many Nintendo fan will be looking forward to, but my impression was kind of more of the same. The only new features to speak of are the ability to travel into the city to gab with annoying humanimals and buy shit, and the ability to spend yet another 30 American dollars on yet another useless Nintendo Peripheral, the “Wii-Speak” microphone. Unlike a traditional headset, the Wii-Speak sets on your TV top and records the whole room so whole groups of people can converse as they play, I guess.

Several games made use of the Wii Balance Board, including Shaun White Snowboarding, an impressively detailed open-world snowboarding game, a new Rayman Raving Rabids party game, and the new sequel to Wii Sports, “Wii Sports: Resort”, which will be a pack in with the aforementioned “Wii-Motion Plus” and features beach resort themed sports such as volleyball, Frisbee and sword fighting. Wait, what? I haven’t spent a lot of time in resorts in my lifetime, but at least enough to know that I’ve never gotten into a sword fight at one…
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Microsoft, EA, Rock Band and Guitar Hero News!

By Jeremy Azevedo

I’m sure many people were expecting to see Microsoft debut a 1st party motion controller today, due to the week long speculation surrounding the lightsaber-esque peripheral known as the “Darwin”.

Despite the fact that this turned out to be untrue, that didn’t stop Nintendo from making an official announcement the day before their actual press conference regarding a new controller add-on that promises to provide the Wiimote with absolutely accurate 1:1 virtual response. Wait, what?

I don’t know about you, but I already shelled out 40 bucks apiece for the goddamn Wiimotes and 20 bucks more for the nunchuck, which already pisses me off. Factor in the Wii charging stations and you’ve got the world’s most needlessly expensive controller. So why in the hell would I want to pay another 20-30 dollars for another add-on designed to make my Wiimote do what it was supposed to already do in the first place? Go fuck yourself Nintendo. You better show me a new Kid Icarus or something equally rad tomorrow or we’re not friends anymore.

So what did Microsoft debut today? There were a couple of presentations for eagerly awaited multi-platform games like Resident Evil 5, fallout 3, Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 (more on those later). Exclusive titles Fable 2 and Gears of War 2 were also shown, although I always felt Gears was sort of the poor man’s Halo, so I couldn’t get that excited about it. I am super pumped about Fable 2 though, the original was one of my favorite games of the last generation, and I expect more of the same from the sequel.

The big news from Microsoft was that Final Fantasy XIII would be exclusive to the 360, which is a big surprise due to the fact that Final Fantasy has long been exclusive to Sony (and before that, Nintendo). Microsoft seems to be serious about developing an RPG following on their machine, something that has long been the Playstation’s secret weapon in the hardcore gaming market. But you know what game I was most excited about? Lips. Feel free to throw away your crappy Singstar collection, as Lips will allow you to upload and sing to any song in your personal collection. Sounds too rad to be true but that’s their claim. Ama-shizzle-azing.
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