20 posts tagged “games”
Rumors are flying that the next StarCraft will be an MMO. Blizzard's a talented enough company that I don't think they're just make it "WoW in Space," but I do have my fears. Blizzard tried to do a few online real-time strategy things with the battlegrounds in WoW, but they didn't fit into the framework of the rest of the game and had to be significantly nerfed/retooled. Perhaps let me in StarCraft play and level up a squad of Protoss instead of just one character, or even raise an entire army that I play online. Maybe have ongoing campaigns that players join into, like what Alterac Valley was going to be originally. It didn't work in WoW because people don't want to join into a battle that started days ago and their side is losing, but if you desired the game with this stuff in mind, it could work.
All this makes me want to find a PC to play the Warhammer 40,000 RTS game.
I took the plunge today and picked up a strategy guide for Twilight Princess. I'm not categorically opposed to using cheats, but I generally prefer, and find it more fun, to play a game without them and figure things out for myself. For Zelda games, though, that just isn't possible. You can get through the story and the dungeons on your own, but if you want to come anywhere near completing them, especially as regards heart pieces, you have to cheat.
I did debate, though, the necessity these days of buying a book when gamefaqs is often adequate. In the end the pretty pictures did me in and I have a nice thick book sitting on my coffee table full of maps and secrets. Anyone who wants is welcome to borrow it once I'm done with the game, but I don't think that'll be for a while. FWIW I'm in the third dungeon now, the water temple.
Something (I think) very cool about the Wii is that it was designed to use very little power so that you can leave it on 24 hours a day, enabling it to download updates and demos when you’re not using it. According to Kotaku, the power consumption breaks down thusly:
Wii:
- In Standby Mode: 10w
- Idle @ Wii menu: 17w
- Running a Wii Game (Test with Zelda / Trauma Center) in 480i: 17w
[…]
XBOX 360:
- In Standby Mode: 2w
- Idle @ Dashboard: ~140w
- Running a Game: ~160w
- Playing a DVD: ~110w
Allowing for 3 hours of play a day, with either console left in standby for the other 21 hours, that means the Wii uses 261 watts while the 360 uses 522 watts, or exactly twice the power the Wii uses.
From Kotaku: Welcome to the next-gen […] it’s all about unfinished products and micro-transactions.
Just a quick shout out to Go Nintendo for their excellent Halloween banner image.
Good, well thought-out piece by John Siracusa about the Wii. As he admits, Nintendo may and probably does have something going with its approach to the console, but it’s a shame they didn’t try harder to match the competition’s processor power. Sure, gaming needs to be about fun, but looks do matter. My hope is that creators will flex their muscles to make things look cool rather than photo-realistic. For example I’d love to see a game that looks like a cartoon, or a grainy black-and-white horror movie. Still, more computational ability couldn’t hurt.
While I’m very excited about the Wii, and I’m behind the idea of a new kind of gaming involving motion control, I think there’s a big flaw in Nintendo’s strategy: there’s nothing wrong with the status quo. I’ve been enjoying games for years now using joysticks and buttons. Maybe Nintendo’s new generation will be so much more fun that I’ll completely forget the old way, and picking up an old game will be like using a rotary telephone, but I’m not so sure. I have a feeling you’ll still want to play some games with a standard controller, and then with the Wii you’ll be stuck with the same game as you’d have on the XBOX 360, only not as pretty.
Still, my money’s on the Wii.
I’ve decided after much deliberation not to worry about getting a Wii on launch day. Final Fantasy III for the DS comes out the same week, so I’m going to enjoy that and pick up a Wii sometime later.
Pre-orders started, and ended it seems, today. If you hadn’t decided you wanted one on November 19, you may be out of luck until the second shipments roll in. Joystiq has a few journal entries up chronicalling their line-waiting:
Seems like stores are getting between six and thirty-two units to sell on launch day. In all the above cases each store sold out its pre-order quotas just from the people waiting in line. I feel like making people wait in line for a pre-order is a little silly. Why not have a sign-up box and do a raffle? I guess a line builds hype, but it’s not like EB Games store managers really like having people hanging around outside their stores all morning, nor do they like turning away customers who didn’t wake up early enough.
Regardless of this, my guess is that there will be plenty available to buy if you go for one in early December, and none to be found if you want to get one in late December. I’m guessing Amazon will have a good supply.
Earlier worries that Mario Hoops 3-on-3 would be unplayable for lefties have been put to rest. The game, as with most DS titles, offers an option to flip controls for left-handed players. The default control scheme involves using the stylus in one’s right hand to dribble, shoot, block, etc., and using the D-pad to control your player. Switching to left-handed mode lets you hold the stylus in your left hand and use the A, B, X, and Y buttons to move players around the court. It works pretty well, though not as cleanly as using the D-pad. All stylus-intensive DS games have the same problem, whether you’re left-handed or wrong, which is that you have to support most of the weight of the unit with your offhand. Mario Hoops, unlike Metroid, understands this and doesn’t require too much use of L or R. Also, it’s built that you’ll only use the same shoulder button you use to move your character, so you don’t have to figure out how to hit L while holding the stylus in your left hand, for example.
The game itself is pretty fun so far. I found the tutorial so be a tad overwhelming. You’re quickly taught how to run, shoot, dribble, block, steal, dunk, jump, dash, use items, and so forth all with various taps or flicks of the stylus, and it’s a lot to take in, but once you get playing you realize that they’re all basically the same commands. An upward swish can be a shoot, a dunk, or a jump block, but it in practice the game works out the proper context and provides the appropriate verb pretty well. One review I read expressed frustration that when you try to pass to a teammate who’s too close to the net you’ll often shoot instead. The game designers actually did anticipate this, so if you want to pass into that zone you need hold R (for lefties).
Worry set in when my trio of Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi were able to breeze through the first tournament with little idea of what I was doing. Penny Arcade indicates quite clearly that the game gets harder as it goes along, and as soon as I started the Flower Cup I began to see the other team doing some better block and ball handling. Nothing I couldn’t manage, but I’m guessing things will get trickier from here on out.
Nintendo is running a very nicely done series of interviews between Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, and the developers of the Wii. Each piece is long enough to cover information you probably didn’t already know and gives a nice look at the thought behind designing the device. So far they’ve covered the Wii hardware, the controller, and the software web channels.
The sense I get reading it is how proud the developers are of what they came up with. Wii is a huge risk for Nintendo, in departing so much from the status quo of console design. At one point in the interview they’re discussing what it was like when people actually started being able to demo the thing:
Ikeda: […] I was very moved by Nintendo’s Media Briefing. It started with Mr Miyamoto getting up on stage and using the controller to conduct a virtual orchestra, and it finished with Mr Iwata playing Tennis from Wii Sports. By the time it finished I was close to tears. (laughs) I’m a little embarassed to say this in front of you guys, but I was overflowing with emotion. And even after that, I thought I was going to cry again when I saw how much everyone enjoyed using the controller. (laughs)
Ashida: I spent all of E3 at Nintendo’s exhibition corner, and I’ve never witnessed at previous E3s anything like the excitement I saw there at the Nintendo booth.
Iwata: We had that glass case with lots of controllers lined up, didn’t we? The people crowding around there, it was a truly unforgettable sight.
Ashida: There were so many of them! Sure, there have been displays like that in the past, but the atmosphere… it was the first time I’d ever experienced anything like that.
Iwata: There was a great air of excitement, wasn’t there? Their eyes were glued to the case!
Ashida: It was absolutely incredible. Everyone looked so thrilled, including the staff from Nintendo of America. And the smiles on the faces of everyone who got to play the games.
Iwata: That’s what I remember the most. I actually found myself wondering “why are they smiling so much?” as if I didn’t know what they were doing. I wondered what was happening.
Go read: Iwata Asks.
Wow, this is strange. Twilight Princess was designed with Link being properly left-handed. Late in the development cycle, they realized that they wanted to make him right-handed to accomodate the poor righties who couldn’t possibly be expected to hold the remote in their left hands, so they mirrored the entire game. If you buy the GameCube version, Link’s a lefty. If you buy the Wii version, he’s a righty, and the entire game is flipped. Right turns are left turns. The map is backwards. Says Shigeru Miyamoto:
Although Link is left-handed, at E3 we noticed people seemed to be using the right Wii controller to swing his sword. That’s why we decided to make Link right-handed. The interesting thing is, on the GameCube Link is still left-handed; because of the mirror mode the game map is reversed.
This almost makes me want to just buy the GameCube version instead, since the Wii is backwards compatible.
