This Person Over Here

I would like to play Crysis on a netbook because I love playing large, attention demanding, spectacle filled games on very small, low quality screens. Also, more than anything I want to pay a monthly subscription fee to gain the ability to purchase access to a streaming feed of a game on a service from a company whose CEO is one of the people who created webTV. I also enjoy sticking French fries up my nose and drinking used motor oil whilst firing all of my money out of a cannon at various technology.

The Wii is the first ever make-believe-imagination console. You play games and pretend that what you are doing actually matters. It creates the illusion of innovation; you imagine that it does anything more than replace pre-determined button pressing with pre-determined waggling.

The Wii is a toy. It’s the imagination action playset of game consoles… It’s a Fisher Price Ipod.

I would like an Xbox-Three-Hundred-Sixty-Degree-Rotation

Kameo: Elements of Power

Serenity

Wow. Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and Trusty Bell. After watching footage of these games all I can say is you’ve got to be kidding me. Here is an interesting piece of information for Japanese game developers: It is not the early 90’s any more, and the Xbox 360 isn’t a SNES. The Playstation 3 also is not a SNES. You people might be interested to know that rendering technology isn’t the only thing that changes from console to console, you can do stuff with game-play now that you couldn’t do in Dragon Warrior 1.

It’s not like western developers are much better (sense 97% of them are either MMORPGS or Diablo clones or massively multiplayer Diablo clones) , but at least there are a few studios like Bethesda and Bioware that are trying produce RPG gameplay that AT LEAST uses the system’s hardware for something other than prettier cut scenes.

But whatever. I guess that’s what the Japanese want. Time to select “Attack,” or in some cases “ATTK” from a menu in order to trigger mini cutscenes that include the shrill, high pitched screeches of your standard issue, non-customizable anime characters along with a whole lot of lens flares, glowing explosions, and negative (and sometimes positive) numbers popping out of things.

You can have physics, and procedurally generated worlds, but let’s just make another game that’s a great, big, enormous load of cut-scenes and canned, pre-defined, non-dynamic gameplay were you increase your various on-screen numbers and watch some interchangeable characters display their ability to constantly gasp, growl, clench their teeth, and generally fail to convey any emotions other than those of exaggerated anger/shock to the tune of a story about some standard issue anime people fighting against a standard issue corrupt world order that wants to do something utterly nebulous that you can bet either involves manna or some sort of futuristic, post apocalyptic version of manna.

I wish they would just remake the entire Marathon trilogy and Pathways into Darkness, but that’s highly unlikely (they could at least put those games on Xbox Live Arcade).

There’s no telling what Bungie will do. They probably want to start a new IP, but Microsoft probably wants them to continue the Halo series and turn it into one of these everlasting franchises where they keep making sequels and spin-offs for all of eternity.

No. Do not buy an N-Gage. Take it from someone who has one. It might be fine if you’re not really into cellphones and only need one for basic use because it’s cheap, but playing games on the thing is an exercise in pain unlike any other. There ARE a few good games, but good luck controlling them with the number pad and horrible, terrible, ghastly d-pad.

On the other hand, DO get a Tapwave Zodiac. In dire contrast to the N-Gage it has fantastic physical design (very comfortable to hold, and it has a better joystick than the PSP). Its games go beyond the library of official Zodiac games because it plays Palm software, emulators, and the are old PC games that have been ported to it that are free. You can use SCUMMV on it, for instance.

The cord is probably there because they are using a development kit. I don�t know if it�s a development kit but I just assume they would be using corded controllers on them.

Ok, here’s a free game that demonstrates a few things related to all this for anyone here who’s interested:
http://www.aeonity.com/ab/download/penumbra.php
It’s first person, and all though it uses the mouse it has controls that might be well suited to the Wii controller. To open doors for instance, you have to grab them by clicking, then pull them open with the mouse. Although you can play with normal mouse look, there is also a mode were you move a pointer around the screen with a mouse and push it nearly to the edges to turn. It makes the whole pushing and pulling thing easier. Sound familiar?