An Actual SaturDAY

Amazingly, we were actually conscious and active throughout the morning and afternoon. A breakfast on Bloor was followed by some photos taken for reference for a job the Wife recently got. We went down to a park to shoot pictures of park benches from various angles. After that, it was down to Chinatown to do a little shopping for those goods you Just Can’t Find Anywhere Else, and then it was home to relax, watch Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (I seem to grow more fond of this movie with each passing year, for some reason. It is indeed, most excellent) and more messing with the Playstation 3.

More Fiddling

Another geeky day with the Playstation 3. I tried something out that I was curious about. Over in Singapore, the locals who bought a PS3 quickly came to realize something; the Asian equivalent of the online “Playstation Store” left something to be desired. When you buy a PS3 and hook it up, the console creates a user profile/account filled to the brim with information on you, provided you answered all the questions honestly, and then, assuming you actually told the machine where you really live, locks you into an online Playstation Store appropriate to your region. The Southeast Asian version is, apparently, in not so terrific shape, so what many Singapore PS3 owners had been doing was faking an American address so that they could get access to the North American store. The only catch was that they needed a valid North American postal code, since the North American system actually went to the trouble of checking online to verify the postal code address put in actually existed.

After doing a little bit of homework, I realized that the European, Australian and of course, the Japanese versions of this store all offered a few things that the North American version did not. The European store, for example, offers a demo of a game that the North American version doesn’t. In Australia, PS3 gamers can download music videos and watch them, a service not available here. And of course, in Japan, the Land of Games, they have much earlier access to demos of games, since those games come out there first, before being subjected to months of translation to ready them for an English release. So following in the footsteps of the Singapore gamers, I went into my system and created a bunch of new dummy accounts, one for England, one for Australia and another for Japan. To my amazement, neither the British or Australian versions of the store cared about a valid address, and simply took me at face value when I said I lived there. The Japanese store was a lot trickier, if only because once I designated my residence as Japan, the consoles–surprise!–switched over to Kanji. Fortunately the registration process was exactly the same, and I muddled my way through until I got to the bit asking for a residential address. It turns out the Japanese ALSO want to confirm an actual postal code, and they have a bizarre address system that I needed to take a crash course in, learning about odd things like how prefectures work and how the Japanese use the AGE of a building, rather than its location, to determine its hierarchy in address numbers for a particular street. In the end, I ended up hitting up an English speaking expatriate site that had apartments for rent in order to track down my legit postal code and fortunately that was all I needed to get in.

Not a bad haul, though. In the end, I managed to get my grubby little paws on a Japanese demo called “Folksoul” who’s English name will be “Folklore” when it finally releases, a music video from some Australian singer with weird, almost Kate Bush-y sort of feel to her voice, and a demo for comic book based first person shooter, The Darkness, which amazingly is not offered in the North American store.

I also finally got around to getting that HDMI cable. Looking around in normal retail stores, the cheapest cable I could find sold for about $70. However, on the internet, I found some guy that claimed to sell them for $15. So we hopped on down over to St. Clair West and promptly found ourselves in a very nice, sleepy little neighborhood that lacked the same bustle in the middle of the day that our usual haunt, Bloor Street possesses. It seems like a really nice place to live, and I’m glad we actually got an excuse to go down and see the area.

It turns out the guy in question was NOT lying. Instead of a little electronics shop, we ended up at a house that was inhabited by what the Wife tells me were Vietnamese folks. We entered the guy’s bedroom and found wall-to-wall electronics. I have no idea how he came across them. I have no idea how he could sell them at such unbelievably low prices and still make a profit unless he didn’t pay for them himself. Frankly, I don’t want to know. I got my HDMI cable and we got out of there and went back home. Hooking it up and turning the PS3 on, that big black box once again amazed me by automatically detecting the new connection and optimizing itself for it. I had thought that the jump from standard AV cables to S-Video cables was noticeable when I first tired it on my PS2 years ago. The jump from S-Video to component was similarly noticeable. I knew that there would be a change, because the component cable I was currently using for the PS3 was analog, meaning that a loss of signal due the entire damn thing not being shielded with gold plating–or something else similarly arcane–was inevitable. However, HDMI is pure digital, so the quality of the cable itself means nothing, as long as it works, the purity of the image is preserved. But I wasn’t quite prepared for just how sharp and crisp the PS3′s graphics became when it finally got its “native” cable, the one it was really designed to work with (and yet, is not included with). The vibrancy of the image is really amazing, and I now understand what other folks have been saying; if you’re any kind of technology geek, once you get a taste of High Definition, there’s no going back. Even old PS2 games and regular DVDs look noticeably better thanks to the PS3′s ability to “scale up” standard definition images to pseudo-HD.

I’m extremely curious now to see what an actual Blu-Ray movie will look like. Guess I’d better mail that damn coupon out for the free movies.

Hurray For Desperate Marketing Moves

This is pure fluke timing, but I only just found out today that, as a result of the Format Wars, the Blu-Ray consortium is trying to give The Finger to the HD-DVD guys. Over the summer, anyone that buys a Blu-Ray player before September 30th, who can produce the UPC code from the box as well as a photo copy/scan of the receipt will get five free movies.

Of ‘course, the movies ain’t that great, but hey, at least Corpse Bride is on the list. And for the cost of a postage stamp? Hard to say “no” to this…

Messing Around With The New Addition

Today I get a better idea of what the latest addition to the household is capable of. It’s been a few months since I messed around with a Playstation 3, since the last time I got to touch one of these beasts it was the resident console at the GameAxis office. Back then, the PS3 had recently launched, there were many features that weren’t yet enabled, and the system was still essentially an untried contender.

It’s a few months later, and thanks to the miracle of operating system updates via the internet, the PS3 I now mess with isn’t quite the same one I touched in 2006 and early 2007.

One of the things I’m very impressed with is the ease of use. When I played with the PS3 at the GAX office, the boys had already installed it themselves. This time I had to do it myself, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the online connection was. In my case, I simply plugged the broadband cable in and it did everything automatically, zero fuss. I also think that perhaps the settings on the TV the PS3 was connected weren’t calibrated correctly because the demos I tried on the PS3 this time looked FAR better than the ones I played with last year, and at least one of these (Gran Turismo HD) was the same once I played in January. Speaking of which, I don’t yet have the SuperGenius(tm) HDMI cable that gives you the best possible image presentation, but I still had the component cables that the PS2 had been hooked up to the TV with. Incredibly, they actually worked, and even though the image still isn’t at max, it’s a respectable looking 1080i (that’s as high as our TV goes) with a noticeable vibrancy in color and crispness.

And then there’s that actual interface. Like I said, there have been changes. One thing I’m glad I missed out on is the era of no background downloading. Fortunately being in North America with a broadband connection, downloading is now blazingly fast anyway, with a typical trailer or demo taking no more than 5-20 minutes to download depending on size. But at least now, once the download starts, you can keep browsing through the store, listen to music, or simply play another game while it happens. At launch, downloading anything meant you had to go and do something else while the PS3 did that, and ONLY that. This, thankfully, has been fixed. The other neat, recent addition is that the PS3 now actually takes DVD movies and even your PS2 games and “upscales” them, meaning it uses a complex set of algorithms to artificially make your non-high def DVDs and PS2 games HD. In the case of better transfers on DVD, this actually really makes them vibrant and the difference is noticeable. On lousier transfers however, this simply blows up the flaws even more.

As far as Playstation 3 games go, no we don’t have any, not full ones. However, like the Xbox 360, the PS3 also has an online component and in this case, it’s called the Playstation Network with its Playstation Store. In the interests of building hype, several game developers have included demos of their game, usually just a level or two, to give gamers a taste of the game and decide whether to go out and buy it. I’ve messed around now with Resistance Fall of Man, Gran Turismo HD, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Rubber Duck and Motorstorm. Of these, I had previously played through the full version of Resistance, and played the demos of Motorstorm and Gran Turismo previously. GT HD in particular was very impressive to me, simply because I remember it looking “pretty good.” For whatever reason, loading it up and taking it for a spin this time really blew my mind; the graphics looked AMAZING. I’m almost convinced now that the PS3 in the office wasn’t configured to display properly, because there were portions of the game–ESPECIALLY during a playback of a race–where the race just looked freakin’ real. The game, much to my surprise, has brought out the Car Slut in the Wife, and she found herself wanting me to complete the various time trials, simply to see what new car came up. She was especially happy to see Lotus and Ferrari autos in there, so I have a feeling that the upcoming Gran Turismo 5 has suddenly made a surprise entrance on my list of games to get. I’m particularly looking forward to the release of a demo for Heavenly Sword (best described as “Goddess of War”) because when I tried it out at last year’s E3 I walked away very impressed, and it seems like the game has only gotten better since then.

In the end, that still leaves the question, “Is this system actually worth it?” From a sheer finance point of view, Sony is making a big loss on this system, so it actually is sold for less than the cost to manufacture it, from a consumer perspective, a console over $400 is pretty crazy. I don’t know whether the PS3 will ever be considered worth its current price, though if it ever dropped to $300, that would be an INSANELY good deal, practically a steal. I will say though that it is a very, VERY powerful system, and some of the potential I saw only hinted at when I first played with it in November is finally starting to come out. Home is on the way, the OS and actual operational mechanics are in better shape, the games are coming, and it has a bunch of very cool (though it could be argued useless) functions that make it a unique console. If you were so inclined, it could very easily be the multimedia centerpiece of a living room, since it does just about every damn thing you’d need of a living room appliance.

Now all Sony has to do is not screw up horribly and let some better games come out, and they stand a good chance of at least SURVIVING this latest console war.

And on a related note, I got curious and booted up Guitar Hero 2, which worked fine. The guitar itself didn’t, of course, so I picked up that wireless SixAxis controller and gave it a shot u
sing that.

Never. Again.

Welcome Home

You’d better not frakkin’ break on me.

I have updated operating systems, folded proteins, watched trailers and completely failed to actually buy any games for the new Black Box since… There isn’t anything really decent.

This is our PS2 replacement and future home of Rock Band. And it runs Rogue Galaxy and Napoleon Dynamite just fine. It does NOT run Guitar Hero, or at least, not the guitar controller, but hopefully something will come along in a future OS update to fix that.

Day In Downtown

The day (or in this case biological clock speaking, evening) was spent in downtown doing a “career run” with the Wife. She wanted to see more of the magazines offered in the USA and Canada that might need her illustrations, so we tromped down to the Toronto Reference Library to look at a few.

That was a bad idea. The place, as can be seen left, is unbelievably huge. They had magazines. Many magazines. TOO many magazines. Like every freakin’ magazine on the planet. In the end, rather than wander up and down the shelves looking at American Philisophical Quarterly and the Costume Society Report, we eventually gave up and just hit Indigo’s to look at the good ol’ fashioned, non-informative glossy magazines there and write down the names of art directors and mailing addresses. We also had hot dogs at the bench by an old church across from the Royal Ontario Museum and did groceries. All in all, a fun if boring day.

Chronal Dislocation

The Wife’s 28 hour Martian Standard Day has kicked in, so bed times have been marching upwards through the day. In fact, I only just got out of bed not too long ago, so this is actually a morning post.

However, before bedtime there was just a run to Queen Street West for some art supply acquisition. Nuthin’ too exciting there.

Who’s The Winner?!

YOU DECIDE!

In this corner, we’ve got the upcoming Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for the Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii:

And in this corner, for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and rumored appearance on the Wii at some unspecified point in time, Rock Band.

On the one hand, Guitar Hero III has scored a major coup in that they have Tenacious D’s The Metal. That song alone may be worth the price of admission for many, and it sure is a big hook for me. However, they also took out Pandora and Clive Winston, a couple of my favorite characters and there’s that worrying report about the ease of the game. And while I appreciate the addition of battling guitarists as a new feature, I don’t know how much I personally would use it and enjoy it as it strikes me as a bit too “video game-y” that you would actually be trying to beat another musician into submission like that. They’ve also included a “note counter” by the score meter that shows you how many notes per row you’re hitting. These additions are the kind of thing that are made by people thinking in terms of GAMES, not music, and it’s clear that the Neversoft team are trying to get Guitar Hero away from just the pure, fun, spirit of playing music and trying to ground it in the score-conscious, achievement oriented culture of gamers. It seems to go against the Spirit Of Rock. Plus, again, it’s made by skaters, not musicians.

Then on the other hand you’ve got the amazing string of good news that just keeps coming for Rock Band. It’s been confirmed that the entire album Who’s Next by the Who is going to be available for downloadable purchase which is an AMAZING coup for the Harmonix crew (GO TEAM!) and the Create-A-Rock-Star mode is a thing of beauty. If you’ve got a half hour with nothing to do, sit yourself down and watch this video, which is of Harmonix showing off Rock Band for Gamespot. I wanted the game before. I’m going to DIE now if I don’t get it.

‘Course I need an Xbox 360 or a PS3 to play it, so I think this video may have just decisively swung me…

So… Is It Time?

It’s been an interesting 24 hours if you’re a gamer. My previous unabashedly glowing evaluation of Sony’s showing at this year’s E3 has been marred by on final event. Earlier in the week, it was announced that the Playstation 3 in North America was going to experience a much needed price cut, dropping from US$599 to US$499. In Canada, the price drop was even more drastic, as the average price of $700 dropped to $550. Damn, $150 off, that’s not too shabby. In addition, Sony released a new version of the PS3, the only difference being that instead of having a 60GB hard drive, this one had an 80GB model, and came packed in with the admittedly fun Motorstorm, a racing game that also involves running people off the road. This new bundle sells at the old price of US$599.

Things were looking up. Then the cracks began to show in the shiny new castle Sony had just built. Jack Tretton, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America had called this price drop. It turns out that this was nothing of the sort. It was, in fact, a fire sale. As various Sony executives around the world responded to questions of why North America got a price drop when none of the other territories did, the surprising response was, “They aren’t, actually. We’re dropping the price of 60GB model because we’re phasing it out. Once they’re gone, the only model available for purchase is the 80GB set at the original price.”

I’m pretty amazed at the reaction that’s been happening to this news. I look at this, and I see some fairly shady “bait & switch” tactics of a sort occurring. Over at GameAxis, I’m more or less written off by the readers as having been bribed by Microsoft because I constantly bash their beloved system and never report any good news about it. They’re not going to trust me anymore unless I admit that Sony rules and everyone else sucks. I’m sure they’re also hoping for me to write an apology both to them and to Sony for being so “hostile” to a system that is clearly a winner.

Of course, my take is different. I like the Playstation machines. As made evident in my last post, I have a long history with this series of consoles, and, as expensive as the PS3 is, I like that machine too, and see a lot of potential in it. I do not like what Sony the company has been doing, and I see several baffling missteps in how they handled the situation. If they had simply been up front from the beginning and told people “60GB machines are out of our production plans, enjoy ‘em while you can,” that would have been a little more honest. But in interviews prior to the Friday announcement, they played it up as if “Yes, at long last, we are cutting down the price of our machine because we love our customers and they have spoken!”

It was bad for this information to come second hand from Sony Europe executives as well. They should have known that within seconds of making that statement, the internet would bring the news back to North America where people would be blinking and thinking, “Huh? WHAT?! BUT…” It seems almost as if some internal conflict arose in the company where they just didn’t know how to handle this development and one side decided to run with it as a price drop, while the other took the road of a production phase out, and two corporate lines eventually clashed head to head.

Of course, it may also have the intended effect. At least for me personally.

I always knew at some point, we would get a Playstation 3. That C$700 price tag was a bit too steep to swallow, especially considering we are far from being a rich couple. With the drop to $550, it was looking a little more palatable, and I was thinking, “Y’know, that might not make a bad Christmas present.”

This kind of changes things. For one, our beloved PS2 is effectively dead, and we were thinking we might simply get a new PS2 Slim to replace it for a few more months until we made the jump. But the other thing, is a factor that only matters to the more diligent gamer; backwards compatibility. Right now, the 60GB model that is on sale has a unique feature. The reason that it can run Playstation 2 games on it is because it has PS2 hardware built into the machine. In a sense, you’re effectively buying two machines in one, in addition to that crazy Blu-Ray player. The future models are going to be cutting this additional cost by using software emulation instead. That means that the near perfect backwards compatibility enjoyed by the machine right now will become an issue for future machines. And I have a pretty substantial library of PS2 games. I don’t relish the thought of having to keep a PS2 around just to play Okami or Psychonauts because my PS3 doesn’t like it.

So in a way, these two factors may have tipped our hand. I wasn’t planning on it so soon, but there is a chance we might just take the plunge and get one of these “old school” PS3s with PS2 hardware built in, since a) they’re cheaper right now, b) we are in a bad way in the functioning console department and c) software emulation is a dicier proposition than hardware.

Guess we’ll mull it over some more, but we don’t have much time. Once more people realize that this is a fire sale, those consoles are gonna’ move, and fast.

My Useless E3 Report

Since I’m not actually there this year, I’ve been doing what most gamers are doing; slavishly eating up every single video that comes on line, digesting it, and then pondering the implications for the year to come. First of all, the Big Three have all made their announcements and I have to say, things are looking pretty good this year. Microsoft had nothing too interesting to show as they’d already made most of their major announcements regarding the Xbox 360 previously, so while their show was solid, they had no surprises.

On a personal note, however, one thing DID occur during the Xbox 360 conference that personally enraged me to no end; Peter Moore, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, decided to “wow” the crowd by showing off his Mad l33t sk1llz on Harmonix’s Rock Band. He picked up his Fender Strat, joined the rest of the band (crewed by Harmonix regulars, you GO team!) set his guitar on easy and… words fail me… Instead, watch this video…

I’m sorry man, I know I’m not being objective, but the Guitar Hero player in me wanted to stand up and throttle someone. Dude, you JUST DON’T DO THAT.

My own personal intolerances aside, Microsoft’s showing was what I expected. There are lots of exclusive titles coming to Xbox 360, but in the end, they’re doing the same ol’ thing; bigger, better, faster graphics with little true innovation. They have some good games in the pipeline, no doubt about that, but since I still see Microsoft as merely refining and tweaking an existing paradigm. Still, they have some interesting titles that, were they not on a Microsoft machine, I would have considered picking up.

Mass Effect, for example, is a proud local product of Edmonton based BioWare, and is that rarest of things in video games, a science fiction RPG. I’m starved for really good SF RPGs, and I have to admit, them schnazzy graphics you see on the left sure don’t hurt either. Chicks in super tight, plastic body armor are always a hit with the kids…

Too Human is ANOTHER fine Canadian game brought to us from the good folks at Silicon Knights, who are in St. Catharine’s, Ontraio, just a couple of hours’ drive from Toronto. These are the same folks that brought us the excellent, and highly underrated Eternal Darkness, one of the best horror/action games ever made… unfortunately it was on the Nintendo GameCube, so almost no one got to play it.

This time around, they’ve secured themselves a super juicy exclusive deal with Microsoft, so only 360 owners will get a chance to try this science fiction, apocalyptic update on Ragnarok. Yes, it’s about Norse gods and the end of the world in a science fiction setting, and having seen some of the graphics and cutscenes for this game I can safely say it looks intriguing. I have no idea whether it’s actually any good as a game, but it certainly looks like they gave a damn about the story, and that counts for a lot in my book.

Eternal Sonata is the very definition of Whacky Japanese. Only from Nippon could an idea this insane be conceived. In this game, Frederic Chopin is lying on his death bed, mere hours from finally losing a fight against tuberculosis. As he loses consciousness, he finds himself in a dream (or IS it?!?) where a strange, magical world that is endangered, and populate by people with incurable diseases that give them fantastic magical powers and combat abilities. The game is based on Chopin and his music, but one of the most intriguing things to me about the game is the fact that it’s Co-op. This the first time I’ve ever heard of an RPG that allows people to play along together, and since the Wife and I are both big RPGs fans, this title would have been just perfect for us. Unfortunately since it’s on the Box Of Evil, that’s simply not going to happen…

Of course for Microsoft there was also Halo 3 and Project Gotham Racing and Madden Football, yadda, yadda, yadda… you know what, I’m bored. Moving on…

The intense looking man on the left is Reggie Fils-Aime, a man I have previously written about as “having the confident, quiet intensity in his eyes that comes only from knowing that police haven’t figured out your wife and kids are buried by the apple tree in the backyard.” He is the American face of Nintendo, the “fun company.” Let that sink in for a moment.

Anyway, Nintendo’s press conference went very well, or incredibly horribly depending on your preferences in video games. If you are the hardcore gamer type that grew up with a joystick almost permanently plugged into your hand (that would be me, by the way) then in some ways, this press conference signaled the death of Nintendo as a gamer’s favorite. However, if you are part of the new wave of millions of people all over the planet that would never, EVER touch a video game until you discovered the Fun In A Box that is the Wii, then this press conference signaled the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with the Big N.

Nintend
o’s entire conference had one inescapable message. “We are mainstream.” Nintendo is getting people in from all walks of life that both Sony and Microsoft have spectacularly failed to engage. Unfortunately, one of the side-effects of this massive success is that they have little choice but to alienate the people that made them so popular in the first place, the gamers. It looks like for the next TWO YEARS, there will only be three games worth playing for people that like traditional video games; Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime: Corruption and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. Everything else is either a horrible game that uses the Wii remote in useless, gimmicky fashion, or else the increasingly more popular “productivity ware”. For the Nintendo DS, more Brain Age style games are on the inbound, and the single most exciting piece of hardware of the entire show was revealed here at the press conference; a SCALE.

Okay, that’s not really fair, first of all, this thing is called the Wii Balance Board. It’s wireless and has two kinds of sensors, one for measuring weight and one for measuring placement, or balance. What this magical thing does is every day, good health maintenance activities such as recording your posture and weight distribution, reading your Body Mass Index and keeping a daily/weekly/monthly record of your progress, and using the bundled game, Wii Fit to go through a series of exercises that involve aerobics, stretching and yoga. Here’s the video:

My jaw dropped when I saw this thing in action, and I realized, in that moment, one, inescapable conclusion. Nintendo has got a license to print money on their hands. Not only have they managed to completely escape the usual stigma of Games Are The Work Of The Devil, they’ve also got an instant pull for both families and trendy; this damn thing is healthy. The Wife took one look at the balance board in action and said, firmly and with no uncertainty, “We’re getting that,” because to her, this represents an interesting solution; in the long run, it’s a cheap personal trainer. Of course any traditional gamer in their right mind who looks at this realizes that it’s lame beyond words in terms of actual gaming, but what’s a few hundred thousand gamers compared to MILLIONS of senior citizens, housewives and other fashionista types on the look out for something new and trendy? This, without a doubt, is it. The balance board is going to be flying off the shelves when it ships next year, and Nintendo has just sealed their position as #1 company in the console wars. The number of new customers they’re going to get from this one product alone is OBSCENE.

Meanwhile over at Sony, THEY HAVE CHEWBACCA! WIN!! No, really, they had Chewbacca. Jack Tretton, the new Sony Computer Entertainment America prez, unveiled a new Star Wars themed PSP and had Chewbacca on hand to help him do it.

It’s a weird place to be if you “grew up” with Sony. I was already in my twenties when I got my first Playstation, and in that time, the Playstation “family” has provided me with more fun on their consoles than any other console I have ever owned. They dominated the landscape of video games for nearly 10 years with an unmatched number of quality action, RPG and miscellaneous games. They brought us Final Fantasy (writ large), the Grand Theft Auto series, and, most recently and most beloved to me, Guitar Hero. Now, in 2007, they are in last place, and their latest machine is barely moving off the shelves thanks to that US$600 price point which only recently dropped $100.

So it was with some minor dread that I checked out what they were offering this year and surprisingly, they seem in good shape. One year later, the horrendous price of the PS3 and the obvious lack of really killer titles are all about to end, and the new games in the pipeline really DO show off a tremendous amount of power in that slick, black looking machine. I’ve been really, REALLY tough on Sony the last year with their business decisions and marketing gaffes that have been borderline insanity, but finally, they are getting their act together in the games department and things are looking up.

Killzone 2 is not really my cup o’ tea, but this is probably one of two saving graces for the Playstation 3. For those that don’t follow this sort of thing religiously, when the PS3 was first announced, an AMAZING trailer was used for a game called Killzone 2 and no one could believe that something that looked that incredible could be a video game. Speculation abounded as to whether Sony was lying or not in their claims that the PS3 could produce graphics of this caliber. In the end, it came out that Sony had given “tech specs” to a company to produce a pre-rendered trailer that would “approximate” what the game would look on a PS3 and people immediately lost faith. Now, at this year’s E3, Guerilla, the developers FINALLY unveiled the actual game and trailer with that uses actual, ingame graphics. The results? It’s pretty damn close. Check it out for yourself:

This game is one
I may or may not play myself because First Person Shooters aren’t my favorite genre, though I do dip my toe in the likes of Halo and Counter Strike on occasion. But since the FPS is the dominant market amongst gamers, this is a crucial title for Sony and the wave of positive press in the wake of the Killzone 2 unveiling is going to be a major source of relief for the company. They really dodged the bullet on that one. But I said that there were two saving graces for the PS3, and here’s the other one:

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is not even made by Sony, it’s made by Japanese developer Konami, creators of the horrifying Silent Hill and excellent Suikoden RPG series. But when you think Playstation, Snake, and Metal Gear are practically synonymous with the console. There has been no doubt–especially considering the pedigree–that MGS4 would be a brilliant game. Similarly, there was no doubt WHATSOEVER that when Hideo Kojima, the game’s creator, showed off footage of the game, that footage was 100% legit. Kojima is notorious for shying away from pre-rendered footage, and every MGS game released thus far has never, ever employed pre-rendered cutscenes and has always relied on the strength of the obscenely powerful game engine, plus the inherent power of whatever console the game appeared on. Where a lot of the doubt for MGS4 came from was the question of exclusivity. For YEARS now, non-Playstation owners have watched MGS games come and go, and they’ve wanted them. Badly. With this latest iteration of the console wars, Microsoft spent epic–really, I mean EPIC–amounts of money to buy formerly exclusive titles from Sony’s partners and either get them multi-platform (that is, to appear on both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360) or steal exclusivity outright and not have those games appear on the Playstation 3 at all, as seems to be the case with Namco’s wonderful Ace Combat and Katamari Damacy games. But the one game, the game that can sell a console alone, eluded Microsoft. Kojima himself insisted that this game could only–and WOULD only–be made with the power of the PS3, but flagging sales of the PS3 console combined with huge budget an MGS game commands had actually made Konami executives say that while the the MGS games were traditionally Playstation games, current circumstances might make them “take steps” to ensure the franchise remained profitable.

At this year’s E3, Kojima–at least for the moment–reaffirmed that MGS4 would indeed appear only on the Playstation 3, and the fans around the planet breathed a collective sigh of relief. Solid Snake is probably THE premiere action hero for gamers; he is tough, he is capable and he has absolutely NO idea how to talk to women. Since Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sonys of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater his long and complex story has been told. It’s full of plot twists, some poignant moments, and, at least in the case of MGS 3, some moments of sacrifice and honor so poignant that even The Wife cried at the end. Kojima has promised that MGS4 will be the end to the saga, and to whet the appetites of gamers even more, he presented a new trailer that is a personal landmark for me. This trailer may have the single best fight I have ever seen in my life. I mean by ANY standard. I have not seen a movie that approaches this level of elegance/cool in mano a mano combat and it’s doubtful that I will see a movie that tops this in the next five years. Check this out:

But aside from suddenly having two very hot properties back in the Playstation stable, Sony is doing something very interesting with their product. Rather than go for the mainstream, as Nintendo is doing, or More of the Same But Bigger And Flashier as Microsoft is doing, they are making the gutsy move of trying to create a kind of integrated lifestyle with the PS3.

This, for example, is called Home. It’s essentially Second Life for Playstation owners. A free service–the other cool thing is the Playstation Network, unlike Microsoft, is completely free–gives ALL PS3 owners an apartment that they can furnish, the ability to create a Home avatar, and the freedom to wander through a large virtual environment interacting–and playing with–other owners. Sony eventually plans to include a virtual movie theater and trophy/gamer space to make places where film buffs can watch (and presumably also buy and download) films that are going to be put on sale, and the trophy room will be where achievements completed in games owned by PS3 users will be enshrined to show how hardcore/isolated-from-real-life they are. It’s a fascinating and very bold experiment in community building, and has crazy features like buying a TV for your apartment that actually shows images, or being able to take your snapshots–or simply favorite graphics–and “frame” them in your apartment as pictures. The music you or transfer to your PS3 hard drive can also be played out of your apartment’s stereo and if you’re not happy with all the free default furniture or clothing, you can spend real dollars to buy more accessories. This is obviously heavily tapping into a market that has proven to be successful for The Sims games for years.

And now here, in no particular order, are some of the games that have gotten my attention for one reason or another:

Rock B
and. Whew, here’s another one where a bullet was dodged. Regular readers already know about my near religious dedication to the majesty that is Guitar Hero but will also be aware of my dismay at Harmonix, the creators of the game, being taken off the series. Rock Band however is Guitar Hero in mythic fashion with the ability to play guitar, bass, DRUM and VOCALS all at the same time, either in the same room or online.

Harmonix have already been making some promises are both insane and legendary. They are finally letting players CREATE THEIR OWN ROCK STAR, complete with “signature moves.” They have a new controller (A FENDER STRAT! WHOO!) that also has buttons on the lower neck of the guitar for doing solos. They finally got Metallica and Enter the Sandman will be one of the songs in the game. The other gobsmackingly amazing promise is that by the end of the first year, Rock Band will have ONE HUNDRED PLUS songs available for purchase and download. On top of this, they say they are going to be doing this in a serious way and including FULL ON ALBUMS. They’ve formed a “Music Advisory Board” withe likes of musician and producer Steven Van Zandt on board to help with songs selections of the future. I’m just about ready to give Harmonix my first born at this point for how good they are being to us.

The part for me that scared me quite a bit was that Rock Band was slated for a multi-platform release on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Yeah, the PS2 simply can’t handle this game, I mourn that loss too. But then ol’ Peter Moore played the game at the press conference and people were noticing on the promotional advertising that there was only the Microsoft logo. Fans freaked out at the idea they would HAVE to buy an Xbox 360 for this game, but, God bless ‘em, the developers waded into the Rock Band forums themselves and said “No. Wrong. PS3 and Xbox 360 for Christmas. RELAX.”

So I’m extremely pleased about that. If I HAVE to get a new system to play this game, please, whatever gods there are in this cosmos, don’t make me have to get that Xbox 360 to do it. I’d do it for Rock Band, but I would die a little inside.

Here’s the song listing so far:

1970s

• The Who – “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
• Mountain – “Mississippi Queen”*
• David Bowie – “Suffragette City”
• Black Sabbath – “Paranoid”*
• Blue Oyster Cult – “Don’t Fear the Reaper”
• The Ramones – “Rockaway Beach”

1980s

• Rush – “Tom Sawyer”*
• Bon Jovi – “Wanted Dead or Alive”

1990s

• Nirvana – “In Bloom”
• Stone Temple Pilots – “Vasoline”
• Weezer – “Say It Ain’t So”
• Foo Fighters – “Learn to Fly”
• Metallica – “Enter Sandman”

2000s

• The Hives – “Main Offender”
• The Strokes – “Reptilia”
• Queens of the Stone Age – “Go With the Flow”

With the exception of the songs that have an asterisk, all the others are the original master tracks. Un-freakin’-believable. Playing guitar with Kurt Cobain singing along, that has me so happy I could barf. Speaking of barf, on the other end of the scale we have:

Guitar Hero III

Okay, that’s being a bit unfair, but I think the gamer snob in me is starting to come out. I should really be more enthusiastic about this game, but that thought, “this is not done by musicians but by skaters” continues to nag me.

The other thing that has recently alarmed me is that IGN themselves have finally gotten a hands on with the game, and the one thing horrified about it; they reported that they jumped straight into Expert and finished it, on the first try, with an average of 96% accuracy. That alone has me worried and not entirely surprised.

The thing you have to understand about Harmonix is the company was founded by MUSICIANS. They originally started out trying to make interactive musical experiences to get the less musically inclined excited about making and being a part of music. These early forays failed to sell, and eventually they hit upon the idea of combining music with GAMES, first in early attempts like Frequency and Amplitude and finally with Guitar Hero. But they love music first and they know what they are doing. Neversoft the new developers, the Tony Hawk guys, LIKE music. They do not love it, it is not in their heart and soul the way it is for Harmonix, and now it is starting to show. IGN’s early report is that the arrangements of the buttons for the tunes seem to make “less sense” than they did in GHI, GH2, and presumably GH80′s, which is the last true Harmonix GH game. They also report the arrangements are far, far easier, and that it looks like no song in the game is going to be a Bark at the Moon or Hanger 18, and that at this stage, the game can be finished with little to no challenge, on the first sitting.

This, I believe, is part of the Activision’s efforts to make the game more “mainstream.” One of the criticisms I’ve sometimes heard leveled at Guitar Hero is some players don’t think Expert level is “fair” and they want to be able to finish it without having to practice all the time, because “It’s not right that only a few people can finish expert, we should ALL be able to, or it’s not fun. Why should that guy be able to unlock more accessories or get cooler guitars when we both paid the same amount of money?” This “new and improved” Expert system is the answer to that.

Despite this though, I know that I will get this game. And I will enjoy this game. The track list is still very impressive so far, and Slash of Guns n’ Roses fame will be a “boss” that you have to guitar duel with in the game. But for me, while the music there, the rock is not. That’s gone, with Harmonix, over to Rock Band.

Aside from that, a
few other titles that are catching my eye right now are a puzzler called EchoChrome for the PS3 Playstation Network and the PSP. The only way to describe this game is “Escher + Tetris + LSD” and that doesn’t even begin to do justice to how whacky and original this game is. Really curious about it.

The other is a blast from my Playstation past, is Wipeout HD. Another downloadable game slated for the Playstation Network on PS3, this is the mindbendingly fun Wipeout series but with High Def graphics and, of course, online play. I can think of a few folks I’ll be able to hook up with online in Asia and other parts of the world to sit down, geek out and blow the crap out of each other while racing in hover craft that go in excess of 500kph.

And that is my overlong, long winded and heavily biased, non-journalist take on E3.