Nintendo 3DS Impressions

A few weeks ago at South By Southwest, I stopped by Capcom’s booth where they were showing the new version of  Street Fighter 4 on a new Nintendo 3DS.  This was pretty cool for me, because this was the first time that I got to try a major new console before it was actually released.  I’ve been meaning to post my impressions of the device for some time now, and since it’s actually being released today I thought today might be a good time to do that.

I’ve already owned a Nintendo DS Lite and a DSi, which are essentially the same console with a little less horsepower and of course without the 3D effect.  Aside from those features and a few other, this is still basically the same handheld console.  The 3DS hinges on the 3D effect, which it does manage to pull off without the need of glasses.

So does it work well?  In my opinion, not really.  Once you do figure out the position that you need to hold the device, you do get a sense of depth.  But it feels somewhat like a hologram sticker on the front of one of those cereal boxes from the 90′s.  Sure, it looks like 3D.  But in an uncanny valley way that feels cheap and unrealistic.  Plus, the device itself goes out of the way to warn you about not using the 3D effect for too long.  I’m old enough to remember the Virtual Boy, which had all of those same warnings.  If you’re of my generation or older, you remember how well that console went over.

The 3DS does have some good things going for it, the extra graphics horsepower does allow for some more visual impressiveness, whether or not the games themselves are in 3D.  And while the 3D effect isn’t really that impressive, it does work a lot of magic in some of the camera and augmented reality functionality.  There’s a lot of promise in the hardware, it’s just up to Nintendo and the developers to keep up support for the device.  That’s not that promising given Nintendo’s lackluster history with the Wii and Gamecube, but we can still hope.

If you have no other handheld device for gaming and you’re looking for something, then I hesitantly recommend the 3DS.  It might be worth your time and money to look into a slightly cheaper iPod Touch, however.  The games are certainly cheaper on that platform.  However, if you already have a handheld gaming device of any kind, I can’t really recommend it.  For $250, it doesn’t really add anything that revolutionary or new that makes it worth that hefty price tag.

Best of 2010: Part 1

I’ve been busy with a lot of other things lately and haven’t had a whole lot of time to write on my own, but maybe that’s a good new year’s resolution for 2011.  In the meantime, I didn’t want to skip on making my annual “Best Of” list.  I’ll be doing my favorite movies tomorrow, and have a list of just about everything else for today.

As in the past few years, I do have a few qualifiers about all of this.  All of these properties and IP’s didn’t necessarily release this year, but I got into them this year.  Also, my favorites are at the top of each list, but the rest are in no particular order.

Video Games

Mass Effect 2 – Absolutely my favorite game of the year, and probably of the past few years.  It’s an improvement in every way over the first game, which I already listed as one of my favorites of the last decade.

I’ve told my wife that it’s kind of a toned down Grand Theft Auto or Fable set in space, but in reality it’s like playing through a Ridley Scott movie.  I love this stuff and can’t wait for the third one.

Rock Band 3 – I think everyone, including Harmonix, knows that the music game fade is dying out pretty quickly.  However, for those guys like me who are still really into it, they made some wonderful improvements this time around that more or less rebooted the franchise.  The keyboard makes it a whole new game, and the party mini-games in the career mode give the game a whole new life.

Mario and Luigi 3 - I was replacing my Nintendo DS back this Summer with a Nintendo DSi, and this game came with it as part of the package.  I probably wouldn’t have bought this separately, but I’m really glad I happened upon it.  It has insane and fun mechanics that make it a perfect handheld RPG.

Fable 2 – While it’s become a little forgettable after the fact, the first playthrough Fable 2 is one of those experiences that really sticks with you as you play it.  I’m not in a rush to pick up the third one just yet, but I certainly will eventually.

TV Shows

Mad Men – I picked up on this late, but I’m glad I did.  This is one of those kinds of things where a bunch of guys sat down in a room and decided to make a TV show for me. Aside from the hard living and womanizing, everything that happens at Sterling Cooper eerily reminds me of the sort of thing I do at my job.

The Walking Dead – I’m surprised that no one has taken a popular sub-genre and turned it into an episodic series before.  Just like shiny vampires last year, zombies are hot this year and The Walking Dead really capitalized on it.  It has movie quality production design, and doesn’t keep itself strictly restricted to the source material.  Even if you’ve read the comic, you have no idea where it’s headed.

Friday Night Lights – I think that in terms of writing, this is probably the best show on TV right now.  It’s easy to write it off as a cheap adaptation or cheesy teen drama if you haven’t seen it before, but I think everyone who ever lived in a small southern town owes it to themselves to try this show out.

The X Files – I started watching the “canon” episodes in chronological order on Netflix, and I’m so glad I have.  This show is aging really, really well.

Comic Books

Walking Dead - I started reading old episodes because of the TV show, and like I alluded to above, it’s a completely different experience than the show.  I’m glad I picked up on this five years too late, because I was able to speed through every issue that came out in that time.

Amazing Spiderman – Spidey purists are probably still ticked off over the post Civil War reboot, but I think the team at Marvel is doing some of their best writing with this series.  Peter Parker is more identifiable than he’s ever been lately.

Kick Ass – What an awesome post-modern comic.  If someone in the real world decided to be a superhero, this is exactly how it would go down.  Violence, obscenity and all.

Scott Pilgrim – Also something that I picked up due to a movie.  Hilarious and relatable stuff, but in a hyperrealized kind of way.

Video Games: Where Loyalty is Useless

I got really interested in a debate fostered by the guys at Penny Arcade recently.  They started a conversation on their blog and later on Twitter that revolved around the discussion of used games verses new games.  If you’ve not followed this, game developers and publishers have gotten frustrated with the sales of their games in used markets like in Amazon or Gamestop.  In retaliation, they’ve provided single use redemption codes with new games that won’t transfer on a second sale.  This has brought the ire of gamers looking to save a buck, as well as some frank discussion from developers to those gamers.

I’m one of those guys who goes out of my way to buy games used instead of new.  At a time where new games are $50 to $60 each, it’s an expensive hobby to have.  Instead, I typically buy games that are a year or two old for just around ten bucks through third party retailers on Amazon.  Rarely, I do buy a game new if it’s something I’m a huge fan of.  For example, I love Zelda games, and will undoubtively buy the new one when it’s first available next year.  I also love LucasArts developed Star Wars games, and had bought The Force Unleashed as soon as it was available.

Within that used game argument, it seemed that the developers constantly brought up the idea that they and the publishers would have to see profit in order to keep their jobs or create sequels.  I found this claim to be somewhat without credence at the time, as The Force Unleashed sold well and yet much of it’s development team was laid off following the release of that game.  Additionally, now that The Force Unleashed II has been more or less completed, LucasArts has made substantial staff cuts again.  That’s precisely why I don’t feel that argument has much merit.  Video game creators in this day and age don’t enjoy long term job security.  In fact, it seems that the companies they work for treat them more or less like temps or mercenaries much like the movie industry does.

It certainly appears that these companies have no loyalty when it comes to the people who slave over games prior to their release.  As soon as these guys remove themselves from the rest of their lives in “crunch mode“, their employer throws them to the wayside in thanks.  Why exactly should I reward that company with loyalty when they have no real appreciation of that concept themselves?  I’m someone who really appreciates the hard work that someone puts into arts and entertainment, not necessarily the corporate business plans looking to make a quick profit off of that.

If my buying a new game clearly does nothing for the developer actually making it, I fail to see the moral high ground that buying a new game produces.  If this was within some system in which the sale of a game directly put income into the hands of a developer, I’d be far more understanding and willing to do just that.  It is clear that some newer and fairer system is needed and that more ethical understanding within the EA’s, LucasArts and Activisions are imperative.

Until then, I’ll stick with saving $40 on every game I want to play.

Mass Effect 2: When Marketing Is Too Much

A sequel to one of my favorite games of the last decade is out today.  A few months ago, I’d have expected myself to be right over to Target or Best Buy right after work with debit card in hand ready to buy it.  But that’s not happening today, and probably won’t be happening anytime soon.  It’s not because I don’t expect the game to be good, it looks fantastic.  It’s just that the darn thing has just been absolutely over-saturated in advertising.  The marketing is so much and so intrusive, I’m no longer interested.

Getting the public awareness up about your product is one thing, I have no issue whatsoever with banner ads, thirty second TV spots, and other types of unintrusive and expected advertisement.  But when the product is constantly being shoved in my face, I honestly tire of it and already feel sick of it before I even purchase it.  But there’s another issue that’s involved with this type of over-saturation that I really don’t care for.  Sometimes the advertisement is so much, I question the integrity of the places that they’re advertised.  For example, below are two screenshots taken today from Gamespot and IGN, two of the most visited sites on the web when it comes to video game reviews.

They’ve both been plastered with the main characters of the game, but each of these sites are also featuring the review of the game as their top slide.  How unbiased can these reviews really be when they’re getting paid buckets of cash from EA and Bioware in order to promote the same game they are reviewing?  If you follow video games much, you might remember a big fuss a few years ago when Jeff Gerstmann, a writer for Gamespot, gave a game a poor review.  The game was coincidentally being promoted in the same way as you see above.  People with more expensive suits than he disliked this discrepancy and he found himself out of a job.  So this type of sleaziness is not unprecedented.

If it’s not a tacky Mass Effect 2 online ad that’s annoying me, it’s a TV ad every other minute on a channel that might possibly skew to EA’s demographic.  Or it’s a “sponsored segment” on The Totally Rad Show, my favorite online entertainment show.  But the point I want to make directly to EA and other purveyors of similar products is this.  The abundance of advertisement of this game has made me sick of a game that I’ve not even played yet.  I feel like I’ve already spent too much time in the world of Mass Effect, and I don’t really know if I can trust reviews of the game at this point.  I’ll eventually get the game, but I’ll buy it used from Amazon far after all the media hype is over with.

Zelda: Spirit Tracks Review

This past year, I hadn’t been playing my Nintendo DS that much anymore.  I still had some great games that are always good to play for a few minutes while killing time, but it had been a long time since I’d gotten a new game for it that sucked me in.

And as much as I tried, I just could never ever finish the first Zelda game on Nintendo DS.  Phantom Hourglass had a lot of fresh ideas for the series, but it had a showstopping hub temple that was frustrating as all get out.  In the last act of the game, you’re forced to play through the entire thing again in order to progress, and it was a huge roadblock that killed my interest in completing the game.

Zelda: Spirit Tracks overcomes those two obstacles and has me loving my DS again.  It uses pretty much the same graphical and gameplay formula as the first Zelda DS, but improves upon it in ways that really make me reconsider whether or not the first one was actually even that good at all.  It overcomes the stigma of the DS only containing games good for short bursts, and it improves upon the idea of having a repeating hub temple.  That, and a few other factors make it my favorite DS game of the past few year.

We might never see a Zelda game that really and truly refreshes the same cookie cutter template of the past two decades, but this one tries enough new things to make it feel pretty fresh this time around.  There are only four real temples, but that in no way says that it’s a short game.  There are now a lot of mini-challenges and side quests that are actually required for progression, but still integral and fun. Which is kind of a new thing for a Zelda game, and it works pretty well.  I groaned a bit when I heard that the idea of a hub temple was being brought back, but I’m eating crow now.  You never replay any of it once, and it actually adds a lot of mind bending gameplay time to the game without resorting to cheap tricks.  If only this idea had been put into place in the first one, I might have actually finished it.

I do have a few gripes, however.  The idea of riding a train around the overworld is respectable enough in that it’s something new, but it does limit what you can do.  You literally do ride on rails, which makes this Hyrule feel much less open and explorable.  It sometimes even becomes frustrating when you can’t maneuver around as you might need to.  Also, for whatever reason, the insanely fun online multiplayer from the first game is inexplicably gone here.  There’s a WiFi only option in it’s place, which is both limiting and disappointing.

Overall, I totally recommend Spirit Tracks.  Whether or not you played (or enjoyed) the first Zelda DS, you’ll love it.  Not since Majora’s Mask has there been a Zelda game that mixed the game up a bit, and the changes are mostly more than welcome here.