Warning: this post is long. Instead of making several posts on all the different announcements, I'm too lazy and threw it all into one, possibly incoherent post. If you're that bored, read along!
Well rumors are no longer rumors and Sony's Playstation Vita now has a name and more details along with pricing, while Nintendo has finally revealed its Project Cafe as the Wii U. Apparently this generation of consoles come with really horrible names but there's already plenty enough people ranting about that. I watched the majority of the press conferences live, Microsoft's, EA's, Ubisoft's, Sony's and Nintendo's. All had their ups and downs but many of them left me ambivalent. Nothing completely excited me while plenty annoyed me. I'll be the first one to admit I was really excited when the 3DS first got announced. I eagerly followed all the impressions and despite it's pretty pitiful launch, I'm still happy that I purchased one. Do I use it a lot? Not really. But I'm also one of those people that just has to buy new technology to experience it... that is unless you're Microsoft's Kinect or Sony's Playstation Move.
And nothing from Microsoft's press conference made me change my mind about Kinect. In fact, it's completely turned me off from it entirely. Don't get me wrong, the Kinect is a marvelous piece of hardware and what it's capable of is simply remarkable. It's a fine piece of technology and it definitely has a place in the world of gaming... but not in Ghost Recon or Mass Effect 3 or Fable. I mean seriously - the gamers that played any of the first two Mass Effects or any of the bajillion Ghost Recon games or any of the first three Fable games do not want to wave their arms in the air or bark out commands at AI players. That's not what gamers do. Casual gamers, young gamers, old gamers... that's what Nintendo's Wii introduced to our world. Those are the gamers that embrace Kinect because they don't want to pick up a controller. Is this a way to get those people interested in a game like Fable? Possible. But please don't make it in a way that completely negatively impacts the gaming experience for those that want a damn controller in their hand.
In defense of Microsoft, most of these games that have Kinect functionality will probably do just fine without it - obviously, being that Kinect is a peripheral that costs extra money and not every Xbox 360 owner has one, myself included. But the fact that the entire press conference for the most part revolved around Kinect's functionality on these games just made me throw up in my mouth. And then Nintendo introduced the Wii U to the world and I'm just full of rants.
Read the rest after the break.
So I was one of those people that went nerd crazy when Nintendo announced its 3DS. Obviously I'm a big geek when it comes to anything and everything technology related, and the idea of a glasses-free 3D display intrigued me. I kept up with the news and pre-ordered one with Best Buy as soon as I was able to. Like everyone else that was interested in the 3DS, I read each and every article that was released once the unit got into people's hands. But one thing I refused to do was spoil the system itself by playing a demo unit somewhere. I avoided that at all costs until I was able to pick mine up, which was this morning. I charged the sucker up and picked up two games, Super Street Fighter IV and Ghost Recon Shadow Wars. Yes the launch titles are pretty weak, especially for a Nintendo product, so I went with what the majority of the websites out there recommended were worth the money.
Read my first day impressions after the break.
The Nintendo 3DS is well, simply put, pretty awesome.