Migraine headaches are no fun. They're made even less fun when you discover you can't drive to the doctor because when you last closed the door of your car it got caught in the seatbelt, causing the battery to run completely flat even though you have the overhead light turned off and the only that changes when the door is open is a small light on the dashboard. $80 and 3 hours for a medical certificate.
It's also E3 time. I had no idea the date was July 14th already. After a while I got way too uncomfortable in bed and stumbled out onto the couch. While I was there I turned on the TV and watched IGN's stream of the Microsoft press conference. The streaming actually worked quite well, for once. It was also a very nice resolution. Switching to National Geographic HD afterwards to catch the latest episode of "Street Monkeys", it looked almost the same quality.
Anyhow, the actual conference was rather average. Their main aim seemed to be "PARTYGAMES WOOOO!" andripping off borrowing the whole idea of Miis. Later this year they're planning to change the entire XBOX 360 dashboard to some bastardised child of the PS3 XMB and an avatar based system. They also beat Sony to the punch in the US market by announcing a trivia game almost identical to Buzz! (which has only been launched in Europe) on the PS3.
They showed some Fallout 3 footage and it looks pretty good. Not sure why it's been refused classification in Australia though, as it seems like every other first person game.Cliff Bleessszzz CliffyB also showed some Gears of War 2 footage, and also showed that he's now 53 years old. Good stuff Clifford.
The new Banjo Kazooie game isn't looking too bad either. Not nearly as bad as the comments I've heard about it on podcasts. They're also going to be offering the original as a downloadable game. That's something I'm excited about.
The worst part of the conference was easily Lips. It's a Singstarclone styled game made by none other than iNiS (creators of Ouendan!). How iNiS have gone from making good games to Lips I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet there was large sacks of money involved. They dragged some singing woman who I'd never heard of named Duffy out on stage to sing a song of hers that's in the game.
The song went on for 3 hours. During the time one of my cats looked very alarmed. I had to inform her that there wasn't actually a cat dying in the vicinity and all was okay. Duffy hit about half the notes on the screen and thenforgot the words improvised. Overall it was bad. Not RIIIIIIIIDGE RACERRRRRRRRRR bad, but bad.
A little closer to Kaz Hirai territory was You're in the Movies. This game uses the Live vision camera to track your movements and insert them into Z-grade movies that you can direct, apparently. I was lying there picturing the pitch meeting...
Executive: "What the hell are we going to do with these useless cameras? Why the hell did we even make them? They don't even work. WAIT! Get me a developer!"
Developer: "You had something in mind?"
Executive: "MINIGAMES!!!!!!"
Developer: "Wait, this isn't the nintendo buil..."
Executive: "INNOVATIONPETERMOLYNUEX!!!!"
The demonstration was awful. The game looks awful. The vision camera sucks. You need full sunlight pouring into the room for it to detect your movements. Who opens up the curtains to play a game? You can't see the screen under all of the sunglare. Stupid.
Then they bought out some SquareEnix guy. After about 44 minutes of cutscene it was announced that Final Fantasy 13 would be on the 360. The word exclusive wasn't said though, so I'm guessing that there still won't be any consoles sold in Japan.
That was Microsoft, I guess. Nintendo's conference starts at midnight. I'm going to be awake for all of it. May Reggie lurk in my dreams.
It's also E3 time. I had no idea the date was July 14th already. After a while I got way too uncomfortable in bed and stumbled out onto the couch. While I was there I turned on the TV and watched IGN's stream of the Microsoft press conference. The streaming actually worked quite well, for once. It was also a very nice resolution. Switching to National Geographic HD afterwards to catch the latest episode of "Street Monkeys", it looked almost the same quality.
Anyhow, the actual conference was rather average. Their main aim seemed to be "PARTYGAMES WOOOO!" and
They showed some Fallout 3 footage and it looks pretty good. Not sure why it's been refused classification in Australia though, as it seems like every other first person game.
The new Banjo Kazooie game isn't looking too bad either. Not nearly as bad as the comments I've heard about it on podcasts. They're also going to be offering the original as a downloadable game. That's something I'm excited about.
The worst part of the conference was easily Lips. It's a Singstar
The song went on for 3 hours. During the time one of my cats looked very alarmed. I had to inform her that there wasn't actually a cat dying in the vicinity and all was okay. Duffy hit about half the notes on the screen and then
A little closer to Kaz Hirai territory was You're in the Movies. This game uses the Live vision camera to track your movements and insert them into Z-grade movies that you can direct, apparently. I was lying there picturing the pitch meeting...
Executive: "What the hell are we going to do with these useless cameras? Why the hell did we even make them? They don't even work. WAIT! Get me a developer!"
Developer: "You had something in mind?"
Executive: "MINIGAMES!!!!!!"
Developer: "Wait, this isn't the nintendo buil..."
Executive: "INNOVATIONPETERMOLYNUEX!!!!"
The demonstration was awful. The game looks awful. The vision camera sucks. You need full sunlight pouring into the room for it to detect your movements. Who opens up the curtains to play a game? You can't see the screen under all of the sunglare. Stupid.
Then they bought out some SquareEnix guy. After about 44 minutes of cutscene it was announced that Final Fantasy 13 would be on the 360. The word exclusive wasn't said though, so I'm guessing that there still won't be any consoles sold in Japan.
That was Microsoft, I guess. Nintendo's conference starts at midnight. I'm going to be awake for all of it. May Reggie lurk in my dreams.
Leave a comment