Wanted at E3: Sony

What We Want at E3: Sony

Posted by Jon
May 31, 2011

With E3 quickly approaching, we all have some ideas about what will be there and expectations about what the Big 3 will bring. But we also have our pipe dreams: our best-case scenarios about what will show up at the event. Over the next three weeks, we at GU will post what we’d most like to see out of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft at gaming’s highest-profile expo.

This week: Sony

In what has been a really solid year of software for Sony so far, our attention is focused on their hardware now: both new and current. That's not to say we don't want more software for the PS3, because Sony has a few properties in particular we're dying to play. But we would like to respectfully ask Sony to not bring out the not-McLovin kid from Role Models to try to convince us to play our PSP's. That ship sailed years ago. Time to give up the fight, Sony.

Handheld Thingy

Sony is almost sure to try to steal some of Nintendo’s thunder by showing off their NGP. We expect them to give a new name, but they called their camera interface the Eye Toy, their motion controller the Move and their video game console the Play Station. Next Generation Portable seems as viable a name as any.

We also hope that they’ll tell us when it will be available and for how much. Rumor was that Sony might push the release to 2012, but with the 3DS slow out of the gate and Nintendo gearing up for home console release next year, Sony may try to push their new handheld in time for the holiday rush. However, we kind of doubt that they’ll talk price at length. Since it is likely to be quite costly, the price structure may end up as an afterthought after a lot of hardware and software hype.

DLC for NGP

We’d love to see Sony bring Patapon to the NGP as well as some more Fat Princess. Both we be fantastic downloadable games, as would a new online multiplayer Wipeout. Being able to transfer PSN games between your PS3 and NGP would be awesome as well.

The PSN Problem

Sony needs to assuage any fear of using PSN during their press conference and they need to do so by say what they are doing specifically to prevent any incident again. We expect them to say that the PSN is now more secure than ever, but they need to do so with gusto. They have to dare hackers to try it again. Showing confidence in their network will install confidence in their users.

AAA First-Party

Finally, we want to see more of The Last Guardian. It would be awesome if the much-anticipated Team Ico project were playable at the show. We also want a solid 2011 release date for the HD conversions of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. We’d love the chance to play these two classics in HD by the end of the year.

FF9 v Dragon Quest

I’ve never been a Dragon Quest fan. I played the original Dragon Warrior on the NES and liked it a lot – even going so far as drawing maps of my own made up worlds and naming my own types of swords and armor and imagining myself playing through my own game. But I never had a chance to play any sequels (in the main series) until Dragon Quest VIII on the PS2 and the remakes DQ’s on the DS. Now, I find the formula archaic: the relentless random battles, the constant grinding for experience and gold, etc…

I hear that DQIX changes the formula for the better, but I have not yet brought myself to play it. I’ve been burned by this series so many times that it’s hard for me to believe that it has really changed. Like that abusive ex, you know? I dunno, maybe I should give it one more chance…

GamePro put up an article on their site, which you can find here.

Comparing Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy IX based on graphic style alone bypasses the fundamental differences between the two, both in gameplay style and storytelling philosophy. Sure, both feature RPG battle systems with a blend of Medieval and Renaissance (with a dash of Victorian) architecture, fashion and color palate. But that’s like saying the White House and the Taj Mahal are similar because they are both big, white buildings. Art style and graphics in games are merely the coat of paint.

The battle system in FFIX (while not as nuanced as in FFX) has a lot of depth, not merely focusing on elemental magic alignments, but also a pick-you-ability system, character specific abilities and skills and boss battles that require more strategy than just a beat down. DQ has maintained a very traditional battle system that borders on bland for decades. The battles are almost an afterthought as you run to the next town/castle.

And you run to the next castle so that someone can tell you through tedious exposition the next town/castle you should go to or next cave to explore so that you can hear more tedious exposition. FFIX’s method of storytelling evolves much more organically and viscerally from the gameplay. The characters are more interesting and have more depth. Each have their own arc to complete and their own motivation for embarking on their quests.

To be fair to the GamePro article, they pointed out some narrative similarities. But to me personally, the two have far more differences than parallels.

Also as a disclaimer, FFIX is my favorite in the series and I can get very defensive over it. I think it perfectly embodies everything that was awesome in the 16-bit FF’s while modernizing the graphics and interface. I love that the characters are not fully customizable and that the games does not allow you to access all of them all of the time. It gives you a party and a quest and forces you to make the best of who you have – like the 3 branching stories in FFVI.

Anyway, I could do a whole blog post on the awesomeness of Final Fantasy IX, but that’s for another time. I really wish I liked Dragon Quest. The fans of the series get a ton of enjoyment out of those games and I feel like I’m missing out.

Lifted Up and Bogged Down

After wrapping up Majora’s Mask last night, I immediately popped in Twilight Princess. Majora’s Mask was on the top of my Top 5 Zelda games for the whole of a half hour. In Twilight Princess, Nintendo refined the Zelda formula they’ve used since way back on the SNES into a pitch-perfect adventure game. The “get 3 things from dungeons then get 5 more things” method never felt more organic than in Twilight Princess, fluidly evolving from the narrative rather than being an epic fetch quest. The story feels much more rooted because of the rich backstory, not only revealed in the game but also established in previous Zelda titles.

The world of Hyrule has a much bigger scope than in any Zelda game to date and is so much more expansive than ever before. Sure, the capabilities of the system the games are on factors a great deal into this, but it feels really good to ride around a huge Hyrule on Epona with tons of little nooks and crannies to explore. That’s the most impressive thing about the scope: the little side caves and holes and cliffs to find those elusive heart pieces and rupees. Hours upon hours can be spent just looking around this version of Hyrule and discovering everything it has to offer.

I’m not saying that Twilight Princess is more important than Ocarina of time, nor as creative and deep as Majora’s Mask. I’m saying that it knits together all of the best elements of Zelda games seamlessly into an incredibly polished experience. It may sometimes feel like you’ve played it before – because you have. But it feels so good to play.

Trudging along in Pokemon Heart Gold is getting more difficult each run through. Wes and I committed ourselves to using one team every month until we’ve used all 250 of the original Pokemon. After 6 or 7 months in, the game is getting old. It feel more like a chore even with fresh monsters. I’ve probably spent more time in Pokemon between Gold and White versions in the past 6 months than I’ve spent with any Pokemon game in the last six yeas. It wears thin after a while.

There aren’t many games that manage to keep the fun intact after playing for dozens and dozens of hours. I could play a couple of run throughs of Contra 3 every day as well as Super Mario World. Maybe it’s just nostalgia that makes those games fun every time I play them. They’re games that when I pick them up, I feel compelled to play till the end. They’re both especially fun, and probably even better, in co-op mode. Gears of War is another one that I don’t mind restarting and blasting through over and over.

It’s rare that modern games have this sort of longevity of replayability. Leave and comment and let me know what games you could play over and over without it getting old.

Ridiculous Listing

Yesterday GamePro made a list of their Top 15 3DS games. I’ll start by saying that their website looks infinitely better than mine and they’re much more consistent with putting up quality content. With that in mind, there are currently 23 3DS games available at retail (according to Nintendo’s website). Come on guys, why not just make a list of the 8 shitty DS games? Or wait until there’s a larger sample size. It won’t take long.

The 3DS games continue to trickle out 2 or 3 a month since launch. Some people (mostly game journalist who don’t actually have to pay for games) complain about the lack of games. But the games will come, and there’s a surprising amount of fighting games. DOA, Street Fighter and Blaz Blue will all soon grace Nintendo’s latest handheld. I can’t even name 3 fighting games on the DS off the top of my head.

I think it’s easy to forget how few DS games were coming out for the first several months. It’s almost the same exact situation. However, the DS did hit the ground running with Nintendogs and Advance Wars and never looked back. Maybe Ocarina of Time and Resident Evil will get the 3DS rolling. We’ll see. But can we make a rule to wait until there are 30 or 40 3DS games out before we start picking the best?

Speaking for the DS, if you were to make a list of the best games on the system, I think you’d have to make a top 50. My collection always hovers around 40 games, but I could easily name 20 or 30 more that I wouldn’t mind owning. It has such a fantastic variety of games spanning across almost every genre. Except fighting.

I wanted to make an amendment to some of my slider-controller ideas for Project Café. If the controller slide open to reveal a touch screen (like some cell phones), it would be tough to utilize both the face buttons/analogue sticks as well as a lower touch screen – as I said in a previous post. However, if the controller slid open and could then be turned around 180 degrees to make the touch screen on top, they using both interfaces could be done. Of course, that introduces new challenges. By turning the controller around, the touch screen would have to re-orient so that the image is not upside down. Easy enough. Furthermore, the right analogue stick would then be on the left and vice versa. The face buttons would also be on the opposite sides.

I still like the idea of a slider controller, but every solution for an obstacle seems to just introduce more obstacles. I had a few crude sketches for what such a controller could look like, but nothing worthy of posting. If anyone want to put forth the effort of making some concept art for a slider controller, please do. I’d love to see if it matches what I see in my head.

Controller Idea

The design of Project Café’s controller perplexes me. Although Nintendo has not officially revealed what the controller will look like or how it will function, they have all but admitted that we’ve on the right track with a tablet-like design. A 6-inch touch screen makes it nearly impossible to imagine a manageable controller. So, I got to thinking about how a slider design might function, like some cell phones: the body slides open revealing a keyboard – or in this case the touch screen.

The advantages to such a design are obvious: the screen can remain hidden making the controller smaller when games are not using it. However, when games make heavy use of the screen, this type of design will, in effect, double the size of the controller. Furthermore, trying to use both the face buttons and analogue sticks simultaneously with the touch screen will be very difficult. There are certainly ups and downs to a slider design, and ultimately it may be a poor design for games using a lot of buttons, but it’s fun to speculate.

A 6-inch touch screen and traditional face buttons on a single controller seems impossible to execute, but let’s not forget that wireless controllers were garbage before the Wave Bird. Nintendo finds ways to make this crazy stuff work.

I, for one, am hoping for a holiday 2012 release for Project Café. It’d be nice to give the Wii one last spring and summer, and I still have my fingers crossed for some quality software for the Wii this holiday. Plus, it would give the 3DS a year+ to plant its roots without competing against 1st party hardware. It still needs some quality software (which is coming) and some room to breathe. Let’s not forget that in May 2005, the DS got such classics as Puyo Pop and Madagascar. Yup, 2 games.

Top 5 (unannounced) 3DS Games I Want

1. Castlevania – another sidescroller, please
2. Advance Wars
3. Final Fantasy VI – give it the FFIV DS treatment
4. Platformer from WayForward – probably inevitable
5. Mario sidescroller

A lot of 2-D games on my list, but that’s what I like out of my handheld games.

I’ve been loaning out a lot of games lately. Ryan has Goldeneye (Wii), Tatsunoko vs Capcom and Little King’s Story; and James borrowed P.N. 03. I really should come up with a system to keep track of who has what, because Carlos still has my DS Phat and Dementium the Ward. Wes takes copies of my games routinely, but he returns them quickly. What about you guys? What’s your policy when loaning games to friends? It makes me a little nervous because sometimes it’s months before I get them back.

Hard Mode

Hard mode in Contra 3 is fucking unfair. Ryan and I always fire up the SNES after recording a podcast, which you can find here. Stealthy little plug, huh? It’s our semi-weekly movie podcast and in this episode, we review Thor.

We’re thinking of reviewing The Greatest Movie Ever Sold next, but Bridesmaids could possibly pull an upset. It’s nice to see Judd Apatow making movies again. Although Funny People disappointed, he’s almost singly responsible for taking mainstream comedies out of the clutches of Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. While he was gone, we got the cinematic masterpieces that are Couple’s Retreat, Little Fockers and The Dilemma.

Playing Contra 3 on hard makes Normal seems so much easier. Easy mode should not exist in any game. Easy mode is the game making fun of you. Remember how after dying over and over in DMC3 the game unlocked Easy mode? No thanks and fuck you. I’ll skip pussy mode every time.

Carlos and I did manage to make it through Contra 4 on hard mode a couple of times. It’s always a pretty awesome accomplishment to beat a game on the hardest difficulty level. Most of the time, you don’t get a goddamn thing for beating a game on hard except bragging rights.

Top 5 Games Hardest Hard-Mode Games

Devil May Cry 3
Ninja Gaiden (XBOX)
Contra 3
Little King’s Story
Resident Evil 4

Any amendments you want to make to the list? Leave a comment :)

Sometimes I wonder why RPG’s and platformers don’t have harder difficulty settings. I guess it would be tough to make an RPG harder since most powerful enemies can be overcome with some grinding. But a few more and faster moving goombas and koopas could ramp up the difficulty in any Mario game. Fewer power ups could make both of the New Super Mario Bros games tougher. That’s not to say the platformers feel unbalanced or simplistic, but an optional hard mode would be kind of cool.

A Core Principle

Rocket Slime helped break up the misery of work. The worst thing about working electronics retail is the knowledge that I have a college degree that turned out to be pretty useless.

Over the past year and a half since Carlos and I started Gamers Unanimous, we posted a bunch of reviews on the blogspot and site. Most of them are pretty short, more fitting for a magazine. One ideal that’s always been gospel to us is that reviews should never be tagged with an arbitrary number reflecting the writer’s judgment of it. We believe this for a few reasons.

The 1-10 grading scale for games has been around for a long time, and as time has gone on, the standard for an “average” game has been lost (if it had ever been known at all). The middle ground of the “OK” game gets smaller and smaller as games get bigger in scope. On a 1-10 scale, a 5 should be an average game – and a majority of games should be average (because that’s the definition of average). However, if a game slips below a 7, many gamers consider the writer’s opinion on it to be low and therefore not worth buying.

The 1-10 scale lacks congruity between games, which is to say, one game can be given a lower score but be a better game. This phenomenon occurs most often with sequels – the later is better (and that is written in the review) but receives a lower score. The 1-10 scale limits comparison among a library of games.

Furthermore, some negative (in the eyes of the writer) elements of a game may subtract from the total score, but those elements may not bother all gamers. The subjective nature of passing judgment could repel a potential audience. For example, the writer may not like random battles and doc the game’s total score for an abundance of them. Some readers may not mind or even like random battles but not buy the game due to a lower total score.

A game receiving a lower score than expected can cause disappointment or even outrage among the gaming community. The preconceived notions that gamers have about the quality of a game or a franchise sometimes rise too high for the game to live up to. But sometimes gamers can overlook the shortcomings and give a game a chance. It’s more difficult for gamers to overlook a disappointing score.

The worst result of a 1-10 scale (or a facsimile thereof) is that it bottom-lines a team’s months or years of work. I’d like to think more of a community that I consider myself a part of, but the truth is that many of us just look a the final score and the breakdown for each category. Taking time to read the reviews gives greater insight into reasoning behind the score. Since the 1-10 scale, or whatever system for rating games, is not going away any time soon, we should all take some time to read more often.

Of course, if you took time to read my obscure blog, I’m probably preaching to the choir. But I would like to pose this question - Which is more broken: the scoring system or they way we (gamers) interpret the scores? The answer is probably both. I choose to lay the blame on someone other than myself.

Now for some savage hypocrisy.

Top 5 Reasons 1-10 Scales Suck

1.“Average” no longer exists
2.Little congruity between games on the same rating scale
3.Subjective elements detract from total score
4.preconceived notions causes disappointment in lower scores
5.Years of hard work is erased by a 6.5

May 2011

Jon here.

I'm working on a schedule that will allow me to update the blog more often and with greater regularity. Look for updates on Tuesday and Friday. I'm off to a horrific start as it stands now since today is of course Wednesday. A momentary lapse that will be addressed.

A few notable games are coming out in May, such as Brink and LA Noire. I'll try to talk Carlos into picking up Brink, since he is much more into shooters than I am. I may pick up BlazBlue Continuum Shift II for the 3DS, which looks to continue the solid lineup of fighting games on the system. It's kind of funny that I probably cannot name 3 fighting games on the DS, but here we are a little over a month into the 3DS's lifespan and we've already gotten Street Fighter, Dead or Alive and BlazBlue. It's a brave new world. I just hope we don't lose out on the Phoenix Wrights and Trauma Centers and Professor Laytons that made the DS such a fantastic system.

To hold me over until BlazBlue, Wes and I have started another round of Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver for our Gotta Train 'em All segment. We decided to go with a few monsters we've used before and one newcomer: Magby, Elekid, Smoochum, Totodile, Larvitar and Sunkern. I'm inside the Ilex forest right now. One thing I love about Gold/Silver is the quick pace at which the game moves: the first three badges can be obtained within four hours.

Look for regular updates on the team as May moves ahead. So far all I have to say about them is that Sunkern is not that bad. We'll see how long a Grass type can be useful.

I've also been playing a lot of Majora's Mask, and you can check out my retrospective on it here. I've been thinking a lot about a remake of it since Ocarina of Time's remake releases on the 3DS in a couple months. So, here's my Top 5 Necessities for a Majora's Mask Remake:

1. 1080p - a high resolution remake of the darkest Zelda game ever is a must.

2. touch panel mask selection - Project Cafe's touch screen would make swapping masks infinitely easier that assigning them to item buttons.

3. iron boots - the ocean temple is a bitch, but some boots to hold Link in place would help.

4. time-proofing - i know it's a basic mechanic of the game for Link to lose all his arrows, bomb, etc... but being able to obtain a quiver or bomb bag that retains their contents even when time is reset would be awesome. they should not be easy to get, though. maybe if they were sold for 500 rupees in the Curiosity Shop or something...

5. debit card - Link saves and saves and saves, and the money stays in the bank no matter how much time is reset. a debit card that allowed him to access the thousands of rupees that would never otherwise be spent would make buying much needed items a whole lot easier.