TGS 2010 Thoughts
By Daroki 3 Comments
I can sum up my thoughts with a few days away from the deluge of news from TGS in one word. Wonder. But I guess the explanation could take a few more so here they are:
1) I still wonder what the hell Catherine is really all about. Two trailers, lots of lurid imagery, but no real details on what the hell is going on with this one. I'm still completely intrigued and I now know against my better judgment, I'll digest every piece of news about this game until something solid shows up. Damn my own curiousity.
2) I wonder if the DM... sorry, DmC 5 character model change is a tempest in a teapot, or something that's going to have REAL backlash. I'm sure the people at Platinum Games are the most confused right now, they should be bouncing off the walls to know that they now hold the definition of the crazy action shooter in Bayonetta, but having created Devil May Cry, it has to be bittersweet to hear the word "Twilight" being assigned to the new makeover.
3) I wonder if all of this Final Fantasy stuff was piling up while the team behind XIII finally got off their asses and put the game out. Between information on XIV, 012, Agito, and Versus, it seems like there was a lot of constipation in the franchise, and I wonder if it might be too late to reclaim what once was SquareEnix' throne as the premier RPG makers with the premier RPG franchise. Everyone from Projekt CD, Bioware, Atlus, and every other maker of RPGs thanks them for their incompetance the last five years.
4) I wonder if Nippon Ichi can hang on long enough to release Disgaea 4 in the United States. Those guys had a HORRID 2009 and seemed to expand far faster than they could handle. There's a problem with making games that take nearly 200 hours to really dig into, and it's that I don't have 200 hours EVERY MONTH to dig into one of those games.
5) I wonder how having people with pedigrees from Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and No More Heroes working on a game CAN'T be full of greatness. I fear that I might find out, and I hope desperately that I'm wrong. I hope that Shadows of the Damned is awesome.
6) I wonder how XBox 360 owners are going to react to Project Dark (Dark Souls?) if it does get the rumored US release on that platform. I'd love for From Software's Demon's Souls "successor" to get some love from everyone, but I just don't know if expanding it's platforms will expand it's audience.
7) Speaking of From Software, I wonder how they go about making a third game in a series which is infamous for having one of the most complicated controllers ever devised and having it work on Kinect. But a new Steel Batallion game is coming that way and it looks like a crazy trainwreck waiting to happen. Godspeed to the programmers of that monstrosity, they need all the help and luck they can get.
8) I wonder how much money it cost Microsoft to have Japanese devs go as crazy as they have with Kinect. From the Steel Batallion sequel, to Rise of Nightmares, to Project Draco, it looks like the Japanese are making the "core" games for that system.
9) I wonder if anyone else will look as cool playing Child of Eden as Mizuguchi does. I mean, I am in disbelief every time I watch video of that game being played that it would play out that way in anyone's home.
10) And last, I wonder if Ni No Kuni is about five or six years too late. I'd be curious to think of what would happen if it was in people's minds closer to the time that Spiried Away won an Academy Award, but we're nearly a decade away from the films initial release and over seven years from it winning an Academy Award. Does anyone really care about Ghibli anymore?
Bonus Thought: I wonder if The Last Guardian joins Ico and Shadow of the Colossus in the short list of games brought up when the "Games as Art" debate flares. Either way, cat-bird-dog-dragon thing and my PS3 need to get acquainted when it comes out.