DxBecks

These videos played throughout the Digital Event. In fact the event opened on the first skit. I had to do a double take to make sure I had clicked the right link when I watched the event this morning.

In the Robot Chicken skits during the Digital Events, one of the press people in the audience says "Come on Reggie, give us Mother 3!" The other game the audience member named was Star Fox. It was later teased that Star Fox is in development, and then confirmed. My educated guess is that Nintendo specifically made reference to Mother 3 as tease that they plan to translate the game, or use the fan translation, and release it on the e-Shop.

The constant cynicism is fucking annoying. I realize there are legitimate problems within the video game industry to be entirely cynical about (I'm looking at you day one downloadable content that can only be obtained by pre-ordering the game at GameStop), but what the ever happened to video games being fun and exciting? This was the first E3 in ages that made me incredibly excited for video games. The worst conference was EA's and that was simply because they didn't have a lot to show at this point, however they still showed off Mirrors Edge 2 and Star Wars Battlefront. Microsoft finally revealed some interesting looking titles and appears to be taking the criticism it's received to heart, to the point where they blatantly stated their conference would only focus on games. Nintendo finally nailed the Digital Event and I think this is the future of press conferences at E3. Nintendo showed they were self aware and not afraid to laugh at themselves. Nintendo revealed a killer 2015 line up including a new arena shooter, an open world Legend of Zelda, a new Yoshi game, a new Kirby game, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Mario Maker, and teased a new Star Fox and Mother 3. Sony revealed a new Uncharted game which looks phenomenal, LittleBigPlanet 3, Let It Die, and Ratchet and Clank. id announced a new Doom with a teaser that seemed very Doom II-esque. I really can't complain about anything this year. The only thing I can really say I'm disappointed about is the lack of new Metroid or a Majora's Mask 3D announcement from Nintendo, and that I'm not going to have the money or time to play the awesome titles coming out in 2015. Easily the best E3 in five years for me.

I thought something similar. Since the new Zelda seems to be about breaking standard Legend of Zelda conventions and tropes, I thought they were going to have you play as Zelda instead of Link.

Luigi is fucking tired of being Player 2.

Not just any old stickers, virtual stickers.

I've been pondering the same question myself recently. Anytime Nintendo is brought up, a number of people seem to gain satisfaction from their financial issues. It is almost as if some people want to see Nintendo fail, but why? I think part of the answer lies in the fact that Nintendo was once the savior and hero of the home console market, the unstoppable Juggernaut . Now that more competition has become establish, successful, and arguably better in certain aspects than Nintendo, people want to see the Juggernaut crumble. It is the same reason why people want to see either Apple or Microsoft fail.

The other reason people dislike Nintendo, or feel that they abandoned their audience, despite the fact their audience has been the same for the past 30 years, is because some people have insecurities about playing child/family-friendly video games as adolescents or adults. This issue, I believe, has only further been exacerbated with the market trend and consumer belief that video games need to be darker, grittier, bloodier, and more story driven in order to convince those not-familiar with video games that they are Art. Nintendo games typical are full of bright colours, lack grit and violence, and sometimes a story all-together (nothing that artsy about an evil turtle-dinosaur stealing a Princess). That isn't to say Nintendo games are not mature in themes or content, The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask is a great example of this, however those type of games tend to be the exception to the rule. I find it hard to believe that most people who grew up playing Nintendo games didn't at one point disown Nintendo for being "kiddy" once they become an adolescent.

The last major reason that people dislike Nintendo is because they are an incredibly frustrating company at times. Nintendo typically has great ideas, but quite frequently half-baked execution. The Wii-U is an incredibly awesome idea, but half-baked. It isn't the lack of power of the machine but because Nintendo failed to properly incorporate the GamePad with most games, and I think Nintendo would have been better make the GamePad function as a standalone Tablet for movies, e-books, internet, music, and virtual console titles, and given it a capacitive touch screen instead of resistive touch screen. Nintendo's conservatism isn't always terrible though, and sometimes I would argue it's their best asset. Their stubbornness to submit to market trends means they have bastardized their video games with microtransactions, season-passes, excessive downloadable content, unfinished games, or any of that other bullshit. When I purchase a Nintendo title, I know that I am getting the full experience that Nintendo wanted to deliver. That being said, their refusal to make a competent online system, especially the failure to tie e-Shop purchases to an online account instead of physical hardware, and the failure to incorporate online multiplayer into games with local multiplayer *cough*SuperMario3DWorld*cough* is incredibly frustrating.

I haven't had much time to play it yet, but I will tonight. First impressions is that this game is really demanding but still decently optimized. I'm running second generation mobile i7, 4GB of RAM, and a Geforce 550M and I can run the game at a solid 720p/30FPS on low settings. That is a big downgrade from the Medium/High settings I could play Battlefield 3 on but considering my card is two years out of date, and it's a mobile card, I think that is pretty decent.

Nintendo will be where it always is, in five years, doing its own thing. People are always quick to call out doom and failure for Nintendo, complain how Nintendo hardware is not up to par with other consoles, and decry how much Nintendo has fallen from grace all the while Nintendo releases hit title after hit title and their consoles that people thought would bankrupt them starting selling.

I frequently hear how Nintendo is no longer needed because of tablet games, but I find that hard to believe. I think the questions we should be asking ourselves is where will mobile gaming be in five years? A friend of mine of Facebook posted a week ago that tablet Apps are no different than the video game industry around 82'-84' where you had to weed through a large selection of rip-off's, broken, and terrible games to find anything worthy to play. Simply put, the App market is and will become even more saturated with terrible releases that could crash the market. More importantly few tablet games can deliver on the diversity, complexity, or scale of video games on other platforms due to the limited control scheme. Many titles on the 3DS and Vita could not be played on a tablet touch screen, and certainly couldn't sell at $40 on any App marketplace.

Grand Theft Auto IV, how it received so much praise from the press and community astounds me. The missions are typically boring and repetitive, the mission checkpoints create frustration, the cover system control is frustrating and borderline broken, the weapons mechanics are awful, the artificial intelligence is laughable, weapon switching is a pain, non-playable characters and enemies take way to many damage, the driving physics are awful and make car-chase sequences frustrating and painful, the death/police mechanic is frustrating, their is no reason to be caught by the police instead of either letting Niko die or restarting your last save, the art-style is bland and uninspired, and the graphics are incredibly mediocre and inconsistent. The game is just so frustratingly awful in many aspects.