kosayn

The WiiU would have carried over gracefully as a 'big DS,' two or three years ago. At that time, there was a vibrant market on PSP and DS for all the refugee Japanese PS2 developers that hadn't yet adapted to HD, and there were lots of innovators making dualscreen/touchscreen games. The WiiU could have inherited that audience at a point when it was strong. They could even do ports from the old DS, which has an awesome, underappreciated library.

But that's all changed. Apple took the casual and touch stuff. The Japanese developers nutted up and moved on to PS3. At this point, I'd say that nothing can save the WiiU besides a polygonal, HD Mario ready in time for Christmas. A lot of multi-generational fans would come back for a proper AAA game, the same way they came back for 64 and Galaxy. Retro Mario stuff can sell great, but it doesn't sell systems.

It's at times like this that I best understand people why people can get so worked up about console loyalties. It is kind of exciting, seeing these giant companies compete for our trust and attention.

Gearbox sure knows how to find game series to resurrect for their old, curmudgeonly fanbases. Well, holding out hope they'll do right by this next one.

Stoked for ownable Earthbound, and this gives me hope that they'll possibly get to Mother 3.

Now Konami needs to get off its ass about ownable Suikoden 2. And Namco needs to do some sort of gigantic Tales collection for their PSX and earlier stuff. When companies don't preserve their own accomplishments, piracy will.

For me the best battle systems focus on the simple problem of keeping multiple dudes buffed and upright. I think FF4 had the best system in the series, and in large part it's because you had 5 dudes to keep track of in combat, rather than 4 or 3. FF4 didn't just have a few great boss battles - almost every boss was ferocious, even on the easytype version by the standards of the 1990s. ATB meant that even simple choices had to be made urgently to keep up. I've enjoyed the odd boss here and there in the FF games after that, but mostly I've appreciated them for story, music, character, and imagination - not mechanics.

I still recommend people try FF4 on the DS, it's one of the few remakes I respect.

FF8, I wasn't totally against the draw system, and I remember gleefully hammering the button for more damage on summons, so I don't have the standard complaint about those either. It was legit, but I feel that battle system was more interesting in the middle game than early on, where it was repetitious, or at the end, where the junctioning setup became quite involved.

I liked Persona 4's battle system quite a bit too. So much of it is about disabling enemies, buffing and defense, often leaving you only one attacker per round on the bosses.

I also think that the first Lunar had excellent boss battles, for the same reasons described above. Its system was not even 'good' for random battles - the onscreen movement felt like insignificant busywork in those - but the bosses were half-hour long slugfests that really drove the heroic theme of the story. I felt very invested in making efficient choices in that game, and that's the essence of good RPG combat.

You know, Dead Space, Dragon Age, Simcity, Old Republic are all franchises that I felt DID merit sequels, and were definitely worth trying to innovate on. But what they decided on were completely risky and bizarre forms of innovation. Single Player oriented MMO? Multiplayer oriented God sim? Co-op horror game? I'd love to have seen those things work, but I wouldn't bet the farm on them. Gutsy choices like that need really hard work, and probably more original IP, to turn out positively.

If you ask me, I'd say lean hard into Dead Space's dialogue writing if you wanted to improve it; even Dead Space 1 is not outstanding in that regard. The rest of the original model was fundamentally sound horror design.

I'd say they should have built a new kind of engine that could handle proper Xwing / Tie Fighter flight sim stuff online if they were trying to make an innovative Star Wars MMO, people still deeply revere that series and nothing else has picked up the Wing Commander torch in over a decade; it's starving for innovation.

I'd say Simcity designers should have been very careful about making sure really bad gameplay results can in fact happen, and the player would gradually be led to understand more and more about why they happened, that way ensuring that the gameplay lasts. As is, people usually have no idea if bugs or their choices are why their city is what it is.

But what do I know about game design?

I think it's hard to keep making games that specifically contain lightning in a bottle, no matter how big a publisher gets. Square had it and lost it too. The really good games have something extra beyond just being well crafted - I think it's about providing what the audience doesn't know it really wants yet.

Hope EA will cut losses and push newer franchises to the top of the pile following this.

Glad to have this info.

I think they will come up with some sort of plan for backwards compatibility, for 'greatest hits.' They'll definitely want their high selling digital titles to carry over no matter what. It hasn't been great for back compat on the PS3 - very few good PS2 games are available digitally, and the people with launch PS3s have tiny hard drives. I suppose the only folks who have a nice large Sony library on one console are people who reinstalled hard drives to launch PS3s and carefully babied the system to make it last, or pirates.

The big problem on PS4 is whether back compat games could be bug-free in light of the new proposed features. Suspend/Resume, recording gameplay, incremental downloads to start playing faster, and sharing - I think the new PS4 games might have to be custom designed with supporting those features in mind, and the old emulated games would have to be reworked, either that or say 'no new features for emulated games.' That's no good - they want active, connected users if their grandiose network concepts are to succeed. It'd be especially tough for PS3 games, which almost all have online components, installed portions, updates, and so on of their own to manage, on a new system with a different architecture.

Basically it sounds like it would be a lot of work, an unreasonable amount. They need to prioritize the new content, as much as I and others want to retire our old consoles.

I like hidden stuff in games, and I have pondered the fact that putting stuff in a game that you can find and pick up is at the same time one of the cheapest, easiest ways to flesh out a sparse polygonal environment, and also, really hard to do well.

The problem is that there's 80s 90s style hidden stuff, where it's often totally obscure developer references and gag items. The game chugs along just fine if you miss it, and without the internet, you usually did. Then there's 2000s style hidden stuff, where in most cases everything you miss is documented by achievements, and has no actual use or interesting reference to make.

I really don't understand how so many people can harp on not showing the PS4 box design itself; that is clearly the sort of thing that a, doesn't actually matter, and b, should obviously be saved for E3 to keep it from losing its 'newness' by the time the thing sells in November.

I don't want to get all Sony Defence Force about any of the press conference - I almost never get excited about launch games, and I agree that their lofty plans for enhanced network functionality are destined to run into the brick wall of North America's shitty ISPs. But in all seriousness, I think the actual sales pitch was much stronger than anyone could have expected - considering their past shenanigans.

Hopefully they'll have guts, and Hotline Miami will be in some sort of cross-platform coming soon reel at the presentation today.

Sony have really done right by the PS3 in finding and backing a few good Euro and Western indie games. The Vita definitely needs the same support to differentiate itself from its predecessor, which eventually had nothing but JRPGs, and its competitor, which keeps most games kid friendly.

Part of the appeal of Playstation back in the late 90s, for those who remember, was that it was the less censored console. That meant a lot of dumb macho power fantasy games, but also a few games and series that really benefited from suddenly having creative freedom.