Nintendo Could Have Shown Way More Wii U Games At E3
Apparently the Wii U developer kits Nintendo sent out to developers pre-E3, had been underclocked by the developers themselves in order to get out demos for E3, which basically means they were limited to how good they could look. Nintendo felt that if the demos didn't show the games being looking better than the Xbox or PS3 then they had to atleast show off the Wii U's unique functionality, which is why Ubisoft's Killer Freaks From Outer Space and Ghost Recon: Online were shown. My best guess would be that this probably means the Wii U is capable of better-then-the-current-consoles' graphics and Nintendo were hoping to show this off at E3. Instead they had to settle for footage from the Xbox and PS3 versions. Ah well Nintendo, there's always next year!
Killer Freaks From Outer Space - Talk about having to settle...Microsoft Release Kinect SDK
Since it's release, Kinect users have been hacking the software to do all sorts of awesome, unofficial stuff that show off the insane things the Kinect is capable of. Well now Microsoft have released the Kinect Software Development Kit (or SDK for short) which will let budding Kinect hackers make their hacks available to other users. Microsoft have been smart about this, they saw people were hacking Kinect and decided to roll with it. Pretty sneaky, Microsoft.
A brief example of a Kinect hack in action4J Studios Responsible For Minecraft Xbox 360 Port
You may not recognise the name 4J studios, but they've been responsible for all of Rare's N64-to-XBLA ports aswell as the team that ported Oblivion to PS3, so porting is kinda their "thing". I reckon they can be trusted to do a good enough job, I have no fondness for Minecraft though, so as it turns out I don't actually care... still, news is news!
Psychonauts is generally considered one of the best games ever made, which is why this news is kinda exciting. Double Fine already owned the rights to the Psychonuts brand but if you've bought the game recently (whether on xbox Live or on steam) the money went to the publisher Majesco. Well, not any more, as Double Fine now own the publishing rights to Psychonauts aswell. The news has people jazzed about the possibility of a sequel but this doesn't autonatically mean a sequel ill come. It's surely more likely than ever now though!
HD Psychonauts? Yes please!Halo: Anniversary To Come With Special Original Xbox-Style Controller?!?
343 Industries, the people behind Halo: Anniversary are toying with the idea of including a remodelled xbox 360 controller with their special edition, not a massive surprise until they start dropping hints it'd be modelled after the original xbox's controller. It was possibly the worsld's worst controller, but this is probably the only context it would ever make sense to want to own one. I guess. Maybe. Ish.
They called it The Duke for a reason...Wii U To Contain No DVD or Blu Ray Player
Seems like a weird move by Nintendo, it would surely only increase the console's price by about £5. Still, they probably know what they're doing. I guess. Probably. Ish.
So it's been far, FAR too long since I looked for news and didn't have a seizure from the unbelievable amount of the stuff, but today is a brand new day! The gaming industry has woken up and recovered. And so, without further ado, I present to you.... NEWS!!!
Bungie Release IOS App
The app, (which you can download right now if you have an appropriately awesome phone) so far only really displays your Halo: Reach stats, but as Bungie draw further and further away from the Halo universe (It's 343's problem now!) the question is, what kind of content are they gonna start putting on there? Well thankfully Eric Osborne (Bungie Community Content Writer) gives us a few cryptic sentences:
"It’s our first, small step into the mobile world. The first of many, it really is just a beginning--our first, super cute baby step. We already have adult-type plans to keep updating Bungie.net Mobile with new features and enhancements in the months and years to come."
There's a Bungie Day coming up (June 23rd to July 7th... yep, Bungie Day is 2 weeks long....) where they'll hopefully give us more details, aswell as Bungie Aerospace (god knows what that is) and they're alleged partnership with Activision (said to be called Destiny). There's alot to look forward to for Bungie fans! Unfortunately I'm not a Bungie fan. Sad face.
He's assuming the "hit-in-the-balls" positionActivision And Time Magazine Team Up
The two have joined forces to publish an issue of the historic magazine with a special Modern warfare 3 front cover. The front cover will be a poster and will be used as a pre-order initiative at Gamestops in America. I think it look pretty epic. I mean, we don't get Time magazine over here but it's influence is known wordwide, and any time video games break into the mass media like this can only be a good thing.
Here's the poster. I like it!Steam Now Supports Free To Play MMOs!
Do you have a PC or laptop? Then you're in luck! Because now you can play some MMOs for free!!! If you have a computer of some kind and you're reading this site then chances are you have Steam, so this can only be good news for you (and me!). The 5 (Yes, FIVE) MMOs available are Sega's Sprial Knights, Cryptics Champions Online, Hi-Rez Studio's Global Agenda, Perfect World's Forsaken World, and NHN's Alliance Of Valliant Arms. Of all these games the only 2 I've heard okay things about are Champions Online and Global Agenda, though that's not to say the others are bad, besides, the beauty of free games is that you get to try them all out anyway!
Champions Online - Free MMO with superheroes. What's not to like?!?Rage Release Pushed Back By 4 Weeks
It will now come out on October 4th... I guess that's it!
That's not Nemesis, I assure you this is a Rage screenshot. ASSURE YOU.Millions Of Release Dates For Wii, DS and 3DS
I could copy and paste the list that Giant Bomb posted, but instead I'll just paste the Nintendo published games and let you guys go to Giant Bomb's post if you wanna see the rest of the MASSIVE list
3DS
The Legend of Zelda™: Ocarina of Time™ 3D June 19
Star Fox 64™ 3D Sept. 11
Kid Icarus™: Uprising Holiday
Mario Kart™ Holiday
Super Mario™ Holiday
LEGO® City Stories™ 2012
Luigi's Mansion™ 2 2012
Animal Crossing™ TBA
Paper Mario™ TBA
Wii:
Wii Play: Motion -- June 13
Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident -- June 27
Kirby Wii -- Fall
Fortune Street -- Holiday
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword -- Holiday
Mario Party 9 -- TBA
Rhythm Heaven -- TBA
DS:
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 -- Aug. 28
Kirby Mass Attack -- Sept. 19
Professor Layton and the Last Specter -- Fall
Super Fossil Fighters -- Holiday
For the rest of the games coming out the rest of the year on Nintnedo platforms check out Giant Bomb.
So as the collective gaming community takes a well-deserved rest after the madness that is E3, the news starts to dry up. I'll start poking through the best stuff from E3 soon, but until I do, I found a review for Lego Star Wars III I forgot I had written!
I wrote it in work on a really slow day and just forgot all about it, so if you guys like obsolete reviews of games that have been out for 3 months, then enjoy! Otherwise I'm afraid you'll have to wait until tomorrow. Have a great rainy Sunday!
So there's WAY too much stuff coming out of E3 for me to narrow it down so instead I've written an article about the ten games I think would be awesome on the new Wii U. Let me know if I've missed any great franchises that would fit with the insane new controller and also tell me if I'm just flat-out wrong about any of my choices!
Look at that thing! I know you have already but LOOK AT IT!!!
Until tomorrow, when hopefully E3's crazyness will have died enough to start digging through the wreckage.
There is WAY too much stuff coming out of E3 right now to do a daily news of the top few things, so instead I'm gonna try and post every new trailer I can from coming from the show. I don't expect to get them all but I'll get the ones that matter. Enjoy, and look forward to the next year in gaming, it's gonna be a doosie!
The only news of the day is obviously that E3 is ON. The press conferences wrapped up today and some crazy shit happened. You can see what was at each press conference and whether it impressed below, but in the interest of me having to be conscious tomorrow, I'm going to just focus on the big 3: Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.
Microsoft
What They Showed (In order):
Modern Warfare 3
Tomb Raider
Mass Effect 3
Ghost Recon - Future Soldier
Live TV for Xbox in America, live UFC will have extra community features
Youtube and Bing support
Gears of War 3
Ryse
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Forza 4
Fable: The Journey
Minecraft
Kinect Disneyland Adventures
Kinect Star Wars
Double Fine's Sesame Street Game "Once Upon A Monster"
Kinect Fun Labs
Kinect Sports Season 2
Dance Central 2
Halo 4
__________
The Good: Modern Warfare 3; Mass Effect 3; Youtube support; Gears Of War 3
Gears, Modern Warfare and Mass Effect all looked superb (as you would expect) but the surprisingly exciting thing for me was hearing Youtube would be on the system. My computer is terrible and so can barely run Youtube on anything but the minimum quality, so I'll actually use this a tonne! __________
The Bad: Tomb Raider; Ghost Recon; Kinect Disneyland Adventures; Kinect Star Wars
The less said about these, the better. Bear in mind it's just personal preference but honestly, I hated everything about everything I saw about all of them (though gunsmith was kinda cool). Boo!
__________
The Worst: Fable 3: The Journey
Imagine Fable 3 as a first person shooter. Now clean up that vomit and go lie down. __________
The Meh: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary; Forza 4; Once Upon A Monster; Kinect Sports Season 2; Dance Central 2
For whatever reason, I felt no emotion at all to any of these. Halo does nothing for me, and Forza isn't a series I've ever played. the rest are just run-of-the-mill looking Kinect games. Not much to say really. __________
The "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!": Ryse, Minecraft; Halo 4
The trailer for Ryse showed a dog walking around Rome whilst a guy murdered some guy in Kinect-enabled first person with a sword; Minecraft for Xbox is a mental concept and Halo 4. Halo 4 pretty much "whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!"'s itself! __________
The Intriguing: Kinect Fun Labs
It's about time they did this. Made a bunch of tools for Kinect that make it do awesome stuff. If I had a Kinect this would be getting me seriously pumped. __________
The Star Of The Show: Mass Effect 3
The purpose of them showing the game during the Microsoft Press Conference was mainly to highlight the game's new Kinect functionality (which is actually just subtle enough to make it awesome) but more importantly, it showed that Mass Effect 3 is essentially just way more Mass Effect 2. The story follows on from Mass Effect 2, the combat is the same and the galaxy-faring remains intact. The section they showed contained Moridin, a Krogan female and some combat and totally "lit my wick". Gross. Gross but true!
Sony
What They Showed (In order):
Apology
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Resistance 3
God Of War: Origins Collection
Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus Collection
NBA 2K
Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest
Infamous 2
Starhawk
Sly Cooper
Dust 514
Bioshock Infinite
Move-controlled Star Trek Game
PSVita Pricing
Modnation Racers and Little Big Planet for Vita
Street Fighter X Tekken
The Good: Apology; God Of War: Origins; Ico and Shadow Of the Colossus Collection; Bioshock Infinite
Right from the start they said sorry and set their sights to the future. They fixed it and now they're moving on. Great. The rest of the conference was... dubious, to say the least, but there were some highlights. Bioshock Infinite looks cool, and I'm a sucker for some HD re-releases, there was definitely some good to be taken from the presentation. __________
The Bad: Resistance 3; Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception; Modnation Racers and Little Big Planet for Vita
Resistance looked as generic a game as I've ever seen and Uncharted looked similarly run-of-the-mill to me. I never got the whole Uncharted thing, I played 2 for maybe an hour at a friends house and saw loads of footage from the game on various websites and it all just looked like standard 3rd person shooting but window dressed differently depending on the level. Nothing about it appealed. Similarly, Modnation Racers and LBP for Vita looked as money-grabby as you can get.
__________
The Worst: Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest
Gamecube style graphics, unbelievably obvious puzzles and virtually no gameplay, surely one to look forward to! __________
The Meh: Infamous 2; Move-controlled Star Trek Game; Street Fighter X Tekken
A sequel to a game I never played, a game we have no info about and a cross between 2 fighting games I don't like. About as meh as you can get. __________
The "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!": Dust 514
A first-person online shooter based on the universe of an MMO (EVE Online) that not only runs off the game's economy but also affects it depending on which side wins a battle and how. Dude WTF?!? __________
The Intriguing: Sly Cooper
The Sly franchise is definitely quite a prolific one, so a new entry sounds like something to look forward to, even though I haven't played any of them myself I still find myself intrigued. __________
The Star Of The Show: PSVita Pricing
So the Vita will sell for $250 in the US for the WiFi-only model and $300 for the 3G version. That's a fantastic price! The general consensus seemed to be that it would have to be atleast double that for what it was offering but at that price point, Sony have given themselves a real chance to break the handheld market wide open!
Nintendo
What They Showed (In order):
Zelda: Four Swords Adventrue free from DSiWare
Zelda: Skyward Sword out for Christmas
Zelda 25th Anniversary Concerts live worldwide and also in album form
Mario Kart 3D
Super Mario 3DS
Luigi's Mansion 3DS
Star Fox 64 3D
Kid Icarus: Uprising
3rd Party 3DS Support
Wii U
Smash Bros for both 3DS and Wii U
Massive 3rd Party support for Wii U
The Good: Four Swords for free; Zelda concerts worldwide; Super Mario 3DS; Luigi's Mansion 3DS; Star Fox 64 3D, Kid Icarus; Smash Bros mentioned
Freebies, the chance to hear Nintendo music live from an orchestra, quality 3DS games on the way and... what's that?... Did someone utter the word Smash Bros?!?! Excuse me while I change my underwear and sleep for a year.
__________
The Bad: Mario Kart 3D
Looking back at the press conference, just about the only thing I thought looked awful was Mario Kart for the 3DS. Gimmicky, bland and dated, the game looked about as poo a version of Mario Kart as you could imagine. It didn't even look like a Nintendo game. Made me a depressed panda!
__________
The Meh: 3DS and Wii U 3rd party support; Kid Icarus: Uprising; Skyward Sword release date 3rd party support was inevitable, granted hearing games like Arkham City, Assassin's Creed and Battlefield will be on Wii U lendsa certain legitimacy to the system but it's still about as standard an announcement as you can get.Kid Icarus and Skyward Sword look pretty uninspired to me, although they are Nintendo games so they'll obviously be good. I dunno, they're not jerking my chicken. so to speak. I. Umm. Yeah. Sorry. __________
The "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!": Four Swords Adventure for free
So Nintnedo, you're just going to give away one of the coolest sounding multiplayer games ever made, based off one of the greatest games of all time? You're insane and I love it! __________
The Intriguing: See below! __________
The Star Of The Show: Wii U
Nintendo's next console is insane. Somehow they continue to find ways of making absolutely new tech that blows my (and apparently everyone else's) minds. The console is so far a faceless wii-looking shell, what they're showing to get us excited is the controller. A "proper" controller with a 6.2 inch screen in the middle. the screen has touch capability, the controller contains cameras, speakers and gyroscopes and the console can stream content directly to the controller, so theoretically you wouldn't even need a TV to play Wii U games. the console will be compatible with all the wii peripherals so you probably wqont need to buy anything but the console as chances are you'll already have enough Wii-motes to go around. The graphics look good so far but they're very early, eventually thay'll be comparable with PS3 and Xbox though. It'll have online and make you happy. If you can't picture it for yourself then take a look at the video below.
There's just one press conference left now, and that's Nintendo. With Nintendo set to show off their new home console it's gonna be a belter! Also, expect me to round everything up later on (hopefully) tonight if I can pull myself away from Starcraft and TV for long enough...
So, here it is, at tea-time tomorrow (5:30pm on the 6th June 2011 to be precise!) we find out what the big game companies are gonna be making us buy for the next year or so. If like me you love the awesome press conferences, then you're gonna wanna sit there and watch them live whilst you eat your tea!
Expectations: I fully expect them to make me want Gears Of War 3 pretty badly, and to announce a crazy new feature for Xbox Live. Aside from that, the great thing is I'm not sure what to expect! Which I suppose means I'm expecting it to be awesome!
Expectations: Battlefield 3 will absolutely explode my brain and force me to change my pants more than once during the EA conference I expect, and Mass Effect 3 is going to be amazing regardless. EA could steal the show for me (if Nintendo's new console doesn't pull it out of the bag)
Expectations: Ubisoft will not do anything for me. Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy games make me limper than Dale Winton's wrist, they'll have to show us something brand new to get a rise out of me.
Expectations: Sony. Sony, Sony, Sony, Sony. It's gonna be a carcrash. a carcrash followed by some 40 year old men trying to put the car back together. Be warned, the thing's scheduled to be 5 hours long so expect much apologising and freebies. The rumour is a concert of some kind, sounds like fun! The sony conference should be proper popcorn television!
If the Last Guardian makes an appaearance I'll be happy!
With E3 LITERALLY kicking off tomorrow (I stay up way too late) I haven't seen anything too exciting on the news front these past few days, but expect posts of me highlighting what I think are the best things at the show and thew things you should be excited for.
I have a feeling it's gonna be a week filled with mental announcements so we shouldn't be seeing any "Daily Lack Of News" for a while. Thank god, there's nothing more depressing for me to have to write than a post basically just letting the internet know that I'm still alive.
Still alive, internet! Still alive and still awake. Ugh.
I'm so tired! Also, this "KO" was the one good thing MvC3 gave the world
Killer Freaks From Outer Space - Talk about having to settle...Microsoft Release Kinect SDK
A brief example of a Kinect hack in action4J Studios Responsible For Minecraft Xbox 360 Port
Chunky but pretty, at the very least
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