2006-05-17

What I don't miss about E3

I was reading the latest post from Greg Costikyan's blog entitled "I Hate E3", which made me chuckle as I suspected what was to come from the post. Here's a perfect summary of what I don't miss about the E3 experience. From the blog:

"Games: the most important and liveliest artform to emerge from the confluence of technology and imagination, the revolutionary endeavor to merge creativity and audience participation, creating experiences never previously possible. And how do we celebrate them?

With pounding music, three thousand games with virtually identical art styles and nothing new to offer blaring away on monstrous screens, brainless smiling bimbos dancing on stages while drooling fanboys take innumerable snapshots, and with huge crowds assembling not to hear the greatest auteurs of the age, but to drool at--Paris fucking Hilton."


Yes, all of this has to be put up with at E3 and each year it would bother me more and more. So I can whole-heartedly relate to what is said here, but having missed my second E3 this year, I'm beginning to miss the things I like about E3.

What did I miss this year? Well, I don't have the experience of playing with the Wii remote. That's the biggest reason I wish I could have gone this year. And while it is true that most of the games on the show floor all feel the same or are just rehashes of already existing games, the joy of discovering the few gems that break that mold was always fun. The last year I went was the beginning of the Classic Games Festival (or some similar title) and that was probably the coolest part of that E3. Seeing the history of gaming up close. The nostalgia and the discovery of old systems that I had never heard of. And I think that has become a regular part of E3 since then, but I could be wrong. And lastly there is something special about being able to experience all these games before anyone else, and long before they get released.

2006-05-13

E3 2006 and other ramblings on

So I missed another E3, and I really wish I could have made it this year. Watching is not the same as playing, especially when there's a brand new controller interface, care of Nintendo. I'm getting excited about gaming again. There hasn't been anything of late that peaks my interest too much, but I'm excited to play around with the Wii. Mario Galaxy looks really cool, and I thought the graphics looked pretty sweet. Better than Gamecube or XBOX but not quite the same as the X360 or PS3, and at a much cheaper price. I just need to experience it to really know what it's like. Anyone that went to E3 give me your impressions of the Wii remote, or anything else for that matter.

I've been playing Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind as of late. I really wanted to play Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion, but since I don't have a 360 that's not an option, so I went out and bought Morrowind. It's not exactly what I was looking for but it's fun anyway. Sometimes it's a little bit too open ended for me. I really wanted to play an MMO style game, but just play it offline, no monthly fee. The FFXII demo sort of has that feeling and it was really fun. Makes me want to get it and I haven't bought a FF since VII, if you don't count FFXI Online.

I also recently installed XCOM : Terror From the Deep on my PC. Got it working with DOSBox. I've had the disk for a while but could never get it working on a windows machine properly. I think I paid $0.99 for it. Well now with DOSBox it works great. I played the first one on PS1 (with the PS1 mouse). It's one of my favorite games ever. I'd would love to see an updated version of it. Not like Apocalypse where it was turned into an RTS and just wasn't the same as the original, but the same game mechanics as the original game. Use High poly 3D models, a rotateable/zoomable camera in the battle sequences, a better interface for the interceptor dogfights, and that's about it. Definitely keep it turn based and stay true to the original experience. [I just found this while looking for a link to the game. UFO2000]

This also reminds me of another game I'd like to see redone. After the announcement that Microsoft was finally making a new Shadowrun game (They bought FASA Interactive and the rights to it a long time ago) I was excited, only to be let down when I learned it was an FPS. Shadowrun is an RPG, and a great one, it needs to be kept that way. A Shadowrun MMO would be awesome. Like Anarchy Online but better. The SNES Shadowrun game was great.

Schools done with for the summer. I never submitted an application for the Google Summer of Code, so now I need to look for a job of some kind to make some money this summer.

As far as coding goes I haven't done much, or any really. I just keep staring at the code not sure where to start or what to do. I've been away from it too long so it's not fresh in my mind. I need to get familiar with it again.

So enough rambling for now. I'll post when I finally make some more progress with the game. Still don't know what to do next but I plan to do something with it today.