James McGeachie

Games like this are the most positive thing to take away from the conference probably - that Nintendo is getting some of the biggest upcoming multi-platform titles. Of course, like ME3, it's probably kind of silly to expect people to buy a game in a long-running franchise on this system, when most of the fanbase for the franchise is already well established on the other currently available consoles, and have little reason to want to buy the next title on this system rather than the one they have the rest of the games on.

Ubisoft putting the Wii U's power to full use on creating the MANKIEST FINGERNAILS you ever did see.

I like the haunted level, but it does feel like Nintendo just goes through books of post-impressionists now to get ideas for game visuals. Skyward Sword. Oooh, Cezanne! New Mario? Aaahh, Van Gogh!

The right way to do it would've been a Mass Effect double pack with ME2 and ME3 bundled together. I'd like to say trilogy, but obviously Microsoft prevents that from happening.

I had watched that video when I made the post. That's not what I'm meaning. I mean, just direct feed footage of the game being played. 720p footage ideally. Full audio, no narration. No cuts to an old person talking about it. We can hardly judge its complete visual fidelity from a video that shows like 5 seconds of fullscreen footage at a time.

To be honest, I'd rather play this by far than another Lego Popular Franchise game. Especially because we'll probably be going into "Lego Twilight" or something next.

This looks like it'll have the legs of Wii Play. i.e. 5 minutes for each game. I don't think they can sell this easily to people either. It takes them forever to explain why these games are supposed to be fun.

I wish the trailer hadnt been pre-rendered, it was Red Steel's early videos all over again. Game itself looks okay visually, but I'd like to see Direct Feed. It's one of the only games so far that seems kind of representative of what ground up games that try to push visuals can do, since most other "hardcore" titles shown so far are ports. On that, there's no evidence of anything going on that the other consoles cant do at all, so either Ubisoft are just lazy (which is what people will jump in to say now of course) or we can assume that the Wii U being roughly "current gen" is probably true.

So, at the conference we learn this game is "all about the gold". The trailer obviously shows the same thing. But what purpose does this serve gameplay wise? Any? Is it just another way to make extra lives even more meaningless than they'd already become? Is it just for visual and audio impact? I seriously hope there's some kind of substantial reason for it. Requirement for huge amounts of coins to progress...maybe. Tons of unlockable extra content...maybe that too. High score tables? I guess that's maybe good. I'd rather something better than stuff like that though. :/

I wish half of these games being shown didn't have glaring framerate drops. This looks like an interesting experiment in gameplay but err...not exactly what you'd expect from having a Platinum Games exclusive.

A pretty short one compared to what they had for Wii at the time, one that didnt include much evidence of exclusives from supporters they usually have (e.g. Capcom, Sega). Serebii you're like the biggest apologist on here. We didn't really expect every franchise, but Nintendo knows that to get their hardcore fanbase excited, they need like at least 1 big, obvious, "fanservice" game. A retro developed Metroid-Starfox game as rumoured would've been it. Or a hint of a new F-Zero. Or anything like that. They tried to make Pikmin it, but that was never going to make people froth at the mouth.

Guys, time to go back and watch the 2006 conference and how they hyped Wii. Miyamoto conducting an orchestra, Galaxy footage, large game reel showcasing diverse third party support, loads of cool demonstrations of motion gaming, etc. All from memory anyway. If you compare it to this, they are REALLY struggling to sell Wii U. They didnt brag about tons of third party support or anything.

Game looks gorgeous to be honest. Far more aesthetically pleasing than the NSMB titles to date. Hard to get excited about more NSMB though.

Kind of pointless for Nintendo gamers, but good they somehow got such a big franchise on board. Seriously though, eh.

NSMBU looks good. Pikmin's gameplay looks great. Other than that, hey, no big surprises, no excitement. Cheers Nintendo.

Just seen bits of this, but it's looking a lot like the Wii U is the lead platform? Nice, looks pretty good.

That was boring. They've got the Harry Potter spell game though, so they've secured themselves a money maker. Good for them, I guess. Seriously though, not a good time for current console gaming if this and yesterday is the best Sony and Microsoft have to make a song and dance about. Last of Us looks good, but didn't get a smile out of me. So far, nothing at E3 has.

I like most of the stuff in this. I'm starting to become worried though about all the control input methods. It seems like it could detract from developers making focused experiences for one controller. We now have Wii Remote-nunchuk, motion plus, Balance board, Classic controller, Wii U Pad and Wii U Pro controller. Ideally they phase out support for the original classic controller/pro, so that they can make good use of clickable sticks in the new one. Also, hopefully the old Wii Remote will be phased out so that motion plus support is the norm for any games using the Wii Remote set up. That still leaves 4 distinct input methods though - Balance Board, Remote, GamePad, Pro controller. If third parties latch onto the Pro Controller, then it leaves Nintendo to develop all the unique stuff. So expect them to have more projects and more dispersed resources, so more cheap titles to develop and probably less "Triple A" stuff. Also, if third parties latch onto Pro, then expect Nintendo to also try to be trying to keep the Wii Remote and Balance Board still relevant too, by making stuff for them. This is risky really. Third parties are probably less likely this gen to make Multi-platform titles AND Nintendo exclusives. if Wii U can run their multi-platform titles, which will likely be EXPENSIVE, then I dont see them wanting to spend money to make exclusives, especially with rising development costs. If Wii U "wins" and becomes their lead system, then maybe...but yeah...

Surprising how little hype there was for this before release on this forum. Anyway, I saw this last night. In IMAX 3D. My first time, amazing visual experience. Shame about the drunk guy laughing and booing behind me. Never wanted to enact a disproportionate response on a guy so badly before. From what I got out of my distracted, agitated experience, it was good. You'll have to fill in gaps in narrative yourself to really get around things that could be considered "plot holes", but I'm pretty sure they're mostly intentional. It is certainly a film though that raises more questions than it really answers, so if that's not what you want, then oh dear. I'd say that I liked the script, but that's because I'm happy to sit and play with the questions it left in my mind. Characters are not massively developed. It's certainly not a character driven story. It's more driven by grand concepts and the interaction of the characters with these large-scale ideas and challenges. The acting is good, but don't expect to really care about anyone much. Atmosphere was nice, soundtrack was good. Was the film scary? No. Were parts slightly disturbing/unnerving, even to a hardened horror/thriller fan? Yes. From what I've seen, a lot of fans are doing the typical "spoiled the magic" response, which I think is pretty much a given for any movie of this type. I expect a divided response from the Alien franchise fanbase as a whole on whether they like the revelations here. They're probably not really that important to that franchise to be honest though. On that note, this movie is, as Ridley Scott did make clear really, it's own thing. It's not an Alien movie. It shares similarities and is in the same universe, but it deals with its own themes. Anyway, go watch it and stuff.

...are you in? Imagine the possibilities. HD Gamecube classics like Wind Waker and Prime...and then Wii games, like Galaxy, Donkey Kong Country Returns, etc. I'm just wondering, how much will people let Nintendo away with it? Are you gonna let them get away with milking SD for years and buy all their games again...or are you deliberately not reward them for it and not buy any? (By the way, I'm aware of the existence of Dolphin, but most people don't have PC's capable of using stuff like that to the fullest).

Interesting. Glad that it's 3D. Honestly as much as I love 2D sprite-based games, I think you really need a fully 3D polygonal environment to make the best use of the 3D effect on the 3DS. Also, they can't make Metroidvania handheld titles forever. It was inevitable that there would be a divergence from that trend eventually. Of course there may be another, but it's not like there NEEDS to be. 6 handheld games in a row were all "Metroidvania" style. Storyline peaked with Aria of Sorrow and has fluctuated since then but never really got better. Gameplay is pretty much equally good in all 3 DS games. Order freshened things up a bit, but it was hardly a revolution. What the 2D games deserve is a new console title with HD sprites. Not whatever that junk that came out on Arcade was though.

Always a bit sad when Kevin Conroy isn't playing Batman but eh, guess this is one adaption where a different voice actor could work well.

I like the style, nice colours. Wasted on the Lost Planet franchise though.

Notes on the tablet: Whatever you end up using it for, please don't just shoehorn it in unnecessarily. Make it an integral part of the game experience that you cant play the game without.

End result of unrestrained capitalism. Big companies want to continue to make massive profits at any cost! The thought process behind "how do we sell as many games as possible while keeping our costs low?" is far different from "how do we make this the best game possible". As the games industry gets bigger, the costs go up and the bar continues to be set higher and higher, so do the demands of management that a game sells enough to still make mega-profits. It's kind of inevitable sadly. If you don't have a big marketing push and a marketable product, you don't have a huge mainstream success, unless you have a franchise that already sells itself on its reputation alone. I have no doubts that the decisions that made the Mass Effect series change were based on EA's demands in order to increase sales to the mainstream. At least they didn't need to tell them to make default Shepard look like Vin Diesel as he already looked like a generic action star. They did make sure that the game's combat was emphasized though and then in the third game I'm sure they wanted marketing to put the focus on earth so the game "identified" more with "normal" people. Also, probably introduced James Vega to get another military boy in there they could use for advertising and gave Shepard an omni-blade simply so they could have him pool "cool" poses with it in marketing. Basically, Free Radical's story is hardly isolated. Some people are just far more submissive to publisher demands for the sake of retaining their support.