James McGeachie

I guess waving it back and forward in mid air? Like an upside down pendulum anyway.

Well it's when you look at the total sales in brackets, which means it's first week was pretty poor. It'll also probably trail off pretty quickly (as most hardcore DS games do nowadays) and never break 100K total sales. This is an rpg with art design by Akira Toriyama too. That's part of why the DQ series is such a big draw since his style has always been incredibly popular in Japan. It seriously seems like next to nothing draws people to new IP's on DS in Japan unless it's casual. Sigma Harmonics was an innovative looking title by Square Enix and Inuzuka Eleven was being designed by Level 5, responsible for a lot of recent Japanese top sellers. People just don't seem to care though unless it's a franchise they already love. Dante, that Market share graph confuses me. Is that in relation to software sales or something? It's odd to see the PS3 drastically above Wii on any chart. Unless the Legend is the wrong way around or something.

That control scheme is pretty much the pefect fit. Doesn't seem like any point in doing alternative ones really since it'd be hard to surpass that in any way. The only other thing really might be using the Prime 3 style of switching between visors and what not, where you hold a button to display the options onscreen and then you quickly point to the one you want to use. It's not really any more intuitive though.

I enjoyed Shadows of the Empire a lot at the time! Then again it was the first 3D Star Wars game I'd played I think.

It annoys me how all those exclusive DS RPG's that are actually innovative in some ways and look unique and interesting for the system (Inazuma Eleven, Sigma Harmonics and Blue Dragon Plus on that list) sell like absolute shit in Japan because they have absolutely no interest in new hardcore ips nowadays, at least not on Nintendo systems anyway. On the other hand an upgraded port will sell fucking millions(DQ5). It just goes to show how utterly weird the DS' market is. Absolutely insane total sales of the system, yet software only sells if it's in a key franchise or is a casual game.

I'm actually glad there wasn't a map. It really emphasized on exploration (even if there sadly isn't enough to explore) and didn't hold your hand and walk you through like a baby. The developers mentioned those statue things were there simply for completists who wanted a goal to aim for and reason to explore every corner. It's a shame there really wasn't even the smallest reward though. The entire "game" really does feel like a tutorial though. It's definitely not something you can judge standalone, especially with the whole "To be continued" cheese.

I wrote an essay for my graphic design class on the history of videogame packaging design, including manuals and shit. Now that's hardcore!

Turning is handled through pointer then?

One thing I realised that's good about these sports games on Wii. Since they can fine tune and enhance the controls a lot each year, it's not so much of a case of it being "the same game each year" like with EA sports games on the other systems. That being said now that we know Motion Plus is coming I don't think I'll be buying any sports games until it does!

Well now since we have Black Knight, it feels like we just have this game so Sega can be shown to be "fully supporting" Wii with Sonic, not just giving us the "Wii spin off" titles. There's been comparison screens between Black Knight and this though and honestly this looks like a joke in comparison (lower poly Sonic model, worse lighting, rounded shadows, etc).

Yeah but a game's first week's sales, for anything but casual games, always peak in the first week. Most of the time for a hardcore game like half of the people who'll buy the game (in total) rush out and buy it, meaning big first week sales. Then they drop a fair bit for the next week and then usually go way down by the third week. 33,000 for a first week is pretty mediocre/poor. For a non-first party Wii game in Japan though it's not too bad as third party Wii sales in Japan are absolutely horrendous.

I dunno how serious that poll is. I mean some of the options are a bit silly, like obviously they're not going to give the game an "increase in violence and cruelty" if lots of people pick it.

I get the feeling this is another title where Japan is going to barely care so it sells next to nothing but at the same time where it's far too bizzare and hard to localise for them to put the effort in to bring it over here. Shame as it looks hugely original and very interesting!

Something to note with Fatal Frame, Mark Bozon is apparently a big fan of all the others but couldn't manage to enjoy the game on Wii. The problem apparently isn't just that the controls aren't "what they expected them to be" but that it actually feels worse to control than the PS2 games. People can jump up and attack that if they want but well people probably had the same feeling about numerous games in the past where there'd been word they controlled poorly (Red Steel and what not) so I wouldn't feel too optimistic about "loving the controls no matter what they say" because there's been plenty of cases in the past where dodgy controls have ruined otherwise promising looking games.

I think Wii Sports is still the best example of motion control on the system. All the games felt good to some degree with me (yes even boxing. It was flawed but I can work around it and the training was fun) and some like Baseball are still the closest to 1:1 there's been without the motion plus. Only real problem was the lack of any depth. The IR in RE4 made it even more fun to play than on GC and that by itself is a big accomplishment. It justified paying money for the same game again and is one of the few titles where you can say that. The waggle for some other stuff felt "okay" at least too and never hindered the game. Trauma Centre's controls are good in that it's a game at least where it can only be done on DS and Wii still (well I guess the iPhone too!). It wasn't perfect but it's an example at least of IR being used to create an experience not possible on the "next gen" systems which is always a good thing.

Apparently there's IR for movement. There wasn't any other way to move at E3 apparently even.

Well it wouldn't necessarily be easy as piss if they made the ghosts much harder to shoot since you had better control

It should be noted that both of those IGN impressions were not written by the same person, before anyone jumps on them for "contradicting themselves". Matt's complaint about it was simple, the game is on Wii. When people found out it was on Wii, obviously the first thought was "great, full Wii remote IR camera control, point and snap pictures!" yet it's not even as simple as that. Okay maybe they are less responsive for the sake of the horror feel, like resident evil with stopping to shoot, sure, however it just feels then again like this is another "exclusive" for Wii that doesn't seem to really be justifying much of a reason for being on Wii in the first place, unless using little bits of waggle like they've implimented really enhances the game 300%! Um...they love Wario? I don't really know what you mean. The only ways Matt was down on the game was before he'd played it he wasn't "completely sure" if it'd work because of recent titles like Master of Disguise being piss poor. Other than that the only thing he's bothered about is the bordered 16:9 and that the shaking is a little slow to respond. People have mentioned that the 16:9 may be due to level design in 2D games but at the same time, didn't games like Super Paper Mario still offer full 16:9? Reason I even bring this up by the way is it's more examples on POUNCING for chances for ridiculous IGN hate out of nowhere. Generally extremely positive Fatal Frame preview...yet the one part that isn't positive you all RIP out and tear apart like a pack of wild Matt Cassamassina hating dogs.

Hope they can keep the setting interesting throughout the game!

I don't think it's physically possible for them to "fix" the online really. It seemed like the way Sakurai was talking that they really tried but they just couldnt eliminate lag. Might be more difficult than with Mario Kart since they can't really have any of that "predictive" movement they do in that with a fighting game.

Wind Waker has a better atmosphere and is a more unique and original experience. It's extremely easy though even compared to TP and the dungeon designs were a tad "basic". Also sadly it felt unnaturally padded out towards the end and could've done with an alternative to the triforce quest. Twilight Princess has better dungeon design (even if it declines a little towards the end) and some more unique and exciting items. It also feels like more of an "epic quest" as a whole, with some truly dramatic boss fights. Unfortunately though the story isn't as coherent as WW's and starts to fall apart in terms of pacing towards the end. Too much focus on simply going from one dungeon to the next. Anyway basically as a creative accomplishment Wind Waker is the stronger title but for an actual epic and immersive game experience I had a better time with TP. It had points of pure brilliance where I was thinking "this is the best 3D Zelda" but it's a shame it couldn't montain a consistent quality of pacing and have a less "forced" ending. Unlike a lot of people though I wasn't even remotely disappointed with Twilight Princess. Probably has to do with me not liking OOT as much as most people though and being a LTTP purist.

Well they "have the right" then but when it seems like their "hate" is based entirely on transcripts which don't give off any of the emotion or proper wording behind statements (as in you can't tell half the stuff is just 2 guys having a laugh and not being hugely seriously, the podcast isn't meant to be a deadly serious thing) then it feels like people are taking a pretty wrong stance about the whole thing.

Wasn't bragging about it. Just idle chatter between him and Matt and Craig being to him like "I called it!" as Matt didn't think there would be. Once again just the transcript making things sound like they were meant entirely differently as they try to bullet point things as "news" when there isn't much in the podcasts to begin with (and there isn't really meant to be either). Anyway it's long been established that people just reading the transcripts dont have any right to comment on things said as the wording and meanings are completely different (as in they take a very liberal approach to transcribing what was said) but I guess that's never going to stop the ridiculous, immature hate!

Well people are still pretending it doesn't exist, just simply because Matt is the one who mentions it. I mean there's been very suggestive interviews with Factor 5 though, the "concept art", hints in the E3 interviews on topics like Kid Icarus and well, the fact that it makes perfect sense for them to be doing it now after all the times it was brought up around 2006-2007 and how many times Miyamoto and company had said it sounded like a good idea. It's also a good follow up to having Pit in Brawl. Seriously though I do wonder how many of the people that dont like Matt have even listened to any of the podcasts or watched anything with him in it at all. He's just a regular gaming journalist but is famous because he's one of the few on big sites nowadays that's still a huge Nintendo fan and actually dicusses them and their news regularly. They don't go out of their way to spread rumours, they just have fun in their podcast like normal guys and don't answer every question in some totally dead serious way and joke around about things they know they cant talk about. People always act like everything he says is made up but case is, every damn journalist out there on big sites who's worth a damn usually has exclusive information or deals that by a deal with their publisher/informant, they can't reveal plain and simple. Matt's "downside" is that he does joke about things he can't reveal for 100% but that's mainly because people constantly ask questions on their forums and they try their best to answer them in any way they can. It'd probably be best if they just declined to comment but then their podcasts would be extremely boring. I've listened to pretty much every one since they started doing them mainly so I don't have to rely on poor transcriptions that completely lose the meaning of what was said.

You mean when they were having discussion in their podcast about speculation for what could or could not be announced at E3? Like, talking like anyone else does about possibilities? They thought either one would be announced or "first rumblings" but that wasn't saying that it would happen, it was just speculation as part of their pre-E3 build up, which they're paid to do. It was also sort of a natural guess since we're in the 4th year of the DS' lifecycle now. Seems like virtually everyone who has something against IGN never really hears any of the dialogue in context and just goes by someone else's transcript of something said.