Japanese Junk

louieapplesauce  reminded me of the most gruesome, gory, atrocious event of the past year: E3.  Of course I complain every year, and every year is really irrelevant considering most of the current gen games I play are semi-obscure.  However, this year was especially bad.  I’ll be honest, I didn’t see the Sony conference because of work, but the Microsoft and Nintendo conferences alone ruined this year’s E3.

Firstly, while Haloid Prime 4 looks like it mite b cool, it’s still the 6th installment of a franchise that was never good to begin with.  Intellectual property milking and endless franchising are everything wrong with the industry.  While on the topic of franchises and the Microsoft conference, Tomb Raider and Splinter Cell were hardly even related to their older counterparts.  The new Tomb Raider is filled with QTE and “cinematic” non-game bullshit, not to mention, I’m sick and tired of shooting and that looks to be a very important mechanic.  The new Splinter Cell was not at all urban sneaking, but instead a typical military shooter.  It may be good to change up things with sequels, once you remove everything that makes the franchise enjoyable and unique, you ruin it.  Beyond that… well… oddly enough, there weren’t many VIDEO GAMES discussed.  It was all about Internet Explorer, twitter, Kinect, the Kinect Angry Birds “game,” and that Microsoft thinks reddit is a good website.

About Nintendo… well Nintendo is an old friend.  I stuck by them even with the ‘tude that Sega pushed with the Genesis.  After that, I liked the N64 more than the Playstation, and I even bought a Gamecube despite the library being a fraction of that of the PS2 (which I have since bought, because you know, I like video games).  But Nintendo is a prime example of an old saying: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”  Nintendo, though incredibly popular, used to provide games and consoles that were simply great, but now Nintendo has started pandering more towards non-gamers and the granddaddy of the modern gaming industry Shigeru Miyamoto actually said he likes Angry Birds.  This was shown more so at E3 with the 4th showing of the new Dance Central, 2 “New” Super Mario Games, and third-party support from all of the wrong companies.  Not only did it take them 7 years to make a current-gen game console, but now that they have, they’re not even attempting to make it good or original.  About that third-party support; western game companies have left a bad taste in my mouth.  Western game design is based in traditional game mechanics/play style, and overall “realistic” graphics.  This is fine and good, but it isn’t what console games are for—intellectually stimulating, realistic games with 20 year old mechanics should be on PC and only PC.  However, garbage cash-grab games like The Darkness II, Mass Effect 3, etc. are not console games by my standards (read the title of the blog and you’ll better understand) and shouldn’t be polluting the console gaming market and endorsing the PCLite gaming of most Xbox users.  Now this in addition to “social” gaming is being marketed and endorsed by Nintendo.

But let me get to my biggest gripe: Nintendo made an “original” title for the first time since Pikmin AND IT WAS A FIRST-PERSON ZOMBIE SHOOTER.  Looking beyond that they’re really late boarding that train, this is Nintendo; the closest thing to “MATURE SOREAL” games they’ve made were F-Zero X and Super Metroid. One would think that the minds that spawned Zelda, Mother, and (with collaboration of Treasure) Sin and Motherfucking Punishment wouldn’t make something that had been done so many times before and wouldn’t make something so colorless and stale.

Really, before their conference, Nintendo had it in the bag.  What people had been expecting was pretty reasonable, and I would be praising the good word of Nintendomination right now if they had shown:

• A Nintendo quality new IP
• A new Star Fox or F-Zero
• Third party support from obscure Japanese devs
• Retro Studios doing anything that involves making any game

Now, I think that’s reasonable.  They’ve been working on Project Cafe for years, they should have had at least that much done; they’re the biggest name in games, right?  Instead, they prove that they’re just as bad—no, worse than everyone else, worried about the dollar of the non-gamer as opposed to quality of product.

So now, I’m stuck being tsundere for Sony like always

B-baka Sony… i-it’s not like I w-wanted to play video games or anything…