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A while ago, I wrote that Nintendo is like a beautiful girl with a penchant for stabbing herself in the face every so often. Their most recent announcements about the Wii have done nothing to change my view.
It will be region-locked. The virtual console will be region locked, meaning games that never originally came out in your region *cough*Sin And Punishment*cough*Earthbound*cough* won't be available for the Wii. It won't ship with component video or HDMI cables. The controllers cost too much. The games are going to be $110.
The Wii is pretty much off my shopping list now. Unless I get one for Christmas, I'm unlikely to get one at all.
In unrelated news, a bizarre accident has cost me the 32MB memory card that came with my PSP. So I've upgraded to a 1GB one (they were all out of the half-gig ones) and am going to have to restart all my PSP games again. So far this has mostly meant playing Guilty Gear Judgment until my fingers bleed.
Also picked up Ninety-Nine Nights for the 360. Disregard everything you've read about this game, because it was all written by video game reviewers, and they're all paid by EA to give Madden games 10/10 and hate on everything else. Truth is, N3 is a good game with one serious flaw that I'll call "Dynasty Warriors disease".
N3 uses the 360's procedural generation hardware to good effect. Thousands of enemies appear on screen, all waiting for you to smash them to little pieces. You get to do this in a variety of ways, and it's a very satisfying effect, especially when the combo counter racks up into the thousands. If you've played a Dynasty Warriors game, then just imagine a bigger battlefield, more enemies, cooler moves and the ability to equip stuff in battle, and you're close to what I'm talking about. The other cool thing in N3 is that all the cutscenes are done in-engine, despite looking like they're pre-rendered. Welcome to the next generation.
Now, the big flaw is Dynasty Warriors disease. N3 has really, really long levels, often with multistage goals. Some levels can take more than an hour to complete. The problem is that, if you fail the mission, you get dumped right back at the start. There's no mid-level restart points. This would be fine, but the missions aren't easy, and health refills can be frighteningly rare. Not even that will save you sometimes though. Losing an hour's worth of gameplay to a boss that can kill you in two hits is not fun.
Otherwise though, I really enjoy N3. It's good fun for the mindless hack-and-slash crowd, something to throw in the 360 and play without having to think too much.
While we're on that subject, Uno on XBL is the most fun you can have with three people you've never met.
I took Dad into Missing Link Records yesterday, and we managed to find, of all things, the Akira OST! This is the Motion Picture Soundtrack one, not the Original Score, so it has 10 tracks, not five. It's great to finally have my own copy of this seemingly quite rare soundtrack.
I've been listening to a few things lately. The new Beck record is pretty good, although I'm undecided on whether it's better than Guero. I haven't had a good chance to listen to the new Yo La Tengo album yet, but what I've heard has been pretty good, and the title is awesome. There's also a band called Mastodon, and I've been listening to their second record, Blood Mountain, a bit. Imagine a heavy metal band that hasn't listened to any heavy metal made since 1985, and you have an idea of what they might sound like. It's really really awesome.
Oh, and I somehow found a BoA CD in a Crack Converters for $2 last week. Go figure.
It will be region-locked. The virtual console will be region locked, meaning games that never originally came out in your region *cough*Sin And Punishment*cough*Earthbound*cough* won't be available for the Wii. It won't ship with component video or HDMI cables. The controllers cost too much. The games are going to be $110.
The Wii is pretty much off my shopping list now. Unless I get one for Christmas, I'm unlikely to get one at all.
In unrelated news, a bizarre accident has cost me the 32MB memory card that came with my PSP. So I've upgraded to a 1GB one (they were all out of the half-gig ones) and am going to have to restart all my PSP games again. So far this has mostly meant playing Guilty Gear Judgment until my fingers bleed.
Also picked up Ninety-Nine Nights for the 360. Disregard everything you've read about this game, because it was all written by video game reviewers, and they're all paid by EA to give Madden games 10/10 and hate on everything else. Truth is, N3 is a good game with one serious flaw that I'll call "Dynasty Warriors disease".
N3 uses the 360's procedural generation hardware to good effect. Thousands of enemies appear on screen, all waiting for you to smash them to little pieces. You get to do this in a variety of ways, and it's a very satisfying effect, especially when the combo counter racks up into the thousands. If you've played a Dynasty Warriors game, then just imagine a bigger battlefield, more enemies, cooler moves and the ability to equip stuff in battle, and you're close to what I'm talking about. The other cool thing in N3 is that all the cutscenes are done in-engine, despite looking like they're pre-rendered. Welcome to the next generation.
Now, the big flaw is Dynasty Warriors disease. N3 has really, really long levels, often with multistage goals. Some levels can take more than an hour to complete. The problem is that, if you fail the mission, you get dumped right back at the start. There's no mid-level restart points. This would be fine, but the missions aren't easy, and health refills can be frighteningly rare. Not even that will save you sometimes though. Losing an hour's worth of gameplay to a boss that can kill you in two hits is not fun.
Otherwise though, I really enjoy N3. It's good fun for the mindless hack-and-slash crowd, something to throw in the 360 and play without having to think too much.
While we're on that subject, Uno on XBL is the most fun you can have with three people you've never met.
I took Dad into Missing Link Records yesterday, and we managed to find, of all things, the Akira OST! This is the Motion Picture Soundtrack one, not the Original Score, so it has 10 tracks, not five. It's great to finally have my own copy of this seemingly quite rare soundtrack.
I've been listening to a few things lately. The new Beck record is pretty good, although I'm undecided on whether it's better than Guero. I haven't had a good chance to listen to the new Yo La Tengo album yet, but what I've heard has been pretty good, and the title is awesome. There's also a band called Mastodon, and I've been listening to their second record, Blood Mountain, a bit. Imagine a heavy metal band that hasn't listened to any heavy metal made since 1985, and you have an idea of what they might sound like. It's really really awesome.
Oh, and I somehow found a BoA CD in a Crack Converters for $2 last week. Go figure.