All the cards on the table: Xbox360 vs. PS3 vs. Revolution

UPDATE: I’ve tried to get this as up to date as I could since the months following E3. Surprisingly little has changed in the past few months from what was announced at E3.

I’m still absorbing all the E3 coverage of the next-gen consoles. The mind-numbing technologies being implemented in some of these machines is truly amazing. 2.18 Teraflops? Holy crap, Sony. Calm yourselves down. So, let me break down my impressions right now.

If I could buy only one console in the next generation, which would it be?

Here’s all the info I have gleaned so far. I’ll fill in more details as I get them. (factual and rumored)

J Allard: Marketing Personified

This whole hard drive thing, and Microsoft’s attitude about it is really irking me. It was a stupid idea to make the hard drive optional. That’s all there is to it. So, Edge Magazine posted some interview responses and I’d like to take a moment to comment on them.

When asked if it’s possible that developers had been let down by making the hard drive optional, Homey J Allard replied with:

I don’t know who we’ve let down. There isn’t a game on 360 that you can’t play without a hard drive, so I think that’s a good thing for consumers. We’ve made a commitment to broadening the audience, and while I think most of our energy here at X05 is about the hardcore, over time we’re really setting the stage for making this a bigger category for everybody. So from the developer point of view you have the best tools and the commitment of the most well-resourced company in the world going worldwide with this product and saying that we want to grow the audience. So that seems like a win for developers – I’m not sure who’s supposed to be disappointed.

Okay, there’s a TON of marketing weasel speak in here (Homey J Allard’s primary language apparently), so let’s break this down and see if we can make sense of it…
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The Saga of the Ninja Gaiden Of the 2nd Chapter

I defeated numb chuck guy. I found out that the dodging maneuver is your friend. Now, I’ve progressed to the evil horse guy boss. My favorite part of the game so far is when the evil horse guy spears you through with his giant spear-thing and then he kind of drags you around and you can do nothing except watch your life meter dwindle to nothing. When I say nothing, I mean NOTHING. Forget about hitting the start button so that you can imbibe a life-giving elixir, because you can’t do that here.

If anyone out there thinks this game is fun, and I understand that many do, please enlighten me. Why am I not finding this game fun? Mind you, I will keep playing it. BECAUSE I SWEAR I WILL BEAT THIS GAME NO MATTER WHAT! Just as soon as I can find the time and my wife stops playing it.

Ninja Gaiden Black: An exercise in frustration

Ninja Gaiden on Xbox is a superbly crafted game that supplies hours of action and fun.

At least… that’s what I hear. I have a problem. I can’t beat the first boss on Ninja Gaiden. The big guy with “numb chucks” (as Napoleon Dynamite would say). I got him about 1/3 down after I had spent all of my elixirs and used my reincarnation scroll.

Ninja Gaiden is HARD. I’ve always been an RPG or FPS player, and 3rd-person games typically drive me absolutely bats in the belfrey looney nutso. I have yet to play any 3rd-person game where the camera doesn’t totally screw things up on a consistent basis. Ninja Gaiden Black still has an annoying camera, but at least it’s fun. However, I keep getting the nagging suspicion that when I’m trapped in a room fighting endless waves (3 at a time, mind you) of brown ninjas, that I should be able to somehow avoid getting hit by one of the ninjas while I beat the other 2 into submission. I want to turn my ninjaizer up to “Puree”, if you don’t mind.

No. Not in this game. This game has strange conventions where if you start a swing with your sword, it’s insanely hard to stop that swing, turn around and take a swipe at the ninja that just jumped over your head. Oh, wait… maybe that’s semi-realistic.

Anyway, I’m no stranger to difficult games. I’ll prove it: I finished Panzer Dragoon ORTA on hard. Oh, and I also think that Ikaruga is delightfully fun. See? I can appreciate difficult games. But this Ninja Gaiden nonsense is killing me.

I borrowed the original Ninja Gaiden from a friend and gave up on it after I don’t know how many hours of trying to beat numb chuck guy.

I want to really have fun with Ninja Gaiden Black, but numb chuck guy is totally thwarting me.

Maybe I need more illegal ninja moves from the government.

Bioware Announces Mass Effect for Xbox 360

Mass Effect is a sci-fi action RPG. That’s all I know right now.

Watching the trailer…

Hmm. Pretty cliche, so far. Mankind among the stars, they have to fight for their place amongst other galactic civilizations. No gameplay, looks like mostly cutscene material. The graphics look… nice, but even on the Xbox, pre-rendered cutscenes can look great.

I’m more concerned about the gameplay. When Bioware says “Action RPG,” I tend to think of Jade Empire. That’s not really a bad thing, but if Jade Empire’s story hadn’t been absolutely top-notch, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. On the other hand, if this turns out to be the next incarnation of a System Shock 2/Deus Ex-like First Person RPG, then COUNT ME IN!

Browsing through the marketing-riffic Mass Effect website…

Bioware is referring to its NPC’s as “digital actors.” Fascinating. I guess that is supposed to mean something to me. Perhaps the Xbox 360 will rematerialize actors right into my living room, a la Tron. Sweet.

Seriously, though. This announcement is rather exciting. I’ve liked pretty much every game Bioware has ever produced, and I see no reason to expect otherwise with Mass Effect.

PETER JACKSON TO PRODUCE HALO MOVIE!

It is not April Fools’ Day.

And this is not a joke.

My day?

Made.

I smell something burning

Oh, that’s just the smell of my new computer contemplating running Quake 4, which incidentally has gone gold. Expect to see it released on Oct 14th.

There, there computer, it’ll be okay.

Sony has a magic wand with blinky lights

I’ve been really post-happy the past few days…

EvilAvatar.com linked to a patent application by Sony for a “wand controller” with, and I quote, “several different coloured LEDs that can be switched on and off in various combinations. . . . and if two people have wands with different coloured LEDs, they can play against each other.”

Ooooooo… das blinkenlights!

Granted, the controller is designed to be implemented with a webcam-like device, similar to the EyeToy, I suppose. But still… blinking LED’s… REVOLUTIONARY! NO ONE HAS THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE!

Elder Scrolls IV: Awesome voice acting

Well, I’ve been so wrapped up in Serenity, I missed this press release over at Bethesda mentioning that they have hired Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, and Terance Stamp.

I was so excited for this game, I could barely contain myself. After reading this, my head just exploded.

I can’t wait to be called a “fetcher” by Boromir!

EA employee on why an EA game sucks

Kotaku.com linked to this article written by an EA developer. His insights into Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects are rather interesting, and I’m sure a lot of people are going to put a lot of stock into what he says. I am certainly not a fan of EA, but to be objective, I must take the author to task with this point:

Now, I loves me some fighting games, and I loves me some superheroes, so I really, really wanted to love Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, but sometimes you just have to face up to the fact that the game just doesn’t give a good sense of being a superhero, or of being a fighter. I played through all of Story Mode, and a couple of versus battles, just to make sure.

For most fighting games, that amounts to roughly… okay, let me take out my trusty calculator…

30 minutes playing time. And that’s being generous. I was waiting around at a Halo 2 party for someone to hook up the 2nd TV and Xbox, and busted out a play through of Soul Calibur II’s single-player with Talim and beat in about 5 minutes. Now, if Marvel Nemesis has a mode analogous to SC2’s Weapon Master mode, then, okay, the guy spent a legitimate amount of time on the game. Otherwise, I’d take his article with a grain of salt.

What I’d really like to see is what Solyd thinks of Marvel Nemesis. He is what I would consider a true connoisseur of fighting games. An aficianado, if you will. Give him a copy of any Street Fighter II incarnation, and he will beat you with any character. You can even choose his character. He will still defeat you. So, there.