noisewar internetlainen - games, politics, and sarcasm

Xbox Live is brilliant. Yeah, I know I'm a latecomer to this, but I held out on the next-gen tsunami until this wave of awesome launch titles has crushed me in the tidal fortitude of an endlessly playable holiday line-up. Within the first taste of depth, in the Bioshock demo, I explored the post-objectivist underwater apocalypse that was so beautifully rendered, populated, to the point of being a recontruction, that I haven't been this immersed in the wetting of my panties since... well... just since. I await this game as a leviathan in the famished bathysphere of the game-narrative abyss, wherein we loath surface-dwellers and their shallow byline plots.

Bioshock, save me!

So yeah, I played alot in the last few days. Crackdown, Call of Duty 2, Lost Planet, and the demos for Stranglehold, The Darkness, and Geometry Wars (which is like Smash TV deconstructed by Malevich into a supremacist "essence" of addiction symbology, with my skill level better described as abstract death-on-death). The first five were, in order, crack cocaine, cinematic until you played the idiotic multiplayer, overly-japanese eye candy, bangbangbang, and bangbangbang in the dark.

This smorsgabord was especially exciting for me given its accessibility. I mean, I could just download a shit-ton of random demos and stuff, turn off the 360, come back home after work and I have all the titles mentioned in water-cooler talk awaiting my perusal. And Stranglehold was more fun than I'm willing to admit as well; having long despised John Woo of being reductively derivative of his own work, I found his game was a satisfying Max Payne knock-off with lots more bullets, table-sliding, bullet-dodging, and just sheer mandarin murderin' madness.

Our project got extended, and I sorely miss longer gaming nights, but such is life. Swim with it.

Yeah, ok, I'm finally done with the subject. It just feels so good to have seen this from miles away. The indulgence in criticism, vulturey I call it, really should be man's eighth sin. I've always felt the critical (and commerical) success of a console has always been linked to its controller. From the Atari 2600's emancipating joystick, to the NES' revolutionary gamepad, to Sega Genesis' sleek but uncomfortable three-button pad, to the classic SNES, to the alienating N64, to the re-classic PS pad, to the Buick-sized XBox controller that was slimmed to a successful "Japanese"-style precursor to its latest bit of perfection, and so forth.

So it comes as no surprise, then, as the sell through rate of PS3s declines on the black market and at retailers, Sony brazenly claims their SIXAXIS controller, an engineering marvel they claimed at E3 to have no gimmicks, had won an Emmy. They gloried in the announcement. They squirmed like a teenager rolling in a vat of oiled Maxims, and prematurely immaculated their product. A day later, they recanted, saying they had jumped the gun. The Emmy was given not to their SIXAXIS, rumbleless from the Immersion spat, but to the PS One controller, in conjunction with Nintendo. Ouch! Holy wax-affixed feathers, Batman!

On the bright side, video game publisher stocks took flight today. Pity I got knocked out of my Activision stop, but it was a high stop and I'm happy with the trade. I've been watching Sony stock too (SNE) but it seems like there is too much weakness, despite breaking out of its channel. But news about poor sell-thru, which isn't really news to anyone who's gone to Best Buy recently, cast a big glaring sun, daring them to rise higher on their borrowed wings.

Isn't it strange how little hypocrisy has evolved over the course of human civilization? Invariably, it sticks to a couple simple propositions:

- Believe in an issue.
- Protest an antagonist issue except if it applies to you.

So the Democrats grabbed on to a report pulling selective quotes about how the Iraqi war has only engendered more conflict. The Bush Administration tried to intercept the critics by saying it was going to release specific portions of the document claiming overall threat has decreased. Democrats then scorn the administration for "selective declassification" and dismiss the whole charade as propaganda.

Apparently pulling selective quotes to begin with wasn't "selective declassification." Is anyone else getting sick of this game? I can't believe how many people out there believe more in the game than in reality. It saddens me that 60% of Americans believe recent drops in oil prices is somehow right-wing oil manipulation. Maybe it serves Big Oil right for having such shitty PR, but most Americans do not know that Big Oil is a drop in the barrel compared to other oil barons in Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Exxon ranks a distant number 15 in size, and only half of that even is oil.

The Fed thinks we've peaked on inflation. My portfolio has risen precariously on that news. I've made enough in the past few days to buy myself a PS3, but that would be succumbing to Harrisonragi's "selective declassification" of next-gen details. All I can be bullish on is the Xbox 360's version of Guitar Hero 2 with DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT! I want that wireless X-Plorer dammit! No doubt the chum in the picture is struggling with his Democratic desire to tell all his friends about it, and his Republican desire to rock out against the man.

Shame it's the other way around today in real politics, where Democrats do nothing but tell all against the man, and the Republicans do nothing but rock out with their friends.

E3 pics are up!

Most of the big news probably slaps you in the face at each and every game site, so I'm going to stick with impressions and hands-ons, and leave headlines out of this. Overall, this E3 was probably the best one I've been to, with less focus on graphics and more focus on gameplay overall, with the exceptions of the two you-know-whos. Booth babe quality wasn't bad even with clothing restrictions, and watching Fatal1ty bring some wannabe to the brink of tears on the The Longest Yard conversion to Quake4 had me and Xstine laughing our asses off.

So without further ado...


Microsoft Impressions:
Xbox 360 games continue to look better, and I continue to think about getting one. Games look as a they should on a $400 system. Gears of War looked phenomenal of course, but Huxley was surprisingly fun too considering the amount of lag this FPS MMO had, and I was dukin' it with a roundtable of over 30 people. And its framerate was still a SIGHT better than the Crysis engine game, which when not in that Siberia known as the 10-minute loading screen, was trying to impress us with spring-collision driven foliage bending nonsense at a blistering 4 fps. 3D benchmarks are a FAR CRY from being games, please.
Still, Lumines on XBox Live and the announcement of Windows Vista allowing PC and console gamers to meet in sweet swiss bliss gave the system the edge. In Peter Moore's own words, why buy a PS3 when yyou can get both a Wii and a 360 for the same money? As much as I hate the guy, he's right as rain.
Oh yes, Viva Piñata looks rad (see pic), and besides some framerate problems, has got real style. Good job Rare... finally...
7/10



Nintendo Impressions:
As fanatical as the gaming media has been so far about the Wii, I have a huge complaint. I never got to play the damn thing since the line of lines, the sweat-infused meta-line that wrapped itself around the vortex of Nintendo's creative navel, was so entangled that I had not the ken to locate its extradimensional entry point. Dammit Nintendo, you spoke of playing is believing, but put your new console in the furthest reaches of E3's 9th circle of hell. My heart wept for a chance to play Super Smash Bros Brawl, but my melatonin begged for just one more day of sunlight.
Still, just watching the announcers playing Wii Sonic on the big screen by just tilting the controller left and right filled me with an instinctual, pheromonal kind of parasymptomatic gravitation back to West Hall over and over. Instead, I settled for some DS games, like Magnetica (aka Zuma) and Brain Training. Why is Sudoku so damn addicting.
8/10



Sony Impressions:
Let's forget about the price for a second, and the feature trickery. Do the games look good? Well, as you can see in the photos, their setup at E3 was still running on a bunch of dev kits, but at the moment it looks good. Not $200 good, mind you, but good. Warhawk wasn't very fun, but had that impressive kind of fluidity and SFX density that reminded me of great Dreamcast rail shooters. Madden looked godawful, honestly, with horribly overdone fur/grass. Heavenly Sword looked pretty good, like a PC version of Devil May Cry, although pixilated self-shadowing and jerky animation need work.
The booth area was pretty packed, and people were cheering like mad at the Final Fantasy trailers, but the actual wait time to get into the private showings was about 5 minutes. There will definitely be a market for PS3, evidenced my the throngs of people in the Singstar booth and the Country Karaoke Revolution game. The PSP, btw, went the way of the N-Gage.

4/10



PC Impressions:
I was pleasantly surprised. Hellgate: London continues to look great, and although the avatars are ugly, the gameplay is smooth and addicting just to even watch. The Conan MMORPG was graphically beautiful, especially the horse animations, but it seems like there was stuff being killed only when I looked away. Boring.
Xstine and I are both excited about Neverwinter Nights 2, and eye-rolly about World of Warcraft's expansion and its new Dranei Alliance race. NCSoft held a pretty exciting Guild Wars: Factions tournament with Koreans slaughtering Koreans, but nothing was nearly as exciting as THIS.....


8/10




Finally, some of the coolest things we saw there were these two toys:

What has the world come to? Have the freemasonry realized the jeopardy their New World Order stands on with the legs given them by Dr. Uwe Boll? To borrow a thread from Tycho, has the modern corporate Columbus discovered new testicles at a time when the diminishing returns of recycled licenses has begun to kill the host?

Dan "Shoe" Hsu reamed Peter Moore in the ass in his Xbox 360 interview, with all the questions gamers really want to know (a.k.a. forum flamebait) coming out a less serviceable mouth of reputable video-game journalism, an industry of ill-repute. Bravo, but encore.

Then, out of the fog, the Silent Hill movie trailer reared up to give us a fright. A game movie that actually looks, feels, sounds, and tastes like a game turned into a movie and not just projectile bulimia from clueless Hollywood mamasans? Is this what Twin Earth feels like?

And then, to top it all off, Disney bought Pixar. Without Eisner on the chair. With Roy back in the fold. Lasseter as Chief Creative Officer. Steve Jobs on the Board of Directors where hopefully there aren't enough lestats in the room to drain the impressive showman of his stamina. Does this mean Disney will stop putting out shallow myths with marketable characters and grandly wrapping said animation around music videos to shamelessly deem par with the disney quality of days of Eeyore? Does this mean... dare I say it... a conscience for creative accountability has been established?

Keep an eye on your happy meal, the fate of mankind rests in these greasy, shifting hands.

The joke keeps getting told, but despite all predictions, it has not gotten funnier. The hype-factory that keeps dry-humping what it perceives to be hip young media coverage hasn't stopped touting the holy hyphenation of "Next-Gen" long enough to tell us what has taken that mantle that is actually, pardon my Korean, fucking fun for godsakes. I can't pretend that the dive down the Uncanny Valley is a rollercoaster of hardyparty.

I had my doubts, as probably most people did, but the Nintendo DS still managed to sell out in Japan, and now the redundant Gameboy Micro is picking up too. This ugly, gaudy, gimmicky device really hauled a tactile ass. Phoenix Wright is out-of-stock says Capcom. Any objections? HD-DVD add-on for the XBox 360? Are you fuckin' smokin'? How about a penis attachment for the sleek pimp that drew too quick? The sex they're selling sure feels granny.

What is it that separates Nintendo rehashed games from the rehashed games of every other system? I can't quite place my finger on it, other than the fact that a 5-yr old could tell ya Mario World to Mario Sunshine is a bigger koopa hop than Splinter Cell A, B, and C. What should worry the other big boys is that the Big N has started to work on its greatest flaw... stubbornness. I don't get it, but I keep underestimating them along with everyone else. Given the popularity of Geometry Wars and Hexic, I predict Revolution to be a shameless smash. Brothers. Online. Please. For. The. Love. Of. Gawd.

And with that, my quota for taking deities in vain has been filled for the day.