Don’t think I’ve forgotten you; I’ve just graduated and am now wrapping up a few chores before I can get down and dirty with SPORE, my gaming culture essay and some Beyond Good and Evil.

So as a brief prelude to anything I end up writing this week, here’s a few quick impressions on what we’ve seen at E3 so far:

1) The economy is down, so E3 is very unimpressive. They’re still hyping it up quite a great deal, but coming from the mouth of attendees, E3 is not great this year.

2) Impressions of individual companies’s “big announcements”
Nintendo’s Wii “Vitality Sensor”: The day I need a game to remind me my cholesterol is bad is the day I need to stop playing video games because they’re becoming my mother. The design looks like it may end up being cramp-city. Also, I swear I’ve seen this device before. Didn’t we see a leak preview image of this way way long ago? I’m getting some kind of déjà vu that tells me this should look familiar for some reason.
It’s argued that maybe it could help the game measure which is the best time to COMPLETELY THROW YOUR WORLD TOPSY TURVY like in a jump-spooks horror game, but considering we’re dealing with Wii graphics and Wii hardware here, how smart could the game possibly be for this? Let’s not forget, Super Mario Galaxy may have looked great, but the AI (was there any?) was pretty much limited to “Here Comes Mario, Beat Him Up”. Resident Evil 4 had that same idea down: “Here Comes Leon, Walk Sluggishly Forward And Attack Repeatedly”. Then again, somehow Capcom made it work with Monster Hunter Tri, too.
So, Nintendo, any examples on how this thing will work? What actual uses it has?
Enough speculating; let’s move on.

Sony’s WiiMote: It’s basically everything the original Nintendo WiiMote was supposed to be in its proof of concept video, only with dorky colored balls at the end of it which I suppose are part of the capture process. But of course, if it’s a visual mocap process, there will be horrible glitches involved as with any motion capture technology, which makes me wonder why we are still bothering with freaking motion sense technology. At least they had a technical demo. It made Nintendo’s and Microsoft’s presentations look laughable at best–then again, it’s just a tech demo–the actual product won’t be out until Spring 2010, which means there’s nothing coming this year. Except Heavy Rain. Of course. Which looks as amazing as ever.

Microsoft’s Wiimote “Project Natal”: This is basically an awesome futuristic idea that will never work because Microsoft can’t make it do half of the things in this proof of concept video with any accuracy. It is a wonderful idea, don’t get me wrong. If this actually ended up being what this video makes it out to be, I will personally send a letter of apology to Microsoft, purchase an Xbox 360 and shut up. But I’m quite sure this will not be what it will be like–it’s a proof of concept video, used for patent purposes more than anything, and the likelihood that it gets up and running before Microsoft gets set on releasing the Xbox 1080/720/3/THE OTHER ONE is extremely unlikely. This “Project Natal” doesn’t seem to have any working prototypes, and might as well be Duke Nukem Forever with the amount of working product we’ve seen.

In short, E3 this year is pretty much how I felt yesterday, standing in GameStop, scanning the shelves and realizing I really didn’t want to be there. We’re hitting a low point. The economy is bad. The games are bad. The future looks boring.

We need saviors.

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Wait, or Monster Hunter. (*finds PSP*)

Someone who is not successful said something that is completely a lie and irrelevant. If exclusives didn’t exist, practically nothing would turn games to one title or the other. It’s getting to the point where everything has the same features and abilities. If exclusives didn’t exist, people would have no reason to buy one console over another, and they’d all end up buying the cheapest one.

They’d buy the Wii. Can you imagine the horror?

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I missed Soul Calibur 3.

And to be honest, I wouldn’t mind getting a little shot at Darth Vader. No, he shouldn’t be in the game. No, I’m not going to buy the game just for him. But really, playing as Darth Vader and maybe even Yoda is admittedly pretty cool.

So I’ve had a bit of Change of Heart, and my opponent has stolen me for a turn and put me on their side of the field (curse you, Yu-Gi-Oh!).

The problem is, it seems like they’re looking to sacrifice me. And all of us.

From this nice analysis put up by “Mike Masashi Murakami III“, seems like Yoda will be unlockable on the PS3 version and Darth Vader on the 360 version–but only if you scrape up the cash as downloadable content. In other words, you have to go on the PlayStation Store or onto the Xbox Live Marketplace and buy something that’s already technically on your disk.

Now, I have absolutely no qualms with forking out money for stuff I don’t have. That’s the point of buying. But when I need to pay money to get stuff I already own, I get a little pissed off. Example: iPhone. I want to use my songs as ringtones. You’d think if I can put them on my phone and listen to them, I should be able to use them as a ringtone. Wrong.

Instead, I have to actually go onto the iTunes Store and buy them again. Not only that, but I think I need to pay a $1 fee to turn them into ringtones. That’s two dollars–for a sound your phone makes when it rings. You may think it’s not a lot, but two dollars is the price of a quarter gallon of milk. Two dollars is enough to buy some stuff on the PlayStation Store that I don’t own. Whereas these songs? I already freaking have them on my phone. Why can’t I use them?

That’s much the same situation we’re finding in Soul Calibur IV right now. I could pay money in order to be able to unlock Yoda on my game. It’s tempting. But at the same time, why should I have to? He’s already on my disk! Can’t I just, I don’t know, beat the game on Very Hard Mode without dying? What happened to unlocking content based on skill?

Mike Masashi Murakami III is calling for people to boycott the downloadable content for Soul Calibur IV. Maybe they’ll make it free if they see how few people are accessing it. Then again, why would they make it free? It won’t benefit them in the slightest.

So I guess we’re just royally screwed. If you 360 fans want Darth Vader, or if us PS3 owners want Yoda… we’re going to have to deal out the Washingtons. Or maybe even the Lincolns.

Or yen and Euros, if you’re that person.

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The Good: Microsoft has things lined up for the future. Good–there’s a world outside Halo 3.

They’re changing their interface to look like Windows Media Center (which I have always hated… but it works similar to Sony’s XMB, so what do you do?) and they’re adding Avatars, which are like an answer to PS3′s Home avatars and Nintendo’s Miis, only resembling Miis a great deal more.

They’ve also got a good lineup of games, including Fable 2 of Peter Molyneaux fame and every other multiplatform game we already know about like Resident Evil and Rock Band 2. Exclusively, they have Gears of War 2 and a few Square-Enix-published games.

The Bad: I was no excited by Avatars at all. While I appreciate companies trying to represent players in a virtual environment and I’m looking forward to Home and everything, I’m starting to become frustrated that it’s becoming a gimmick to incorporate avatar representation. Hopefully Microsoft Avatars will be just as customizeable as Home avatars and will not be as static and bland as Miis have turned out to be.

I didn’t fail to notice the fact that they only had really two big-name exclusives on their lineup. Of the four Square games Microsoft boasted, only two (Star Ocean: The Last Hope and Infinite Undiscovery) will be exclusive–the other two being Last Remnant and Final Fantasy XIII–the latter announcement which I already expressed my disappointment in. Both exclusive games are only published by Square Enix, developed by tri-Ace.

Also, I feel this being more or less a confirmation of Microsoft’s less-than-honorable payoff to Square. It also details some of Sony’s sneak tactics, which I’ll elaborate on the day after tomorrow.

Lastly, why did they change their interface? I never thought there was an issue with it. I remember actual complaints about the PSN store being the reason it was changed–and to resemble Wii Channels, no less–but giving the Xbox that WMC XMB new interface is rather uncalled for.

Nintendo’s Good and Bad coming tomorrow.

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Final Fantasy XIII no longer a PS3 exclusive. An Xbox 360 version will be released in Europe and North America on the same launch date as the PS3 version.

I think I’m justified in feeling terribly betrayed right now, since time and time again the world was assured that Final Fantasy XIII was to be a PS3 exclusive–the trailers had logos on the end that read “Exclusively for the Playstation 3 System”, the rumors were quelled time and time again, really–we all thought we could trust Square Enix. They have Sony’s back, we thought. Sony saved them when they were drowning after FFX-2 and Spirits Within. They gave them a huge chance with Kingdom Hearts–it’s the only reason they’ve been able to explode back up. And now this.

I can’t imagine the amount of money that must have exchanged hands for this to have occurred–Xbox 360 must have realized they didn’t have all that much in their 2008 lineup and called up Square Enix, begging for a slice of cake. I do, however, get the feeling Square won’t be having to merge with any other company anytime too soon.

To give some good news, Final Fantasy XIII Versus remains a PS3 exclusive, and XIII itself will of course still be released on the PS3. But Square has wounded me this time. I’ve been able to forgive and forget time and time again. But this? This is betrayal. I’ve been stabbed in the back. And not only me–I get the feeling Sony didn’t know about this announcement either. Nor any other Playstation advocate out there.

Square Enix, you’ve got to win back my respect and my approval. Both are gone for now. You have one more chance: make these two games so spectacular My eyes pop out, or become dead to me from here on out.

Let’s hope you make the right choice.

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But they have recently let me know that Bioshock will be available on PS3, finally, while I lose myself in the drudge of final exams and not writing any posts for weeks because my brain just can’t take the pressure (The school year is almost over; bear with me and final exams will be done and I will have NOTHING TO DO save write articles for you saps).

This concludes yet another Xbox game that loses its 360 exclusivity. While I’m not implying the 360 has ever had a guise of an exclusives-strong console, it’s still a little sad to see. I’m just waiting for Mass Effect on PS3 now, and the journey will be complete. There will simply be zero reason left for me ever to buy that thing.

I’m almost kind of diappointed.

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Wow. I guess I really am severely biased against the 360. I suppose since all I really want for it is Bioshock and Mass Effect. If I wanted more games on it, I might be less inclined to dismiss it.

Such is life.

You learn something bizarre every day.

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The main other reason is that all I want is Mass Effect and Bioshock, and only MAYBE POSSIBLY Halo 3–for parties.

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My favorite parts of the video:

“The player can decide exactly what’s going to happen between these two people–you know what I mean?”

No, I don’t know what you mean. Do you mean I can decide whether they can have sex or not? Yeah, I can decide that. I can’t really do anything else other than watch that, though.

Cooper Lawrence: “If you look at the s-statistics, who’s playing video games?”

Adult males between the ages of 18-35, last time I checked. Are you sure you studied enough to go on air, Cooper? What? Adults don’t play many games? I’m in college right now with 6,000 students, all of which play some form of video game, whether on Facebook, a console, their computer, an iPod or a Nintendo DS. I have not met a single student so far who has told me “Oh, I really don’t play video games.” And I’ve met a lot of students.

Cooper Lawrence, take your college degree and master’s degree. Hold them in both your hands. Now rip them apart. That’s how much you’re worth in the realm of video games. You know nothing. So don’t say anything.

Shut up and you might learn something.

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I know it’s relatively old news, but I mention it now because 1) I really felt a need to talk about this, 2) I’ve had it on the backburner for a month now and haven’t gotten to it and 3) we has reached a general consensus the Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD war is more or less over. Blu-Ray wins.

But from thinking on HD-DVD’s “downfall”, I start to wonder whether Microsoft was really aiming towards competing. My theory is that, if anything, they were hoping just to slow Blu-Ray down, and never planned to even give HD-DVD a chance–which is rather uncool, in my perspective–it’s kind of on the same moral standing as Wal-Mart coming into third world countries and lowering their prices to dirt cheap in order to bankrupt all local businesses, and then raising their prices back to normal when they hold monopoly.

Thing is, I think this strategem was doomed from the start. You can’t really remove the physical element from game ownership–people don’t have the internet infrastructure necessary to download whole games that work in Hi-Def, so Microsoft would have had to sell physical copies anyway. And then there’s the issue with space–where are Xbox 360 owners going to save all those games? Their minute yet extremely lunky Hard Drives that are shipped with their consoles? PS3 at least gives owners the option of purchasing a computer hard drive and installing it in place of their standard drive on their computer. Microsoft holds exclusive market over the manufacture of their 120GB drives. 120GB aren’t going to cut it in this day and age. Computer hard drives are rapidly approaching massive space range–I can get a 500GB hard drive for 500 bucks at Best Buy.

In the end, PS3 would have been able to compete with Direct 2 Drive par on par. Especially since PSN downloads are so simple and straightforward.

So, we give you a send off, HD-DVD. I’m sorry you were just a tool. We’ll bury you near to all your fellow dead formats, like Beta.

(The following video is NSFW due to language and the fact that they’ve chosen Hitler to represent HD-DVD, which is somewhat mortifying.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=friS4OOcdgQ]

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