Since I have some time to spare before I meet up with MK and hit the road to SPX, I may as well talk briefly about DigitalLife…
First off, this year’s show was like the previous years: rather lame. I was actually expecting it to be bigger, if not better, and it really felt as if this year’s DigitalLife was indeed smaller; there seemed to be less floor space dedicated to the show, but also the pro gaming area was much bigger. Basically, all you had were: video games, Blu-ray, HD DVD, PC hardware, Windows Vista, iPod cases, “exciting new ways to blog!” and assorted odds and ends, like hard drives and other storage mediums. There were some cell phone apps and games, but no actual phone manufacturers this time (which I was pretty disappointed by).
And also since I was there mostly during the press only portion of the show, plus I arrived late and missed the Sony presentation (which in the end freed me up to check out the Konami booth meaning that I didn’t have to make my schedule appointment later in the day), as well as the whole Sonic’s birthday party thing, I didn’t end up spending as much time there as I thought I was going to.
My first stop was at Sony’s booth, which was not only pushing the PlayStation 3 but Blu-ray as a whole (and very, VERY hard). There was only PS3s systems on-hand; one was running Resistance: Fall of Man, which is that “what if aliens showed up right after World War 1 and changed the course of human history” FPS, and EA’s basketball game. At one point, this dumb-fuck reporter from CBS News tried to be all funny by acting all “Oh man, I gotta have me one of these!” and literally grabbed the PS3 that was on display and running one of the game and tried taking off with it. And since it was all wired into the display, it could have been a huge mess, but the Sony PR folks stopped him in time, and you could tell that they were super pissed, but had to play it cool and smile for the cameras (if they had gotten pissed and told the guy to fuck off, they totally would have been in the right).
Meanwhile, on the Blu-ray side of things, they had various large screen running assorted Blu-ray movies. One was House of Flying Daggers, and I seriously couldn’t believe how fucking shitty it looked. The image quality was horrendous, with nothing but artifacting all over the place and ghosting. It was like watching a DVD from one of those el-cheapo mini DVD players, and from an angle. I asked the Sony guy who was manning the station literally five times if it was indeed a Blu-ray movie running off Blu-ray hardware and it was all optimally set-up. Right next to it was another screen showing assorted movie trailers, which looked better, so maybe the set-up was poor and the guy was just talking out of his ass (actually, that was a major problem all over the place; most people did not have their shit configured properly) or the Blu-ray version of House of Flying Daggers, is encoded super poorly.
Next was Microsoft’s Xbox 360′s set-up. Nothing really special… they were mostly just pushing Live Arcade games, with Doom and Mortal Kombat 3 on display (the none Ultimate flavor… lame). They had a display of all the different faceplates for the system and asked why in the hell the ultra sexy orange “CONSOLE” faceplate isn’t in stores yet, and no one had an answer.
Konami was next. Tried out Elebits, which stars all these little creatures that are hidden in the environment, so you use the Wii-mote to rummage around the pick them out. At first, I kept spinning around in a circle, so the Konami guy had to reset my system, but it happened again. It was then discovered that I was moving the controller around too much, but once I steadied my hand, I was able to play the game. Its a neat game, but the controls are WAY too sensitive. Afterwards was the Castlevania DS game, Portrait of Ruin, which as expected was totally hawt. Then I tried to play the new Metal Gear PSP game, but the analogue nub had been broken off the PSP (I pointed this out to the Konami rep near-by and he both knew and was totally irritated… I didn’t have to tell him that they don’t exactly sell spare ones in Gamestops or anything). So, it was a real bear to control, hence why I didn’t spend much time on it, though I did check out the interface, and holy shit is it sexy (I’m taking Killer 7 level of awesome interface here).
Then it was Sega’s set-up; Sonic for the PS3 was present, but for whatever reason, the folks at Sega would not let me or any members of the press play it. Instead, a Sonic Team member was on-hand to play it for the cameras. Lame. They also had the new Sonic PSP game, and what can I say other than I was wrong and ShaperMC was right: the game is a goddamn trainwreck. The controls flat out suck; they are imprecise and totally confusing. For those who don’t know, its basically a foot-race between Sonic and some other character, but it looks and sorta plays like a traditional Sonic game, but in 2.5D. Along the way there are enemies, but your mostly supposed to be “fighting” the other racer; imagine Mario Kart, but as a side-scroller, but with all the cheapness. And I was getting totally cockblocked by Knuckles, one Sega PR rep just kept going “Ha! He totally got you!” which was so annoying to say the least. He also insisted that I play several more times so I could get used to things then play head to head against him, which was my cue to sneak away (which was also when I lost all interest in getting a slice of Sonic’s birthday cake).
But if all that wasn’t bad enough, Sega totally went for the three hit Sonic ruination combo with the mind-bogglingly shitty Sonic 1 port for the Game Boy Advance. Slated for release next month as part of Sonic’s 15th year anniversary celebration, the original Genesis game has been re-programmed for the GBA (I was expecting a simple port to the system via some Genesis emulator, and the image squashed down, like all the NES releases) but the animation is totally weird, and best off all is the slow-down. Slow-down in a Sonic game, the first one, which was the slowest one no less. Good job Sega of completely fucking up Sonic!
Sierra (formerly Vivendi Universal Games) was on-hand, along with the new Spyro the Dragon title, which once again, and I know people are going to think I’m nuts for saying this, is oh my God amazing. Trust me, if you like old-school platforming, then you HAVE to check it out. And Sierra rep on-hand was very happy to see someone actually play the game and really appreciate it.
You had EA of course. Got to see the new Superman Returns game, which everyone has been eagerly awaiting for, though mostly to tear apart. I watched some guy play it for a few minutes and he noted that he was pissed that he couldn’t kill the denizens of Metropolis with Supe’s heat vision. The game looked pretty boring and really bad in some parts (the Man of Steel himself looks like crap) but there was this one part where all these meteors are falling and you have to stop them, and that did look exciting. I also liked how Superman has no life meter, so his vitality is dependent on the condition of the city, which is one of the more interesting work-arounds to his invincibility in a video game yet. So yeah, it?s not as bad as Superman 64, but its still sorta crappy. Though I did get to play the new Need for Speed Carbon, and it was exactly what you might expect: very pretty but also shallow and boring. I was told that that the GameCube version will be particularity impressive, as to make up for the crappy Most Wanted from last year.
Also tried out the Fast and Furious arcade game, which someone had set-up. I had seen that game for a long whiles and totally ignored it, but when once I discovered that Eugene Jarvis was the man behind it, I knew that I simply had to try it out. And it?s not bad! Totally feels like Crusin USA. Though its rather interesting in the nighttime NYC course, the World Trade Center memorial lights are in the game.
Square-Enix had a large space, and it was completely dedicated to just one game: Final Fantasy XII. And I guess that’s all they needed.
Stopped by the Gametap booth for a bit, and played some 32X games, mostly Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter. I was pretty blown away by the immense selection of games available (if I had a PC, I’d probably be all over it). Also got to check out the new Sam & Maxx game (again, if I only had a PC), as well as talk with some guy from Cyan about the Myst MMO.
Namco had a booth, but they only had mobile games on display. The cell phone version of Time Crisis is surprisingly not that bad! Basically the screen is divvied up into nine sections, each corresponding to a number on the keypad, so if a bad guy is in the middle right part of the screen, you hit the number 6 to shoot him. Meanwhile, Ridge Racer for the cell phone was pretty crappy.
There was a HD DVD set-up, which included the HD DVD unit for the 360. When I asked about the gaming capabilities of the system, the rep basically said that it was probably going to be just a movie player, since HD DVD is so amazing “game creators probably wouldn’t be able to handle it.” Yeah.
I have a few other bits and pieces to pass along, including the definite highlight, which was a totally amazing robot that I have to get my hands, on, as well as pictures from the show, but that’s pretty much it for video games, plus I should probably be heading out right about now (Pat’s copy of Monster Squad just finished burning). I’ll edit this post with the pics, once I get back from selling comics/accepting my Nerdlinger/getting drunk/singing “Rocket Man” (per Katie’s request)/possibly getting racked in the nuts by either a soccer ball.
EDIT: You can find the pics here.
