3 days until E3 2012 ...

First, as I do every year ...

I never get tired of that video.

Second, read my E3 preview for Galaxy Next Door.

Third, I can't wait.

Before I really get cranking this weekend and next week and what's actually at E3, I want to take a moment and celebrate the impending eye-fucking that happens at E3 by promoting my favorite aspect of the internet, which is wild speculation.

Hell, I won't even call it that.

Shit That I Hope is at E3
 - I know Dishonored is going to be there, but I really, really want it to be awesome, and I want it to be packed to the gills with three things: 1) numbers, stats, skill trees; I wanna have to do fucking algebra to tweak my character; 2) story; I want to apologize to people for not being more involved in their lives because of this game; 3) at least one game mechanic that distinguishes it from the glut of shooters that dots the modern gaming landscape
 - anything at all on The Last of Us
 - anything at all on Dead Space 3
 - Company of Heroes 2; I want to see that this game is on own path of evolution, and not just aping the changes from Dawn of War to Dawn of War 2, Relic's other bad-ass RTS franchise; Company of Heroes is a better game than either Dawn of War (though I LOVE DoW), so I hope they don't take the safe route [oh yeah, THQ isn't even going to be there! DAMMIT!]
 - Final Fantasy XV; not only FFXV, but let's see it hearken back a bit to some of the classic systems and mechanics, but push the franchise forward in terms of narrative; maybe embrace some branching story and dialogue, perhaps?
 - cross-functionality between the current and future XBox OSes and Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8; streaming XBox games to PC sounds amazing, but let's also seed parts of games to Windows Phone for on-the-go interaction; there's a great piece on next-gen console OSes over at GND here
 - iPad + AppleTV has the potential to be an amazing 'console' on its own, if only someone has the guts to step up and start making really bad-ass RPGs for the iPad; everything on iPad right now feels 'light,' and not much like a 'real' game; this can be addressed by having deep systems and beefy story; I'm curious to see if anyone boldly steps into this arena
 - I want solid dates for PS1 on PS Vita and the release of Guild Wars 2
 - I want to see if Nintendo is going to get out of its own way in terms of making a console on which people can play games, or if they're just going to pin their hopes to another gimmick
 - Vita games; where are they?

What else? What are you hoping to see?

Keep an eye out for more from Untitled Gaming and Galaxy Next Door!

-Blaine
Buy my book!

Blaine's 6/14 impressions

First off, props to me. I went through nearly 11 hours of E3 coverage today AND worked a full day AND took care of a sick wife AND played with my son AND handled the letdown of the Microsoft presser like a man.

Tony, in the prior post, correctly conveyed the MS presser was essentially a turd, though he is excited about the ESPN thing because he is Costanza-like in his thriftiness. The Kinect Star Wars footage looks neat, but also reaks of vaporware.

I thought Gears 3 looked fantastic, as expected. Fable 3, like its two predescesors, never shows well, but will be a solid game.

I kept waiting for that annual Xbox surprise, and it ... never ... came. They poured all their effort into Kinect, which seems like a neato device with no actual games. Bad choice. This is now the year the 360 cedes this console generation to Sony.

EA, on the other hand, had their shit together. They swooped in, showed 5-6 solid titles with some random crap thrown in, showed signs of some kind of irritation with Microsoft & much love for Sony, then closed with a bang. Need For Speed, Dead Space 2, Medal of Honor, Madden, & Star Wars: the Old Republic all looked very promising. Nicely done.

Oh, and before I forget, it was GREAT to see the Witcher 2 show a quick demo on G4TV. It looks VERY dated visually, but the party interaction, dialogue, and combat all look fantastic.

The Ubi show was one I could've skipped, but still see every year. I don't know why. The laser tag was kinda neat.

In closing, my biggest shock was how little Microsoft seemed to care. They have a very comfortable approach at E3 now, and with Peter Moore gone as long as he's been, they seem to go through the motions with the actual games, and then let Kudo lose all the street cred for them. Good thing all the press members received free 360 slims this year, or someone other than Morgan Webb might actually call them out.

I am very, very curious to see how Nintendo and Sony respond to Microsoft's newfound indifference to gaming tomorrow.

-Blaine

PRE3 Drives Us to DRINK!

This is so not my fault. Tony started drinking at 9AM and then just kinda showed up at my house, ready to record. Lucky for you all, I filled him full of caffeine and pain-killers, and we rolled this motherfucker out. We combed through our sources and the internet to find every potential game worth talking about, and assembled a 3-hour EPIC PRE3 show for you that hearkens back to the old days of Untitled Podcast madness. Gone are our recent attempts at concision and we lay out for you a plentiful harvest of information and correct opinions.

From Dragon Age 2 to Rock Band 3 to The Last Guardian to the final Nintendo 3DS specs, we have it all for you, and we tell you exactly what we're watching for, what's got us excited, and what the Cardinals were doing while we recorded this.

Explode your mind here!

Keep an eye on this blog, as each day, both of us will be carpet-bombing you with updates and opinions, be sure to keep an eye on both of our Twitter feeds for moment-to-moment reactions:

Blaine

Tony

PLEASE let us know what you wanna hear about from us, and also let us know what you think is going to be the hottest shit during the show!

I'll give you one teaser here. I'm gonna keep a sharp eye on Brink. It's being developed by Splash Damage, who I think are the absolute best when it comes to class-based shooters, and the mix of single-player and multi-player sounds amazing. Check it out.



That looks hot. I like how the cinematic trailer really gives you a feel for the type of gameplay they're shooting for. I trust the guys at Splash Damage, and can't wait for this one. Keep an eye out for it @ E3.

-Blaine

Untitled Gaming & E3

First, we must absolutely indulge in an old tradition:








I never, ever get tired of that. God, I used to love G4TV.

Anyway, so we'll be doing some E3 podcasting and some E3 blogging. We're recording on Saturday, and will have it out a bit earlier than usual, due to some crazy scheduling, and then throughout the week I'm going to blog a bit each day, and I'll try to bug Tony into doing the same. Additionally, you can follow Tony and myself (Blaine) on Twitter, for our fairly-live reactions to each of the pressers and announcements. Somehow, some way, we're going to do a post-E3 podcast. I don't know how, but maybe we can do something cool and different with the wrap-up podcast.

It seems, more and more, like this is the year that a) console makers are justifying the lack of new & more powerful hardware by introducing various waggling methods, b) waggling methods might really catch fire and replace what we know and love as 'fun games,' and c) that my cynicism might take a real punch to the nuts because Bioware & Squenidos team up into a Voltron of gaming awesome and introducing a waggling method for menu-navigation and win my love forever.

So, yeah, it's going to be an interesting year for me, because I have my expectations way lowered. While I'd love to see something about Dragon Age 2 & Mass Effect 3, I'm expecting Bioware to throw all their weight behind establishing Star Wars: the Old Republic as the WoW-killer that EA needs. Now, this isn't a bad thing, but it's something I already know exists ... in the distant future. A release date and pricing scheme would be nice.

Additionally, Nintendo is going to show the 3DS with a handful of awful kids' games, and I'll do what I do with their handhelds every time and wait until they start releasing either original interactive stories or Final Fantasy ports in the system's second or third year.

The PSP2 has the chance to be great IF IF IF there's a second analog control. If there's not, it's going to be a hard sell and Sony should fire every fucking moron that was involved in that decision.

Natal & PlayStation Move also have a chance to be very cool IF IF IF the software is there. They need to demonstrate this technology as something so immersive and accurate that it is truly a better gaming experience than the controller or mouse/keyboard combo. The lack of force feedback is a real problem, though, just like on Wii.

Which leads me to what E3 should always be about, which is the GAMES. I don't think there's anything coming out the rest of this year that I'm really, really excited about, which is a very strange feeling for me. Dragon Age 2, Gears of War 3, Final Fantasy XIV, Star Wars: the Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, and maybe Mass Effect 3 are all next year. I am curious to see if Obsidian can take the Fallout 3 formula and make it NOT painful to talk or fight in the game, with their Fallout: New Vegas.

So, we'll see. I'm pumped for E3, but it's a very tempered, curious 'pumped.'

What about you? How are you feeling going into E3? What's got you pumped? What are totally negative about? Are there going to be any surprises this year? If so, WHAT?

As always, thanks for reading, and expect to see a LOT here over the next week!

-Blaine

Flavors of RPG

So, the podcast is still sitting here on my HDD. It's still too big to upload, because Monday & Tuesday merge into one hellish day each week because I have so much I have to get done those two days. Well, I am free on Tuesday nights, but I'm so wiped out and angry by that point that I'm sure as hell not 'working' on something.

No, instead, I went all kindsa foaming-mouth mad for the new Dragon Age expansion, Awakening. More on that in a minute.

I do love it, though. What I've noticed is that the more someone in a forum post hates it, the worse they spell, so I think the problem may be that there is in-game reading required, and the retards/teabaggers get all sortsa mad about this, and spam-post in forums. I wish forums had a spelling test before someone was allowed to post at that moment. NO. A spelling/grammar test, so that their bile became readable. YES.

Anyway, I was instructed to write about Final Fantasy XIII, and I shall now do so.

Had you broken into my house and listened to the podcast, you'd know that the first point that I made was actually about the soundtrack, which I acquired some time ago. It's composed, rather well, really, by Masashi Hamauzu, and ONLY by Hamauzu-san. This is a first for the numerical Final Fantasy games, since even Final Fantasy XII, which was composed Hitoshi Sakimoto, still featured a handful of tunes from Nobuo Uematsu, who, until Final Fantasy X, scored every bit of music to ever appear in a numerical Final Fantasy game.

The fact that Final Fantasy XIII featured NONE of the classic Final Fantasy tunes told me everything I needed to know about this game. This was a new beginning for the franchise. They were really and truly, finally, severing ties with the past and moving on. I wasn't thrilled about that, but given how much I've enjoyed the game so far, I've let it go.

This game is perfect for people who do normal things in the Meatspace, like raise children, go to work, enjoy other hobbies, go to work AND school, go to work AND school AND raise children, go to work AND school AND raise children AND bribe the wife for sex, watch Lost, etc.

The sections in between save points are short without being microscopic, and let someone like me just sit down and place through as many of these sections as I'd like. If I were retarded, I'd refer to them as 'bite-size.'

What I've done is actually use these points as an excuse to dive head-first into the menus and get my 'nerd' on.

When I first started playing game, I like, everyone else, immediately noticed how streamlined a lot of things were. The battles can run with minimal input from the player, the areas and story are on a rail, so I was worried that my favorite part of any RPG would be gone, but (phew) one can still spend hours in the menus just dicking around with the Crystarium, customizing Paradigms, tweaking weapons and accessories, and on and on.

I'll be straight with you, though. I have found the linearity a bit stifling when I play for more than 2-3 hours at a time, I despise half the characters, and I don't like it as much I like the most recent Bioware RPGs.

Lemme talk about the characters right quick, though. Okay, Sazh and Vanille, you're cool, so you can go. Oh, wait. Wait. Vanille, I'd like you to stop having orgasms every time you make a sound. It's REALLY annoying, okay? Thanks. Bye, now. Hope and Lightning, please cover yourselves in this gasoline and go stand on the edge of that cliff. Closer. A liiittle closer. Little closer. Okay. Now, please set yourselves on fire and then jump. Thanks!

That pretty much sums up my feelings on the characters.

By the way, I really want to strat a petition that bans English-dubbed female Japanese-originated characters from having orgasms every time they make a sound. You know what I'm talking about right? These gals make a waterfall of non-word sounds OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER, but only in bad dubs, like this one. Know how I know it's a bad dub? The girls, with the notable exception of Lightning, who is too annoying to have a proper vagina, all act like they have vibrators in their panties every time they make a sound.

Whoah. Went on too long on that one.

Oh, and some people have had a real problem with the fact that one must read the Datalogs to have any clue as to what's going on in the game. I understand their position, and might feel the same way if I hadn't just gone and read the fucking Datalogs without having to be told to do so. Aside from the game telling me. And not spamming Twitter with all kinds of inane questions. Nope, I was that one smart American.

Anyway, it is an odd choice on the part of the developers to not provide an overt context for the events of the game, but it is all there. Also, if you hate reading, I have some Dragon Age 'fans' that you should meet...

As for the story itself, I'm intrigued. First of all, there's not a giant underwater thing that gently rocks boats instead of smashing them to pieces named Sin who is secretly the greatest Blitzball player ever and oh by the way Blitzball sucks ass and now that you mention it Final Fantasy X was pretty bad well except the battle system but the story and characters and dungeon design were so bad as to nearly be illegal in some countries.

Second, I'm not as into the story as I was in IV, VI, VII, IX, & XII, but it seems to be getting there. It just really hurts that (so far) two of the characters are so utterly detestable.

Oh, and for those who want to know, I'm currently towards the end of the animal sanctuary / bio-weapons development.

Also, some time, I want to elaborate on here about the discussion Laurance and I were having about the parallels between Final Fantasy XIII and Mass Effect 2, specifically pertaining to their mutual streamlining.

Now, I'm going to refuse to let myself play more Dragon Age - Awakening, and go play more Final Fantasy XIII and then maybe some Perfect Dark...

What about you? What do you think of Final Fantasy XIII? Or, why are you pigheadedly refusing to play it?

-Blaine