I played Um Jammer Lammy the other night. Now that, that is a fucking music game. You know why? Because it contains both music, right, but it's also a fucking game, with everything that entails, including years spent working on constructing story and learning how to make things fun.
Guitar hero isn't fun. It's a series of button presses in the most basic and thoughtless style, with absolutely fuck all else included. If it was played with a controller people would gawp in disbelief. The fact it comes with a stupid shaped controller doesn't change that.
It's just like a fucking dance mat. You add a controller which removes everything you've ever learned about playing games and thus they can sell you something so basic and shit it wouldn't have sold on the fucking spectrum.
Now Um Jammer and Parappa, they're fucking games. They're funny, have a plot, have plenty to look at and entertain you with. They're rammed with memorable characters and, most importantly, they reward you for doing your own thing. They're the spirit of music games which is burning and dying on our streets.
Witness the most painfuly awsome piece of star wars video every created. How much cooler this is than all of the new movies proves conclusively that someone at Bioware needs to murder Lucas after forcing hi to sign over the rights to the entire franchise.
Tekken 6 From th sounds of it, this has had a rubbish 3d brawling subgame added, and aside from that is exactly the same as every other Tekken game, which is all people who still play Tekken want anyway so I'm sure they're all jizzing themselves over this.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii No new info but there's a trailer:
Black Wii and red DSi Only scheduled for japan at the moment, that black Wii is handsome as fuck.
Batman: Arkham Asylum By my reconing it's been about ten years since the last really good comic book based superhero game (Spider-man for the PS1 if you're wondering) so we're fucking due another. This looks fucking amazing, with gritty, visceral punches and badass sneak attacks.
There are silent takedowns if you sneak up on enemies and a Detective Mode which you you to sneak about and jump between rooftops and shit. It looks totally authentic and fucking awesome.
Blur This looks amazing. Bizarre creations (of PGR fame) have decided that racing games are too elitist and techy and have decided to combat this by making an arcade racer with mental powerups in it. Admittedly, the powerups are of the not too clever variety and include things like “speed boost” and “shove other cars out of the way” but that's not the point. It's a team capable of making proper driving games doing something arcadey and fun and will kick ass.
Gran Turismo Portable Confirmed to be very similar graphically to GT4 and totally faithful to the series, this apparently suffers a little from the lack of analogue buttons. Still, it's very impressive to see that they've actually got this running and it's one of a slew of PSP games making the handheld look like a less shitty proposition.
Metal Gear Rising and Arcade Rising has been revealed to be multi-platform and coming to Ps3 and PC as well as 360. They've also revealed the subtitle “lightning bolt action”. Apparently it's being made by a new team of younger devs, so maybe Hideo has finally found someone as batshit mental as him to direct this one.
Konami also showed Metal Gear Arcade, which is an arcade version of MGO played in a booth, in stereoscopic 3D, with 3D glasses. Shame the game it's based on is wank.
White Knight Chronicles Finally coming to the US soon, and hopefully europe afterwards. This is an RPG by the sexually awesome Level 5. Apparently it's going to be rammed with extra shit, including all the current Japanese DLC on the disc and some targeting improvements.
The best addition though is Georama, the main feature from the criminally under-appreciated Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle. It's basically a town building subgame and adds a nice extra layer to the RPG formula.
Final Fantasy XIII Looking as sexually awesome as ever, with some new details available. Apparently each character has a specific summon they're partered with, which might go some way to making the character choices for your party less arbitrary. Also there's a predictive auto battle type mechanic to get you through the grinding with minimal effort. Apparently the summons join you on the battlefield in the same style as X and XII and can then transform. Shiva turns into a fucking motorbike and then you can ride around and smash the shit out of stuff. And you do this via a little action minigame, which sounds ace.
Gran Turismo 5 Absolutely fuck all on this except a trailer showing rally stages. No date, not info, nothing. It's almost like they don't want us to give a shit about it.
Final Fantasy XIV Fucking ace. It's a sequel to XI and is an online game, so I'll probably never play it, but that doesn't matter because it looks lovely. There's a trailer and screenshots here.
PSP
GT Portable Sony seem to have finally got off their lazy arses and done some fucking work of GT Portable. Apparently it's due out on 1 October alongside the new PSP and has 800 cars, 35 tracks and 60 different race routes.
When it was initially announced back at the dawn of time it was supposed to be a near perfect port of GT4 but it looks like they're taking it in it's own direction now. Fuck knows how anyone who's got used to playing proper GT will cope what that stupid analogue nipple for driving though
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Kojima has shown the above logo and stated that the new MGS for PSP will be a proper MGS game, directed and written by him and set ten years after MGS3. It's about Big Boss founding outer heaven and will probably be just as unwieldy as the other PSP versions, but a shit load mentaller if Hideo is directing.
Resident Evil Portable Absolutely fuck all on this so far. Seems that Sony are desperately trying to make the PSP a viable platform without remembering that all the big franchises in the world wont replace decent controls and something to protect your giant shiny screen.
Nintendo
Wii
Super Mario Galaxy 2 Awesome, now there will be like, four Wii games worth playing. Due 2010, it's got Yoshi in it and Mario can straddle ride him. Also he can puff up like a balloon or some unimportant shit. The key point is this: It's a fucking Mario game.
New Zelda Next year
Miyamoto has stated that they'll announe the next Wii Zelda game next year and that it “may” be Motionplus exclusive. Apparently there was artwork showing a Link similar to that of Twilight Princess and a femal Zora. So pretty much fuck all on this so fa, except confirmation that it's happening, which means fuck all from Nintendo and their history of announcing stuff that never happens.
Tatsunoko vs Capcom Apparently this is getting a US release with exclusive characters and online play. It's a MvC style fighting game with Tatsunoko characters, which is a Japanese animation studio. Supposedly quite good, this is no way makes up for the lack of MvC3. You hear that you cunts at Capcom? I WANT MY FUCKING MARVEL VS CAPCOM.
Sin & Punishment 2 Also unlikley to make it over here, this looks badass just like it's badass forbear and everything badass Treasure have ever made.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii Five! Five decent Wii games. This is the sequel to the painfully fantastic NSMB on DS, a game so good it caused my penis to swell up and offend passing strangers. This version is four player co-operative and will be fucking amazing. Apparently there's a new Propeller suit, where Mario has a propeller attached to his head. While playing you yank the remote up to make them fly into the air. That's all kinds of amazing.
DS
Golden Sun DS Fuck yeah, a sequel to one of the GBA's best original IP's. Not developed by camelot but hopefully still awesome. Trailer:
WarioWare DIY Genuinely didn't expect to see Made in Ore ported this quickly or at all. It's a WarioWare game where you make and share your own minigames and uses the Dsi camera. I'm personally planning to make a game where I photograph my arse and erect cock and then force other people to make me fuck myself.
Microsoft
Avatar Store MS are finally going to do something with their stupid Mii ripoffs by ringing yet more cash out of you. You will soon be able to buy and unlock clothes for your avatars, as if anyone gives a shit.
Hands on with an 8 year old boy Milo People have used this now and seem to be quite impressed by it. Milo can talk to you, remember your name, remember your face and address you by name and Natal will let you grab things he throws to you and splash water and stuff.
Still genuinely struggling to see how this will work as anything other than a tech demo, I'd imagine if they make it into a game it will be boring, like Nintendogs, which was basically a tech demo gone too far. Molyneux also confirmed that you can have a girl instead f Milo, if you've always wanted to hang out with an 8 year old girl.
Still, it's less retarded than Microsofts own uses for Project Natal, which include beating up old men.
Metal Gear Solid Rising No new info, just this picture with a logo. MS have had such a shitty conference so far I feel the need to post this as they're showing so little that I give a fuck about.
Righty, I'm pretty sure the MS presentation is over and tbh, of their biggest announcements all but one were a bit wank:
FFXIII was shown running on a 360 and has been given a launch date which is only a year away (which is goof for Squeenix and their policy of holding onto games until they're prised from the cold dead claws of their lizard like ancestors).
Their big thin is called "Project Natal". It's like a more complex eyetoy with a shit name. People will probably go mental for it because it looks like something you couldn't possibly craft a decent game for, like the Wii and those ridiculous plastic instruments.
Of course nutjob Molyneux has his own braindead ideas about what to do with Natal. Apparently what the industry is crying out for is a small boy simulator, where we can talk to the little boy and give him bits of paper. Molyneux seems veru excited about this, but then again it probably just mirrors the massive grin he wears whilst liberally applying his own feces to local schools each morning.
Finally, the decent one. It's METAL FUCKING GEAR FUCKING SOLID THREE FUCKING SIXTY. It's not confirmed as exclusive and might have snake in it. Wicked.
