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Since the last entry I..
*Found “that special someone.” The New Jersey part dragged for me. Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan were more my speed. And I say this despite being born in Jersey.
*Played more “The World Ends With You” and “Wii Fit” (the latter of which was immortalized in video).
Next: I will finish “GTA IV.”
I was told that Nintendo would be delivering “Wii Fit” to my office yesterday. They did. And the above video shows what happened.Should I be embarrassed?
(Video not viewable for anyone logging in from the U.K. or Canada)
Analyst Michael Pachter, developer Kellee Santiago and reporter Brian Crecente agree: big games like “Grand Theft Auto IV” don’t pose a threat to Hollywood’s summer blockbusters.
You can read their explanations in my story at MTVNews.com.
Here’s a highlight from Pachter on why he doesn’t think “Metal Gear Solid 4” is a threat to the movies coming out against it in June:
‘MGS’ will have no noticeable impact on movie attendance,” [Pachter] said. “Its audience are even bigger geeks than the ‘GTA’ audience, so if they weren’t playing ‘MGS,’ they would be playing some other game.” The theory is that hard-core gamers, when not playing one big game, are spending their time playing other games [rather than going to the movies].
More Pachter and more from the rest in my story at the link above. Hollywood, don’t worry! Unless… is it all a trap?
Since the last entry, I…
*Set my DS on mingle after playing “The World Ends With You” for a bit. I heard from Tycho at Penny Arcade that I could catch some good stuff that way.
And now for the first live diary update ever, I will check my DS to see if it grabbed any signals. Drumroll please….
…
…
Wha?? I caught something!
I’m ready to have my mind changed about anything that I’ve long held to be true.
Such changes can occur at any time, as happened earlier this week when a reader began to convince me that today’s seemingly generous game reviewers actually dole out too few perfect scores.
Another core tenet I’m at least considering abandoning: the belief that game reviewers need to finish games.
I’m not comfortable changing my mind about this. I happily finish the games that I think are important. That means I finish a lot of games each year, even though I don’t review any of them. And if I didn’t finish, say, “Metroid Prime 3” or “The Phantom Hourglass,” what would I know of each game’s major final-hours gameplay twists? How could I talk confidently about “Mass Effect” without having triggered at least one of its endings? How else would I know that the fantastic “BioShock” stumbles to the finish line, a failing worthy of a penalty?
Surely, games must be finished to be reviewed — or even to be discussed authoritatively.
Yet something N’Gai Croal wrote on his blog a couple of days ago prompted me to question my belief.
And when I learned yesterday that Variety’s Ben Fritz hadn’t finished — probably hadn’t even played half of — “Grand Theft Auto IV” before reviewing the game for his Hollywood publication, I knew I had to ask some questions of them and of myself.
Since the last entry, I…
*Played more of “The World Ends With You” which I am finally — long promised! — going to compare to the game I didn’t play since the last entry,”Grand Theft Auto IV.”
Now I’m not going to say the “TWEWY” is better than “GTA IV,” but there is something that the Square-Enix DS role-playing game game does really well that I hope Rockstar takes notes on. That thing is how the DS game integrates location and, more specifically, the mood of a location, into gameplay.
You know how some painters paint Paris in such a way that you could say that their painting has the feel of that French city?
Ever notice how different regional forms of hip-hop reverberate with the rhythm of the place from where they emanate?
When I play “TWEWY” I feel like my play experience is — how do I put this? — fueled by the energy of a specific place. That place is Shibuya, a Times-Square-on-steroids region of Tokyo I’ve only spent a week of my life in. I only spent a week there so I can only appreciate it as a tourist.
Maybe I don’t really know Shibuya, not the way I think I know New York. But I think I picked up enough of the vibe: it’s crowded, glitzy, full of fashion-conscious hipsters and many business people seemingly lost in thought; it’s bright and noisy but like all big cities full of people who seem lonely and alienated, ambling through life without connections.
All of that has been translated into gameplay.
“TWEWY” feels like I’m playing the Shibuya mood moreso than “GTA IV” feels like it’s playing the mood of a city based on New York.
Over at MTV News I filed a report on the big gaming news of the morning: that “Grand Theft Auto IV” sold six million copies in its first week, netting publisher Take-Two Interactive $500 million. “Halo 3” made Microsoft $300 million in its first week in September. So “GTA IV” appears to be the biggest starter in gaming history.
Should be interesting to see how “Mario Kart Wii” did in the same week.
Have you been staring at mini-maps too much lately?
Have you been missing the beautiful scenery of today’s hottest games because you only had eyes for the map in the corner of your TV?
Have you essentially been playing a 3D Xbox 360 or PS3 game by focusing on a graphical view of Liberty City or Paradise City that could have been rendered on an NES?
Have you, like Peter Molyneux, considered that mini-maps should be replaced by in-game dogs?
Are you making a mockery out of all the effort today’s hardworking game artists put into the parts of the game you don’t see because you’re staring at the edge of your TV?
Mini-maps: gamer friend or game designer foe?
Decide now.
Long promised and finally delivered, the Nintendo Channel was made available for North American Wii owners some time after I went to bed last night.
I downloaded it this morning and tried it out.
As expected, the channel features promotional videos and a deep index of Wii and DS games to better inform purchasing decisions. It can also zap demos of DS games to my handheld.
But it can do other stuff I did not expect, and it shows that Nintendo may be craftier about online networking than many people gave them credit for:
The channel lets you buy games and anger GameStop at the same time: You’d think some other company than Nintendo would be the first to let consumers buy a new disc-based game via their console without taking their hands off a controller. Nope. It’s Nintendo.
I loaded a promotional video for “Wii Fit and clicked an option to buy the game. The Wii Internet Channel loaded and offered me a selection of stores to choose from: Sears, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Toys R Us, Target, Amazon, Best Buy and K-Mart.
Who wants to be the person to tell GameStop that they didn’t make the list?
What does it mean when everything is great?
What’s happening when it’s no longer the exception for something to be regarded as exceptional?
The glowing reviews “Grand Theft Auto IV” received last week — all those perfect 10s — reminded me of just how many perfect scores and how much high praise I’ve seen and read lately. Last fall, the highly regarded Edge magazine in the U.K. ended years of stinginess and doled out three 10s in three months, to “Halo 3,” “The Orange Box” and “Super Mario Galaxy.”
Gametrailers just named last year as the best year in gaming’s history. Factor in “BioShock” and you’ll see over at Gamerankings.com that 4 of the 12 best reviewed games in that site’s history of aggregating reviews came out in the last 10 months.
Have game critics ever been so thoroughly satisfied?
Maybe we’re in the best era of video games. Maybe the hype is giving everyone sunstroke.
