lol, so I haven't really posted much, have I? I guess that's because of work business, not being any interesting news in the anime domain (that interests me anyway), and Phantasy Star kinda eats up some time too. I still try to submit at least one thing a week, and comment every once in awhile. Almost done my second work term sadly, went by so fast probably because of being in the field fishing for about a month. Now things are slowing down at work, and its bascially just cleaning and Christmas lunches
I'm off starting next Friday, and I don't know if I'll have a many chances to come on the site during the break due to food, family, and friends visiting. Should be able to get the odd submission up though.
Anyway, reguarding the article, its actually one about Nintendo's recent activities. I'm not really in the video game loop anymore, and get most of my info from random findings. Anyway, I'm not really a HUGE fan of any of the consoles really, since all of them have their pirks, and PS3 and XBox have alot of the same games now anyway, save for the odd exclusive. By the way, my brother owns a PS3, and has all of 4 games for it, lol. It really is just a way to pass the time if we're extremely bored, and doubles as the house Blu-Ray player for our parents.
Anyway, I'll state right now that for any who read this and are loyal to Nintendo, you will immediately hate this post and the article, and possibly me too, lol. The article talks about how Nintendo seems to be cutting corners as of late with game development and whatnot, especially in the area of presentation, which I whole-heartedly agree on. Now, again, I haven't had much info from video games flowing in, by my brotehr did own a Wii for a little over a year, and I had 4 months to really use it, and rooming with Kastom for 8 months also allowed me some time with it. It was fun at first, but eventually we found ourselves not really getting any games for it, and all we'd play was Super Smash Brothers Brawl. This was due to our prior experience with other games simply being a waggle fest of controllers, or simply not supporting motion control at all. So hence the switch to Sony, who had more games up my brother's ally, that being shooters (Modern Warfare 2 and Medal Gear Solid 4), Soul Caliber as an old favorite, and my game Blazblue. It's also backwards compatible with PS1 as well, so FF's VII-IX (7 to 9 for those would can't read roman numerals) also get played.
Anyway, back to the presentation of things. What struck me as odd was that the Wii doesn't support Surround Sound; with more and more people buying home theatre systems, ya'd think that would standard by now, and the fact that PS2 and Xbox (I think) both had it ages ago. Something else that bothers me, which I will recieve the most heat for, is Nintendo's choice of graphics. I know, its ain't all about visuals, but with HD technology pretty much figured out now and ALMOST common place (hell, most laptops come in 720p, standard HD cable format), but would it kill them to use a little more developed character models for later Mii based games, like the Sports Resort or Wii Music? The gamecube could do it, so why can't a newer, stronger system do it? And don't give me development time issues, the graphic designers should be pros at at-least upkeeping gamecube (not limb-less Miis) quality visuals. Also, the Wii's best resolution is 480p, which means 480 pixels vertically and 720 horinzontally shown in a progressive (smooth, no flickering pictures) manner...The PSP, a handheld, and OLDER than the Wii, runs in the same resolution! I know Sony focuses almost exclusively on visuals, but its almost four years after Wii's release, with no apparent improvement in presentation is kinda sad. Another hardware issue I have is the fact that Wii only has 512MB for storage space; I know because of not beastly visuals it don't need the space, but if they suddenly decide to beef up visuals, that memory will be chewed up quite quickly. And I don't think you can even give away a 512 USB disk, with 8GB ones now selling for less than 30$. Yes, there's the SD card slot, but those don't come cheap, and aren't included with the system.
And one final note is the DS; sure, stylus based gameplay sounds good on paper, but the only game that I've heard of/played that actually uses it properly is "The World Ends with You", by Square Enix (makers of graphics intense Final Fantasy, funny how they went zero on graphics and all on gameplay for this one). ALL commands of your main character are done with iPhone-like stylus gestures, and your partner is controlled with buttons, so it uses BOTH control schemes. Every other game I own for my DS uses zero stylus commands, and may only have optional moving through menues, nothing noteworthy. I hear alot of teh games just use the stylus for movement, such as the new Zelda: Spirit Tracks, which seems kinda unoriginal with the DS's current age and previous titles in the series on the same system. Also, instead of trying to make a completely NEW handheld, they simply keep slightly remodeling the DS, with releases such as the DS Lite, DSi (only adding a camera and minor software add ins), and the DSiLL (sporting only a slightly bigger screen and monstrous stylus). With this, I must also note that Sony is guilty of the same thing with the PSP 1000, 2000, and 3000; the PSP Go seems like a failure cuz it only has digital games, and a big name, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, will not be available for it digitally, and it can't play UMD.
In any case, as shown in the article (linked below), it just seems that they like to cut corners with presentation, release a ton of similar, slightly modified games, and rake in the cash. I daresay they are using "quantity over quality", which is kinda a no-no especially when the customer expectes something fresh and new. And with visual technology developing the way it is, it'd be easy to simply give the Wii a visual-facelift and not use excuses like "we didn't inlcude Princess Peach in the new Mario Bros. because Toad's model is more similar to Mario's" [and easier to recycle] to save on development time. That and Super Mario Galaxy looked beautiful, so why can't all their other games have the same quality to them?
lol, I guess this kinda turned into my own schpeal about the company too. But anyway, the article can be found here, and feedback or thoughts would be kinda cool. Enjoy! (Or hate, depending on your interpretation :P)
