Platform: PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16)
Year: Released 9/27/1991
Developer/Publisher: NCS Masaya
Title: Dragon Egg!
Quote:
Colors aside this is representative of the game.
Introduction
Dragon Egg! is a cartoony platformer NCS Masaya published in '91. This game is a tough one to review, because on the one hand it's a pretty good, fun game, but on the other hand it's also flawed, has an unbalanced difficulty level which is harder in the first half of this six-level game and easier in the second, is absurdly short, and feels unfinished. When this game released in Japan in fall '91 the PC Engine was still popular, but the smash-hit success of the Super Famicom (SNES) was taking over the market and NEC was moving towards a stronger focus on CD games over HuCard titles. NCS Masaya may have been a third party, but they noticed this, as Dragon Egg! was their last HuCard release. This all might be an explanation for why this game was rushed, but whatever the reason, it's unfortunate. Regardless, the game makes a great first impression with its good graphics and nice cartoony artwork, and it controls well as well, but the serious issues add up to some huge drawbacks. The story is that you play as a young girl, off to save the world from evil with a dragon's egg. The text is all in Japanese, but the basics of what's going on is clear enough: there is a demon troubling the land, and a young girl is the only hope to save the land from decay. An old man, maybe her grandfather or something, gives her some goggles which are apparently dragon-rider gear, and off you go to save the day! The intro cutscene is fairly long and looks great. Unfortunately, it's the only real cutscene in the game; the ending is extremely short. There is a nice credits sequence, but still, as with many things in this game, the ending feels unfinished.
Quote:
The intro looks great.
Graphics and Sound
Visually, the game is one of the better looking platformers on the system. The PC Engine or TurboGrafx, on both HuCard and CD, does not have the wealth of platformers that the Super Nintendo and Genesis do. Its platformer library is smaller, and many of the games are more NES-like in design than most of the games you see on those other two systems. The system had an earlier peak, and that shows. This game, though, is clearly 4th-gen in style. The background and character art is colorful and quite well-drawn. It shows off the consoles' ability to put lots of colors on screen nicely, and the art design would look good anywhere. Buildings do look a bit flat, I guess, but I don't mind. The sprite art is particularly nice, and well animated too. The heroine in her pink overalls puts those goggles on once you power up enough to ride on the dragon, for example, which is a nice touch once you notice it. Enemies raise their weapon as they approach you too, and do a 'swing' animation if you touch them. Nice stuff. There are not a huge number of different types of foes, but it's enough for a game as short as this. Those enemies are varied, and while the game has a cartoony anime look to it, there is some variety here, from the cute to the threatening. Your dragon is somewhat adorably cute, but monsters vary from the big-headed and not too scary skeletons to the creepier flying bug-men . Other enemies include giants, slimes, and later on several kinds of gun and laser turrets. Bosses similarly vary, from the barely threatening-looking first boss to the more serious later ones. They all look great. On an odd but then-common note though, the main character wears blue overalls and a yellow shirt in the manual art, but pink overalls with a white shirt in the game. It's odd how some older games have very different art between the manuals and games even in Japan... or sometimes, within the game itself; see Alisia Dragoon on the Genesis for an example of that.
I do need to say though, as in many anime fantasy settings, this world is historically incoherent. It appears medieval at first and enemies have armor, swords, and bows, but there is electricity in places, there are enemy laser turrets, and the heroine wears modern clothing. The setting makes little sense. Is this fantasy or modern? It's both, apparently. But beyond that all-too-common frustration, the game looks great. The visuals here have a more polished look to them than most platformers on the system do. Hudson's platformers often match or beat this, visually, but I do think the game is in the upper tier visually, at least for this system. The developers even pull off a limited parallax effect. The whole background does not have multiple layers in it, but there are clouds which quickly move across the sky in many stages, to give some of that feeling of parallax movement. It's a great effect and definitely helps. The music, however, is unfortunately strictly average stuff. It's mostly okay, but isn't exciting or too memorable. Some songs are too short, too, such as the five-second-loop that plays during the first half of the last boss fight. Still, the audio is alright, and after playing it for a while I guess a few tracks are somewhat catchy.
Quote:
The first level. Health and lives are in the upper right, dragon egg counter in the upper left.
Controls and Game Design
One thing making Dragon Egg! game good are the great controls. The controls are precise and accurate. You do move a little fast, so you do need to look out or you'll bump into enemies, but it controls very well. This is a simple game, and all you'll is move around, jump, and attack. You start with two hearts for health, though each health heart can take two hits, and you can upgrade this to a maximum of four hearts during the game. Though you can't save your progress you do have infinite continues, but your goal should be to beat the game without dying, or without getting hit much at all if you're in Hard mode, so the continues aren't always needed. Levels are all straightforward as well. There is some depth in the upgrade system, however, though it's badly unbalanced, particularly in Normal difficulty. Whenever you kill an enemy they drop one of two different types of powerups: dragon eggs to upgrade your dragon's form, or coins you use to buy other powerups. Which one an enemy drops is entirely random, it is important to note; I kind of wish the powerups were predetermined, but which you get is purely a matter of chance.
Of the two upgrade systems, I will first cover the dragon mentioned in the title. Collecting dragon eggs upgrade your dragon between four forms. You start out carrying an egg in a backpack, and can attack only at melee range. You want to get out of this mode as soon as possible, because this attack is too close-range to avoid taking damage sometimes. All four forms do exactly the same amount of damage per hit, varying on whether you have weapon powerups of course, I should say; it is the range that varies, but those range expansions are vital! It is funny how hitting a badguy with an egg does the same amount of damage as shooting them with a fireball, though. Heh. :) So, the first upgrade requires two dragon eggs. Here, the dragon has poked its head out of the egg and breathes fire ahead of you. This short-range fire attack is pretty good and actually will collect items, something the later upgrades' attacks will not do. The third level takes three more eggs. Now you ride on the hatched dragon's back, and attack with fireballs that go across the screen. The last powerup takes four eggs, and makes the dragon larger and better. Now it's got a higher jump that has some float to it for slower descents, and it upgrades your weapon potential as well -- while the basic un-upgraded attack is the same as the level 3 dragon, with upgrades you will see the difference. The top-level dragon is pretty awesome, and overpowered, so long as you have it. It is a big target, though only your character is actually vulnerable and not the dragon. This is important to know for getting through the laser gates without taking a hit.
The money system similarly rewards staying alive, and is one more element making the first half of the game harder than the second -- if you can get fully powered up and avoid losing those powerups, you'll be nearly unstoppable. You use collected money to buy powerups from shops scattered around the game. There are six different items you can buy. For 3 coins, you can buy cure items which you can use in the select menu. These heal half a heart each, and you can carry up to four. There are three items that cost 10 coins. First there is a firepower upgrade which doubles the damage you do per hit. You can buy this again, for the same cost, to almost double damage again -- this reduces an 8-hit giant down to 3 hits, for example. Next, there is a range / multi-hit upgrade. This gives the level 1 or 2 dragon a slightly longer range attack, the level 3 dragon two fireballs for an attack, or the level 4 dragon three fireballs. You can also can purchase this a second time as well, to add homing to your level 3 or 4 dragon's shots or a little more range to a level 1 or 2 dragon. And last at 10 coins, you can buy additional health hearts, which, yes, you can buy up to two of, though you don't need to as unlike the attack upgrades you can also get these other ways. And last, two items are available for for 30 coins each: a barrier which gives you an extra hit which you don't lose anything for losing if you are hit, or a skull which is a bomb you can use by double-tapping attack, or something like that. You can only have one skull at a time in your inventory. It is important to note that five of these six powerups can be lost, but you won't lose the healthbar-expanding hearts. I wonder why they decided that health upgrades are permanent, while attack upgrades can be lost. It's kind of odd. As for the other upgrades, in Easy or Normal you won't lose any dragon or store-bought powerups unless you die, but if you do die you reset to the level-one egg-swing attack, and you lose all money and purchased items except for health expansions as well. It's painful stuff, if you were upgraded; the easiest way to beat the game is to not die. In Hard mode the game is significantly more punishing: you lose store-bought attack powerups, then dragon eggs, each time you are hit. More on this later.
There is no scoring system in this game, so the only pickups in levels are those items enemies drop, and a few scattered health bar-expansion heart, cure, and skull items. There is also a roulette after each level which spins between a health expansion heart, a cure, a skull, or a 1-up. Try to time your jump for the one you want the most. Oddly, while they look identical, the cure items you get from the end-level roulette or that are placed in levels are entirely different from the ones you can buy in the stores, as quite unlike the ones you buy, the cure pickups are instant-use only and cannot be stored, and heal a full heart instead of only a half like the ones you buy do. The two types probably should have used different graphics to signify that they are not the same. Still, I like that the full-heart heals exist, they are quite useful because there is no health recovery between levels; you'll start the next stage with the exact amount of health you finished the last one with. When you add those hearts to your health they start out empty, too, so even if you don't take damage you will need health at least to fill those. It all works fairly well.
Quote:
The shop and items.
Level Design and Layouts
The level designs are the core of any platformer, and thankfully stages in Dragon Egg! are nicely varied. There are horizontal, vertical, and maze-like levels, and you need to approach each enemy type differently. Enemy AI is extremely basic, as enemies mostly just move or shoot straight at you once they're on screen, but it works as other things differentiate them, such as size, whether they fly or not, and whether they can shoot at you. The six bosses are each entirely unique as well, so no two of those fights will be the same. All six boss fights have the exact same stage background as well, with the same platform layout on it. I don't mind this, but it does lack variety. More importantly, one of the major issues with Dragon Egg! is that the game is badly unbalanced and sort of backwards -- the second half of the game is significantly shorter and easier than the first half is. The first two levels each are broken up into three stages and then a boss. The difficulty ramps up just right here, as the game starts out quite easy but slowly gets trickier. Level three only has two stages before the boss, but the second is the games' one and only maze stage, so it may take a little while to get through. Level 3 feels as long as either before it, and it might be the hardest level in the game. But then you get to level four, and it all falls apart; while levels four through six are quite fun, they all have only ONE stage per level each! One linear stage and a boss each, that's it. There are also level design elements that only appear once, which can be fine for some original challenge, but why does is stage 1-2 the only one in the whole game with instant-death pits in it, for example? It's bizarre. The only explanation I can think of is that the game must have been badly rushed, shipped before it was really done because NCS needed it out NOW or something. These and other cutbacks are quite unfortunate, because a more complete and polished version of this game could have been great.
Now, I'd like to go into a little more detail about each of the stages. Skip this paragraph if you want to avoid any spoilers about the game. Level one has you traveling across some mountains. As mentioned previously, stage 1-2 is the only one in the game with bottomless pits. It's hard to avoid that enemy on the last jump, but you CAN do it without taking a hit if you jump at the last second. I mentioned the first boss earlier. Level two is harder, as you travel through giant-infested caverns. It's a fun level, though it can be tricky at points in Hard mode. The boss is a spawning creature which can be a pain to not take any damage against. Level three is the maze in an electric castle. It's a good, well-designed level, though it is quite challenging to get through in Hard mode without taking hits thanks to the flying bug enemies, the laser gates, and maybe worst of all the invincible gun turrets shooting at you. The boss is this cubic thing with tendrils you need to destroy before you take out the core; it's easy powered up, but a bit trickier if not. Level four is a river-rafting trip over water. You have to stay on the raft in the middle of the screen and enemies are only a minor threat, so the level is very easy. The graphics here are great though, as the level has some really nice-looking rippling water effects. The stage ending is a setup for another stage that doesn't exist though; again, this game must have been rushed. The boss is interesting, but again is easy at full power once you learn its pattern. The fifth level goes through an Egyptian desert. It's a fun level, though again it's too short and badly needs multiple areas. The level 5 boss is one of the easier ones regardless of your power level. And last, you go through the bosses' fortress. The level is only moderately challenging, though the boss is really hard if you aren't powered up. This boss has two forms, and without powerups it takes a lot of hits to kill and attacks with curving fireballs that are hard to avoid. It's hard to do even a few hits in a row against the guy without taking damage, so you want to be powerful enough to take him out as quickly as possible.
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With the level two dragon, shooting a fireball.
Hard Mode
There is a big elephant in the room that I have been sort of dodging around up to this point, however: the difference between the difficulty levels. Dragon Egg! has the usual three settings, Easy, Normal, and Hard. On Easy, the game is a complete and total cakewalk. Don't bother with it. On Normal, the game is still really easy. I beat the game on normal, without dying even one single time, the day after I got this game. So it may have been easy, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted. But to get a bit more out of this not-cheap game, I decided to try Hard mode... and it's a huge difference from the lower ones! Hard makes two major changes to the game: first, all enemies and bosses take twice as many hits to kill as they do on the lower difficulties. This makes everything a lot longer and slows down the game. And second, and even more importantly, you now are punished not only for dying, but for getting hit at all. If you have bought powerups from the store, you lose one level from BOTH of those powerups each time you take a hit. You also take damage, of course. And if you don't have powerups, each hit takes away one dragon egg. If there are no eggs in the meter at the moment you'll be downgraded to the next level down, down to the minimum of just having the egg with its way-too-close melee attack. And you REALLY need powerups, because the final boss is brutally, near-impossibly difficult without a significantly powered up dragon; I tried to beat him in Hard with no powerups once, but eventually had to give up, it's just crazy-hard.
Overall, Hard mode's changes make the game a LOT harder and much, much more frustrating. The main reason why this review isn't happening until now, instead of a week and a half ago when I first meant to write one, is because I just can't stop trying and failing to beat this game on Hard! I know I need to no-hit-clear it to win, and I keep messing up and dying somewhere in level three. It's really the "taking away powerups when you get hit" thing that makes it so hard; if you've gotten to the point where you're losing eggs, it's already over. You cannot grind to get more money in this game, there is a preset number of enemies and each one only drops one coin or egg. So if you take a hit and it steals 10 or 20 coins worth of powerups from you, that's a hard to impossible thing to recover from. It's frustrating, because if I could get past the first half of the game with full power I think I could beat the second half with a lot less difficulty, but that's easier said than done... argh. So yeah, I keep trying, and putting off this review that I was initially going to "write quickly because the game is easy and fun." Heh. But hey, as frustrating as that is, it also shows how addictive the game is; I'm still playing it, after all. Had the game only had the Normal difficulty setting and no others it'd have been another one of those fun but very short game, but thanks to Hard mode the game has some lasting play value.
Quote:
Archers shoot fire-arrows.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Dragon Egg! is a good game I definitely like playing, but it is also a flawed title that could have been a lot better. This game has great graphics that are among the best on the platform in this genre, variety to the gameplay due to the different enemies and obstacles you run across, and something for everyone difficulty-wise as the normal mode is short and fun, if somewhat insubstantial because of how quickly you should beat it, while the hard mode is a serious challenge. On the other hand though, the game is far too short and was obviously shipped in a partially-finished state, as the mostly missing second half of the game and very short ending show. The unbalanced difficulty and too-easy gameplay if you get fully powered up are also issues; though Hard mode does alleviate that second one somewhat, it is still easier powered up. The decision to have you lose a full level of BOTH attack-enhancer powerups every time you get hit one single time in Hard mode is also perhaps inordinately cruel for a game like this; it'd have been better if you lost only one attack powerup each time, if that mechanic had to exist. These issues are significant, but still I do like Dragon Egg! overall. I give this game a B- score. This is the kind of game this system needed more of and I recommend it to platformer fans, it's good despite its issues.
http://www.videogameden.com/hucard/reviews/deg.htm - VGDen also has a review, and a translation of the backstory -- the girl's name is Eran, and she is the descendant of the legendary Dragon Warriors and is the only one who can defeat the demon who has taken over the land. Also, more nice screenshots.
That title is a lie. It's just all the dinosaur movies I've seen that are connected. Feel free to mention all the ones I didn't mention, because this theory is important to the world and must be flawless. I really mean that, get mad.
So in the beginning, a meteor hit the earth, OR DID IT? The meteor hitting the earth split the world into two, one where it actually hit and the dinosaurs went extinct and one were it missed and the dinosaurs maintained their rule. This happened in both the Super Mario Bros. movie and The Good Dinosaur, creating a timeline split (I'm sure you're so excited at the possibilities...)
In the "human" world, the world was slowly dying, with tremors (earth shakes) caused by the devastating hit from the meteor. A few lone survivors managed to make their way to the only place where green things still grew, the Great Valley. Thus, Land Before Time takes place in that timeline. This great valley, over millions of years, may have been cut off from the rest of the land, leading to a single island where dinosaurs still lived. The few mammals that managed to find their way to this island would have been pressured to get bigger or get eaten. Any humans that found themselves there would have needed to find a small niche to hide in so they weren't devoured as well. Eventually, a small film crew would find their way to the island and, bizarrely, decide to ignore all the dinosaurs in favor of taking one of the giant mammal specimens back, giving us King Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World.
Kong would be public knowledge, but the island would be forgotten again, until the late 20th century, when a scientist, struggling to make his vision come to reality, and sparing no expense, would uncover the truth about Kong's origins and travel back to that island. That's right, John Hammond from Jurassic park never actually cloned anything. Mr. DNA? Those labs? His amber mosquito? All smoke and mirrors, to fool investors, and remember the whole reason he invited those scientists was to further convince his investors to keep the money coming in. Note that he got paleontologists, but NOT biologists or anyone who specializes in DNA, because his lies would be seen through too quickly unless he carefully picked scientists without the proper background in genetics (such as, um, er, a, ah, mathematician). In reality, he took all those dinosaurs from Skull Island. (Keep in mind that while the Great Valley started as a haven for herbavores, at least one "sharp tooth" became a regular resident there, so it stands to reason others would eventually come to the valley). Why did they find eggs in Jurassic Park? They thought it was "frog DNA", but in reality it's because Hammond accidentally took a few males by mistake (or a few that had eggs ready to lay). Hammond claims at the start of Lost World that the second island was his original test site, but this is again a coverup. In reality, that was Skull Island. Lost World and JP3 both take place on Skull Island (The Great Valley), or at least small parts of it. It appears to be a rather immense island (and it would need to be, in order to sustain such massive fauna), so it would make sense for different landing parties to see completely different areas of the island. Even in JP2 and JP3, people keep crashing on the island, so it's still as hard to reach as it's ever been. The natives are gone, but after what happened with Kong breaking their defenses, it's not surprising they were all wiped out by whatever came through after Kong.
Meanwhile, in the dino-verse, dinosaurs eventually develop a more modern society resembling the old west. This would be the tale of the Good Dinosaur. One dinosaur comes across a "proto human" and keeps it as a pet. It's assumed that this is mammals evolving into humans even with the pressure of dinosaurs still existing, but the truth is, this "human" is actually evolved from a branch of dinosaurs. It's possible some had become trapped on a smaller island and, as mentioned before, had to evolve to get smaller in order to keep from starving to death (while also going upright and learning to use tools better). Most dino society, still being in an "old west" mentality, simply never knew this species existed. This would be the start of a social divide. At this time, a scientist in the human world would open a bridge and abduct some dinosaurs from the dino world (assuming he'd merely pulled them from the past, but in reality not his past). This would lead to the events of "We're Back", and the start of numerous crossovers between the two parallel worlds. Once that scientist had opened the gate, rifts would start opening in various locations in both worlds. In one such location, a family found one by accident after falling over a waterfall, meeting another group of dino-evolved humanoids along the way as they visited this Land of the Lost. In another, one of the dino world's more massive specimens' eggs would cross over at a nuclear test site and rampage around New York, mistakingly identified as Godzilla. With "Zilla's" ability to reproduce so fast, it would need to have come from another world to have not been found until then. Further, perhaps even the original Godzilla, theorized to have been woken up by nuclear testing near Japan, came through yet another rift. The nuclear bombs then would be a reliable way to open rifts between the two worlds. Back to the meeting of dinosaurs and humanoid dinos, eventually something tragic must have occurred that led to the humanoids taking over the world and pushing the dinosaurs to the fringes of society. This would lead to social injustice, with a police station eventually having to induct a member of the dino underclass as a bid to ease tension between the two groups. This cop, Theodore Rex, would end up doing far more harm than good for the cause, as while it was a good move to ease tensions, Theodore proved to be an incompetent officer. Rather than heal the rift between the two groups, it pushed it even further. The true dinosaurs ended up being pushed to outright extinction, and the world in general went downhill with pollution. The few towns that remained were led by President Koopa, who was desperate to find a better world. He'd heard the rumors of these crossover events with another world and sought to find the link himself, eventually stumbling upon one of those tears, with an area with the very meteor that hit the human earth, somehow accessible to the dino side as well, but with a shard missing. This would lead to the events of the Super Mario Bros movie. At the end of this movie, both worlds now very publicly know about each other.
In Jurassic World, we are introduced to an experimental genetic abomination with super intelligence. It was assumed that super intelligence was just a result of their tinkering, but the more horrifying possibility is that the scientists were actually implementing genes from the more intelligent dinosaur humanoids after getting a few samples from across the rift. This might be the real purpose of the park. If Jurassic World's people knew about the other dimension with talking dinosaur people, it would also explain why so many park patrons are so bored just looking at regular dinosaurs.
Firstly, it's been an unexpected worldwide phenomenon. Out of nowhere, in about two weeks, everyone is talking about it. I don't just mean "everyone on gaming sites", I mean politicians and late night talk shows.
Secondly, HOW DID EVERYONE FIND OUT ABOUT IT?! I didn't see a single commercial for it, online or otherwise, and the only reason I knew it was coming was due to Nintendo's own announcement at gaming-centric events. I have no idea how everyone online found out about this game at once. It's beyond my ability to comprehend.
Thirdly, finally a reason to actually get outside and see the world. I mean, people have been cooped up indoors for what seems like over a decade now, thanks to the internet, and the internet finally solves that problem for us by telling us "hey, look at this little-known memorial deep in the woods, and oh by the way there's an imaginary monster there too".
I for one hope this takes off to the point where people actually take cross-country trips around it, but I'm not the one to do it. Too many real life obligations, you see. I would like to challenge any Go-er who looks me in the eyes though... if it's safe. That brings me up to the elephant in the room, criminals using the "spot" system to know in advance where to find victims. The solution here is to travel in large groups, I suppose, but it's worth noting the usual danger concerns when outside in that "real world" place.
It's amazing really. Just a few years ago, people were forecasting the death of PC gaming, and these days it's taken off to such a degree that the forecasting now calls for the death of consoles. Between changes to how OSes are handled, more robust APIs, and groups like GOG working hard to make all the games of the past work on modern systems, PC gaming is also more reliable than it has ever been. I build my own systems, but for those who either don't know how or would rather not bother with the hassle, the variety of prebuilt options actually made for gaming AND built to last has grown a lot too. Beyond Alienware, there's the current crop of "Steamboxes", MS's own Surface Pro series, and with the upcoming changes, the XBox One itself may just gain the ability to play PC games (internally, it runs on x86 architecture and Windows 10, so nothing really prevents it except MS's own lockdown on "side loading" unapproved applications).
Beyond that, I see so many people turned off by the current generation of consoles who are sick of the console wars and would rather just dump some money into a good PC rig and leave Sony and MS to do their own thing. (Note I didn't mention Nintendo. They do their own thing and at this point everyone gets a Nintendo system purely as a system to play Nintendo's own games. I know that's why I do it.)
I've just recently upgraded my PC. It's been long overdue, and when it comes to PC hardware there's generally no point waiting for that new hardware just around the corner because there is ALWAYS new hardware just around the corner, so I took the plunge with the new GPX 1070s having just come out. I'm loving it so far. It took some work getting my Windows 10 install to boot correctly after the switch from BIOS to UEFI (I pronounce that with a hard "I" sound, because it sounds more computery that way), but I've got it running correctly now. I have to say in the process I learned a LOT about the GPT partitioning system (compared to the old MBR), as well as what makes UEFI so different (the key is in how tightly integrated it is with the OS now, it can even replace Windows 10's boot logo, though I turned that off). Modern hardware all seems specially designed for overclocking, to the point where I wonder just how honest those "default settings" really are now. I had to replace my case, because enough has changed over the years that this old case I bought in 2003 or so just wouldn't fit the hardware I wanted any more. Cases by and large look ridiculous (when it comes to aesthetics, I got the distinct impression that a lot of custom PC builders never got out of the 90's, it's all "extreme" with cyber dragons other such nonsense all over the place.
Let me get into that, because it's pretty tasteless. I've seen firsthand what a lot of PC builders think looks good, and as a general rule, I hate pretty much all of it. I didn't pick my hardware based on aesthetics, but to see the descriptions on some of it, I have to wonder just how often hardware sacrifices performance in the name of looking cool these days. Firstly, far too many cases have these stupid curves all over the place that, aside from looking like some early 2000's era PC, also makes the things harder to clean and harder to fit exactly where you want them to go. I went for one of the few companies that believes that form should follow function and picked up a big white box shaped case. http://www.fractal-design.com/home/produ...e-r5-white As you can see, it's simple and clean, just like I like it, but more than that it doesn't have any shapes that get in the way of opening the case up and tinkering with it. A big deal for a lot of these builders seems to be having side windows. I opted out of that. I actually saved money getting one without a window. That's crazy to me, because I got this case in particular due to it's silent design, and the window panel means no silencing foam where the window is, so I got one that's quieter AND cheaper thanks to the crazy style that's "in" right now. So, builders like to show off the hardware inside with that window. To that end, EVERYTHING LIGHTS UP NOW! That was one of the things I hated finding out the most. I keep my PC in my room, and I tend to sleep in there too. Good thing is, I could shut those blasted lights off in the firmware. Bad news is the LED on the case itself is surprisingly bright. I slip a pokemon pamphlet over the light just so I can sleep at night. Lastly, there is exactly ONE acceptable color scheme that "looks good" in the eyes of builders right now. Black with red highlights. There is no possibility of an alternative viewpoint here. I had to sift through countless reviews of hardware on newegg that all would say things like "great hardware, disappointed it wasn't black and red to match my hardware" and "good and it's black and red so it looks great". Basically, things sorta drifted to that black and red outnumbering other colors, and out of fear of a color clash, now EVERYONE demands absolutely everything use that color scheme. The good news is, I really don't care. Since I'm not using a case window, nobody's going to see that hardware unless I open my PC up anyway.
Well, back on track, the good trends include power cabling being detachable from the power supply and much better modular case design with a whole section "behind" the motherboard dedicated to cable management to keep stuff out of the way. It's clear they've been focusing on making cases more builder-friendly, and I like that. I also like how modern cooling fans focus on both solid build quality and silence. (I've not yet had good reason to take the plunge and go with liquid cooling.)
My specs are good enough to hold me for the next five years now I think, with a little room to grow on with the motherboard in particular so my next upgrade will likely be cheaper anyway. At this point, my next upgrades will be a new monitor and eventually replacing my hard drive flat-out with a SSD (flash capacity is increasing steadily enough that I expect that within the next five years).
On the topic of software modifications, then came the process of making sure all of my PC games still worked. I managed to find a lot of fixes to get pretty much everything working just fine, fully featured even. MS themselves make a special "application compatibility" tool which includes all manner of rules to change Windows' behavior when launching programs. For example, I used one ruleset to fix issues launching Morrowind. Unfortunately, one critical issue with Windows 10 proves elusive to find a convenient fix for, and that's the frame buffer. For now, the only way I can play Curse of Monkey Island is through ScummVM, but at least I can play it.
On the original topic, GOG is really starting to become a big threat to Steam's dominance. As far as features go, all they're lacking is a good multiplayer and chat backend and they'll have all the major features Steam have.
Cookie, icecream, and various other snack makers of the world, listen up.
There is no such thing as "birthday cake" flavor! There's nothing special about cakes on a birthday that cakes at any other time don't already have, and the cake someone gets on their birthday, traditionally, is WHATEVER THEIR FAVORITE FLAVOR IS! There is no absolute standard of what "Birthday Cake" is!
You COULD have just said "cake flavored". It would still be pretty nonspecific, but no, you had to go and invent the concept of "birthday cake" as a flavor. The only thing I can figure is some idiot in marketing said "people like birthdays, so we should call it birthday cake to associate the flavor with something people like".
This has been another random rant on something that doesn't matter.
For another example of how much I dislike open-world design, I would say that StarTropics is a better game than the original Legend of Zelda, because it's also fatnastic, but is a more focused, fun experience that doesn't rely on stupid crutches like "go find the random hidden stuff" or "wander around pointlessly for no good reason". I've beaten StarTropics 1, did so in the late '00s, and loved it. But Zelda 1? I've still never gotten past the sixth dungeon. Sure, it's a classic and a game I remember playing back during the NES'es lifespan various places, while StarTropics isn't (I'd heard of it in Nintendo Power, but not played it until the '00s), but while Zelda is fun, it's also flawed and frustrating. StarTropics is better for sure, and it's the best action-RPG I have played for the NES.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:I... just can't possibly understand your opinion on Link to the Past. I think just about everything you said is simply... entirely backwards! I mean, the sense of adventure as you get new abilities and unlock new areas is completely lost?
I'm not sure what you mean here by "the sense of adventure as you get new abilities and unlock new areas is completely lost"? Please explain.
But to try to guess at what you mean, you can explore most of the world in LttP without items, and that map is so dull! No other Zelda game has such a poorly-designed grid (grid, 9 squares, etc, I've said it before), at least in OoT and MM even if there is a hub-and-spokes design like LttP each spoke is more interesting in shape and design than anything you see in LttP. In LttP, sure, there are some areas to unlock, as well as the not-very-different Dark World, but not many compared to the worlds of better games like Link's Awakening. Exploring the world in LA is so much more fun than it is in LttP, because it feels like you're actually progressing, and not just wandering around in a large empty space. LttP's world may be larger in terms of physical tiles than LA's, but it feels small due to its design, which is why I remember years back saying something about LA having the larger world... which is wrong, but I can see why I'd think that. And of course the LttP town is kind of boring too. And as for items, the ones in dungeons are fine, but the dumb random hidden stuff isn't, I don't like that at all (medallion, ice rod, that lake, etc, as discussed in the past). But as for those dungeons, LttP's dungeon designs are some of the weaker ones in the series, with how many of them are annoying long corridors, not the more interesting designs of the other games... and then in one of the otherwise more interesting dungeons they pulled that unforgivable "ice rod required at the bottom and we never mentioned that item before' stunt. So yeah.
And remember, I care less than most people seem to about loot in games. I almost never play games just to get better stuff, that's not something that often actually interests me. I like exploration, finding new places, and putting them on a permanent map... so yeah, not a fan of randomly-regenerated-every-time stuff either. :p (Stupid Diablo games, even though I know the map isn't permanent I can't help but want to explore out every zone every time I play one... I find that much more fun than whatever loot the game drops.) This applies here because you make it sound like just getting items is a reward on its own in LttP, in lieu of having more areas to explore, but I don't agree with that. Of course it's fun to use new items in a Zelda game, but that's as much in the context of the new places it'll let you get to than it is with the item itself... apart from things which add to the combat too, such as a bow, fire rod, etc. But I probably wouldn't keep playing a game just to get some item.
Now, of course, Ocarina of Time copies a lot of things about LttP's world design... but it's not hurt by it as much because of the amazing dungeons, because of the vastly larger amounts of added content in the towns and such, and because of the much larger side areas you can't explore until you have progressed in the game and gotten key items, etc. And while I find it disappointing for other reasons, I do appreciate MM's overworld, which is better than OoT's because of the more complex, segmented design. After MM they've tried, in varying ways, to have both scale and complexity in 3d Zelda worlds. And I think it worked; the MM overworld was fun to explore, I liked the sailing, and the islands each had a puzzle on them at minimum. TP's world is like a bigger OoT, and it's a lot of fun to explore. It is annoying that it's only after the second dungeon that they finally let you explore the whole thing, but once it opens up it's great. And SS's "it's all a dungeon" design was less successful, but I do like flying around in the sky even if it's probably not quite as good as MM's ocean, the town is one of the best in the series, and the ground areas have lots of interesting stuff in them.
Quote:I've said this before but, did you even play the same game the rest of the world did?
I think some people are too blinded with nostalgia about that game... and yes, I have nostalgia for LA, but still.
Quote:Well, it's a matter of personal taste, and I could accept that if you just weren't so absolutely certain about LTTP's supposed failings with all your "obviously"s thrown in there.
Well, given that we'd discussed LttP quite a few times before on this site, isn't my opinion on it fairly well known by this point? :p I've always been critical of the game to some extent.
I thought I'd make a proper thread dedicated to the hype train this particular game has started.
I for one am very excited about this one. I've noted how many gamers have found Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword to be disappointing. Their reasons have been all over the place, but at this point I've got a good handle on what's changed (and for what matter, what Wind Waker did right). Namely, the freedom to roam was taken away from players in both Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. This has been a steady trend going back to when Zelda games got more cinematic. In order to direct those more movie-like moments, they had to funnel the player into a number of "plot gates", and Nintendo's been feeling the pushback as of late for such choices.
This also goes for their recent 2D games. The Capcom-made ones suffered from "gating" the player through and not really allowing a full sense of exploration, though to a lesser extent than TP and SS (huh, those are some problematic acronyms).
For my part, my favorite Zelda games are universally the oldest ones. Link to the Past, in recent years, has finally surpassed Link's Awakening in my standing. Link's Awakening is good, but Link to the Past allows more freedom. The very first Zelda game, while it has the least to do and least variety in puzzle design, had a truly open world more open than any later game. Link to the Past is a close second though. Link to the Past, once you get past the opening, lets you go wherever you like. You can break sequence right from the start, although clearing Death Mountain before the other two palaces does require some creativity that the designers may not have intended. Once you reach the dark world, once again you're free to take on the dungeons in an almost completely free way.
Ocarina of Time will always have a place in my list of favorite games, but it's luster has faded a bit. It is still a very well done game, but it was the start of a bad trend. Everything I can complain about with newer Zelda games got it's start with OOT. I never "hated" Navi like a lot of gamers, but her basic design of "hint giver" was not well done. She forced herself on you far too often and annoyed you into listening to her hints when you might have wanted to solve the puzzle yourself. While the overworld is far more open than later games like TP, it was also the start of forcing you along a gated path. There wasn't much of a way to do dungeons out of order, with only a few notable exceptions. It still did at least allow you to wander off to other locations and explore a bit though. I think we all loved finding that fishing pond for the first time.
Majora's Mask continued that trend, but it did offer an amazingly well designed experience in it's own right, and I gotta appreciate it for what it is. It is still one of my favorites just for being such an odd one.
Link Between Worlds was Nintendo's first attempt at a return to form. It is great, and really challenges Link to the Past as my all-time favorite game. It does have a more "open" design than LTTP, which is saying something, but that does come at a cost. In their effort to give the player choice, it skews a little too close to Megaman-like stage design. All the dungeons are "equal" difficulty, save the "final" one unlocked after beating them. For that matter, every dungeon only requires one specific item to solve it's puzzles. There's no sense of steadily using more and more tools to solve ever more elaborate puzzle design. The items themselves can all be obtained without needing to dive into the major dungeons, but that's because you just buy them all from the sales bunny camping in your house. There's no real sense of accomplishment in getting those items. You just grind up money and buy them. That's a shame, because the "side dungeons", those little caves dotting Zelda games with smaller scale challenges, would have been the perfect place to stick those items in as reward. You could still do things in any order, but you'd still need to find each item and solve puzzles to reach them. For all that I said, it is still a very well made game and I go back to it more often than I have a lot of recent Zelda games. I still highly recommend it.
So that leads us here. Not only do they seem to be learning from the design issues of recent Zelda games, they're adding in all sorts of fun things to do. I'm not a big fan of item durability in my Zelda games, but if they do it right, maybe those items will just feel like those "temp" weapons you could pick up off enemies in Wind Waker (Double Dragon style weapons, basically). The open world design should have that sense of a vastness that Wind Waker had, but on actual land. Even the art design really calls back to Zelda 1. (I've always loved how Zelda, as a series, isn't afraid to completely reinvent it's art style every few games, so if you aren't a fan of one art style, don't worry, they'll be trying something else in a few years.) The sense of loneliness in this vast world means they will be skewing away from cinematic narrative in favor of letting you put together the story by just exploring the world. Think something like Myst or the Souls series. I don't need everything spelled out for me, so this is great.
Lastly, the things I've seen hint at a focus on sequence breaking and emergent gameplay. The game I enjoyed the MOST last year was Phantom Pain, and it wasn't even finished :D. The reason? The designers focused on giving the player a bunch of tools, yes, but more than that, focused on making the tools interact with other tools in interesting ways, and the environment besides. Phantom Pain is a game that is designed with the ethos "if you can do it, cool!". The sheer variety players have come up with to solve problems in the game is amazing. There's many a time you may find yourself surrounded, about to be discovered, and you end up just pulling up your list of items and saying "okay, what combination will open this lock?". For example, helicopter parked somewhere and you want to take it out? You could shoot a rocket at it. That's boring though. Air drop a tank on it!
As an aside, a quick fix to the gender issue would be simply letting a player pick their own pronoun at the start of the game, with the game script accordingly switching that pronoun around as you play. Link is androgynous enough for that to work with minimal effort.
So, there is no female playable character in the new Zelda game because Aunuma is sexist. To explain why there won't be a playable female character in this game that should have one, he said "Zelda isn't playable because then what would Link's role be"? WHAT? That's a ludicrously sexist thing to say, for fairly obvious reasons! It's a modern version of the good old sexist stereotype that 'girls' have no place in adventure stories [because they should stay home, etc.]. This is a stereotype we're breaking down here in the West, but Japan sadly still holds out against the modern world. It's sad given how much I love the Zelda series, and it always has been one of the best in gaming, but that is the only way to explain his incredibly flawed "logic" in the quotes in the OP, sexism, from an older man in one of the most sexist countries in the developed world.
Sadly enough, due to series history and Nintendo's own bad record of womens' roles in their games this is exactly the result I expected, but it's still extremely disappointing even if it is in no way a surprise.
Quote: During the conversation, which was translated by a Nintendo representative, we asked Aonuma if the rumors of having the option to play as a female version of Link are accurate. He said that he's aware of the conversations happening online, stating: "So yes, there were rumors like that, and we did discuss as a staff as to what would be possible if we took that route."
However, instead of entertaining the idea of the player being able to choose the hero Link's gender, Aonuma said his team considered what they deemed to be the simplest option; making princess Zelda the lead character. "We thought about it," said Aonuma, "and decided that if we're going to have a female protagonist it's simpler to have Princess Zelda as the main character."
This idea was ultimately rejected, because according to Aonuma "...if we have princess Zelda as the main character who fights, then what is Link going to do? Taking into account that, and also the idea of the balance of the Triforce, we thought it best to come back to this [original] makeup."
As for the game otherwise it's looking good, but different, but maybe another thread for that?
So, E3 may be smaller than last year, with many major publisher either gone or significantly scaling back their appearances, Nintendo included of course, there is still an E3, and there are still some exciting things for sure.
So, so far I haven't seen the PC Gaming show yet but I'll post again once I watch it. For now I'll cover Bethesda, EA, Sony, and Ubisoft, since I watched those live, and Microsoft, which I just watched while posting this. All four have lots of first or third person shooting games, the kinds of games I rarely care about much or play often. Some things were of interest, though.
One of the most noteworthy things here is a serious absence of actual surprise announcements. Part of that is that many conferences had serious leaks of the more interesting parts, but that's not all;' nobody seems to want to announce many actual new surprise games, unlike last year which was full of surprises. It's unfortunate. There were some new announcements, but not on the level of last year.
EA - EA and Bethesda had their conferences on Sunday. EA's not at the show, but they have an event nearby. Their conference was Sunday afternoon, the first of the show. This conference was about an hour long, though it was followed by an hour-plus Battlefield 1 stream showing off that title. Mass Effect Andromeda could be good, but this teaser showed almost nothing beyond that the default/cover character will be a female this time, instead of male (on the box and ads) Shepard of ME1-3. They also showed a potentially interesting indie 3d adventure/platformer thing from Europe called Fe, I do want to see more of that one. They also had a segment on their Star Wars games, including a mobile game, new content for the MMO and Battlefront, and a very short teaser of something for Amy Hennig (Legacy of Kain)'s upcoming original, not movie-based Star Wars game. I haven't played her games so I'm not excited for this specifically, but I do want to see more Star Wars games, so it's good they're doing something. They also showed FIFA and Madden of course, and Titanfall 2, which now will have a single player campaign and will be on PS4 as well as Xbox One and PC. I doubt I'll play it though.
As for Battlefield 1, it looks like a standard Battlefield game wit ha World War 1 skin on it. Considering how seriously a lot of people in Europe still take WW1, and how different trench warfare is from what you find in a modern online shooter, I was interested to see if this game would be different from past Battlefields, but... nope, it's just more Battlefield. I remember finding the original BF1942 demo kind of fun, but haven't played anything else in the franchise since. Also, apparently the list of playable nations is out... and it's the US, UK, and Italy v. Germany, Austra-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. What the heck? The core of that war was the Germany-France rivalry. The biggest front was that between France and Germany, and the best-known part of the war took part in France, fought by French soldiers first. The US and UK troops were there too, but France bore the brunt of it... and they're not in the game. I presume there'll be DLC, but still, that's a really bad decision.
Overall though, it's a very EA conference: it was okay, but not great. Disappointingly they didn't have any racing games to show. No Need for Speed this year? Too bad, those games are fun. And yeah, no big new surprise announcements.
Bethesda - Bethesda is, of course, one of my least favorite of the major publishers. Their owner ZeniMax are horrible, and Bethesda itself's Elder Scrolls games have never interested me. However, Arkane and id do make games that interest me, and both of those showed stuff here. The main headliner at this show is Dishonored 2. The first Dishonored is a good Thief-style game, apart from its "if you killed many people you get an awful ending but there are few rewards for not killing people" design. We'll see how the new game handles that element, but everything they showed looked pretty good. The choice to let you play as a male or female character's a nice addition too. I'm definitely interested. Beyond that, Bethesda also announced Quake Champions, a new Quake arena shooter which has some kind heroes & skills element, though it's supposedly a traditional shooter. It's got a mediocre co-developer working on it, and they showed no gameplay, so we'll see. They also showed some Elder Scrolls stuff, including a graphically enhanced PS4/X1 remake of Skyrim, new content for the MMO (with an overly enthusiastic person in the audience during this segment) and a card game, surely inspired by Heartstone's success. There was also a bit with some new DLC and stuff coming to Fallout 4. And of course they talked a bit about stuff coming to DOOM, and some VR things that probably aren't actually full games. As for anything new... Quake Champions is it, and we know very little about the game. So yeah, there was some good stuff here, but sorry, I dislike Bethesda regardless.
Ubisoft - Ubisoft's conference was Monday afternoon. This two-hour conference was the longest one of the show, I believe, so it's Ubi's longest yet, while Sony's conference, usually the longest, was much shorter than usual. EA moving to Sunday allowed Ubisoft to extend theirs, and they did. Ubisoft's conferences are usually among the most entertaining of the show, and that was true again this year. Aisha Tyler hosted for the fifth year in a row, and she said some interesting stuff as usual... watch the show. The show started with a dance number advertising the next Just Dance game, too. Beyond that, though, a lot of the show was taken up with open-world modern-military shooters, including Tom Clancy stuff and such. They did show other things too, though, thankfully. There's a new '90s cartoon show-themed Trials game and that trailer was fantastic, it's perfect for any of us who remember '90s advertising. The Trials games are fun stuff, too. Ubisoft also had a VR segment, covering a cartoon-ish flying game Eagle's Flight for Oculus which looks decently good and a Star Trek VR game. The Star Trek game had LeVar Burton there to say how much he liked it, and he's quite good at that and made it sound good, whether or not it actually is. Will it be? Who knows, we'll see... but Star Trek's gaming history is oddly mediocre, so I'm not expecting something incredible. Still I'm sure it'd be neat.
They also showed the medieval action game For Honor again, with its intense bearded producer. The game looks good, with some Dynasty Warriors influences but with much more challenging combat. You have left, right, or overhead attacks, and need to attack and block to defeat tougher enemies. The game is a war between Vikings, Knights, and Samurai, in a ruined world where they are fighting for what remains. Now, normal enemies are easy to kill, as usual in this kind of game... and that's fun, but is quite unrealistic. Still, the game does look interesting. It releases early next year. They also announced a sequel to last years' popular little 3d platformer Grow Home, titled Grow Up. It sounds like more of that, with a much bigger world. Maybe there'll be more to do also? It looks good, and it was great to see at least one cartoony game in this lineup even if Rayman is still sadly absent. There was also a gameplay-free trailer for some upcoming The Division content... whatever. And last, they announced an actual new game... an open-world extreme sports game set in the mountains in France, with winggliding, skiing, snowboarding, and some more. I'm no open world game fan, of course, but it was exciting to see Ubisoft announce something like this -- just before they announced it I was thinking 'it's too bad Ubi hasn't shown any racing games, they make some good ones... but this'll probably be another shooter'... and then it was this! So yeah, that was pretty cool. And the game does look quite good. I'm sure I'd like it. Overall Ubisoft's show was long
Sony - Sony's shows in the past are usually overly long and kind of boring, but they made their show shorter and more gameplay-focused, with very few parts with someone on stage talking. That's alright, but a little bit of explanation for some of these might have been good. They also showed no indie stuff at all. They started with the big reveal, though it'd leaked: the new God of War. This time it's Viking-themed. The new protagonist looks like Kratos with a beard and somewhat Viking clothing, so he's not as different as you might expect, but the tone and gameplay look different -- the pacing, combat, and exploration don't look like old God of War, there seem to be Dark Souls elements, and more. It could be good, though I hope the story isn't as terrible as the old ones. The trailer leads you to believe that it might be open-world, but apparently it isn't. I'm quite fine with that of course. After that they show a new post-apocalyptic-with-zombies shooter, Days Gone, that looked decent in the first story-only trailer but totally uninteresting once they actually showed the gameplay; more of the good-looking action-adventure game Horizon: Zero Dawn. Sony also revealed the new Crash Bandicoot project: a remaster collection of the original three PS1 games, and he'll be in Skylanders this year. Yes, there isn't a new Crash game, it's only a remake collection. Blah. No gameeplay is shown either, only the announcement.
As with many publishers, Sony showed a bit of VR stuff too, though it's not clear which are actually full games and which are just 'VR experiences' and the like. Resident Evil 7 was announced, is it all VR? Not sure. Looks more first-person and horror this time. Sony also showed a Spiderman game which may be exclusive? I don't know. The Last Guardian also has a short appearance, and will apparently release later this year. It does look good, but the long delay... well, we'll see. And the only other Japanese game shown, if it is a game, is Death Stranding, an engine test ... thing ... for Hideo Kojima's next game, which Sony is bankrolling. This is a really weird video I won't try to explain that only Kojima could have come up with, though I've never gotten into his games of course. Also apparently he hasn't even chosen an engine for the game for sure yet, much less gotten far with the design, so it's quite a ways off. Sony also showed a Call of Duty trailer. It's gone sci-fi this time, and you have a spaceship and stuff... but it's mostly CoD, so I don't care. Sony didn't have a reveal at the end, either, the conference just ended. There was no mention of the PS4 Neo, even though the system is supposed to release by mid next year, and not as much PS VR as you might expect. So yeah... meh. Sony showed some good stuff, but some games could have used more shown and this was a AAA-games-only conference, unfortunately. It was okay but not one of Sony's best conferences.
As for Microsoft, I've been watching their show while writing this. It's a solid show, and I really like the new PC push, to have the first-party titles also release on PC with cross-save, some cross-platform multiplayer, and more. MS's PC support has been poor ever since they moved over to Xbox, so here's hoping this time they actually care... we'll see. MS showed a lot of games. Recore looks like it's actually a third-person action game... huh. Could be okay I guess? I'd need to see more, the trailer is short. They also cover Minecraft, showing cross-platform multiplayer between an iPad and a Surface... and also John Carmack on an Oculus. Yes, Carmack is here, playing Minecraft. Huh. I would not have guessed that. Amusing stuff. The custom Xbox One controller thing sounds pretty cool too, that'd be great. Inside, the new game from the developers of Limbo, could be good as well, if it's as good as the first one.
They also have an indie roll, which is welcome to see given Sony didn't bother. Most of the games I'd like most in these conferences are probably in this indie roll -- it includes Yooka-Laylee, among others. MS also had on-stage Final Fantasy XV and Tekken 7 demos, for some Japanese games. Akuma is in Tekken 7, though Tekken v. Street Fighter is still dead apparently. I don't like Tekken, though, so whatever. Dead Rising 4 is shown too. If you are going to do that super overdone zombies thing, at least make it ridiculous like this, instead of the far too serious Days Gone. Scalebound is at the MS conference as well. It's about a guy and his dragon, third-person fantasy action game. It could be like fun stuff, though the protagonist is annoyingly cocky. The game has great graphics, but the gameplay looks pretty average. Maybe it'll be better than it looks here, though? It is a Mikami game, but... we'll see. Forza Horizon 3 was also announced, with a Australian setting this time. I don't care for those games though, they're a bit too simmish... sure, Horizon is less simmish than Forza, but it's still a bit tricky to drive, you spin out somewhat easily.
And from Rare, they show Sea of Thieves, Rare's first-person pirate-themed online game. The art design is fantastic, really nice cartoony stuff. The game looks great visually A third-person view option would be good, it'd be nice to be able to see your characters. As for the game though, it's an online game/MMO for sure. The gameplay video has some teams of people, and they sound like real people and not the ridiculous scripted "game speak" of Ubisoft conferences, which is cool. You and your team run a pirate ship, exploring around, fighting other players, and such. I doubt it's a game I'd play a lot of, but you never know? I do like fantasy pirate settings, they're of ten great fun stuff. The online MMO team focused element, though, that's never been a thing I've liked. But who knows. MS also showed State of Decay 2, which is a sequel to some kind of post-apocalyptic zombie game I don't recall ever hearing about before. Seriously, aren't there enough zombie games? This has some good press apparently, but still. MS showed Titanfall 2 as well, though it's multiplatform now. Halo Wars 2 interests me much more, though -- this is a sequel to that Xbox 360-exclusive RTS Halo Wars, this time developed by The Creative Assembly instead of now-dead Ensemble. It's nice to see another one of these, but seriously, RTSes are better on PC, not console. This game will be on PC as well thankfully, but will it be hamstrung by having to work on console as well, as some games are?
And unlike Sony, MS did at least show a LITTLE bit of what they're thinking about for their next console. The next system, codenamed "Scorpio", is actually mentioned! They mention the 6 teraflop power, they show some circuit boards, talk about how it'll have 4k gaming support -- this is what all that power is for, 4K and VR first. It's a good video talking about the more powerful system they'll be releasing, and why they're releasing a new system so soon. Todd Howard says that Fallout 4 VR will be on the system with "the framerate and resolution we expect". Huh. They also say that games will also work on the original Xbox One, though, so will games be able to make full use of its significantly greater additional power? I have to imagine they eventually will, but at the conference they say things will be dual-compatible. They don't show the box, but there is an outlined shadow of a probably-large box, the opposite of the small (and $299) new Xbox One S. [After the conference, we learned that the S will be $299 only for the 500GB model, while 1TB will be $349 and 2TB will be limited-release and $399. And those custom-color-and-word controllers will be $80 to $90. So yeah, they didn't mention negatives like these at the show.]
Overall, right now I'd say MS had the best conference this year, followed by Ubisoft, with the others trailing. Microsoft's conference was good, probably their best so far that I've seen. And after seeing MS actually talk about "Scorpio", Sony still said absolutely nothing about the PS Neo, disappointingly. Nintendo of course has promised to also say nothing about their system releasing next year. And on that note, it is interesting to see how short this generation has turned out to be, before everyone releases more powerful hardware... sure, for now they're saying games will be backwards compatible and that is good, you're heading towards a more PC-like future for consoles here, and this will make things confusing in the future, once you have to say "games work on the third model but not the fourth" or what have you, but isn't that harder with the new "we don't put full new numbers on each system" world? I know it works for Apple, but Apple doesn't actually care about games.
But anyway, it's been an interesting conference so far. MS showing some details of the Scorpio pushes them on the top so far, but I'm really missing Nintendo; their choice to not show much here at E3, so far as we know, is disappointing. Not saying anything about a console coming so soon is a somewhat odd choice. It shows that either they think that the NX won't match up to the Scorpio and PS VR and such and they're still changing things about it, or they just don't think E3 means as much as it used to and want to show it later when no one else is getting attention... but they'd get more now than later, I think, so it does make me wonder if something isn't ready. Of course this applies to Sony as well, but at least they said a bit about the PSVR here, another piece of hardware releasing later this year. So yeah, I really hope that Zelda is great, both because it's Nintendo's main focus, and because I really love that series. (I will say, though, I'm not convinced that it'll have a playable female character. I'd love for that to be true, but Nintendo has been so tone-deaf or backwards on gender issues far too many times before for me to believe that they'd do this until I actually see it. So I'll hope for it, but won't really expect it. And of course I really hope the game is great and recognizably Zelda in key ways, and not just some Zelda open-world game...
This has been a very interesting development. Microsoft technically has had two "platforms" for a while now, considering Windows as it's own platform. They've got nothing to lose with a step like this. For some background, Microsoft is shrinking down their OSes to a single universal platform. Windows 10 will simply be Windows 10 everywhere, functioning exactly the same (though with a few system settings customized for certain configurations). Windows 10 on PCs, Windows phones, and Surface tablets is already the same. Now, their game console will simply run Windows 10. One configuration difference is that the "Start Screen" (Metro interface) will be turned on by default on XBox, phones, and certain tablet setups (this is the same start screen you can turn on through a setting on the PC, which they have wisely turned off by default in that version).
This also means any and all software made for their Windows Store interpreter will run on anything that can run Windows 10, so long as the hardware specs are up to snuff. Basically, if it's made for that Windows 10 platform, it isn't designed for the hardware but an interpretation layer which then translates the program's instructions to something the processor can understand, so it won't matter if it's x86 or RISC. That said, the XBox One is already an x86 platform, so there's little need for much overhead. There have been some issues with limitations MS is putting on that universal platform, and those are worth complaining about, but the overall idea is a very good one. So, we're at a point where MS is going to go ahead and open the gates so all existing XBox One games run on PCs. They've made a very powerful emulator for 360 games as well, so that's getting ported over too. Who knows, they might even go ahead and set up a better emulator for original XBox games and get all 3 systems fully functioning on the PC.
I do have one major question. I often buy disc games, for a number of reasons, and I want to know if I can insert those discs into my PC and play them that way. At the moment, my PC's Bluray drive tells me nothing's been inserted when I stick an XBox One game in there, but I am not sure if that's a fundamental hardware issue or a software issue MS could easily fix with an update.
That question aside, there's another concern. If MS goes this route, many people would be able to simply use their XBox One AS their PC. I know for a fact it's tempting to me as my current PC is long overdue for an upgrade (the latest Doom is playable only in the barest technical sense). However, I need to be able to install and adjust anything I like. Will MS turn off the software lock so that I can "sideload" whatever applications I want onto the system? Can I install Steam and Good Old Games Galaxy on it and get my whole library ported over and fully functional? I do know that the Microsoft Store is going to host a little application called "XDOSBox", which means at least all my DOS games should be playable, but I'm talking about the rest of my games here. It'd be a major win for MS if they did that.
If not though, they just made enthusiast PC gamers very happy anyway, because they now have no reason at all to buy an XBox console ever again. I myself, even as an avid console gamer and collector, don't see myself bothering with buying an XBox when I can save the money for a major PC upgrade. Again, this doesn't hurt MS. They win either way because Windows 10 is their platform either way. I'm just saying that even as a collector I wouldn't see the point.
In fact, if they truly open up their platform on the console side, they just justified their rapid upgrade cycle for the system. It's still a bad idea for the PS4, but it would actually make sense for the XBox-as-a-PC positioning they are attempting.
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