Unfortunately for us all, summer is almost halfway over. But I, at least, will not be complaining for a while yet. Tomorrow, I'm going on yet another trip, this time to a rather large lake in the middle of the province, to do some good old fashion....house boating. I did it last year with some friends and it was quite a lot of fun. I can't wait to get out there again, there are definitely some good times to be had.
This is going to be a short post, cuz I don't have much more to say than that I'm leaving and won't be back for a little while. Don't expect to hear from me for about a week or so :P
I do, however, really want to see the Simpsons movie. So if some of you (people I know who read this regularly; you know who you are) still haven't seen it by the time I get back, maybe we can get together and have some happy Homer times. It's going to be such an awesome movie. It's already got a 9.0 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database (practically unheard of) and ranks among IMDb's top 100 movies of all time. Simply put, it's going to knock your soxorz off.
Ah, the new Harry Potter book. Yes, I have it. No, I have not begun reading it. Why? Because I'm currently 300 some odd pages into a 900 page book which if put on hold now, I'll never remember what was going on in the plot. So I'm just going to have to finish that before I get around to reading The Deathly Hallows. Plus, my brother is reading my copy right now, so I couldn't read it even if I wanted to.
E3 afterthoughts: Resident Evil 5 is going to be awesome. Check out the extended E3 trailer here. LINKY! It's the first video on that page. Click on "High-res" or "Low-res" under "Watch it now". To see a ton of really cool games that were demoed at E3, go to this page, and click on any of the videos there. You can click on the days (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday) to see approx. 20 minute demos of tons of games from every day of E3. You can even watch M-soft's press conference on Tuesday and Nintendo and Sony's on Wednesday. Pretty nifty, despite how much Gamespot pisses me off.
Alright, that's all for now, and remember, I'll see y'all in about a week or so. Till then, I'm...
I'm sure most of you know (or at least have heard of) this special annual event called the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3 for short). Well, in case you need reminding, it's a huge convention held every year to promote electronics (mostly just videogames). Over the years, this event grew to become one of the largest conventions ever, but last year, the industry decided it was just getting too chaotic. They had to scale it down. This was because just about anyone who wanted to could get into E3, regardless of your (lack of) position within the gaming industry. In fact, over 60 000 people went to E3 in 2006. This made for long lines and desperate journalists running around the convention centre trying to see everything and do their job within 3 short days.So E3, as we know it, was completely remade.
For 2007, the expo was scaled back to less than a quarter of its original size, with only about 5000 people admitted to the show. This was somewhat controversial for the industry, gamers, and journalists alike, but I'm not going to go into that because that's not the reason I made this blog post. The point of this post is to give a little insight into the 3 major companies' presentations at E3 2007.I'll start off with mah favourite :)
NINTENDO: "Nowa, da people, they thinka we cool"
Ah, Nintendo. My long time favourite video game developer and publisher. What has become of you? Has this sudden, world-wide attention gone to your head?I have to say, the Nintendo press conference was a little disappointing. They focused so much on the new "mainstream demographic" that they practically forgot about the traditional hardcore gamer. See, there are are casual gamers (not "real" gamers that only play video games once in a while) and there are hardcore gamers ("real" gamers that are love games and are devoted to playing them regularly; THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE LOSERS DAMMIT!). Nintendo's focus with the Wii is to bring everyone together, both gamers and nongamers, but recently Nintenso seems to be alienating its loyal fan base in favour of the greater majority of the "casual" or "mainstream" crowd.
This pisses me off. I am what you would call a hardcore gamer. I love games, they are my passion. I know that sounds lame, but some people like music, some people like art, some people like animals. I like games. They are, in their own way, a very unique art form. No other medium allows you to interact at such a level of immersion as video games do. They let you do things you would never dream of in real life, and see things you will never have the honour to truly experience. A good game can take you places you could never have imagined, but note, I said good games. These silly, mainstream, "easy to pick up and play" games are good in small doses, but Nintendo needs to realize that they cannot continue to rely on these alone. I love Nintendo, and most of its franchises: Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc. and THESE are the games that keep the hardcore crowd satisfied. These are REAL video games. I understand, that games such as Wii Fit are great money makers, but I sincerely hope that they will never drown out the good games, the REAL games.When I say I was disappointed by Nintendo's conference, I say so because the only major games announced were of the Wii Sports variety. I know there are some amazing games on the way, (Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, SSBB), but what comes after that? I hope Nintendo has something up its sleeve, because it can't afford to give up its hardcore fan base. Without that, Nintendo just isn't Nintendo.
Final note: I want to make it clear that there are some really good games coming from Nintendo this year, and one hardcore announcement was made: Mario Kart Wii will be coming in early '08, and that's going to please a lot of Kart fans, myself included. Another thing I want to mention is my hope that third party developers will start making some quality games for the Wii, so we can enjoy some games that weren't made by Nintendo. I think that would really help the system thrive and become a well rounded game console.Finally, the Nintendo DS was not given too much lovin' this E3, apart from Phantom Hourglass, so I hope to see some cool new stuff in the months to come.
MICROSOFT: "We like money"
Good ol' M$. Yup, Microsoft came to E3, and...it wasn't much more impressive than Nintendo, frankly. The majority of announcements included titles such as Scene It! (the board/DVD game, now for your Xbox!) and Viva Pinata: Party Animals (a Mario Party ripoff, without the well known characters). You can't really blame them though; most of MS's big titles have already been announced: Halo 3, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Too Human, Alan Wake, and the rest. The most exciting part of Microsoft's press conference was probably the spectacular Resident Evil 5 trailer, which really got me shaking in those hypothetical booties. Seriously, check it out. (Not an Xbox exclusive, mind you)
What else was special about Microsoft at E3? Not much really. As I said before, there were very few interesting announcements, and aside from a few neat trailers and demonstrations (Assassin's Creed) Microsoft's presentation was a little bland. Halo 3 was pretty much a no show, with only a measly single player trailer and some retarded real life promotional video. Oh, and the announcement of an ugly camo green Halo 3 Xbox 360 (big whoop). Don't get me wrong, though, Microsoft has some great stuff on the way, and I will likely be broke by the end of the holiday season due to all its great games, its just that I didn't think their E3 presentation was particularly strong. I'm sure if I actually got to go to the show and play some of the games, I would be completely impressed, but its all stuff I've pretty much seen before, you know? No big announcements. Nothing completely mind blowing. They could've had a big Halo 3 demonstration, or Peter Molyneux (I dunno how to spell) up on stage showing off Fable 2. But they didn't. Just a lot of talk, not a lot of bang.
SONY: "We are verrry innovative."
Sony is probably my least favourite of the Big 3. I don't have a PS3 or a PSP (I sold it; not enough good games), and I've used my PS2...twice, I think. But considering all this, Sony had an all right show from my point of view. They really showed off a lot of games and made a few interesting announcements. They really showed a lot of games. Game after game after game after game. I was actually pretty impressed with their PSP line-up and like the new slimmed down version of the PSP. It's not nearly as big a change as DS phat was to DS lite, but its pretty cool nonetheless (I might actually get one, now that there's some cool games for PSP).
I liked how they used "Home" during the conference to show off some of their games. Very nice. If you haven't heard of Home, its a game-type-program being released for free on the Playstation Network that allows you to create a virtual version of yourself and plop him (or her) down into a virtual world where you can customize him and communicate with other PS3 users. You get your own apartments and houses and are able to start up real games with people you meet in "Home" right within the interface. It's a pretty cool feature, especially considering its a free download.
Unfortunately, there wasn't any information on Lair, a really cool motion sensing dragon riding game developed by the makers of the Rogue Squadron games for GameCube. This game looks super cool, and will be the reason I get a PS3, if I ever do (along with Bluray).
Keep in mind that the main reason I sound so positive about Sony is probably because I didn't expect much from them and they went beyond my expectations, whereas I expected more from Nintendo and Microsoft, and therefore wasn't quite satisfied. I am, however looking forward to some great games on all three major systems, (as well as the handhelds).
NOTABLE GAMES:
Wii Fit- This is going to be HUGE. The press is going to eat this one up and Nintendo is going to make millions from it. And there is definitely some potential in that new "Wii balance board" (snowboarding game, anyone?)
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption- AWESOME game. I can't wait to play what is supposedly going to be the best controlling first person game on any console. And the graphics and art are really nice, especially for Wii.Resident Evil 5- This trailer is HOT. Check it out.
Halo 3- Even though it was hardly mentioned, I am still totally psyched (is that right?) for this game. Say Halo to my little friend :)
Assassin's Creed- I really want to try this game out. Look it up if you don't know much about it, because it looks really cool.
GAME OF THE SHOW:
Super Mario Galaxy- This game is going to be F#@%ING SWEET!!!11!!1 Spectacular physics, awesome graphics and effects, a brilliant concept, and the first real successor to the renowned Super Mario 64. This one is going to blow you away.
WHERE WERE YOU?:
-Super Smash Bros. Brawl -Halo 3 -Spore -Lair
BEST MOMENT: Chewbacca walking on the stage to announce the kickass ceramic white PSP with an image of Darth Vader printed on the back. Hey, who doesn't love Chewie?
Check out this awesome Weird Al Yankovic Song I just found on YouTube. I can't believe I've never heard it before; it's so hardcore! Consider it part 2 of my Canada Day blog (I know it was over a week ago, but w/e, deal with it. The music has been put to a series of video clips taken from Bob and Doug Mackenzie, which makes it even better. So enjoy, ya hosers!
On another note, today is Chase's Birthday, so y'all wish him a sweet sixteen! I'm sure he's very excited about getting his Learner's :P Congratz, dumbass! XD You better invite a bunch of people over for some seriously hardcore Halo playin' (at which I will inevitably pwn your sorry asses). That'd be kickass (such a cool word).
I just got back from a weekend camping trip today, and tomorrow I'm leaving with my nieces and sister-in-law on a road trip across the country (well, almost half of it anyway) So you might not hear from me for a week or so. I'll try to get to a computer and check up on you guys though, so don't feel too neglected. I'll see you when I get back; I know you'll all be holding your breath.
I don't think I have much more to say, so I better quit before I get too incoherent. Oh noez, it's already happening. BLARGH
That's right folks, July 1st is Canada Day. Makes more sense than July 4th, eh? That's right, I'm talking to YOU, America. Anyway, I thought I'd make an acknowledgment of this lovely day, before it ends (which is in 20 minutes, as of this writing). So...um, yeah. It's Canada Day.
This is my blog: the Lair of Funk. Consider yourself fortunate; you have stumbled upon the single greatest page on the internet. Proceed with caution, as the following entries may just blow your mind.
If you are visiting this site, you probably already know me, but if you're more one of those random stalker types, I'll tell you a little about myself.
My real name is Cole, I'm eighteen years old and am in Grade 12. I spend my time hangin' with mah homies, jammin' on my sweet SG, playing (good) video games, and just being generally awesome.
