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by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh in Tokyo
Monday, 19 September 2005
Of course it took up a lot of space. It's for the Xbox. Har, har. Anyway, there was oddly little on show here -- a theme you might notice recurring at the Tokyo Game Show this year.
The attraction of the day was, of course, the 360: its games and controller. The pad was shaped poorly for my hands; although other people I was with thought it felt great, and to be sure the thing was solid and well-built (as are the original Xbox controllers) there was literally no way for a person with long, spindly fingers to hold the thing comfortably. My knuckles always rubbed against something, or there was a bulge where there shouldn't have been. Aside from that, it was hard to get excited over a screwed-up Controller-S after Nintendo's presentation on Friday. Some more research would have been warranted. Boring is okay, if you back it up with competence. The S was fine. One of my favorite pads ever, even. This ain't, quite.
The major games here were Gears of War, Ninety-Nine Nights, and Dead Rising. Of the three, the last one is probably the most interesting to talk about. After its poor showing on Thursday and Friday, it was revealed that Gears of War had only been running on the 360 hardware for a couple of weeks. In that light, its technical issues are forbidding more in how minimal they are than in how obvious they were earlier. Some other people I was with enjoyed the game. I guess they can do that. It does seem to learn from most of the high-profile action games released over the last couple of years -- at least in theory. Microsoft seems to be gearing this up as the 360's own Halo. Technically I guess it might fill the role. It's just, I get the same feeling from this game that I get from The Matrix. If you think that sounds great, then this is probably the game for you. And it's probably the game for a lot of people. It will sell millions of copies.
Ninety-Nine Nights probably won't sell quite that much -- not in the US, at least. Though actually, if the 360 does as well in Japan as most people are anticipating, maybe that will be its key market regardless. It is basically Dynasty Warriors, only with lots and lots and lots of pretty effects going on. What it does is demonstrate, in a way you can easily pick apart, the 360's special graphics capabilities.
Dead Rising, now, is a little different. Although on the surface it looks like a generic, and frankly kind of stupid, Western-developed project, this is an action horror game by Mega Man series producer Keiji Inafune. It's all done at Capcom Japan. Essentially, the game throws the player, in the role of a reporter, into the middle of a Dawn of the Dead-style situation in a shopping mall. The zombies are going to just keep coming; you can't get rid of them all. The idea is just to smash through them, using whatever you find (from baseball bats to frozen swordfish to a neverending supply of lettuce), to rescue whatever survivors you can and thereby piece together your newspaper story. I dismissed the game too early, just from what it looked like. Don't you make the same mistake!
Some other games were shown in one form or another, usually video. There was that new Sonic, which I reference in the Sega article; Rumble Roses XX is apparently really early, and the character models I commented on earlier will be substantially upgraded or altogether replaced by the final version -- so that's encouraging. Though I wonder why they chose to show it now.
You'd have thought Microsoft would have had more to say, what with the system's launch right around the corner. T-minus two months is not a time to keep your cards glued to your chest. Then, no one really had a lot to show this year -- despite it being touted as the biggest TGS ever.
by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh in Tokyo
Monday, 19 September 2005
Of course it took up a lot of space. It's for the Xbox. Har, har. Anyway, there was oddly little on show here -- a theme you might notice recurring at the Tokyo Game Show this year.
The attraction of the day was, of course, the 360: its games and controller. The pad was shaped poorly for my hands; although other people I was with thought it felt great, and to be sure the thing was solid and well-built (as are the original Xbox controllers) there was literally no way for a person with long, spindly fingers to hold the thing comfortably. My knuckles always rubbed against something, or there was a bulge where there shouldn't have been. Aside from that, it was hard to get excited over a screwed-up Controller-S after Nintendo's presentation on Friday. Some more research would have been warranted. Boring is okay, if you back it up with competence. The S was fine. One of my favorite pads ever, even. This ain't, quite.
The major games here were Gears of War, Ninety-Nine Nights, and Dead Rising. Of the three, the last one is probably the most interesting to talk about. After its poor showing on Thursday and Friday, it was revealed that Gears of War had only been running on the 360 hardware for a couple of weeks. In that light, its technical issues are forbidding more in how minimal they are than in how obvious they were earlier. Some other people I was with enjoyed the game. I guess they can do that. It does seem to learn from most of the high-profile action games released over the last couple of years -- at least in theory. Microsoft seems to be gearing this up as the 360's own Halo. Technically I guess it might fill the role. It's just, I get the same feeling from this game that I get from The Matrix. If you think that sounds great, then this is probably the game for you. And it's probably the game for a lot of people. It will sell millions of copies.
Ninety-Nine Nights probably won't sell quite that much -- not in the US, at least. Though actually, if the 360 does as well in Japan as most people are anticipating, maybe that will be its key market regardless. It is basically Dynasty Warriors, only with lots and lots and lots of pretty effects going on. What it does is demonstrate, in a way you can easily pick apart, the 360's special graphics capabilities.
Dead Rising, now, is a little different. Although on the surface it looks like a generic, and frankly kind of stupid, Western-developed project, this is an action horror game by Mega Man series producer Keiji Inafune. It's all done at Capcom Japan. Essentially, the game throws the player, in the role of a reporter, into the middle of a Dawn of the Dead-style situation in a shopping mall. The zombies are going to just keep coming; you can't get rid of them all. The idea is just to smash through them, using whatever you find (from baseball bats to frozen swordfish to a neverending supply of lettuce), to rescue whatever survivors you can and thereby piece together your newspaper story. I dismissed the game too early, just from what it looked like. Don't you make the same mistake!
Some other games were shown in one form or another, usually video. There was that new Sonic, which I reference in the Sega article; Rumble Roses XX is apparently really early, and the character models I commented on earlier will be substantially upgraded or altogether replaced by the final version -- so that's encouraging. Though I wonder why they chose to show it now.
You'd have thought Microsoft would have had more to say, what with the system's launch right around the corner. T-minus two months is not a time to keep your cards glued to your chest. Then, no one really had a lot to show this year -- despite it being touted as the biggest TGS ever.
Carry on...