this is gonna be a longish post, but i feel i need to get it all on the record.
i watched the whole conference live and didn't touch this thread again until it was over.. at that point i started reading, and finally i've caught up. It was very interesting to see the diverse reactions. Some people still expected holograms or something and they were disapointed, even furious... Others thought the graphics were meh, but were still impressed with the gameplay, and others were just blown away.
I fall into the third camp.
I was actually even blown away by the tennis game. I think the sports title is a genius idea because it DOESN'T use any of nintendo's characters. That's why it will appeal to non gamers. They aren't playing mario, they're just playing a generic tennis game. There are no real kiddy overtones, it's just a fun comedic, generic looking title.. PERFECT.
I'm glad to see that i was right about twilight princess. Nintendo would have been stupid not to leverage it as a real revolution game. It's an instant killer app right out of the gates. Sales will be absurd. I can't wait to see some good direct feed footage of it, because it's hard to judge graphics in these crappy conference feeds.
Mario looks next gen to me and it looks incredibly fun. I'm very intrigued by it.. My only disapointment with the conference was that it was not focused on. I wanted to see more of it and understand how it plays. It's the best looking game shown.
Red steel looked a little weak , but part of that was the motion artifacts caused by the compression of the feed. It looks 100 percent better in the IGN videos and the turning speed doesn't appear to be a problem there. the only awkward thing about it is how the hand animates... It tries to accomidate the players motions and sometimes it ends up looking unatural, it also doesn't follow the aiming cursor in real time, there is a slight delay. If you watch the videos closley you will see that the cursor is moving very snappy, but the hand can't keep up. The destructable environments are very cool and the textures are way beyond anything on cube.. This game also looks next gen to me and i think it looks as good in motion as it does in scans.
Metroid was a little bit samey. I expected a bigger jump from metroid, but the first one is my favorite game of all time so obviously i'm not gonna complain too much. Reading the fact sheet gives a sense that the game will have massive scale. I want to see direct feed footage of it. Red steel proved to look a lot better in direct feeds and metroid might be the same. I'm sure the gameplay is awesome.
Sonic looks amazing. It looks just as fun as the ps3/360 game to me, and i'm one of the few that really loves the way that one looks and sounds. There are some other third party titles that i'm intrigued by and i can't wait to find out how they play. Even crap games are intriguing on this system. It reminds me of when i first got my genesis and entered the 16 bit era. Everything was just insanley fun at first, simply due to the novelty of the new graphics and new franchises.
One thing clever about the marketing is that most of the people playing games in the videos are adults or at least older teens. It's a subtle way of shedding the kiddy image. Even the mario footage shows an adult couple lounging on the couch, having fun. The message is "you don't have to be a kid to enjoy Mario". I think it works.
Reggie was awesome. the whole structure of the conference was awesome.. and then the conference ends, and we start finding all these game announements on the press website. The paper mario game is amazing and then there is mention of a mysterious RE game?
Nobody will have as many FUN games on the showfloor this year. Graphics are awesome and all that, but crap like genji for ps3 can't compare to zelda, mario and metroid, no matter how much better it looks. Nintendo makes great games, and even if the graphics aren't up to par, it's tough to compete with them when they really bring it.
