www.godsavethepress.com coming soon...

I just bought a new URL for www.godsavethepress.com. unbelievably it wasn't taken already so I bought it while I could. I'll continue to blog here for now, but as soon as the website is up and running I'm going to redirect my blog onto the website.
Both my blogs will be moved when the site launches.
More information closer to the web site's launch.

Activision dumps anticipated games

The Activision/Vivendi merger has been all over the gaming news for a while now, but Activision has recently announced that it will be dropping two highly anticipated Vivendi games as the publisher, leaving them in limbo.
Brutal Legends, the new Tim Schafer game (of Phychonauts, Monkey Island and Grim Fandango fame) and the new Ghostbusters game have both been dropped by Activision. As a result neither games have a publisher. This doesn't make them cancelled, but it also means their future is a might foggy.
I am not too worried about either game, since they both have enough hype behind them I think it would be unreasonable to not assume another publisher will be eager to jump on board.
Also the new 50 Cent: Blood in the sand has been dropped by Activision. While we are all hoping for a new publisher to pick up Brutal Legends and Ghostbusters, lets hope for the opposite for 50 cent.

Nintendo embaces 2D with new Wario game on Wii

being a gamer who has been around since the 2D sprite days of the 8-bit generation (NES and Master System), I've always been a fan of well done sprite games and think they can still have a place with modern photo-realistic games of today. The best examples of this would be games like Odin Sphere.
When Nintendo announced a new Wario game for the Wii I had visions of the Wario World game from the Gamecube in my head, and lost interest. If it has Wario's name in the title it better be followed by "ware" to keep me interested for long.
However, then I saw the in-game at E3. What is this? A fully 2D sprite game on the Wii? And it's not even a Wii Ware title? It's a full game!
Now my disinterest has seen a full 360. It has some big, beautifully animated sprites. This is the kind of thing we see all the time on the DS but rarely on the consoles.
The visual style looks great, lets hope the gameplay follows suit.

Wii still has no real storage expansion

E3 was something of a flop for a lot of gamers this year, which may be a testament to how little weight it carries now with the smaller design, but more importantly, Nintendo has, yet again, now given Wii owners a feasible storage alternative.
For almost two years now Wii owners have been crying out in wanting of a way to store all their Virtual Console and now Wii Ware games without having to fumble with constantly transferring files back and forth between SD cards and the internal memory.
Given that the Wii currently has only 512 MB of space - roughly 1/40 the space on the smallest model of Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 - i believe it is justified for gamers to want more.
Yes, games you download can be re-downloaded for free an unlimited number of time. Yes, you can back them up on an SD card. The point is we shouldn't have to re-download something again and again and why is it we can't simply boot a game straight off our SD cards? Isn't this something that could be fixed with a simple firmware update?
frankly, I would be happy just to be able to boot off an SD card. having an extra 2GB would still be better. But this subject has been done to death.
Ign.com asked about it at E3.
"There isn't anything that we can announce today, but we have been thinking along a variety of different lines regarding this matter for some time now," said Shigeru Miyamoto told ign.com, "So my hope is that sometime in the not too distant future we will be able to discuss some concrete solutions."
What is beyond me is that it seems like an open-and-shut case. give us a USB Hard drive. Let us boot off an SD card.
piracy is likely one of the reasons Nintendo is being so cautious with the Wii already prone to being hacked by mod chips and the DS losing software sales due to flashcard devices. However they can not ignore the obvious storage problem. They already solved the online chat issue with the Wii Speak public mic device, lets hope we get an answer about this as well, sooner rather than later.

E3 2008 Part 3: Sony

Sony spent the week showing some solid new installments in its core franchises but had little new to bring forward.
E3 is over and Sony has ended up being one of the three that I ended up the least interested in, even though I own both a PS3 and PSP. That's right, Microsoft caught my eye more even though I have no Xbox to speak of. Of course Microsoft also caught my eye for all the wrong reasons.
But I digress, this post is about Sony. While the showing from Sony wasn't really disappointing as a whole, it just seemed to be a lot of stuff that we all already knew about. Killzone looks incredible, but shooters tend not to excite me. The same can be said of Resistance 2 and the surprising PSP edition of Resistance.
There was God of War "shown", and by shown I mean we got to see a prerendered clip featuring Kratos. However, go ahead and burn me alive on a steak for it, but God of War never really appealed to me. To me it was always "Zelda for jocks", even if that's wrong of me to say.
I still haven't jumped on the LittleBig Planet bandwagon yet, since I still don't know what the hell it is, no mater how many articles I read or videos I watch. Does it have any premade levels? Is it just a platformer that I get to build? from what i understand it is a side-scroller with 100% user made content. A cool idea, but i will see how far the idea really flys. Either way, it will be very original and should be a highlight of the Playstation 3 library.
one new Playstation Network game that looks very cool is FLOWer, a game that seems to have you blow around flower petals to create unique music. Looks like a great game to wind-down with. And frankly, the PSN really needs more content.
Unfortunately a lot of Sony's big titles were already showcased at Microsoft's show, like Fallout 3, resident Evil 5 and the bombshell that was Final Fantasy XIII being released on both systems.
Other highlights were the news of both Locoroco and Patapon getting second games. this is good news because my PSP has been gathering dust for the short while I have owned it. Those mixed with the announcement of the Star ocean games coming to North America in the coming months will give me something to do.
One interesting piece of news was the new Ratchet chapter exclusively for the Playstation Network that was quoted as being "a movie length ratchet game". It looks like it will be of the same high graphic quality as Ratchet & Clank Future, which would explain why the downloadable game will only be a couple of hours long. It is supposed to answer some questions left open by the end of R&C Future. It leave one to question if we will see another full-length Ratchet game on the Playstation 3 or if these mini chapters will fill in the gaps from now on. An interesting idea, at least.
Sony still has a big obstacle to pass if they want the Playstation 3 to take the number one spot like it has for the past two generations and that road is paved in exclusive titles. Wii has it own set of games unlike any other. Microsoft has a library of its own games that range from shooters like Gears of War to epics like Lost Oddessy. Playstation 3 is going to have to prove to developers that it can move hardware and make it worth while to make games Playstation 3 exclusive which would in turn entice gamers to pick up a Playstation 3. It's going to take more than Gran Turismo, Metal Gear and LittleBig Planet. Losing Final Fantasy XIII will hurt Playstaion 3 in the long run for the RPG crowd as well, since the biggest RPG of this generation will be multi platform and most others are Xbox exclusive so far (Lost Oddessy, Mass Effect & Star Ocean come to mind).
here's hoping Final Fantasy Versus XIII remains a Playstation only game, for their sakes.

E3 2008 Part 2: Nintendo

Nintendo's show is one that was shrouded in rumor and hearsay, everyone seemed to be expecting big things from them this year, but it looks like Nintendo played it safe with some interesting new devices announced, but little else we didn't already know about.
Those that know me know that I have been a big supporter of Nintendo for as long as I played videogames. So I tend to look forward to the Nintendo conference more than any other. In the end i was not disappointed so much as I felt the show was a bit too dry. Then again the show really wasn't meant for me, it was meant for intriguing the casual crowd and shareholders.
The show opened up with a bit about the new Wii balance board, a device that can sense a subtle shift in the players weight to do some genuinely great stuff, but thus far there hasn't been any games to use the device that really interests me.
In typical Nintendo fashion, they introduced this years pseudo-celebrity to push a new game. this year it was Snowboarding Gold medalist, Shaun White, for the new snowboading game for the Wii baring his name, much like the popular Tony hawk Skateboading games and adequately popular Dave Merra BMX.
It was a nice show, for what it was, but still didn't do much for the hardcore gamers. Skipping ahead we saw all the things we expect from a Nintendo show, most of which are just slide-show sales figures that show just how well the Wii is doing followed by President Iwata's speech on innovation.
One part that kind of caught my eye was more info (ie: actual in game footage) on the new Animal Crossing (City Folk). Along side it we also saw the new voice chat alternative for the Wii, simply called Wii Speak. A device that will be placed on or under the TV and allow for "group chat", meaning everyone in the room will be able to talk to the person/people you're playing online with, rather than having a personal headset.
Given Nintendo's emphasis on having people play together in the same room over online play it makes sense they would use a device like this so that everyone can get in on the game, even if they're not necessarily playing it. Also, it is safe to assume that most (or all) games that use Wii Speak will likely require friend codes to be able to actually talk to each other (like almost any DS game to use the headset).
The other device that Nintendo showed at E3 this year was the new Wii Motion Plus, an accessory that will snap onto the end of the Wii remote (where the nunchuck or classic controller normally connects) and allow for true 1:1 control where the Wii remote will be able to exactly mimic your arm and hand motions in real time.
Along with it they showed the game that will be bundled with the device, Wii Sports Resort. It seems the new Wii sports will have a handful of new minigames based around the beach that include Frisbee, a wave race-like Jet ski game and a sword dueling game, each showing how the 1:1 motion can be used to improve gameplay.
While that was all very cool to see in motion, I have only one complaint about the whole thing. Didn't Nintendo tell us that the Wii remote could already do 1:1 motion two years ago? Now they're telling us we have to go spend another $20+ to get our remote to do what it was designed to do? Will they release a new Wii remote v. 2.0 with the technology built in, or do we need to use the device and make our remotes just a little bulkier? If they don't make a whole new remote will the Motion Plus at least come packaged with remotes in the future as well as coming solo? if we do have to buy them separately, that means the full Wii controller setup will cost upwards of $85-$100 for each controller.
Anyway, all that aside, the new Wii Music game looks like it could be fun, as long as the game doesn't just auto-play itself with you only selecting the tempo and there still is no answer to the Wiis storage dilemma, but overall a decent showing, just not a whole lot to really get me too excited yet. But the week isn't over yet.

The joke trailer to end all joke trailers

Behold, the epically hilarious new Duke Nukem trilogy teaser for the Nintendo DS.
I think it speaks for itself.

E3 2008 Part 1: Microsoft

So the conferences of the big three (Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony) of E3 are over, how was the first few days?
Microsoft was up first and was certainly the most eventful of the three. Maybe that makes it the best of the three, as they were all pretty lack-luster. But Microsoft's show was certainly the most entertaining (ie: outrageous).
First up, it was clear that Microsoft has noticed the Wii. For starters, they're taking on a very Wii-like marketing campaign in that they intend to try to grab some of the casual audience, but they also don't want to loosen their grip on the Hardcore crowd (ie: Halo fans/Gramers). It makes it look, from my point of view, as though Microsoft doesn't have a wholly focused marketing plan with the Xbox 360, since they can't decide which audience to target. Sony clearly is going for the hardcore crowd while Nintendo is attempting (and seemingly succeeding) to be the "everyman" platform.
The Microsft conference went from mature titles like Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2 to kid friendly stuff like the new Viva Pinata and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts to more casual stuff like "Lips" (ie: Singstar/Karaoke Revolution) and the "new" avatars and Chanel designed menus.
They even went as far as to show us a video on the painstaking creative process behind coming up with the innovative new Avatars, stylized, cartoony characters that look like you (or whoever you want them to) that will be integrated into games in the future (like 1 Vs. 100). It truly must have been quite a feat to come up with such an idea and to bring it into the game play really does bring a new level of immersion to the game. Or at least it did two years ago when Nintendo introduced us to the Miis.
I don't think I'm alone when I say that the Xbox's Avatars are clearly an "appropriation" of Ninteno's Miis, even when I saw the game play of 1 Vs. 100 I had to remind myself that those were not Miis making up the crowd, like so many rounds of Mario Kart Wii, but in fact Avatars.
But maybe I am being too hard on Microsoft. After all, Sony didn't get hit so hard by criticism with the customizable avatar you create in the up-coming Playstation Home for the Playstation 3.
I think what really caught us on Microsoft was the fact the their Avatars look almost exactly like Miis, in how they are stylized, designed, and even the avatar building tool looks very much like the tool used to create Miis on the Nintendo Wii.
It seems as if Microsoft was put in a tight spot though. With Playstaion Home on its way these sorts of avatars seemed to be becoming a new industry standard. Microsoft would have to do something but it was a catch-22. If they made realistic avatars, they would be accused of copying the Playstation Home and if they were stylized they would be accused of copying Nintendo Miis. It just would have been nice had they made a more original interface to make it feel more unique than simply "xbox mii-60".
the other big moment, I suppose, was the announcement of Final Fantasy XIII being multi-platform and getting an Xbox 360 release along side the Playstation 3 in North America and Europe. I think this is not really a good thing or a bad thing.
Certainly it is a bad thing for business for Sony, since that was supposed to be the game to really propel Playstation 3 off store shelves. For gamers though, it is great news, since now all it really means to us is that more people will have access to it without having to go and spend $400+ on a new console.
It is just another one of Sony's lost opportunities, but hey, look at the bright side, Sony, at least you still have Final Fantasy Versus XIII... for now.
But let me end this rant with a positive. The new online party system seems like it could be very interesting. While I hate that Microsoft seems intent on keeping us from playing together in the same room and opting for online play, the fact that you and some friends can jump into a "photo party" and share pictures, videos and music in real time is pretty neat.
Although for watching movies with friends, I think I'd still rather just go to their place. That's just me though.

Thanks to ign.com for providing the images

Nintendo Wii gets a remote upgrade?

As of today Nintendo has announced that the Wii remote will soon be capable of true 1:1 control via a new remote add-on for better motion performance.
the add-on is called the Wii motion Plus and is simply a dongle that snaps on to the bottom of the remote where the nunchuck normally attaches. And I know what you`re thinking and we can all rest easy. Nintendo will be issuing a new wii jacket to fit the new device aswell.
Also the device seems to have an extra pass-though port at the bottom to attach a nunchuck.

The add on is said to increase the accuracy of the remote and give it a better sense of your hand and arm position in a 3D environment. Nintendo claims that this will give the Wii true 1:1 control for a more genuine and immersive experience.

Square releases iPod RPG

iTunes has shown that buying digital music an be fast and easy, but recently the idea of the iPod Touch and iPhone being legitimate gaming machines has become a more probable idea with games be produced for it like a special version of Spore.

little did anyone expect that the standard iPod would also be getting full, original games from RPG giant Square-enix.

Days ago Squenix posted an original tactical RPG on the heels of the latest DS game Final Fantasy Tactics A2. The new game was known as Song Summoner: the unsung hero, a Strategy RPG for the iPod Nano and iPod classic that could be downloaded from iTunes for $6.

The game boasts that it can generate unique soldiers based on your MP3 tracks for use in combat. The idea seems reminiscent of the Monster breeding sim game on the Playstation; Monster Rancher, which featured the ability to convert your CDs into monsters, generated from the CD data.

To take the idea even farther, Squenix also claims that listening to the song that spawned one of your soldiers will help to toughen them up even farther.

Sounds like a great idea, and for only $6 a bargain as well. Only time will tell if the game will become available for the new iPhone 3G and iPod Touch.

Thanks to Square-Enix for the images

Chrono Trigger DS - Preservation of a classic or corporate cop-out?

So just over a week ago the RPG behemoth, Square-Enix (whom I shall affectionately refer to as Squenix), launched a teaser site for the up-coming Chrono trigger DS in both Japanese and English.

The web page had almost no information only showing the clock with a familiar ticking sound from the title screen of Super Nintendo (SNES) classic, Chrono Trigger and "ctds" in the URL (which fans immediately deciphered as "Chrono Trigger DS"). Aside from that the only other bit of infor was the Nintendo DS logo on the left-had side of the page.

Fans were abuzz with whispers of the potential of a remake much like the new 3D reimaginated versions of Final fantasy III, from the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Final fantasy IV, another SNES classic, both remade on the Nintendo DS. Some even dared to dream that maybe we could be seeing the true third Chrono game on the DS - The second game being Chrono Cross, the Role-playing game (RPG) follow-up on the Playstation, which was based off the Japan-only Radical Dreamer.

Only days later Squenix relieved in a minimal press release that Chrono Trigger DS was on its way to both Japan and North America "winter 2008". the press release revealed that the game will feature new touch-based control, a new dungeon and unspecified wireless multiplayer. It also said the game's core would remain the same, which meant no updated 3D graphics for the DS version of Chrono Trigger. It would be the same as it ever was, only portable and with a few extras.

A couple of days passed and both a Japanese and English version of a trailer showing off some concept art and in-game confirmed that the game would, indeed, be a direct port of the SNES RPG, scaled down to fit onto the DS 3" display. No updated 3D graphics, no redrawn sprites, simply the same masterpiece we all played on the SNES and (the buggier) Playstation port in the Final Fantasy Chronicles collection on the Playstation.

Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Certainly it ensures that we get our grubby little hands on it sooner and Squenix is guaranteed to turn a profit, but is that really a good thing? Or is it a great thing?

Looking at the positives first. let me start out by saying that Chrono Trigger is still among my all time favorite games, RPG or otherwise. It was a beautiful example of sprite graphics, had one of the most original plots I can think of, one of the best combat systems I have yet to play and the best incentive to replay time and time again with a panthora of extra endings and the ability to restart with all your gear intact.

So what's so great about it? Well it is Chrono Trigger, which is great for the reasons I already explained. And as I get older, having games portable seems to become more and more of an asset. Also, having some extra content, namely the extra dungeon, is a nice add-on for long time fans.

But the real argument for it would be that it preserves the classic. believe it or not there are still the people who like classic 2D animated graphics. They fear that to update the game into 3D may hurt the classic feel of it.

But would that really be such a bad thing? Final Fantasy III on the DS saw a complete 3D remix, including new plot points to give the nameless heroes a bit of a back story and a more modern look. Even with all the modern updates the game still maintained its old school feel because it maintained the same "soul" of the classic, with the ramped up challenge level and classic turn-based combat.

The same is being done with Final Fantasy IV on the DS and in about 10-days time we will know for sure if it maintains the classic feel of the benchmark RPG.

So why is it that with the proven success of classic updates, why do people think that Chrono Trigger will fail as an update? Mostly it is likely because Chrono Trigger has become a game so revered by fans that to change the core of it in any way is considered a sin.

But what about the spirit of the remake itself? I feel it could really go one of two ways. First off let me say that the piles of fan petitions you will find online will not influence Squenix to make a true new Chrono game. We have to talk with our wallets. But with Chrono Trigger DS being a remake there is a certain risk to be had.

Yes, if Chrono trigger does well, it could very well show Squenix that Chrono still has legs and influence them to produce a new true Chrono game. But at the same time it could easily go another way. It may very well simply prove to them that remakes will net them easy money so we will simply end up with more ports and remakes. And the updated ports of Final Fantasy III and IV are one thing, but if a port shows a real profit it could mean even more under-produced SNES remakes that could be just as easliy done on the Gameboy Advance as the Nintendo DS.

However, like the rest of the hardcore horde i will be going out and putting my cash down on a copy of Chrono Trigger DS. I'll likely love it just as much as I ever have. So lets hope this means we see more original Chrono games in the future and no more under-powered remakes.

Thanks to www.rpgamer.com for providing the info on the Square-Enix press release and http://ds.ign.com for providing the Chrono Trigger DS logo and screen shots for Chrono Trigger DS, Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV.