Microsoft @ E3 2012

E3 is well underway, and Microsoft is unveiling a multitude of a amazing games and products during the week.  So far, from what I've seen, Halo 4 is the big name that they're using to provide a current for the rest of the titles to flow through.  If you haven't checked it out yet, take a gander at the live-action trailer on Xbox Live; it gives you a sense of reality for the game that I hadn't yet had the opportunity to feel.

Though Halo 4 may have been the big hitter, as it were, South Park The Stick of Truth is truly impressive for any fans of the series.  You take control of the new kid and take part in an epic battle for South Park in the latest entry to this Comedy Central show.  This trailer is also up on Xbox Live, and it provides more than a few laughs and really gets you psyched for the game's release.

Resident Evil 6...that is all.  Nah, there's more that I have to say.  The trailer made the game look like an adrenaline filled Bond movie that's crossed swords with all of the Resident Evil games since the second iteration.  New and familiar characters clash and join up to take down Neo-Umbrella's plot.  during the game it looks like you make a mad dash throughout the world as you see scenes from all over.  It looks very different from the last few games, but in a good way, not in the ORC way.

What rounds out E3 for me this year is Borderlands 2.  In no way should this game be passed up for lovers of FPS games or RPGs.  It takes elements from both and mashes them up into something greater than the sum of it's parts.  Not only are there millions of gun adaptations to play with, but you'll take control of new characters while meeting old favorites on your journey.

That's what E3 felt like to me this year, a reuinion of familiar games with fans that are eager to get their hands on them, with a few new ones interjected at the correct intervals.  The convention's still not over yet so there's still time for some great new surprises too; keep your eyes open and on the coverage so you don't miss out!

Tutorials

I recently purchased and finished The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition and loved the game.  The entire thing was just a masterpiece in my mind.  Yes, the graphics were not PC quality, but I just feel like the game, and even it's predecessor, were designed to be played using a controller.  There were some menu sorting things that were unnecessarily hard with a controller, but that's nothing that ruins a game.  The one thing that made me balk at the title right from the beginning was the tutorial, and that's what I want to address today.

I can barely recall when this was complex.

Remember back in the NES era?  To learn how to play the game, your only resource was the manual or a friend.  Going into a game like Final Fantasy I without reading the manual was basically video game suicide.  You'd spend quite a lot of time trying to figure it out, and even then you'd oftentimes be stuck at certain points in the game.  Nowadays we don't have problems with games like this, but back in the days without Internet and with the video game industry really starting to get back on it's feet after the crash this game would have seemed entirely new and different.  A tutorial would have been helpful for those gamers new to the market and to RPGs.

This was such a brilliant game.

Advancing forward a few years to the SNES, game developers must have realized the need for tutorials as games became more and more complex.  Two of the tutorials that stuck with me, as the games are both two of my favorites from that system, are from Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy III.  In the former, the tutorial tries to integrate itself into the story as Toad tries to run ahead of Mario to the Mushroom Kingdom and ends up walking into some enemies that he needs help with.  The game essentially uses this as an excuse to have Toad explain to Mario how to attack and use items.  It seems primitive, but it works.  For Final Fantasy III, the developers left the entire tutorial as optional.  In the first town, Narshe, you can enter the house at the very entrance and talk to a bunch of wizened old men who tell you how to play.  The idea is that it's a learning center of sorts and there are some items and experience to be had inside.  If you don't enter the building you aren't penalized in any way and can just move on with the game.  I like that setup since the developers really tried to integrate the tutorial into the game, not slap it on like some post-it note afterthought or with a window that just says, "DO THIS."

Love the game, not the tutorial.

So finally, let's end with a much more recently developed game: The Witcher 2.  As I said, I didn't like the tutorial.  My biggest problem with the tutorial is that it makes you feel like you're going somewhere with the game, like it's the start, and then it just abruptly cuts out after you finish it.  You save some guy with a potion and fight in an arena, all the while thinking that you get all of the abilities you have and keep the items you earned, but that's just wishful thinking.  I don't like this style of tutorial.  I need the tutorial to do one of two things, either be seamless to the story, as in FFIII, or be part of thes story with pop-up windows if need be, like in Kingdoms of Amalur.

I didn't know that I was going to be awarding a winner at the end of this, but I decided that it sounded like a good idea.  I'm giving the Tutorial Award to FFIII.  It's seamlessly integrated into the game, gives you items and experience, and even allows you to skip it entirely without painstakingly forcing you to play along.  That's the best kind of tutorial.  Now only if developers could remember how to do things like that...

Diablo II Real Money Auction House

Remember when you were a kid and wished you could have a job where you played video games and did nothing else?  Well, that probably didn't happen unless you're working in that industry, but now you can get a piece of the action with Diablo III's auction house. 

The real money traded with this feature of the game will be a gamer's to keep.  So theoretically you can play this for 24 hours a day and make some kind of profit, which just boggles my mind.  Now unfortunately you don't really rake in the dough because it takes work to get the items that people want, and only rarer items will bring much in the way of profits, but the idea is phenomenal. 

What's the downside?  Well, none really, except that you can only trade on the auction house in your "home" region.  No trading globally in either of the other two regions that you can play in.  There's also no migrating items between regions, but that's not really a big deal.  Blizzard does charge some fees for putting your items up:

$1 off the to if an item sells
15% transaction fee on stackable items
15% if you move funds to a third-party service like Paypal (there's no charge if you put the funds into your Battle.net account but you can only get Blizzard services and items that way)

But who really cares?  You're making money playing a video game, and honestly, that's the bottom line for me.  Making money playing a video game.

Dungeon Hunter Alliance

I love the Vita boxes; they're so tiny.

First off, I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day weekend.  Secondly, I've said it before, but I'll say it again, buying an iPod Touch or an iPad and getting a game from the App Store does not make you a gamer.  If, however, one of those games is released onto a console with extra content added in, making it a real game in the eyes of the console world, then it's okay.  Sounds like it's just a sneaky way for me to be a hypocrite, but it's definitely not that.  It's a loophole...trust me.

Dungeon Hunter Alliance was developed for iDevices but was eventually ported to the PSN.  After that it was polished a bit more, with added Vita features, and slapped onto the PS Vita in cartridge form.  The idea of the game is that you're a king that was betrayed and now you're back to life trying to avenge your death and your kingdom.  It's a simple idea, and the story is pretty bland, but we're here more to talk about how the game plays rather than how awful and cliche the story is.



There's a lot of great loot in this game, and the Vita tracks the last "epic" loot you found, which is fun to see.



As soon as you get past the first section of dialogue, you're put right into the action.  Dungeon Hunter is a simple hack-n-slash RPG a la Diablo.  The formula is basic:  Kill enemies to get loot, use loot to kill enemies, and embark on quests to get more loot until the end of time.  There are three classes to choose from, Warrior, Rogue, and Mage, and each has a pretty large skill tree to level through.  There are auras, activated, and passive abilities that help you demolish your enemies.

4-person multi player is interesting to say the least.

There can be some slowdown when there are too many creatures on the screen and for whatever reason the standard melee attacks tend to miss if you aren't standing right in front of your target.  There are multiple equipment sets and multiple skill sets that you can create with an auto-equip function to keep you equipped with the best as you plow through the dungeons.

The Vita updates here are minimal: the touch screen controls your fairy power, the camera, and the menus.  Other than those few additions the only real new content included on this version is the multi player.  I haven't had a chance to experience it for myself as of yet, but from what I understand it flows pretty smoothly.  The main issue is that all four players are stuck on the same screen, which really hampers movement from one area to the next.

For what it's worth, this game is fun.  There are a few issues that occurred in it's transposing from the iDevice to the PS3 and finally to the Vita, but I can overlook those since I love the genre and can enjoy many aspects of it.  The main question is this, "Is it worth the $20 extra on the PS Vita from the $12.99 version on the PS3?"  I don't think that's something I can necessarily answer, having not played the PS3 version, but I think that portability alone is something that you need to pay for, and a portable Diablo-esque game is something that can't be passed up.

And this is different than Diablo II how?

Amid much speculation that Diablo III wouldn't be different than Diablo II, we find out that it actually isn't different at all; except that the weapons don't make sense, an online connection is required at all times, and there are new classes (but even those mirror the classes from Diablo II). 

Read the comments after the article, too.  People seem to have pretty mixed opinions, but the overall feeling is disappointment.