Time flies. It’s been almost a month after the last post already. I know I should have written this earlier but I had some exams to pass. I passed every one of them by the way and only three remain in October but I have the whole summer to work on those, between some Mario Galaxy and Metroid.

You may have read the latest news on game announcements at E3 but let’s recap, just to make sure what we’re going to buy and why.

Microsoft

Probably the most embarrassing conference I’ve seen, even worse than that Nintendo conference from 2009. Let’s face it, Kinect (Natal’s new name) is just an improved Eye toy and what they showed was a more multimedia box than a gaming console. Movies, Facebook integration and sport events aren’t that interactive when it comes to actually play. And about Skittles, I’m sure that the little girl enjoyed that part as much as we didn’t. You’ll see my comic on this later. There’s at least a really good news in the release of a new 360 model, with built-in wi-fi and larger HDD.

EA

Nice stuff, really. I’ve got a couple of friends overly excited about Battlefield Vietnam just for the lack of Carl Gustav and seeing Dead Space 2 in action with more quick time events was really a bang. I’ve been re-playing Dead Space lately after EA’s big sale on steam and I perfectly recall the adrenaline i felt the first time a drag tentacle grabbed me.

Crysis 2 is nearing completion and it has been optimized for slower machines while faster machines will star in Need for Speed: Hot pursuit featuring multiplayer police car chase.

Ubisoft

Ubisoft presented a handful of very interesting games, starting with Child of Eden, from Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and ending with Rayman Origins, passing by Assassin’s creed brotherhood. They also showed a new non-video-game with plastic guns and laser sensors that allows you to battle in your living room or set up checkpoint runs. I don’t know if you have ever seen this but in the 90’s there was a game called “Laser combat” sold with 2 guns and 2 chest sensors. It’s pretty much the same, even in the look.

The most interesting product is probably the UBIart Framework: a new in-house development engine. I hope they release it as free someday, like the Unreal Engine or Quake Engine.

Nintendo

Everyone that wasn’t expecting anything big after the leaks in the months before E3 got terribly shocked. Nintendo threw on screen a huge number of games for both DS, Wii and the new 3DS, finally unveiled. Goldeneye, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kid Icarus Uprising, Zelda Skyward Sword, Kirby Epic Yarn, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and many more. I really can’t figure out precisely how much I’m going to spend within the next year.

My bad, I couldn’t see the Nintendo 3DS in action as you don’t get the 3d effect from videos but from what I’ve read it works like a window on another world. The black border around the screen helps to isolate the 3d image from the rest and your brain reads it independently. It sounds awkward but it’s possible if your eyes aren’t too close or too far from the screen and not tilted. With the amount of games revealed and awaiting us within the end of Nintendo’s financial year (March 2011) there’s no doubt they owned the show this year.

Sony

Sony’s motion control, named Move, is finally priced at $49.99 and supported by good games and not only tech demos, like Sorcery and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11. Media molecule’s Alex Evans unveiled a little more of Little Big Planet 2 and how it will be a platform for games and not just a platform game. I admire their intents but I feel that the LBP franchise would work way better on PC with external applications and a supportive community. Just look at how far Garry’s Mod made it.

The big bomb came with Gabe Newell, announcing that portal 2 will be released on PS3 too. I wonder what made him change his mind considering that coding forPS3 is actually time-consuming, despite his previous statements were jokes or not. Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 went on the screens again with Dead Space Extraction as bonus playable with the PlayStation Move. The conference ended with a disturbing clown in an ambulance promoting a new Twisted Metal game.

The worst part was Kevin Butler, charging up the crowd  and mocking the products of other companies like Sony invented everything in gaming since the creation of PlayStation. That’s not something you do in front of people who probably owns every console on the market.

Within a few days from the E3, Mario Galaxy in Europe, my exams and the 300th comic things are getting pretty tense. I’ll probably write down the usual E3 recap article in the next month but not much else until I pass my exams. Still, we can already talk a little about the E3 we’re going to attend on liveblogs.

A couple of days ago Valve announced that Portal 2 and his “surprise” wouldn’t be shown at E3 this year, for unknown reasons, and almost accidentally this picture of a folder in black leather gets leaked from somewhere on the internet. You judge by yourself.

We all know that Valve took almost 3 years now working on Episode 3, it will probably be the last game in the Half Life saga and the development team is taking his time to make sure everything’s perfect. I can’t recall perfectly but I once read on a “behind the scenes” book about HL2 Nemesix lent me that one of the developers (probably Gabe Newell himself) didn’t like how Half Life 2’s ending turned out. In fact Episode 1 and 2 both have better endings with proper bosses. Anyway, this looks the right time to me to reveal Episode 3 at last, after the Aperture Science reference in Episode 2 and the announced Portal 2, with no need for Left 4 Dead 3 or Team Fortress 3.

One last pic for the new piece of furniture I bought yesterday, along with the old Yoshi I had.

OMG, I have to turn that penguin into a reaction image for 4chan.

Literally, in italian it means spare time. It’s a funny expression and I don’t mind if you want to use it in english too. I’m writing this because I’m sorry. I’ve been a little absent in the last month due to the fact that I’m working on multiple projects for my exams and I didn’t have time to write a couple of news.

Probably the most important news from the last week is that Steam finally came to Mac. Oblviously the game library isn’t the same of the pc. Mac games are mainly indie games with only Portal and Civilisation IV from large companies. I’m really wondering if there’s marked for such a thing, considering that in the environment I work in 99% of the people use a Mac but none of them use it for gaming, except facebook and flash games in general.

Anyway, to celebrate and promote this step into steam integration with a new userbase Valve is giving away Portal for free until May 24th for both PC and Mac users. Team Fortress 2 will come later, probably after the Engineer update, to avoid fixing something on a platform and breaking something else on the other. Don’t look at me like that. We know how it goes everytime.

Almost siltently, TF2 got a lot of tweaks and updates recently. Adding four medals staing how far back in time your first frag (or death) goes, new community weapons and some important changes to the pyro. The flamethrower is now less effective in burning and more irritaing in airblasting enemies in the air and the Sledgehammer (it’s the Homewrecker’s filename and I like it better) guarantees the pyro a babysitter job for sentries. I’ll stick with the backburner like I always did, thanks. Now the Heavy is also faster when spinning the minigun and moving, the Sniper can nock the arrows while in the air and the bonk doesn’t slow down the Scout.Other unlockables are the Crit-a-Cola drink for scouts and the

Another free DLC comes from Futuremark Games as Shattered Horizon got the Firepower Pack, adding 4 new primary weapons, 2 secondary weapons, 3 grenades and a mining pick. The game now is way more various and unpredictable as some weapons also change the speed and aim of the players. The new grenades, again, can’t damage enemies but they can blind them, or fool with their radars. The only downside is that it greatly affected the performance on low-specs PCs but it has been mostly fixed.

The last freebie I’m giving you today is Mechwarrior 4, which got a completely free release two weeks ago from the Mektek servers along with the mektek 3.1 pack with extra mechs and weapons. Since Mechwarrior (MW5, it’s a reboot) is on hold this is the best we can have at the moment and trust me, this is really the best.

Super Street Fighter IV has been released a couple of weeks ago but I won’t be able to try it unless it comes to PC. Blame Capcom with me. I have a comic in my mind though.

Happy Easter everyone. I hope you liked your chocolate eggs as much as I liked my hen ones.

I recently played Castlevania Symphony of the Night on the PSX and that was really awesome. A bit difficult at first to get used because I only played the two GBA titles and they were a bit different but in the end it was a great game. I also finished BioShock 2 saving all the little sisters and despite the bitter ending it was a nice adventure as well.

Unfortunately this brings back something that a friend said to me some time ago. He wished he could erase his memory to play again the games he loved without knowing everything in advance. How I wish that could be possible! After I played Symphony of the Night it felt like I played a surrogate of Super Metroid, which I have played at least ten times. It would be great if it were possible to forget everything about a game to live again those plot twists you liked so much.

Sure, there are always rom hacks but in most cases they’re games that barely stand tall when it comes to playthrough or difficulty balance. That’s why we keep playing and we are worried when a new game is announced if it will live up to our expectations. In my opinion, today we can’t rely too much on reviews and gameplay trailers. The first are made by people who played a lot, and I mean really “a lot”, and they usually compare newest games to older experiences. This is useful when writing a review but in most cases comparing newer games to old classics of the same series results in lower, undeserved, scores. The second are made to lure players with quick cool clips that don’t do justice. How can we know if a game will give us the thrill we were waiting for? The only thing we can do, once again is talking with our friends, like we always did.

This afternoon I made a little gift for you, registered users. Isn’t it cute and soft? I mean the metroid.

Sorry for being late updating the blog. I had to study for a pre-exam these days ( i got 29/30 by the way) and I didn’t really have time to write this down. Now I’m at home for Easter vacations and I have time do a lot more things.

The biggest news that popped out on the net in the past days is probably the announcement of the Nintendo DS successor, codename 3DS. It has been stated that it will feature a 3d effect without the use of special glasses and it will be backwards compatible with all the DS games. It should be on sale within the current Nintendo financial year, ending April 2011. Well’ get more information at June’s E3.

As you can guess, it won’t be cheap so starting to save now could be a good choice. I already have about 150€ at hand but Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid Other M are also getting released this year, so…

Talking about Metroid Other M, yesterday a new gameplay trailer showed up on the official website. This finally shows some gameplay mechanics like the third/first person switch. It makes me laugh to watch a Wii gameplay trailer in HD though.

From what I’ve seen I can now state that Other M isn’t exactly Metroid as we mean it but it’ll make a good action game for sure. A flashback I got while watching the video came from Metal Slug 3, you know. Mold undergrounds, alien spaceships and giblets everywhere. I just re-played it and it’s really the best Metal Slug ever made so Other M can’t be too bad if it’s not far from it.

Last week I also changed the site header to a more fitting and visible font. It’s still temporary, as I’m looking for a similar font with better outlines. Feel free to suggest a Font if you know any good one.

The site has changed a lot recently, thanks to my Html and Css class and it has almost reached it’s final state. I’m planning to make the main color chosen by users using javascript but that’s just a futher step that will take a lot of time to be implemented.

EDIT: as I promised, this year’s birthday present group shot. I bought the new keyboard myself after I got the 4-port usb hub. Everything plugs into that one now. I also got a 4-piece wiimote set that couldn’t fit in the photo.