I unlocked every character and stage in brawl today. I had some spare time lately between a sickness and a muscular inflammation (muscular? Me?!? Sounds like The Sword in the Stone’s Wart but whatever…) and I unlocked anything that could come in handy when playing with my friends, because this week my parents are away and we’ll have a brawl-fest for sure on Friday, after another week of work. Anyway, I noticed some nasty faults in Brawl. First, every cpu player attacks the human player in normal brawls. Isn’t there any other AI available? What the heck, I’m fighting with a cpu and two other cpus get close to us from the other side of the scenery instead of fighting each other and when I’m out of the game the cpus take hours to finish the match because they barely attack when the player is away. I though I could have had a good match online but after I connected to the WFC it didn’t find any other player in less than 1 minute. Then I asked a friend and he told me that it takes 20 MINUTES to find somebody that’s not on your friend list (I’ll shut up about the friend system for now). I CAN PLAY ONLINE WITH TF2 IN 1/10 OF THE TIME DAMN IT! Just because Microsoft and Valve created good community systems it doesn’t mean they can’t be copied, come on!

I added a new plugin to the site to display a poll in the sidebar. There’s currently only one poll but I’ll add more later, as soon as I figure out how to use it nicely. The first poll’s about the site layout. I’ll have to completely redo the css when I install the new comicpress release and if you want me to change style this is your change to let me know.

Many thanks to Enrico who gave me a great link about Post-It art and game sprites. You can find the article here. Here’s a little preview. I actually wanted to hug the building when i saw this.

Speaking of “real” gaming, I’m still pissed for brawl. I’ll play it this evening with Catman, AoA and Ganon hoping that they’ll make me change my mind about it. Or else, I’ll stick with Super Metroid, waiting for this.

N00bs please read here: It’s a fan-game. You don’t have to cry “Nintendo didn’t tell us” and “I didn’t save money for it. I spent it for Mario Party 8″. It’ll be free.

Oh, and I have to play TF2! I haven’t played it in a week. I wonder if the amount of Pyros per server is decreasing. Speaking of which, how many jokes can you think about TF2? For me, the answer is “a lot”. Expect a few more TF2-only comics in the next month.

The last but not the least: E3 is scheduled for July 14-18, starting with Microsoft’s press conference starting at 10:30 am pacific. Can you say “Halo 4″? I can’t. My mouth is filled with drool for Gears of War 2.

E3 2008 has passed and now we have plenty of games to discuss about! I’ll just recap here what were the conferences about and linking some videos, for the full coverage i recommend you the official site.

Microsoft

Microsoft did exactly what everyone would expect from a videogame expo: showing off games. Not many new games announcements with Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 and Fable 2 but everyone of these titles had a great gameplay video and most of them are coming out this year.

The shock came with Square-Enix announcing Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox360 with a glorious HD trailer way better than the one they showed last year. Armors, swords, chicks, badass bullies and ships in the sky like it’s always have been. Poor sony fanboys. I think they feel like Nintendo fanboys when the new Banjo & Kazooie was announced as well.

For their system, Microsoft though of a new dashboard, a bit complicated at first but really enjoyable, and a new (really?) network community, based on full-body avatars like Miis or the PSN that will allow users to share every media they have on their Xbox HDDs. FacebookLiveBunchofcommunities FTW!

Nintendo

From the Industry-leader since 1986 you’d expect tons of new games for their fans but it wasn’t quite what they prepared. I’m sure they have got big hits for the next year but for now we know they’re still targeting the family with their games (you can’t say the Famicom was a bad idea). First, they showed a snowboard game for the Wii Balance Board.

Following the guitar hero stream and aiming to the whole musical audience Miyamoto presented WiiMusic, a game that allows you to “create” your music, instead of just following the notes on coloured bars (a drummer performed solo with incredible precision. I can’t guess how he managed to use the nunchuck like that).

The next news was a WiiSports follow-up: WiiSports Resort. It’ll feature wiimote-based sports like his precursor but set on a tropic isle. What really changes the approach to the game is a new peripheral for the Wiimote that increases his accuracy in detecting rotation and target position. Many of us though that a “slice-for-real” Zelda is on the way because of this.

Another peripheral was announced: a microphone to be placed on top of the sensor bar to communicate worldwide while playing the new Animal Crossing: city folk. yes, voice chat is finally coming to the Wii but I don’t think it’s a good thing to let anybody hear your mother screaming “Dear, dinner’s ready! Your soup’s chilling!”. I want a headset. Period.

Sony

Sony just presented his lineup. Sony fanboys are the most certain about their future at the moment and at least they know what to save money for. A big bunch of games is coming for the three Sony platforms at the moment. Here’s a quick list with video links:

God of War 3, Killzone 2, Little Big Planet, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, LocoRoco 2, Patapon 2, Resistance: Retribution, Super Stardust Portable, Fl0wer and Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest For Booty.

We don’t own systems but we know our business

Square

Square conference was unusual. Yoshinori Kitase and Shinji Hashimoto sat at a table and listened to the answers from the attendants about Final Fantasy XIII. I think this is also what a press conference is for

Final Fantasy XIII will be still developed for the PS3 first and then it’ll be ported to Xbox360. The game will require just one disk thanks to the blue-ray technology but we’re uncertain about Xbox360’s support at the moment. Currently there’s no footage but it’ll be available soon and the battle system will be and evolution of the classic ATB system.

Capcom

Lost Planet’s movie is on the way, featuring the producer of the first two Spiderman movies and the voice of Solid Snake. Capcom wants to continue its movie ports successes after the big hits Resident Evil and…. Street Fighter (yes, they actually said that).

Megaman 9 (with pixelated graphics) is going to be released for the XboxLive, WiiWare and PSN. Am I the only one excited about this? Well… I like pixels…

Konami

Konami did the same as Sony, it showed its lineup for the year and let the images speak for themselves. In 2008 you’ll get Silent Hill: Homecoming, many DanceDance games and a couple of Castlevania for the Wii: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and Castlevania: Judgment.

Sega

Another lineup list: Empire: Total War, Golden Axe: Beast Rider, Madworld, Samba de Amigo, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Sonic Unleashed, Space Siege and Stormrise.

EA

New teasers, new demos and new games announced for EA: SimAnimals, Sims 3, Mirror’s Edge, Dragon Age: Origin and Left 4 Dead.

Out of time

Not mentioned during the E3 conferences or just before or after it we still have a couple of trailers that will make you wonder. Enjoy Wario Land: Shake It! and Mirror’s Edge animated story trailer. Sonic & the Black Knight and Pikmin 3 are also under development but we don’t have media at the moment.