Let me just start by saying, “I’m a huge Legend of Zelda fan.” Not to the point where I get into philosophical debates about where each game falls in the “timeline” or anything like that, but I love playing these games. I have fond memories of skipping another Super Bowl featuring the Buffalo Bills to play the first game in the series; and staying up way past when I should have. The sense of adventure from these games is unlike anything else I’ve ever played.
The worlds always seemed so huge and vast. You could spend hours and hours, or weeks of your life exploring every nook and cranny only to realize you’d barely scratched the surface. It’s always about finding that next hidden secret and using some newly acquired item in ways you didn’t think were possible to discover all the things Miyamoto and the development team had tucked away in some far corner of the world.
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Xenoblade Chronicles is more than I ever could have expected. When the game was first announced I knew going in that it was going to be a grand RPG experience. I knew there might be a chance the game wouldn’t come to North America, but in reality it was the game highlighted by Operation Rainfall that I was least interested in. I don’t really know what it was that failed to draw me in, but I wanted the other two games (Pandora’s Tower and The Last Story) more. One reminded me of a God of War style action game and the other was from the creator of Final Fantasy, both things that appealed to me more than this seemingly unknown game with a weird title. When the game was announced for North America I took a look at some coverage from Japan and Europe and had my mind changed. I was unprepared for what I was going to experience. As of the time of writing this I’m about 17 hours into the game and I have been blown away by everything I’ve experienced.
From the very beginning of the game you’re told it’s going to be something very different. Most Japanese-role-playing games tend to start out very slowly with a long introduction sequence that is unplayable. Many of these moments are unforgettable gaming moments, but they’re just something you watch. I can remember the first time I booted up Final Fantasy IV and watched those airships fly over the rotating ocean below then get attacked as the characters ran around to defend themselves. It was a truly epic beginning to one of my favorite games of all time. It’s nothing, though, compared to what I experienced with Xenoblade Chronicles. From the second the game opens up you are thrust into the thick of fighting. You get a quick introduction to the characters through their battle planning, but within just a couple of minutes you’re in control of the action. It was absolutely a great way to learn the basics of the game. You’re given all of the information you need to survive; how to attack, and how to use arts. Once the opening battle is over you get a moment to collect yourself and relax while the story truly begins and you meet the characters you’ll be playing with in a more relaxed setting. Read more…
It’s time for a special Friday edition of Tony’s Time, since I didn’t talk to you folks on Tuesday. I was a big proponent of everyone going out and buying a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles, whether you were actually interested in the game or not. If you’ve listened to me over the years you know I’m someone that likes to vote with his dollars. I think that, more than anything, is the best way to get publishers and developers to pay attention to you. Hitting them in the pocketbook, whether positively or negatively, is going to be the biggest factor in how they conduct business.
I’ve bought games like Blaster Master: Enemy Below for the Game Boy Color on the eShop because I wanted more Game Boy Color games to come to the service. I bought Xenoblade Chronicles because I wanted Nintendo to realize that these core, Japanese-style, role-playing games could sell in the western market. I even helped with an infomercial about the game.
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The debate begins. The Wii U isn’t even out yet and Nintendo hasn’t officially announced specs for the system, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t going to talk. For the last few weeks we’ve been hearing rumors from developers with Wii U dev kits about the power of the system. Most of the talk seems to be on the side of the system being at least as powerful as the current generation of consoles. We’ll officially find out more about the system when E3 rolls around and Nintendo officially shows off the system again. Until then we have to take the words of people around the games industry.
Darksiders II, from Vigil Games, has been confirmed to be a Wii U launch title. The game will be hitting the Xbox 360 and the PS3 in June, but will be out on day one when Nintendo’s new console launches. They’ve had some time to work with the new system to get the game up and running. The game’s Director, Marvin Donald had this to say about it:
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Nintendo has gotten a reputation over the last six years of being a peripheral heavy company. The company has released a number of add-ons for their devices that they designed as a way to enhance a players gaming experience. Many of them are nothing more than a piece of plastic that you strap the Wii Remote into, or attach to the 3DS. Not only Nintendo themselves, but a number of third party companies have also created peripherals for not only the Wii and the 3DS, but the Xbox 360, the PS3, the iPhone and any other gaming device out there. Despite the fact that many people say that it’s a new thing peripherals have been around since the beginning of the era of video games.
These devices are designed because companies, like Nintendo or Mad Catz, think that there is a need or a desire for these devices. The Wii Remote is used as a steering wheel in a number of games and many people actually play the game that way. I’ve tried using the Wii Remote by itself to play Mario Kart Wii and it doesn’t work. The controller is not actually designed to be held in that manner to play the game and many of the buttons are hard or uncomfortable to reach. However, if you strap that controller into one of the plastic wheel shells it becomes immediately intuitive and easy to use. The peripheral did its job. Read more…
If you went out on the street and asked people if they knew what Kid Icarus was I think you would get one of three responses. The first and probably most popular answer would be a blank stare. The second would be, “Oh that kid who flew too close to the sun.” The last would be that new game starring the character from Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The point being that not many people really know what the Kid Icarus franchise is, or even who Pit, the main character is.
Nintendo is set to release Kid Icarus: Uprising on March 23rd. Based on all of the coverage that the game is getting you’d think it is the biggest game of the year, and for some people it might be. I, for one, am very excited about the virtual re-launch of this long forgotten Nintendo character. He seemed like a very odd inclusion for Smash Bros. and I thought then that it might be the signal of something new for the franchise, but at the time I didn’t really know what it was going to be.
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Nintendo is releasing a new platform this year. You might have heard that news. It’s going to be more powerful than the Wii, and according to all sources the Xbox 360 and potentially the PS3. It’s going to launch in a part of the year when the current HD consoles are getting some of the biggest games of the year, like the newly announced Assassin’s Creed III, Call of Duty: Subtitle Here and more. That also means that many of these games could come to the Wii U.
One of the things I keep seeing around the internet is that it’s going to be a dumbed down or a rushed port to get the game on Wii U. Can we please stop with this talk now? It got old with the Wii and it’s already worn out it’s welcome for Wii U. As the internet says, “haters gonna hate,” but it’s just stupid. Do people really say that a game that was announced for the 360 is a rushed or dumbed down port when they bring it over to the PS3? No, they say that PS3 owners will get to play that game as well and console owners will have choice in the system that they want to play it on. However, when it comes to Nintendo’s platforms it’s always a bad thing.
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We got our copy of Tekken 3D: Prime Edition in the mail today and Micah will be handling that review. As the fighting game “expert” at Nintendo Okie he’s the most in the know about what’s going on in the world of fighting games. I took the opportunity to take a look at Tekken: Blood Vengeance before passing on the game to him and I have to say, “Please sir, may I have another?”
Now, let me say this right now. The movie wasn’t bad. I’m about as far away from a Tekken expert as you can possibly get. My knowledge of Tekken can be summed up in the following phrase. There’s a panda, a dude with a jaguar head, some guy has wings for hair and one of them gets thrown off a cliff……a lot.” Outside of that I know nothing about the series so I’m looking at the movie as someone who likes animated action movies and wanted to see how 3D movies on the 3DS would work.
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This past Monday on Episode 102 of the podcast I made the revelations that I had finally broken down and picked up an Animal Crossing game. Animal Crossing: City Folk is a Nintendo Selects title and as such is now available for the low, low price of $20. It’s almost a deal too good to pass up. I’ve been hemming and hawing for years because I was always a fan of the Harvest Moon franchise and for some reason I really thought those two franchises were pretty similar. That, of course, comes from not having played Animal Crossing and only judging it based on screenshots. It just seemed that both of the games were about daily living, getting into a routine and not much else. As a result I passed on AC and stuck with Harvest Moon for years. That is until this past weekend.
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In case you missed it last week I posted an article where I said one thing that Nintendo needed to do to turn around some of their financial fortunes was to get people excited about the Wii U. It seemed, at least to me, that they weren’t really doing anything to get people excited about the system. The only thing we really seemed to know about the system was that it was going to have a new controller. Even then we don’t know how many of these new controllers the system will use. Well, over the weekend Nintendo released the details of their latest earnings call and there was a ton of information about not only the Wii U, but the 3DS as well.
The biggest announcement was that of the Nintendo Network. This appears to be the successor to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. A number of details about what the service could entail were also mentioned and they were quite exciting.
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The Great Friend Code Exchange
