I am not enthused by 3D. I think my disinterest stems from the type of 3D found in theaters. Often using polarization, these techniques first boomed in the 1950s, and obviously haven’t maintained their popularity. My issue is that it never looks truly real. Instead, it looks like a paper pop up book of moving images. The benefit to this, however, is wide angle viewing, provided that everyone has glasses.

Now that 3D is growing in persistence as a sign of our evolved technological achievements, it is getting harder to ignore. There are many 3d televisions for private homes and 3D games, moves, and sporting events to enjoy. For the most part, this is still by polarization. And it is still a pricey endeavor.

Despite my reluctance for 3D, I did by a 3DS. Instead of polarization, it employs stereoscopic 3D. Unlike movie 3D, which attempts to pop out at you, stereoscopic 3D delivers depth of an image to create 3D. Before you see it, you would think that the basic nature of a camera and pictures allow you to understand the dimensions therein, so while you watch something or look at something you can tell the depth of that on screen. The same is true for games, where they take place in a 3D world, and you may not feel that depth will be that different from how you interpret images already.

You would be wrong.

Movie 3D has something definitively unbelievable about it. In reality, when you want to look at any one thing, your eyes bring it to focus, near or far. A standard motion picture dictates what is and is not in focus, which is sensible enough. Designating focus is part of how the movie is directed, and tells you want you should be looking at and when. When this transfers into 3D, it creates a slight problem that I cannot help but notice. You know have things at exaggerated depth, trying to pop out at you, but when the object of focus, such as a person, is moving through the screen, the focus does not accurately adjust itself, so a defined object is moving about in a sea of blurriness, because it’s just a created effect anyways.

Stereoscopic is also a created effect, but since it is projecting to perfectly clear images, you can shift your focus to anything in the screen and it is in focus, which is more logical for 3D than the focus system of 2D. Today I watched the Green Lantern trailer on my 3DS, for the first time seeing a cinema quality film in auto-stereoscopic 3D. It was amazing, even on that small screen. My brain didn’t flag it as suspicious because the effect was more natural. I hope that if 3D has moved truly past revival and is here to stay, technology will allow stereoscopic to take over other methods.

To say that the Wii U is not at all a new system and simply a repackaging of the Wii is easily in troll territory, but I think it is a valid argument. The power does not surpass other current systems, HD is something they could have done from the get-go and Nintendo has used handhelds as second screens in the past (Zelda and Crystal Chronicles on Gamecube). Now, they are just giving you the handheld with the system. They are selling the Wii for a mere $150, and we know that Nintendo always makes a profit. Wiis are so cheap, and the market so saturated with them, they might as well introduce a new system that includes the obvious omissions of their last. By staggering their release, they are competing with essentially no one. If the Wii U can last past the hypothetical Playstation 4 and Xbox 720, it will not have to compete as it did last time. It may not be the best strategy in the minds of gamers, but it is certainly profitable. Such a similar system with improvements to match years old technology may seem like a hard sell, but we have to remember who we are dealing with. Can we really doubt that Nintendo will have a hard time selling a dual screened gaming system?

It was a liberating experience, but also a little frightening. Just the feeling of missing out, when I absolutely could have watched everything as it happened for the first time since I cared about E3 was sort of shocking. But, I was doing a very worthwhile gaming free thing, and I don’t regret that. I do have a passion for it, and I have pretty much every worthwhile current gaming thing. I will probably go the Gamefly route from now on, but I am slowing slipping back into the gaming world.

My departure was aided by the new Gawker sites… they work better now, but they were rather broken. It seemed irresponsible to be for them to have a mediocre site that they were pushing over one that, despite its shortcomings, worked just fine. I stuck on past more deserters, but when I could not get any RSS reader to stream it to my phone, well, it was the last straw for me. I left it on my phone screen, with it’s sad “no recent updates” message for a couple months.

I do think that gaming is in a lull in general. It’s been years since a major console release, and we are just coasting along. The games are all packed into fall, and then spring is inevitably boring, and in summer they just tell you what you can’t have till the holidays. If there is anytime to lose interest in gaming, this is it. E3 is a well placed and now well publicized event that helps renew an interest and faith in a cyclical, money hungry industry. I think that the challenge of Apple and Android have allowed for some needed new competitors. The shenanigans that have earned Nintendo a lot of money have also proven to stretch the idea of who a gamer is and what a gamer plays. Nintendo’s success has disallowed other companies from ignoring that oil field. And Apple, surprisingly, is beginning to challenge Nintendo’s long rein in the realm of handheld gaming. . All of this is making the news from E3 (that I am now catching up on) a little more interesting.

In 1994, it was hard to say what the “inter-net” was. I don’t think I really remember using the internet until 1996 or so. It was then that the internet was introduced to me as “what you write papers with at the last minute.” In ’96 there were about 2 articles on most truly important things. Like wars and such. But in 1994? There probably wasn’t much there. This conversation still happens today, albeit less frequently. Nice to see newspeople still a little unsure.

Violence at NBC? It sounds misleading.
And some people even had wi-fi then! How nice.

As seen on Gizmodo.

I suppose a small introduction is in order.

This is my blog. It’s mostly about gaming. There are some old posts before this one, no need to worry about them. They were written as long as two years ago. I just wanted something to post to make sure everything was working right. They may be gone soon anyways.

I operate under this name on many sites and places. If you’ve seen 100tacks somewhere, that’s probably me. However, there is a blog with the domain 100tacks.com. That is definitely NOT me. I imagine that person is more than a little annoyed that I have taken the name “100tacks” on mostly everything.

And that’s all. Thanks for visiting.

It’s in the title. I’m about to talk about the end here. I want to give you fair warning. Just… avert your eyes if you care to. I’ll put the spoilers after the jump.

Ok. So, I’ve played through Fable once as a good guy and now I’m going back as an evil guy. As a good guy, I wasn’t all that good and actually let about 4 million people die. I thought that sounded horrible, but as it turns out, after the invasion, life pretty much went back to normal. There were a couple of corpses strewn about, but no big deal. I can still do missions and such in that save. As a mean guy, I’m trying to be pure evil. The very essence of evil. I want to save absolutely everyone.

I thought these were the only two options, but I was talking fable with someone the other day and they said they were the essence of nice, so when the darkness came, everyone died. Every single person. So, in his save, when he walks through the streets, there is just no one anywhere.

The sad part is this person now hates the game. I think there are some games that you have to play twice to get the full experience. I think games should have extreme consequences because they are fictional, and you have that ability. But this should result in two valid and exciting experiences.  It’s a huge deterrent for someone to play the game and have everyone die.

Maybe Fable should have some voice over or dialog about how you should play again, just to suggest that it’s possible to save people and keep playing that save if you leave some alive. Or maybe that’s the responsibility of the gamer. I dunno. It just seems so horrible to play Fable and then have that ending, which after speeding through the year of rule, you feel cheated out of $60.

After seeing a Nintendo roundtable discussion, Kotaku posed the decade old question, “Why doesn’t America like JRPS? This is an old discussion, but now Japan is actually thinking about trying to care. Just like Japan culture at large, they were making things for themselves and that was enough. Making games solely for the interests of Japan was successful. Now it’s not as profitable, and Japan’s gamers are starting to like western rpgs. So what’s the problem?

CHARACTERS
They may be too feminine for western eyes. Some are guys, some are girls, some of the more girly ones are guys. It’s a somewhat safe bet that shorter hair is a guy and longer hair is a girl, but that only gives about a 70% success rate.

SCOPE OF TIME
Spanning a decade is a bit of a stretch for Americans. Not much in America is older than 400 years. (nothing the settlers didn’t drive out, anyways.) An American game may be way in the future, or way in the past, but if it actually travels that amount of time in the storyline, it’s just not feasible. Western RPGs usually stay within one lifetime, and often a couple years, of their main character. JRPGs will casually span decades, centuries, or even longer. This is sensible enough, since Japan has a longer unified history than America.

LENGTH
Even though Westerners want to complain when their $60 game is not long enough (Call of Duty), they also complain when it is too long. Maybe they want to attain a more immediate sense of achievement. Maybe they collectively lack the attention span. One could argue that Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto IV are long, successful, American games, but then we enter the realm of theme.

THEME
Length in American Games is permitted, but only if the theme is good enough. Red Dead Redemption has an old wild west theme, something that is truly American. Grand Theft auto has a modern urban crime theme that, sadly, America really goes for. Mass Effect is a more neutral theme, but I’m willing to bet two things on that account: less Americans would play it if it didn’t advertize militarized male lead (as A LOT of American games do) and that a good chuck of the people that liked mass effect would enjoy a Square-Enix type RPG.

TAKING TURNS
I know there aren’t as many turn based RPGs these days, but it should still be said that Americans are generally impatient, and hate taking turns or waiting in line. To take turns in a games is widely held as a boring and time wasting endeavor.

REPETITIVE
I will take the most recent successful example I can: Kingdom Hearts. It’s not secret that I’m a big fan. Before Kingdom Hearts, I was intimidated by the whole JRPG genre. It was too intricate, too time consuming, and seemed generic. However, I was hooked on Kingdom Hearts from the moment I played it. I know it’s not really a JRPG, but it was a gateway game for me.

I have been buying and playing every Kingdom Hearts game since. Kingdom Hearts 1, 2, and Birth By Sleep are legitimate entries, but Re:coded and Chain of Memories are senseless money makers. Exploiting a successful series with sub-par titles is a quick way to frustrate players. This is no different than what Activision has done to Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, and… well most of their games.

That said, I think one of the greatest strengths of the JRPG genre is the emphasis on storyline. It could be to their detriment, but engagement in a great story will carry a player through repetition easily.  Eternal Sonata had an amazing storyline, pulling in a variety of themes gently scattered throughout game play. I loved playing it, but when explaining it to others I always qualified that they would need to enjoy the story first, and the game second. I think storyline is what Western RPGs are improving. They have finally started to understand that games are capable of holding a novel-quality story.

The culture at large is accepting this too, as many more games are being made into moves. This is something Japan has been aware of for a long time. Maybe it’s because they already had serious cartoons for adults, so the jump to games wasn’t such a stretch. Maybe it’s because they are can more easily connect with their audience than the west.

Despite how much America resists them, there is a trend developing to make Western RPGS better. The west is learning it can make deep, engaging RPGs with rich story lines. They are more willing to elongate their stories. They are beginning to see characters age and stories expand beyond the present moment. They may even start varying their character models. Strangely, Western RPGs are taking over JRPs through imitation.

I believe it was Pablo Picasso that said, ” Good artists copy; great artists steal.” I am but a good artist, because I will only be copying an idea of this guy. He has created a fun series of minimalist images to go with some popular movies and games. Because America usually gets the worse version of every case, these simple versions gave me an idea. The visual clutter that is my gaming shelf has always been a problem. Even when it’s clean, it looks sort of messy because of all the random colors. If I were to use covers like lbo’s, I could get a nice uniform look, and swap mine so I could see the originals when I open the cases. The only problem? That easily 100+ cases that need iconic designs…

I have a bad habit of creating too many projects at once. And they all feel necessary.

Save

Rather, I like it, as I have yet to beat it. It is another fun and upbeat game predictably on Nintendo Wii, but made by THQ .his Spring a sequel will be released for 360, PS3, and Wii. I’m glad to see this fun little game get a multi-platform release. The original feature de Blob, a amorphous orb best thought of as a ball of paint. It is the players task to navigate deblob along the color deprived areas of city, leading an underground movement to restore joy after the inky goverment starts regulating color.  It’s sort of a cheesy re-hashing of a classic plot, but there’s something catchy about it.

The use of sound in the game may be the reason I enjoy it so much. It starts silent, then as you add color, there music goes from simple beats to a crazy jamming party. I haven’t heard much about deBlob 2 but I’m interested to see if the game has the same feel when played with an average controller. The wii controller had you actually flicking de Blob around, so pushing buttons might feel a little boring. Additionally, niche games like this one don’t fare as well on additional systems. Katamari Damacy has been on four systems, and by the time it finally made it to ps3 it was merely fan service (which we fans appreciated!) but just a re-hashing of what had already been done. I hope de Blob continues to innovate and grow with each new title. Though, the SyFy kids logo in the bottom corner has me worried, and feeling a little ridiculous for being so excited for this game.

And by the way, blob is green on the 360 cover, red on the PS3 cover and blue on the Wii cover. Colors are fun!