World in Motion

So Microsoft have announced that the much anticipated Kinect will be sold for around 150 bucks. A little exchange rate research later and I guess it will around £100 over here, which in my opinion is £99 too much.

Let’s be honest, we are all bored of the Wii. Waving your arms about like you’re being attacked by a wasp just isn’t fun after four minutes, unless you’re Ant and Dec, which is always fun as long as you’re still getting paid.

With the Wii making so much money, Microsoft and Sony have jumped on the motion cash cow, and before Christmas motion controlled gaming will be available on all three consoles. Despite it’s popularity, the Wii has offered very little to hardcore gamers apart from the odd Zelda and Mario game, so it’s hard to get excited about Kinect and Move because they will only cater for the casual gamer.

The majority of the games announced for Kinect are aimed for children, so rather than an innovative piece of technology, it is more of a sound business plan from Microsoft, aimed at attracting a younger (and older) audience to the console. There is always one bastard developer though with delusions of grandeur, and they make a brilliant game that we must all have…the bastardy bastards. The big game from E3 was Child of Eden, and will be the reason (if any) for the hardcore gamers to buy Kinect, which they will.

The problem I have with the Wii, which I assume I will have with Kinect, is that the few good games available on the Wii would work just as well, if not better, without the motion controlled elements. I’m fine with pushing buttons, it’s less of a hindrance than waving my arms about, and with the Wii you end up pushing buttons anyway. You won’t have any buttons with Kinect, and whether this is a good thing depends on how well it works.

I understand that the whole movement aspect is great because it encourages the often obese gamer to exercise, but I have found a way to sit down and play games, and not get fat, or what I have dubbed, COD fit. All you need is a console, an exercise bike, and the ability to multitask. Or you can just play games and exercise separately.

Even if you don’t want to buy Kinect, Microsoft will manipulate you into buying it eventually. It’ll just be like downloadable content, fucking devious. In the good ol’ days you used to be able to buy a game, and then play it, seem simple enough. Now, you spend £40, and then you are continually sold extra parts of the game for the next year (at least). The latest Fifa game has 2 modes on the menu screen that you need to pay to unlock, didn’t I already pay to play it? Modern Warfare 2 has released 2 map packs so far, each costing around £10 each. You don’t have to buy these, but it makes it incredibly hard to play online without them as you are kicked out of any match that features a map you don’t have. So if you want to keep playing online you have to spend a total of around £60 on one game.

It has been announced that Fable III will use Kinect, but you won’t

need it to play the game. I get the feeling that a lot of games will have totally pointless special Kinect features that you don’t need, but in some way stop us from getting the whole experience of whatever game we’re playing. So it is inevitable that we will all buy Kinect even though we don’t want to, so how about lowering the price a little?

Whoah! It's 3D!

So Nintendo have done it again, or at least we all assume they will do it again, and bring out another “game changer“ (who came up with that phrase?). The Nintendo DS revitalised handheld gaming, and introduced a new way of playing games. Take Trauma, one of the most brilliant yet difficult and frustrating games I have ever plated, where you undertake the role of a surgeon, using the stylus to make incisions, suture wounds, and in one case defuse a bomb. Actual surgery must be easier than Trauma. Without Nintendo’s technology this game wouldn’t have been made, and while thousands of absolutely shit awful games have been released on the DS, you still have to take your hat off to Nintendo, even if they do shit in it.

Then they gave us the Wii, which redefined the way the mass public think about gaming. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are like the naughty kids at school, where as the Wii is that nerdy little square. Everyone loves the Wii, Ant and Dec say so! What could be more fun than waving your arms up and down?

The Wii is one of the most innovative pieces of technology we’ve seen in the last few years, and has even had Microsoft and Sony desperately clamber after Nintendo with their own versions. Sadly, not everyone is as creative as Nintendo, and as a result there are only about 10 games worth owning on the Wii and DS combined, and the majority of those feature Mario. Not to the mention the Wii is basically just a Gamecube in disguise.

With the announcement of the 3DS, things are actually looking peachy. You don’t need 3D! glasses, Kid Icarus looks pretty darn good, you can watch 3D! movies on it, take 3D! photos, and they are releasing Ocarina of Time on it. Just like the DS and Wii though, you would be sane to assume that there will once again be less than a handful of games worth playing, and once you get over the novelty of 3D! It will stay in a draw until you decide to sell it so you can buy a George Foreman Lean Mean 3D Cooking Machine.

I’ve never really been too keen on 3D anyway. Growing up, it was only ever a gimmick, and one I never got. Ooo, another dimension! We are all fine without 3D, it’s a safe bet that your favourite film is in good ol’ 2D, and may even be in black and white and even in some arty foreign language. In no way does 3D enhance your movie experience, and it is nothing more than a cheap (well very expensive) trick to distract you from an average (or terrible) plot/script.

I wear glasses at the cinema, to wear ANOTHER pair of glasses over mine is beyond a pain in the arse. It’s far from a pleasant endeavour, and it just hurts my eyes, especially if the film is nearly 3 hours long, and essentially just Aliens meets Blue Pocahontas.

Every blockbuster seems to be in 3D now, and while some use it amazingly well (Up and Avatar), some just hurriedly paint it on in a get rich quick scheme, they might as well not bother and just ask you for some money. I fear that this isn’t a gimmick that will fade out, but it will actually replace scripts altogether, and films will just become 3D avatars of film execs reaching out of the screen and taking your wallets, and you won’t mind because it like really looks good and stuff.

It doesn’t stop at the cinema, we are now being shouted at to spend thousands of our pounds to purchase a 3D TV, just like we were urged to buy HD DVDs. It is likely that once Nintendo release the 3DS, other companies will soon come up with their own “no 3D glasses required” technology, and we will be stuck with our obsolete TV’s, and our stupid little glasses.

The next logical step for Nintendo will be a 3D Wii, and then after that 4D, where every time you face Bowser on Super Mario 4D, you’re set on fire, and run around your living room clutching your burnt arsehole.