Free Candy For Everyone

Stopped by Penny Arcade today and I have to disagree with something Gabe said. Well, first, he comments that he doesn’t know what to think about Spore. I very strongly know what to think, and have a post in the works to tell you. Just a hint, I thought it was awesome.

But under “Not so good” Gabe has put Indiana Jones. His comments don’t refer to anything he actually saw in game, but to a demo of a new technology called Euphoria. The idea is to get away from doing custom animations that are the same every time, and instead have the characters be skeletal systems with models of muscles and balance behaviors built on top. The demo involved a model of Indy standing on a rope bridge. There was no control of Indy, instead you controlled the environment and Indy would react. You swung the bridge or threw rocks and him and he staggered and shifted his weight trying to maintain balance.

It doesn’t yet look entirely human. The closer something gets to reality, the more critical we are of it. If something doesn’t look anything like a real person/behavior, you don’t expect much from it. But if something is 90% correct, the 10% wrong jumps out at you as so much worse than it is. I think that’s the problem with the current state of the Euphoria demo. It’s getting much closer to real, but it’s not there yet, so it doesn’t look quite right. When I asked them about this very problem, they mentioned some plans to work around strange states that can occur. But unlike Gabe, who says he’d rather see canned animations, I say I’m excited by this idea. This kind of research needs to happen so we can progress. In a few years we’re going to laugh about the ridiculous number of animations we used to have to make. We’ll be able to create better characters because we won’t have to imagine every needed interaction ahead of time, and can create new situations dynamically as things develop.

Anyways, I’m not sure about the actual game, but the technology is very cool and something I’m looking forward to seeing more of.

I managed to get my hands on the Wii at E3 last week, and it’s just not for me. Let me start by making it very clear that I’m a complete and total cynic. And my cynicism screams “gimmick” loud and clear about the Wii remote. With that said, I’m also what one might call a hard-core gamer, and therefore not really the target market for the Wii.

On Day 3 of E3, I stood in the Wii line with one of my co-workers first thing in the morning. In typical Nintendo fashion, the entire booth was super cool, with giant screens set up along the wall of the line. There were people on these screens, and they were actually talking to us, through the magic of a video camera and microphone aimed at the line. It was really cool, for some reason.

Then we got inside, and there were some guys demonstrating the Wii controller as drum. It was neat, and they were able to make some cool percussion, but it wasn’t really a game, more a nifty party trick.

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I’ve posted most of my E3 pics. Having some technical difficulties, not quite sure what’s going on, so some of them are missing. I’ve put descriptions on the Day 1 photos, I’ll let you know when I have updated the rest of them too. The web site is running rather slowly and it’s taking me forever to put the descriptions in place!

More exhausted than yesterday if possible! I’m so tired and my internet connection is still really slow. I’m taking a red-eye home tomorrow night, so I won’t be able to post again until some time Saturday. Look for all my pictures at that point. I’m taking them, I promise!

I managed to see just about everything I had wanted to get to today. Whether I can remember any of it is another story. I can handle the volume and the intensity of multiple screens flashing images from every direction. But I can’t really retain it all - my brain takes it in and dumps it out again, probably as a coping mechanism. Hopefully my pics and some of the junk I picked up at the booths will jog my memory.

• Virtua Tennis 3 - I know I already mentioned this, but I keep coming back to it. It looks really good and is lots of fun to play. I know I’ll be picking this on up when it comes out.
• Square Enix - Final Fantasy VIIs. Yes, that’s an ’s’ at the end. All these many many FFVII titles are coming out - Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, and some other one too. I never managed to make my way through the original, so I’m kinda holding off on these until I get to play the recently announced FFVII for PS3, whenever that may come. FFXII and FFXIII (actually multiple FFXIIIs. Again. What is going on??)
• Heavenly Sword - I think that’s what it’s called. It’s a PS3 title, and you play a female warrior. The graphics looked really good. The character has long flowing red hair that moves around as you beat the crap out of lots of enemies. Not a title that would get me to buy the PS3, but if I have one (which I will), I’ll buy this title.
• Lumines 2 - Hands on it. Too loud to hear the music, which made playing it not that meaningful. Looked just like the first one. I’ll probably pick it up, if only for the new tunes and probably must have some new game options, one would think.
• Konami booth - they had DDR and Karaoke Revolution set up, but interestingly, they also had some less well known music games on display. They had arcade machines of Guitar Freaks and Beatmania. I have some pics so I’ll describe these a bit more when I get those up.
• Desperate Housewives - there’s been some sort of backlash over the announcement of this title, at least from what I heard. But it looks fine, if you’re into this sort of thing. You’re a new housewife who moves on to the block with secrets to protect and things to discover. It’s a Sims-type game with an element of story and mystery. Seems like it’ll appeal to many of the show’s viewers. So good for them for trying to make games that appeal to a different target audience then all the darn war games littering the floor.

That’s all I can think of for now. I’m going to try to get in to see Nintendo’s Wii tomorrow - you have to wait on line to see it behind closed doors. But I hear it’s worth it.

Exhausted. That’s all I have to say. Today was long, and I feel like I hardly saw anything. But there are 2 days left, so I still have time! My ‘net connection is abysmal, so there seems to be no chance of me uploading any of the pictures I took right now (don’t worry, they’re not that good anyway!).

Highlights, in brief:

• WoW: The Burning Crusade
  • Hands on with new Alliance race, the Draenai, as suspected, Paladin definitely one of available classes, starting zone is newly discovered island just south of the Night Elves’ start zone
  • Played around with the Blood Elves, male dance is full dance from Napolean Dynamite
  • Hands on with Jewelcrafting profession - craftable rings, necklaces, crowns, saw socketed items in action and a version of UI for adding gems to those items
  • Ran around Outlands with a level 62 Tauren Shaman, no new talents/spells available
• Guitar Hero 2! Co-op mode is cool, some new songs have a lead guitar and a bass guitar as the second one, very fun, shared bonus bar and rock meter
• Virtua Tennis 3 looks awesome - liked the first one for Dreamcast, a very simple to play but surprisingly fun title. This one is for next-gen, Xbox 360 and PS3 and it looked fantastic. Amazing graphics.
• New Warhammer 40K expansion looks great, not that I played the game, heh, but I love RTS and this expansion pack looks huge. Maybe it’s time to give the game a try
• Age of Empires III expansion - now natives are playable! Eh. Not too excited. Had a couple of neat things like the ability to assign villagers to do different tribal dances for bonuses. Cute, but not stellar. For those who like Age3, this’ll be great.

I ran by lots of other stuff, but that’s about all I can remember. I’m barely awake right now. I’ll be more focused in my attack tomorrow and hopefully have more to relate that’s not so scattered. G’night!