Official Nintendo Magazine (June 09) Opinions

July 1st, 2009

A while ago I scrutinized Australian multiplatform games magazine Hyper for clinging to norms that would only see the publication into a slow, barbecued demise. It’s only fair then that I do the rounds and examine other examples of copy that fills Australian news agencies. I want to begin this critical crusade of print media by looking at Official Nintendo Magazine (Australia). Later I hope to re-examine Pixel Hunt alongside retrogaming e-zine Retroaction, before concluding with supposed EDGE killer GamesTM.

Official Nintendo Magazine (Australia) – June 2009

magazine

General Impressions

A follow up to the heavily flawed, but much adored Nintendo Magazine System, how could I refuse? ONM live ups to the Nintendo Seal of Quality lost somewhere on every front page. The magazine’s aesthetic tastefully match the new sanitized look Nintendo are going for, and the writing isn’t too bad either. The team clearly makes use of their prescribed relationship to the brand by bagging plenty of exclusive interviews, covering the digital distribution areas well, while prioritizing the best art assets. The writing is fine – falling in line with a standard good quality UK games magazine, appealing to the average enthusiast Nintendo fan more so than the expanded audience as might be infered by the neutral-esque design. The magazine’s standard journalistic fair teamed with exclusive content which make this a priority read for Nintendo fans looking for fitting copy with a wide coverage of their platforms. The magazine portions WiiWare, DSiWare and Virtual Console coverage much more evenly than other publications both online and in print, which I heatedly admire.

Overall the standard Ninty fan can’t go wrong with ONM, it’s a much more cleanly written, professional publication than NMS and covers all fronts quite admirably.

Criticisms of the June Issue

Standard fair might sound decent enough (and rest assure, this magazine is not poor by any means), but in my mind publications like this and Hyper are given a greater stature than their content earns them. While – like Hyper – I enjoyed the clean read, and have no problems recommending this to players that are solely fans of the Nintendo products, there’s plenty of holes as well as a couple of suspicions.

Usually magazines not sponsored by the brand or system they’re covering (ie. unofficial) make a holler and fuss about conflict of interest issues with these rival magazines. Basically they’re accusing their competitors of unflinching bias. Although their whiny jealousy is annoying, they do hold a weight of truth. Starting from the editor’s introduction, over the page into the news and then into previews and even reviews, the magazine can’t help but consistently remind the reader of the benefits of Wii MotionPlus. Sure, it makes sense for the MotionPlus to be a talking points in the Red Steel 2 and Grand Slam Tennis previews, but when you’re spruiking the add-on in reviews unrelated to the device, it’s annoying!

Reviewer Chris Scullion seems to have a problem criticizing the games he writes about, constantly using softeners to lower his tone when he wants to discuss a game’s weaknesses. This was most evident in the Pokemon Platinum review and other parts of the magazine as I recall. The softener “if we’re honest” doesn’t really say much, shouldn’t you always be honest to your readers?

On the topic of reviews, the crew seems obsessed with percentages. Take for example the way…oh look, Chris Scullion, makes a point to fret over what percentage he’d assign Punch-Out!! before he reached the unlocked World B mode. Further, in face-cringing fashion, the magazine even has a ‘Settling Scores’ segment in their review index, where readers propose their own score for a game in lieu of what the OMN crew awarded. It’s really petty.

The bulk of their featured content such as their 31 Reasons to Start Stockpiling Nintendo Points…NOW! as well as several news and previews pieces were well matched with good developer interviews. The Red Steel preview is thin information spread out into a feature piece. Fortunately the screenshots and interview make up for this in part. The Zelda feature is extensive, but doesn’t capture the spirit nor all of the significant details for each game, maybe they should have allowed more text on the page. By the way, I like the IGN logos in some of the Zelda screenshots. Did you try MobyGames, no tags there?

It must be some hip trend that I’m unaware of - in the same vein as that Hyper issue I covered some months ago, ONM included a flip-over segment at the back of the magazine. Argh, I hate it when they make me flip the magazine! The flipped content comprises of a 100 Greatest Nintendo Games Ever List! feature The main problem with such mammoth lists is that within the limit of 25 pages, you’re essentially providing a list and very little explanation as to the significance of each title. Couple with a bloated number of page filling images, and it’s a rather pointless piece. Conversely I could have just said that they ranked Mario Kart Wii as the 4th best game ever released on a Nintendo platform and you would have believed me.

Oh, the Dragon Quest guide was filled with noting but common sense too, not sure why they included it.

Lastly, I noticed that in the Australian magazine, the Pikmin 2 review states “With Australia being a nation of Wii owners”, yet this is a simple copy edit of the review featured in the ONM UK, evidence here. This is simply a ruse to throw readers away from the indiscriminate fact that ONM Australia is simply ONM UK with some edits shifted in. The cracks become obvious very quickly with the overall British flavour of writing teamed with obvious British references (.co.uk). Furthermore the most useful thing the Australian website offers is a link to the feature packed UK website. Crafty eh? Unexpected? No.

Additional Readings

Column: Game Mag Weaseling – GameSetWatch

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Tags: magazine, nintendo

E3 2009 Impressions

June 9th, 2009

metroid-other-m-saus

I’m a bit behind the ball, but here’s how I feel about this year’s show. I missed a few of announcements like Golden Sun‘s resurrection, Social media of Xbox 360 and GT5.

Microsoft

E3 can bring out the worst in my fanboy bias against Microsoft, after all this is the convention where game companies drop bombs and I’m clearly rooting for Nintendo and Sony, I want them to “win”. I guess it would be a good compliment on Microsoft’s part to say that the company’s strong showing made be quiver with fanboy trepidation. Take all that away though, and as a player I was hardly excited by what they had on offer.

Most of this is reflected by their lack of exclusive content that wasn’t already jacked up with testosterone. Halo:ODST and Outreach are really starting to wear thin, I mean, how much longer is the industry going to evangelize these soulless franchise? Forza 3, Crackdown 2 and Left for Dead 2 are great assets. Like many people I’m surprised and slightly irked that Valve decided to sequalize L4D so quickly. The other two though don’t particularly interest me much, not a fan of racing sims and the open-world, sand-box genre feels kinda tight at the moment. I’m not too fussed about L4D 2 either, since I rarely play games online. Still, for others is probably a big coo.

Splinter Cell: Conviction, Shadow Complex and their 3rd party content were impressive. Splinter Cell looks to have some cool mechanics such as slapping objectives as text on the walls as well that rapid fire technique which has supposedly been a part of the series for a while now – still cool IMO. Shadow Complex is perhaps the only title I feel particularly envious about. A downloadable Metroidvania game is genius, perfectly suited to the services, you would have thought that Konami would have jumped on this earlier. The game seems more appropriate to the PSN though, since it’s more of a full length feature.

shadow-complex

Microsoft also deserve kudos for their selection of celebrity sponsorships Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Tony Hawk and Steven Spielberg are all likely to grab them some air time from the major press. Each celebrity was attached to games that didn’t use a regular controller too, which is interesting.

As for Natal, I think that there are too many problem that they’ll have to overcome. I personally foresee that it’ll be too tiring for the player (try holding your hands out in front of you for more than 5 minutes and you’ll get the point). The – premium tech – hardware is likely to be rather expensive as well. I also doubt that Microsoft has the talent to design for such a device, like almost everything they’ve ever done, they crib from the competition, this time though, they are walking alone. I discussed this with Richard over at Critical Gaming who thought that the lack of tactile feedback would also be problematic. I just don’t think that they can do it, and if they did, I don’t think that I’d want to play it.

It has to be said that Microsoft is still attempting to fool players with the fake casual gaming pretense and I don’t think it’ll ever work for them because their hearts aren’t in the right place – their products reflect that.

Nintendo

Talk about a hokey presentation – boring one minute, rapturous the next. Discarding the performance itself, the company had an improved showing over last year. I couldn’t believe the fangasm they dished out with Metroid: Other M. My brother and I let out a disrespectful laugh when Reggie said that he reads the blogs – no doubt we should have, the presentation was unimpressive up to that point – but he delivered and the peasants rejoiced.

The two new Mario titles are interesting because instead of reinventing the franchise they concentrate on expanding previous designs. It’s definitely a wise move as it allows Nintendo to be creative within an established template.

mario-galaxy-2

Like a lot of people, I was confused by Mr Iwata’s annual editorial on company philosophy. His speech wandered around in circles and didn’t have a clear direction. The Wii Vitality Sensor was similarly lost in the muddle, a curious non-announcement at best.

I liked Bill Trinen more when I saw his name in the credits of my favourite games instead of seeing him on stage. He’s just not quite that good a presenter, really irritating. The Wii Sports Resort demo still caught my attention. I like how they’re truly making this game for everyone with added bite for the hardcore players. I agree with Trinen that the sky diving intro really sets the scene for the game, seems very Pilotwings-esque. The demo just looked fun and that’s all it needs to be.

Sony

The leaks really hurt Sony I think, but they recovered better than I anticipated. There was less of a focus on PSN and more concentration of the big announcements for their two primary devices. I thought that they could have stressed the extent of 3rd party support for the PSP stronger as it really is unprecedented. Just a series of logos on screen would have been enough. I don’t like Hiraz so much, he clashes with Tretton’s softer presentation style and comes off too cock-sure in comparison.

It’s interesting to observe how the Uncharted franchise has gone from semi-blockbuster accused of borrowing too liberally from its competition to E3 show-stopper. And so it should be regarded that way. Everything about this title looks fresh and lively. Drake’s dialogue is slick, the interface clean and the graphics lush. The game has what so many current generation games are lacking; colour. This title, paired with God of War III (which I was admittedly less impressed with) represent the start of the visible technical divide between the current two generation platforms.

Many people have criticized the PSP Go over the price. As said by Michael Pachter, the cost of a 16gb harddrive is considerably less than a UMD drive, Sony are already making good profit on the PSP 3000, there is no reason to hike the price up an additional $100. I need to buy a PSP for myself, so I’m being cautious over my decision as I want to be able to play my old UMD games on the new hardware and so far the “good will” alternative remains sketchy at best. Let’s hope they find a proper solution fast.

Both of the Metal Gear Solid announcements bothered me. The series has run it’s course, let’s not beat it into the ground, please. I’m more interested in MGS: Peace Walker as it’s fleshing out a patchy part of the backstory, a part that MGS:Portable Ops left open. MGS: Rising on the other hand, I’m not convinced. Raiden is not a likable character and his backstory isn’t an important part of the series timeline. I’m expecting MGS: Rising to tell the story of how Raiden reclaimed Sunny from the Patriots. Also, I think that there’s something up with his suit as the torso protrudes awkwardly protrudes outwards, perhaps his in a Gundam or something. I like how Peace Walker will be treated as a proper franchise entry, with the MGS4 crew and Hideo himself personally working on the product.

raiden-mgs-rising

The Final Fantasy XIV and Rockstar (Agent) announcements proved that Sony still yields power over 3rd parties. Both announcements could have been delivered better though. Tretton ought to have first shown the Final Fantasy XIV trailer before blurting out the name as it sounded downright ridiculous – the crowd’s disbelieving laughs highlighted this. I think that it’s inevitable that this title will arrive on the Xbox 360, the three versions will likely all launch at the same time too. Agent on the other hand remains to be a PS3 exclusive, Sony really should have hired Take 2 boss Ben Feder to do the boasting, with quotes like this, you can’t lose;

“The game, like anything from Rockstar North, is going to be very, very cool. It’s going to push the edge, it’s going to be genre-defining and it’s going to be a whole new way of experiencing videogames that we haven’t really seen before,”

Similar to the way they introduced FF XIV, Sony mad a mess in introducing the motion controller. Firstly they shouldn’t give the device the same label as the Wii-mote, this makes you look fraudulent. The two engineers started out on wonky ground (better than the GT Mobile guy, looked like he was being tortured on stage) but once the demonstrations were rolling they found their groove and impressed. The technology clearly isn’t the problem, the positioning is. It’s difficult to see where this will fit on the PS3 and I think the same applies for Natal as well. All three systems have their own proprietary motion sensing technology, no developer is going to develop for all three, Natal seems to have too many design hurdles, the PS3 wand device is only a peripheral really, Wii now has Motion Plus and the largest possible audience, plus it’s cheaper to developer for – which would you choose?

Wrapping up, Modnation Racers looks cool. Sony should have referenced Syphon Filter Combat Ops in the Play.Create.Share propaganda me thinks – might have seen a sales spike. Otherwise their conference was well done, they presented more exclusive content, further along in development and this ultimately was their key strength. The conference would have been huge if the leaks hadn’t sprung and the presentation was tidied up a little, but it’s all the same really. I’m very enthused for some Playstation, the best out of the three I’d say.

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Tags: e3, microsoft, nintendo, sony

Satoru Iwata is the Only One With His Head Screwed On

July 25th, 2008

satoru iwata nintendo president

Despite the overall pessimistic view surrounding E3 2008 and the games industry in general it does seem that many people were unanimously most disappointed with Nintendo’s conference of the big three. I can understand this in some ways, as the scripted acting between Reggie and Cammie Dunaway was awful at best.

Ignoring the silly banter by the Nintendo America PR folk, Satoru Iwata’s speech about paradigm shifting really took a hold over me and then later substantiated itself with the presentation of Wii Music. Of all the conferences I watched, I saw Nintendo’s last and it was in Mr Iwata’s words that made the most sense out of anything else on display.

Even though I completely loved the show and almost everything on display, there were a few underlying issues which troubled me. Almost all of the gameplay demonstrations reeked of stale gameplay mechanics, while naturally expected, the lack of nothing truly groundbreaking was disheartening.

Resident Evil 5 appears to be a derivative rip off of the franchise’s former entry, right down to story premises and character animation. FallOut 3 and Farcry 2 both sang choruses of tired gaming buzzwords with heavy emphasis on ‘choices’ and ‘expansive, ‘free roaming’ environments. With FallOut 3 submitting to the ever popular glamorous parade of glorified death which presenter Todd Howard was keen to highlight.

Resistance 2 sadly opted to participate in the “mine is bigger than yours” pissing match between Gears of War which was disappointing to see. Even more so was Mirror Edge, which abandoned the idea of a truly pacifist first person experience, awkwardly taking up arms in the process. Prince of Persia developers also failed to show inspiration in some regards, reusing the ‘Sands of Time’ gameplay mechanic (real time rewinds) and wrapping it in the form of a female side kick who also allows for high flying, over the top acrobatics, something that makes no sense within the history of the franchise.

While most of these games will undoubtedly go on to be fairly successful titles (and it goes without saying that I am greatly anticipating each), the fact of the matter is that they are all reliant on a mostly dated way of thinking. They all fall victim to not being as forward thinking as their graphical make up may suggest. This isn’t necessary bad or makes them inferior but within the context of what this generation can bring, we’re sticking pretty close to convention, aren’t we? Developers are dragging their feet when it comes to new game design, so I ask; How long is it going to be before we see games that:

-deal with difficult issues without the aid of bullets
-engage us with culturally enriching experiences
-teach us the consequences for our actions
-capture us emotionally through stories directed through gameplay

Just to name a few examples of what we should be expecting out of this medium.

It is here where I segue into Mr Iwata’s idea of paradigm shifting. In contrast to all of these games providing familiar experiences, staying within a set boundary, I think that Wii Music is a game which upholds these ideals of change that he discussed. Perfectly relevant with all of this Guitar Hero/Rock Band rivalry going on.

Instead of sticking to conventional rules of combining button presses with fixed timing to create a tune which demands great reflex and dexterity of the player, Wii Music removes it all to provide something that has never been done before; an open ended music performance. It sounds ridiculous, right? I mean, it’s a fair assumption that after watching the presentation most people would have questioned the legitimacy of this title. This is expected, because Wii Music is by no means a typical game and which, is what Mr Iwata was basically discussing.

Much like the other titles of this series (Wii Sport, Play…), Wii Music is challenging the very definition of video games. While it may not be shooting for the 4 examples I listed above, what Wii Music and all of these other games are trying to do is perhaps even greater and for this it should be commended as one of the only upcoming games that is actually pushing our industry forwards (save for Little Big Planet and some interesting PSN stuff).

e3 2008 wii music presentation

Obviously the simplified graphics, “casually” branded gameplay and embarrassing presentation don’t really work in favour to an audience that is still warming into this massive change. I don’t blame people for feeling uncomfortable about these games, this is fine. What bothers me considerably is how these games are not being understood for their intent. I’m not trying to negate whether Wii Music’s mechanics will or will work, instead focusing on whether the design message is being realized by consumers.

As Stephen Totilo pointed out, Nintendo isn’t 100% innocent here but the case still stands, “hardcore” gamers (seriously, this term should not exist, there is no such thing!) and a good part of the gaming press seemingly lack the open mindedness to appreciate the favour that Nintendo is doing for the industry. Not only are they breathing new life into our industry, increasing our position on the global stage, but they are also stretching the limited definition of video games. Yet we hate them for it?

Furthermore the whole concept of the Wii and DS are themselves still greatly unrealized and under appreciated. Namely because there are not enough developers prioritizing the technology to make ground breaking products. This perception problem could easily be solved if the new technology is adapted more adaquetly to a more “hardcore” playing style. Games like Metroid Prime 3, and Kirby Canvas Curse are both games that thrive on the new hardware as with 3rd party titles like Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword and Zack and Wiki. These games are appealing to the hardcore, are they not? With a greater influx of these games, maybe then Iwata’s message will be realized.

My point in writing all of this is that, much like everything else Nintendo is doing (besides the obviously rubbish Pokemon cash ins) they are doing it for a reason and a very important one at that. While the décor is radically different, can we really be so critical on something that many of us still fail to completely understand? Nintendo are running their own race, leaving the competition behind, in pursuit of a greater glory, one that we’d be fools to be shortsighted on. Nintendo don’t want to exclude their dedicated audience, but considering how this is playing about (once again, in reference to Stephen Totilo’s article), Nintendo are in essence making a huge sacrifice and I wish them well with their message.

NB: Just to reinstate, I don’t intend to speak badly of these other games, I just want to put the ideals that Nintendo are pushing for into perspective.[Conference Image: Press the Buttons]

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Tags: e3, nintendo, satoru iwata

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