Jason, The Jungle and Jon St. John

The date is 10/10/2010 and just in case you couldn’t tell I’m Gamer_152. This week I’ve spent time gunning down Spartans in Halo: Reach and getting my strategy on in Starcraft II but the highlight by far has been Jon St. John, voice of Duke Nukem, answering my question and telling me he’s got balls of steel to a live audience of 1,900 people (skip to 1:09:45 in this video for the good stuff). Before I go any further though I’d like to add a little something to what I said last week, regarding the 3DS. I stick by my statement that the large price tag on that thing is going to scare a lot of people off but after listening to the fantastic Michael Pachter  speak on the matter I have to say it makes sense that Nintendo are doing it. Remember the Wii, it was out of stock in regions all over Europe and the US for about two years leading to it being in massive demand and yet Nintendo only charged a measly £180 for it. We’re not going to see the 3DS getting Wii sales figures but when this thing hits shelves there are going to be serious sales, and at least during the early days it probably won’t be a case of if people buy the console, but a case of who buys the console. Nintendo know that they have the opportunity to do what they didn’t with the Wii, to charge through the roof at launch and I have to say, as a business tactic it’s a pretty damn good one.

Haha, that's very funny. Okay, you can show us the real console now.

From a great-looking handheld to a ridiculous looking one now, anyone who hasn’t seen news of the Panasonic Jungle needs to check this thing out, not because it looks worth buying but because of the exact opposite, Panasonic’s new console looks like absolute nonsense. For those of you who have not yet seen this monstrosity this is Panasonic’s attempt to create a handheld console focused around online multiplayer. Yes, you read that correctly and if you thought that sounded horrendous then check this out; there is no d-pad or face buttons, the console is controlled by a tiny qwerty keyboard and the first big game they showed off for the console was an MMO. So to evaluate these people are taking the kinds of games you like, giving you a tiny, fumbly keyboard with which to play them and forcing you to squint at a tiny screen to work out what is going on. I’m frankly astounded that this thing exists, sorry Panasonic but you dun goofed.

This man is enjoying a happy, emotional trauma-free day with his son, what could possibly go wrong?

On a more personal note this week I’ve been doing something that I’ve never done before, watching a video game from start to finish. What game you ask? Heavy Rain. I decided that I wasn’t realistically going to have the chance to ever play this game and so I’m doing the next best thing. We all know watching isn’t the same as playing but Heavy Rain seems to work a lot better as a pure audio-visual experience than just about every other game out there. I’ve been watching Mahalo’s walkthrough and I can say that without a doubt Heavy Rain is a thoroughly depressing game. It’s rather amazing though, while being far from at the high of sophisticated gameplay the experience it provides on an emotional level is unlike anything I’ve seen in a game before, in fact I almost feel like Heavy Rain could represent a genre of games within itself. I wish more games would take a leaf out of Heavy Rain’s book because it not only feels unique but part of what makes it so unique is just how impacting it is with its narrative. There’s also a lot of talk out there about how games are often geared so heavily towards a male audience and I believe that Heavy Rain represents the kind of game that could really appeal to women. Sure there’s the fight scenes and the escape sequences but Heavy Rain is very emotionally-driven and from what I’ve seen rather brilliant.

Finally, while I may not get the opportunity to purchase it myself I have to say Double Fine’s Costume Quest is looking great. If you said to me ‘Xbox Live Arcade RPG’ I wouldn’t immediately be rushing to the marketplace to buy it but Costume Quest looks like a quality product and I think part of the magic of it comes from its ability to tap into our childhood fantasies, please check it out if you have any interest in Tim Schafer or the game itself. Anyway, this concludes things for another week. Thank you for reading. Good luck, have Ponyta.

-Gamer_152