Current Ramblings
Saturday, October 11, 2003
I'll get to the game talk in a moment, but first: Transfandom.com just put up an interview with Simon Furman and (inexplicably) Brad Mick about the upcoming shift from Armada to Energon, go read it here. There's one little thing I wanted to comment on:
TFD: Word on the street is that Energon pays homage to a great deal of characters from previous lines... and with names like Scorponok it is obvious that some notice was paid to older Transformers work. What kind of inspiration are you taking from previous generations of Transformers?
SF: I'm actually looking back at what I've done in the past (on previous TF Generations) and basically throwing out the rulebook for Energon. Previously, there was a maximum damage threshold for planet Earth, a kind of 'that's going too far'. With 10 years' worth of breathing space between Armada and Energon, that no longer seems to apply. The basic status quo is going to be very different, and what happens after that is anyone's guess!
This is coming from a guy who had San Francisco - in what was then the present day, not even this future stuff - completely destroyed not as a major plot point, but as a villian's off-the-cuff demonstration of force. I'm amost afraid to see what he's got planned for Energon.
So portable gaming... I bring this up now because of this week's release of the N-Gage, which any good gamer and/or Penny Arcade reader will have noticed being met with derisive giggling. I myself ran out of Electronics Botique in a giggle-fit when I noticed on my way out that they actually had some demo models. I'll pick on it first both since it's out and since it's an easy target. The first problem is that it's far too ambitious. It's not only a gaming unit, it's also a cell phone, an mp3 player, and an FM radio. The next problem is, at $300, it's more expensive than all four devices put together. In addition, it doesn't even do at least two of those functions particularly well. The phone function requires you to hold the device awkwardly, and to top it off you look like you've been in a horrible frisbee accident. And gaming...I put aside my giggling long enough to fiddle with the demo at Target, and the use of the numerical phone keypad for games was ridiculous. They had the Tomb Raider game loaded up, and each of the number buttons pulled off a seperate action. The hell!? Could it be any more confusing? And if a game only uses a couple of the buttons, how do you remember which ones? It's as counter-intuitive as it could possibly be.
Sony's PSP may seem a little more promising at first, but there are some aspects of it that make me seriously question Sony's ability to understand the portable gaming market. To start with, I think the most telling stat here is the size. With a 4.5" screen, the PSP will have to be significantly larger than any Game Boy incarnation. The size of the original Game Boy is considered one of the signs of its obsolescence, and one of the biggest selling points of the Game Boy Advance SP is how compact it is. Backwards compatability is a major feature of both Sony's PS2 and the GBA, but the PSP's new media format won't allow for that. Processing specs like the ones planned for the PSP will guarantee a hefty price tag, at least at first. With a lack of backwards compatability, a high price tag, and a not-quite-portable size, people are likely to get the "portable" PS1 kits that come with a power pack and a screen so they'll at least be able to play all the games already available for that system before they buy a PSP. The inclusion of an analog stick seems like a promise of broken systems, especially from a company that doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to durability. The problem inherent in the PSP is that Sony doesn't understand portable gamers. We want small, and we'll sacrifice graphics to get it. In fact, a lot of Game Boy enthusiasts specifically enjoy old-fashioned side-scrollers and turn-based RPGs. We like substance over style. If Sony puts too much emphasis on style, they're not going to win over Game Boy fans, and Game Boy fans ARE the portable market. I like a game console I can keep in my purse, and I'm more than content with the GBA's graphics capabilities. Golden Sun was a beautiful game, and it didn't need everything to be polygons to pull it off. Pokemon Sapphire spent the effort and memory space they could have used on overly complex graphics on amazingly complex, deep gameplay. And my purse isn't even that big. I predict that the PSP will fare much, much better than the N-Gage because of the Playstation brand's built-in fanbase, but I don't see it toppling the Game Boy Advance.
There. I'm glad I finally got around to getting that out of my system.
posted@10:43 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments