E3 2011

E3 came and went so fast I didn't even prepare my pre-E3 thoughts. For the first time in years Startbutton didn't do a video on it either. Which is a bit sad since this year's E3 was probably better than the last two years combined. I'm not looking to go into super long winded details like I usually do.

Microsoft:
Microsoft's conference can be summed up thus: Gears 3, Halo 4, Halo remake, assload of crappy Kinect games. Oh, and I think they were proud to announce Youtube coming to Xbox, which is a lot like being proud of inventing the toaster in 2011. By then everyone already had one and you just weren't paying attention.

Sony:
In my opinion Sony had the best conference showing off PS Vita their new handheld which effectively blows away the 3DS at a $250 price point. With games that look like PS3 but handheld, it would be really hard not to bet against them this time around. They apologized for the PSN issues too which was nice, I dare say we'd never get that from Nintendo nor the Welcome Back program they initiated. The PS Move was talked about at minimum thank the gaming gods. They showed off game after game after game, most of them were pretty cool like Uncharted 3, Infamous 2, Resistance 3, and some of their Vita games. Also on hand were their HD remake program with Zone of the Enders 1 and 2, God of War PSP -> PS3 conversions and ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. And we saw a new Sly Cooper *yawn*

Despite that the gameplay and games that were shown were pretty great and took a page from Nintendo last year simply showing us more and more games. The downside of the show like Microsoft was their constant need to tell us how "everyone can play" "inclusion" and "connectivity." Every single game intro or monologue began this way, through the WHOLE 2 hour show. Like we get it Sony....Vita, PS3, other Sony shit all connects and does stuff together in the happy land of technology. Got it, thanks...shut it now.

Nintendo:
Wow talk about a turn around. Last year Nintendo had more games to show us than I own! Well at the age of 6 anyway...This year Nintendo decided to go a different route and show us practically nothing software wise. They began with the 3DS and we saw some neat things but nothing we haven't seen since last year like Mario Kart and Kid Icarus. Luigi's Mansion 2 was the welcome surprise here and literally the best part of their show.

Yeah they showed a new system...er...the controller for it anyway. I was immediately disappointed by it to say the least. And I was pretty hype for it beforehand. It's a giant tablet with buttons...Yes that's what I want to play games on, a giant ass tablet. And not a good tablet either. The touch screen tech on it is lifted from the DS, meaning it's functionality will never even compare to some of the shittiest tablets on the market. No multitouch, and no 'smart' touch features will be included here. That's not the worst part of it though. It appears bulky, "awkward" to use as I've heard from the E3 blogsphere, and the "joysticks" aren't joysticks, they are 3DS circle pads. Circle pads? Why? By comparison to joysticks I may as well play with my nose as opposed to my thumbs as practice for when this shit-turd hits store shelves. And the shoulder buttons do not possess a set of analog buttons, they are all just regular buttons. Way to alienate third parties yet again who often rely on those analog shoulder buttons for FPS games...

And let's be perfectly clear on what we're getting here. The hardware itself is no better than a PS3 or Xbox 360 which can stream gameplay to your controller and you can interact in a "new" way with games (though I'm tremendously skeptical on whether "new" means good or new means "waggle") all for an untold price. But to speculate it will probably be $300-$350 as they have admitted it will cost more than the Wii. I don't know about you but that's just embarrassing to me. They are making a system that is already 6 years old tech-wise and selling it for, probably, MORE than what the current generation consoles are selling for?

Now I know they did this exact thing with the Wii and I didn't begrudge it because they promised us a new way to control games that the other two units couldn't offer and 5 years later they deliver that promise with the Motion Plus that no developer made games for and that Nintendo themselves only made the new Zelda for...Yeah, so what I'm getting at is the Wii didn't deliver on that promise until the very end of it's life with a SINGLE game no one has even played yet. What am I supposed to think of this new system who's only defining feature is a touch screen and the letter U (it's called the Wii U)...?

Furthermore, when Sony and Microsoft decide to go into the next generation of consoles they will take with them the prevailing wind of developers leaving Nintendo behind once again with no ports and no third party support as we've seen now these past two and a half years with the current Wii.

I'm putting on a lot of hate and speculation for something I haven't used myself, but really the thoughts of the gaming community are with me. Even Nintendo's own shareholders are unhappy with their show/announcements. Their stock hasn't been this low since the end of the Gamecube days. Practically no one has confidence in this gambit.

I do see the positives it could bring to gameplay like having maps, radar, inventory screens, puzzle solving, other interesting elements I haven't thought of....but there's too many drawbacks....too many why's? Drawbacks like how much is one of these damned controllers? Also Nintendo said as of now the Wii U can only use 1 touch screen controller at a time while friends will have to use Wii motes and classic controllers. The problem is the system isn't powerful enough to stream to multiple controllers at a time. Isn't that kind of a BIG problem? What if the controller breaks? $150 to replace it? I was already pissed at replacing my PS3 controllers for $60. And I will often ask "why" while using this thing. Is it honestly required? Does it really make the game better? Could I have just hit "start" to see my inventory, solved different puzzles, or looked at my hud on the TV to see the map/radar and effectively not having to look away from the TV every ten seconds? Yeah....probably.

Barring a Mario release at launch this will probably be the first Nintendo system I ever pass on until it has a decent library of games. Or if it ever does, the current Wii doesn't have anything that qualifies as a "good" library of games.

Oh, and we saw some more of Zelda Skyward Sword. Link gets tired now for running too much and we have to wait to watch him catch his breath....really Nintendo? That wasn't a good idea in the Grand Theft Auto games it's not a good idea now. This is about as bad as adding random tripping in Smash Brothers Brawl.

E3 Wrap:
Sony impressed me a lot this year which I honestly didn't expect. Mainly I really thought the Vita would be like $400 (which it probably should be considering the tech it has). Sony showed us the games we wanted to see and did a good job of demoing this time around. Last year they were more content showing trailers and video after video after video, which they still did some of that this year too but they were better videos this time.

Microsoft is still trying to convince us the Kinect is somehow good, but at least they brought back Halo. And while I'm not one to like Halo at all in any way, I'd much rather be forced to play that for the rest of my life than touch even a SINGLE Kinect game for more than 5 minutes.

Nintendo thinks it's 2006 I guess showing off 6 year old tech and a lame duck touch screen controller. I've never really been one to want the utmost quality in things, but I'm starting to feel like Nintendo is the dollar store and Sony / Microsoft are K-Mart. You may not always find what you want at K-Mart but the prices are right for what you get at least whereas stuff at the dollar store is plentiful but never really turns out satisfying you in the same way brand name items do. (ex. Call of Duty World at War on Wii vs on PS3/360).

I guess you could even compare Nintendo to Apple in a way. They both overcharge you for their stuff and often don't support the latest games, like how there are next to no ports for Wii and Apple hardly ever gets Mac OS versions of PC games. At least Apple gives you the best touch screen money can buy...even if that amount of money could technically buy a small country and your own factory of children to make the best touch screens money can buy....

**cracks whip** MAKE ME MORE TOUCH SCREENS!!*

Journey to PC Gaming

I should first apologize for the very overused stock photo seen:
<------










However, in my mind's eye that's exactly how I felt myself to be after my long quest to fulfill some strange itch to build an ultimate gaming rig. But stories are not without their beginnings as I will describe to you the tales of my quest, wrought with heartbreak and scorn, victory and conquest, and above all else an empty wallet.

The year was 2006. Us gaming nerds were about to be adorned the Wii and PS3, our gaming itches were to be fulfilled on all fronts. Poised was I to claim my Wii, however early reports of the PS3 were saddening my inner gamer with developers crying over terrible user interfaces and the price-tag soaring above expectations. All hope was lost for my needs of HD gaming and JRPG's.

Fearing that I have lost a friend in Sony I turned to the PC market. My refusal to get an Xbox as I still deemed it the invader of my otherwise happy Nintendo Sony rivalry, I went to PC's as my alternative. Many Xbox exclusives were also on the PC so I had no worries. I did however have next to no PC building experience, or the ability to decipher what a "good" computer was. I figured if nothing else it will assist in my schoolwork (lol gamer mentality lies).

I did the mildest amount of research on the subject and closed my search on a stock HP Pavilion from Circuit City. Almost immediately I regretted the purchase. I found myself unable to run even the simplest games like Doom 3 which wasn't even a current gen title. Then I learned of graphics cards and that what I had was just an integrated piece of monkey dung. So I set out in search of a good yet affordable graphics card.

My searching left me at a quandary however. I was unable to understand exactly what my computer could handle. The go to gaming graphics card at the time was the Nvidia 8800GTX. Everyone and their mother recommended it. I was not sure that my PC could handle it though. I knew nothing about PCi connections or power supply wattage, or that motherboards even existed. I saw them as fairytale words and phrases tech junkies used to get off. Assuming for no discernible reason that I could not use the 8800GTX in my current rig, I bought a 8600GT.

The improvements in gaming were immediate and noticeably better. I could even run Crysis! I was very pleased. I would have this card for three years in my rig, but not really doing much gaming at all, mostly out of fear that my computer couldn't handle the latest games. Also, I had broken down and bought a PS3 for $600...a decision I do not regret however.

Years waned on, and my PC was all but gameless as my full attention was on the PS3 and fighting games. Nintendo and the Wii had disappointed me greatly the past few years with almost even less offerings than the PC had. That void had to be filled, and though the PS3 had amazing games there was just something missing.

My PC bug blossomed from the Orange Box. I read a few reviews that slammed the PS3 version calling it one of the worst ports of all time. I didn't figure I could run it on my PC, but a sale at Toys r Us for $20 for this set of games was "too good to pass up" (a quote that would later define my PC gaming habit). So I ran through Portal and Half Life 2 and was greatly invigorated, enjoying myself more than most gaming lately.

Somewhere, in the deep void of the Orange Box lurked a small seemingly harmless program called Steam. I would go on to ignore Steam and really not fully understand it's purpose. But on one dark and stormy night after surveying the youtubes, updating my myspace, and growing bored of so much porn I clicked on Steam. There I saw Lost Planet, a very well received Xbox 360 game that I had marginal interest in playing for just $5. Again worrying about how my PC could handle it I was hesitant....but at $5....how could I go wrong?

Luckily the game ran well, and soon this spawned an active interest in Steam and their wacky sales. My PC game library exploded in 2010 going from a mere 6 or 7 games to nearly 40. Not all was well on my Steam list however. Some games were not kind to my 8600GT and decided to run poorly. Late in 2010 I learned a bit more about PC's and realized I could handle a 9800GT just fine. I bought it, and noticed a marginal performance boost but not in the games I was hoping to see a boost.

I learned that this was likely due to a poor processor. Mine was a simple processor of just 2.1 GHz dual core. One of the first dual core models AMD made as well. This was a challenge as I had to learn about many PC related things. My motherboard apparently would only accept up to a 2.9 GHz dual core of the same model. A .8 GHz upgrade...would that noticeably improve my performance? Well at $80 it wouldn't hurt to try....right?

I did try, and try I did. Putting in a processor was the hardest thing I ever did in PC gaming. At first I put too much of that goop on causing the processor to overheat...though I found that out AFTER buying a new heatsink. Putting on this new heatsink was unmanageably difficult. I can't describe in detail what it was that struck me as so challenging as exhaustion and heat from doing this task purged my memory of the experience. Suffice to say I did not want to experience that again.

With the 2.9 dual core in I set out to try my games again. I was instantly disappointed to learn I gained MAYBE 5 frames per second on most games. Not enough to notice, and not enough to stop the constant stuttering of many of my games. Somewhere in this scrum of peace meal upgrades I had bought 2 more 1GB Ram of DDR2, and a Power Supply which I have since forgotten the wattage of. All totaled I spent probably over $500 from 2006 to early 2011 trying to get the performance I wanted out of my PC. The initial purchase was $700 for the Pavilion mind you.

What I ended up with was frustration and a yearning to get that right gaming rig I always wanted. Money was a factor as I moved out recently and pay my own bills on a job which I only work 4 days a week. Though, in this economy I guess I'm doing well? I had done a lot of research in 2010 and had the components I wanted in my Amazon cart gathering digital dust. Uncle Sam had given me enough for a wedding recently with the first home buyers tax credit with quite a sum of money to spare. Enough for my dream computer to be sure. But doubt still lingered...

Admittedly, I could play 85% of my games on medium or higher with few or no hiccups. But increasingly I was noticing games were requiring Quad core processors. With a push from my future wife to get the damn thing already and telling me to "stop whining" I abruptly ordered my parts, though still fearing my ability to put this thing together.

The parts arrived yesterday, and I enlisted the help of a friend with about the same knowledge as me of PC parts. We set to work putting everything in bit by bit. 6 hours later after many very small hiccups we got it on. Of course, my sound didn't work, and one of my 2GB Ram cards wasn't recognized. But, if it's one thing I've been VERY good at, it's troubleshooting and ironed out those small issues.

Using my dedicated Steam hard drive I put on GTA IV first as it gave me many issues on my old computer. It ran beautifully, not a single issue. Later, I ran Saints Row 2 which I deem to be the very worst PC port of all time. It also ran swimmingly. It had become 2am and I had work in the morning. While it needs more testing I think I can say with confidence that this is the PC I've always wanted. And at least this will be much easier to upgrade in the future.

Specs:
Intel i7 950 3.06Ghz
Nvidia GTX 460
6GB DDR3 Ram
ASUS Sabertooth x58 Motherboard

I know I could do with a better video card, I had planned on SLI with another 460, but it seems my case may not allow for it as it would literally bump right up against my power supply....lame. Oh, well SLI is kinda shitty anyway.

*Pixel pushing is a hazardous lifestyle*