Nintendo E3 News – All about the Wii U

The second part of my E3 news coverage is solely about Nintendo. They came out quirky, as always, with a lot of news about their new console. Their second press conference (on the 6th) was completely about the 3DS. To read the news from Sony, EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft’s press events, check out my other blog And Ubisoft Takes the Prize – E3 News.

Opening with a demo for the new Pikmen 3 for the Wii U, they did their best to push how innovative the new Wii U Gamepad would be. If the system was set up to just use the Gamepad, I wouldn’t be complaining, but after repeated references to not only the Nunchuk but the Pro Controller and the Balance Board, I’m wondering just how many peripherals Nintendo wants their customers to purchase. Is this everything you’ll have to buy to play all of the games on the Wii U?

And how many will you need? Since the system is being catered towards families, owners may need more than one of each and the only controller announced to be packaged with the Wii U is the Gamepad. The lower priced tag system could be concealing a lot of hidden costs.

Controller Breaking Nerd Rage

Abric, the guest from Episode 52 of 5wowthings, sent me a link to a blog about throwing controllers. Some of you may know, as I finished Mass Effect 3 a week after it came out, I threw my controller across the room and it broke. This is the controller:

Doesn’t look very broken, now does it? I figure one of the little bits and bobs on the inside that they make in Japan and I don’t understand at all broke off and can be fixed by being soldered back on. I don’t have any idea how to do that, so I just use the other controller I own and this sits around as a paper weight.

No big deal. Well, there is this spot:

That’s where the paint tore when this got ripped off the wall by the flying controller:

It’s just a hook I use to hang stuff on. I have several and there’s about a foot of space between each so it’s damn good aim on my part. But to be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve thrown a controller, or anything that is immensely pissing me off. I broke a flute once and my steering wheel receives a lot of abuse.

ME3 Jan’s Way

I posted this in response to Lodur’s blog, ME3 and why the ending is fine as is. He challenged the critics of ME3s ending to write something better. Challenge accepted. I encourage you, if you’re as annoyed by this as I am, to also comment on his blog with your ending. He wrote a good post; I just disagree with him.

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Fine. Even though I am not a fiction writer, a game writer, or a writer of anything but my opinion, I’ll take a shot at this because I think they could have given us something that reflected our paths throughout the game like they promised. I’m not making a special cut scene for people who got 5k+ military strength. This is because I am lazy and I’m not getting paid for this shit.

So let’s get into this: Anderson is dead and Shepard is dying. Everyone Shepard loves, has ever known, everything that has ever mattered to him is about to be destroyed because Hackett needs him to do something. The Crucible isn’t working. No one knew what it was supposed to do in the first place, so what the hell is he supposed to do?

Crawling forward, he tries anyways. With the last of his strength

Mass Effect 3 – All the same colors

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read this blog if you care about being told the ending.

I loved this game, as you’ll know if you read my blog,  First Impressions – ME3. Every second was filled with a new choice, a new option, a new way to shape MY Mass Effect game. Yes, MY game. When you talk about ME 1, 2, or 3, you’ll see gamers tag “my” to the character names: “my Shepard, my Tali, my Kaiden, my Wrex.” We do this because up until the last ten minutes of this game, everything that’s taken place varies from one player to the next. My Tali and Garus hooked up, much to the shock and surprise of another ME3 player and that’s just one example of a very, very small difference.

If you follow me on twitter, you know how angry I was about the ending to this game. I’m still angry – seething, really – that I didn’t get a conclusion to my game; that the options I was given were nothing my Shepard would have ever picked, let alone ran towards in the end. Then I got in an argument with a guy who said the ending was amazing and we should stop bitching (by we I mean the 50,000 people who took a poll on EA’s Origin forums to say we hated the ending and want a better one). This blog is for you guys, for the ones who don’t get why we’re upset, why Child’s Play has raised a donation of over $45,000 in an effort to get Bioware to change the ending, and who think we need to grow up and get over it.

First I’d like to show you a little video

First Impressions – Mass Effect 3

As Mass Effect 3 loaded on my Xbox, I sat back, calmly waiting for the game to start. Of course, this was interrupted by three separate updates to the game and I got to sit for a long time before being able to click that New Game button. The first chime took me back to the very first time I played Mass Effect 1 and the excitement started. Who can forget that noise? Leaning forward eagerly, I waited for my port to go through but then my save from ME 2 didn’t port correctly and I got to spend ten minutes recreating my Jane Shepard from scratch (her nose still doesn’t look right).

So, finally, after nearly a half hour of waiting, the opening cut scene started – and I was hooked. As Commander Shepard once again, it was my job to smack the stupid Alliance Council into doing something about the nefarious Reaper threat. Did they listen to me? Well, they probably thought they should have all along when a Reaper blew the fuck out of the chambers we were in and killed them all.

Yes, that’s right, the game starts out with you nearly dying as Earth is attacked – no decimated – by the Reapers invading force. The little girl you were watching playing from your room? Oh, she’s dead. The friends and family of most of your crew? Them too. And in this game it’s not just being told, “Hey, we don’t stand a CHANCE against this enemy,” you see it firsthand. As I ran down the outside of the tower where I had been , I looked out to watch a Reaper ship zapping and blasting its way through a thriving metropolis, ship after ship dogfighting above me while molten meteors hurtled their way through the sky. Let me remind you, I’ve been playing for less than ten minutes thus far and ever since, the action hasn’t relented once.