Project Lore

It's Possible, But Not Fun In mid-May I finally broke down.  With E3 approaching, BlizzCon tickets in hand and PAX just two weeks after that, I realized that I couldn't delay a new laptop any longer.  After scrutinizing numerous netbook or netbook-style PCs I went with my gut and purchased the Asus EEE PC 1000HE. From a basic user's standpoint, the machine is a glorious meld of metal, wiring and plastic.   Sure, the thing attracts smudges like stink on a monkey, but the battery lasts an eternity.   I was able to fly from Philadelphia, land in Denver for a layover, and then continue on to Los Angeles without being tethered to the archaic power grid.  The 1000he's impressive wireless capabilities comes from Intel's Atom architecture, Asus' Super Hybrid Engine that allows throttling of the processor, and a low power profile in Windows XP.  Of course, there's power, and then there is power. My bit of QQ over Netbooks revolved around their lack of GPU power.  Just because my hand was forced into the purchase of a lackluster model, for me, doesn't mean that I wouldn't try to push it.  After spending a few hours downloading WoW, TBC, WotLK and patches (there's no CD/DVD-ROM drive) to the slow harddrive, I fired up the MMORPG and waited.  To my surprise, the game got to load screen in a fashionable time.  Of course that's just the load screen, not a big accomplishment. An excruciatingly long wait later (Tommy Tallarico suggested I upgrade the machine with a solid state drive.  A good suggestion, but that would make the machine seep an extra 50% from my moth-ridden pockets.), and I am loaded into Icecrown.  With everything at the bare minimum (shadows, textures, color depth, no add-ons) the game is playable in only the loosest sense of the term.  With framerates that fail to count with toes I won't be making a habit of entering Azeroth from Asus's slim gateway, but it is suitable for housekeeping activities and certain daily quests. The little machine is impressive visually and technologically, but it falls flat when it comes to pushing polygons.  All things considered the purchase was a good one.  That doesn't mean I won't be watching for the second generation of Netbooks to make non- raiding and PvPing a possibility.  Come on ION. In E3 news, The Grinder (shown behind closed doors) looks and plays as described, Left 4 Dead on the Wii.  Batman Arkham Asylum is the dark Batman I have been looking for, but I can see the seemingly awesome combat system becoming repetitive.  The scale of Just Cause 2's (closed doors again, aren't I special!) open world and the amount of ways to dispatch enemies are a pair of features to get excited about.

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Activision's DJ Hero Demo With DJ Shadow Thanks to the wild success of BlizzCon our favorite MMO developer has little cause to attend E3 these days.  Who could blame them?  They have thousands, upon thousands of people attempting to get tickets to the company's gathering in August.  With a guaranteed captive audience, why bother paying the ECA for a booth?  There are also numerous other benefits, including setting the rules, relatively unlimited physical space, and, this is the big one, complete and total coverage from the video game journalists and mainstream press of Blizzard's material.  Blizzard isn't here in Los Angeles, but we can't simply ignore the return of the biggest video game convention in the world.  So here I am and here.  We.  Go. I'll be realistic, although I am covering the show as a freelance writer for a site, there's simply no way I can compete with the budgets behind the likes of 1UP.com.  Just go there for your day-to-day, press-to-press, announcement-to-announcement coverage.  Instead of trying to speedbag alongside million dollar budgets, I'll play to my strengths by dissecting upcoming titles and analyzing incoming information. Rundown of my favorite announcements:

• Nintendo announces Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, New Wii Zelda, Metroid: Other M and Golden Sun DS.  To be honest, SMG2's announcement scares me more than excites me.  I am a huge fan of the original title, the diverse gravity gameplay is stunning, but feel that a direct sequel could be diluted fun, the likes of Mario Sunshine to Mario 64.  Sure Miyamoto and friends can do a lot more with gravity, but will it feel fresh like most of the other Mario platformers ?  New Super Mario Bros. for the DS was a stunning return to the series' original 8-bit gameplay.  With added drop-in co-op for four players and Mario vs. Donkey Kong-style puzzle solving, how could an oldschooler like myself not be excited?  Metroid and Zelda announcements are all well and good, but the Golden Sun DS announcement, that will bring the best RPG series I've played in a decade to a trilogy, had me covering my notepad in exclamation points.
• Microsoft's Project Natal Hardware Microsoft's Project Natal and the extension of Xbox Live to a games on demand service.  As it stands now, Project Natal is the biggest announcement of the show.  I don't play the whole "who won E3" game, but its too innovative to ignore.  Let's just hope it plays as good as the presentation makes it sound (remember how awesome the Wii Remote sounded so many E3's ago?).  Full digital distribution coming the Xbox 360 eh?  Well that will certainly piss off the retail chains.  Left 4 Dead 2 seems kinda quick.
• Sony stuck alongside Microsoft in following Nintendo's example with a motion controller.  In addition to that we have the PSP Go! and a little diddy called Final Fantasy XIV.  The motion controller didn't come off as, well, trumped up as Microsoft's.  What I mean is that Sony's promises seem more realistic than Microsoft's, but again we should take the wait-and-see approach on both technologies.  PSP Go! is an entire platform that will piss off the retail chain since all of its content will be digital (no UMD drive).  As a collector of video games this decision upsets me, so I doubt I, or any retail chains who won't see substantial income from selling it, will be supporting the first sliding handheld.  Square-Enix returning to the MMORPG genre with FFXIV was a bit of a shock to me.  The company promises a multi-lingual worldwide release across the "exclusive" PS3, and, oh yea, that PC thing.  I wonder if they will stick to the hardcore guns ofFFXI , or casual it up in an attempt to suck away WoW players.  DC Universe Online, a title we've discussed before, still seems interesting even though it remains in pre-alpha.  The same state it was in at the New York Comic Con.
• Activision, the other Blizzard meat, did impress the hell out of me with DJ Hero.  The whole rhythm genre felt incredibly stale to me after Rock Band, but the scratching game blew me away with a multiplayer mode that would blend songs together (vocals for one overlayed on the music for the other) for a very interesting, and club-tastic, mash-up.  Still, I think the general gameplay will get stale quickly, but that doesn't mean it won't sell like Wiis.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade Hands-on:

• Muramasa: The Demon Blade plays like a revamped, stylized Double Dragon.  Too bad it doesn't have co-op.
• Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, also known as Marvel vs. Capcom 3 with old school anime characters, looks beautiful and plays awesome on the Hori's Wii arcade stick.
• Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles rehashes Resident Evil 2 in an on-rails shooter title for the Wii.  The gameplay seems very slow for a shooter, with a good amount of downtime, I literally put the gun down, that is meant to build old school Resident Evil suspense.  I enjoyed Umbrella Chronicles, but Darkside didn't impress.
• Sin and Punishment 2 brings back Space Harrier gameplay and is developed by no less than the excellent Treasure.

That was all I got to cover on Day 1 of E3 2009, which just so happens to be my first E3.  There are numerous other MMORPGs on the show floor (A.P.B.,CrimeCraft ) that I will try to get my hands on.  Especially after hearing about some awesome mechanics in All Points Bulletin from the guys at TheGameReviews.com (another place I digitally pen for). What's excited you the most? *Note* I did not get to the EA, Sega or THQ booths.

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