Nintendo Power gives Conduit a 6.5, E3 must be epic

Well folks, here it is. The highly anticipated Wii savior finally falls into the grubby hands of reviewers. The first verdict? A 6.5, from Nintendo Power. Nintendo Power. What was hailed as the Wii's hardcore gaming savior, is simply put aside as mediocre. To be honest, I was looking forward to the game, but with a sort of skepticism I've come to expect from upcoming Wii titles.



NP gives several reasons for the low score, including bad voice acting, short single player campaign, good, but inconsistent graphics, and horribly laggy online. Overall, this doesn't suprise me. Despite High Voltage's consistent bragging, nothing that I've seen of the game gave me the impression that it could stand out in any way, besides having decent graphics. I'll wait for other reviews definitely, as well as play it myself to get a real verdict. Looks like a rental.

One thing to consider, however, is the quality of the review. It is riddled with grammatical errors, as well as factual errors. Errors aside, it is still very poorly written. Read it, and see for yourself. Page 66 seems a little bit too early into the magazine as well. The screenshots used also feature an older version of the HUD (check IGN.com). Above all, it's a little suspicious that such a high-profile game would be reviewed so early (including its online component), and then put on the shelves. The evidence points to it being fake.

http://www.picvalley.net/u/1709/25782576520183922431242544711CxiV7ia8rTjgUmvxapBH.JPG

Regardless of the review's authenticity, it brings up the chilling and very real prospect of the Conduit flopping. Nintendo has got to do well at E3 this year. While they're certainly doing well in the sales department, the lack of good games on the Wii's horizon is ridiculous. Last E3 was a disappointment of epic proportions, topped only by Sony's 2006 showing. Nintendo has got to show off some good, core franchises this year. And it's not like they don't have options:

-Wii Zelda (Wii Motion Plus, anyone?)
-New Mario
-Pikmin 3
-Starfox
-F-Zero
-Kid Iccarus
-Metroid (Dread)
-Kirby

In addition to already revealed games, such as Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Mario and Luigi 3, and Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver. On the above list, bold titles are ones that I expect to actually be shown, simply due to time since a previous installment. Of course, all of the games on that list should be shown for the same reason. Also, options such as a DSi virtual console can be fleshed out.



Realistically, I expect another poor showing. 90% will be spent on sales figures (female gaming is up 35% from last year!!!!), followed by Wii Fit 2, Wii Stretching, Wii Play 2, and other assorted casual shit. In all liklehood, one or two new core franchise titles will be shown briefly at the end. The fact is, Nintendo is on top, and the current strategy they have is working - sales are through the rooof. Regardless, I hope I'm dead wrong. So come on Nintendo, surprise me.

Biggest Disappointment of the Year: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

I've been playing videogames for as long as I can remember. As an avid gamer, I would always buy my anticipated titles on launch day, eagerly doing what any other avid gamer would - playing the shit out of them. Of all of the games I've ever played, Super Smash Bros. Melee was probably the game I put the most time into. Eventually, I became a competitive smasher, learning all the advanced techniques, and kicking a fair bit of ass with Marth. I could only dream of the next Smash Bros. game.

Until the launch of Mario Galaxy (an amazing game), I was not happy with my Wii. Twilight Princess, which I had all but creamed my pants in anticipation over, was a huge disappointment, as was Metroid Prime 3. Most of the Wii games looked like they weren't even worth my time. I wasn't worried about the possiblity of Brawl being a disappointment, however. After all, how could they ruin Brawl? It's the fucking sequel to Melee!

When Brawl came out, it took over my life. For exactly one week, I played the damn game every waking hour, not even yeilding to eat. It was an obsession. After a thourough amount of time with the game, I've come to several conclusions. Compared to Melee, Brawl is shit for competitive players, and, overall, is a huge disappointment. (No, it didn't deserve a single GOTY).

First, let's take a look at the character balance. Previous top-teir smasher Marth, was improved for Brawl. Yes, that's right, the top-teir, insane priority, incredibly powerful badass girly-man Marth was improved - double edge dance is now one of the best moves in the game, fair is deadly, counter is more powerful, and his ^smash is usable! In all fairness, his range was nerfed, and his tip is slightly less powerful for his side samsh, but overall, he was improved. Other characters, such as Peach, Shiek, and Captain Falcon, were completely nerfed.

Overall, the character balance is horrid. Meta-Knight rises to a supreme level untouched by anybody else. What were they thinking when they made him? He's a character with near infinite recovery, and unprecedented gimping ability. Snake is incredible, Rob is amazing. Then you've got trash like Link, who is completely outclassed by Toon-Link. Character balancing my ass. Items have been horribly balanced as well, ranging the gamut from utterly useless to completely overpowered.

Before I go into my next point, I want to briefly cover what it means to be competitve. A game is competitive when the better player can win consistently. Yes Brawl is somewhat competitive, but no where near Melee. You can find competition in event the most shallow game, however, it is not truly competitve. The addition of certain limiting factors to Brawl's gameplay help to cripple its competitve nature.

Now let's examine some of the limiting factors they placed on the gameplay, to "make it easier for new players". L-cancelling and wave-dashing are gone. What good does that do? None. It removes depth. Now there's less reward for hard-practice, less to separate the big-boys from the n00bs. Keeping in those advanced techniques wouldn't have hurt a damn thing. It would've only provided more enjoyment for people willing to dedicate time to the game. The ledge snap feature is ridiculous as well, enabling people to grasp the ledge automatically from extremely far distances. Above all, the changes they've made ensure that the game will be a floatly, slow, clunky, sheild-grab fest, with long, flowing, Ken-style combos a thing of the past. In Melee, technique was rewarded, and the sky was th limit. With Brawl, that's simply not the case. The better player does not win nearly as much as they did in Melee.

Then there's the "random" factor. To everyone's great enjoyment, tripping has been added - a feature that serves absolutley no other purpose except to frustrate players. And guess what? It's completly random! Yay!

Now, some general complaints about Brawl, not related to its competitive nature.

First, let's look at the random character select feature which is absolutely not random. Here are some scenarios:

1. I get Wolf, in the same color, 5 matches in a row.
2. During a team match, p1 gets fox, and his teammate p3 gets falco. P2 gets falco, and his teammate p4 gets fox. Repeating the match, the characters are then switched - p1 is falco, his teammate p3 is fox etc.
3. P1 gets Link, and his partner gets Mario. P2 gets Gannondorf, and his partner is Bowser.

Now, keep in mind that the above situations were all chosen completely by the random feature. Also keep in mind that similarly "unrandom" scenarios occur frequently, perhaps in almost every match where random is used. If I choose random, that means I want a random set of characters. If I wanted my own cutsey scenarios, I would've arranged them myself! While this may be a minor quibble, it's still annoying, and a prime example of the developers' incompetence (or random/luck oriented attitude when making this game).

Next are the CPUs. While not a complaint about Brawl's competitive meta-game, they still make playing alone incredibly annoying. First of all, there's the matter of their Jesus-flexes. Yes, you heard me right. They aren't really skilled in the traditional sense. Instead, they possess godly reflexes, allowing them to dodge anything - smash attacks at point blank range, any obstacle, or any item or assisst trophy, even final smashes. This makes playing against a CPU annoying as shit - you never hit them, and they're constantly running.

CPUs are also a pain in the ass in another aspect as well. Contrary to previous Smash Bros, these CPUs do not fight fairly in a "free for all" match. For some reason, they only go for human players - teaming up to ridiculous extents on the lone human. In Melee or 64, if you were to run to the other edge of the stage, and leave two CPUs, they'd fight each other. In Brawl, however, both CPUs will follow you. They won't so much as touch each other. After they knock you off the ledge, they just stand there, waiting to rip the shit out of you as you try to recover. Only after you're out of the picture do they fight each other. Now playing free for alls as a single human player is extremely irritating, as it consists of you trying to fend off 3 CPUs constantly.

Next, I have some other complaints. Subspace isn't that great, and gets boring after a while. The soundtrack isn't all it's cracked up to be either. There are some gems in there, but overall, quality>quantity. Many of the tracks are trash, and alot feature midi (which sounds horrible, there's no excuse for midi). WiFi is shit. One word: lag. I have a pretty damn fast connection, and even local matches suffer from extreme lag, which completely unacceptable in any fighting game.

Above all, I firmly believe Brawl is a worse game than Melee. Melee is the better made game. Competitively, it's no contest - Melee is the game that rewards hard work, and Brawl does not. That said, I still play Brawl, and I still have fun with it. I also believe that the Smash series has passed its golden era of Melee, and will only go downhill from there. Brawl was definitely a step in the wrong direction, and the next Smash Bros will probably be no better. Sakurai has even said that he intends to give the next Smash Bros. installment less content - a sure sign of its potential catering to "new players".

Most of the pro-brawl or anti-melee arguments are baseless, overused, and just annoying. (No, I do not hate pro-brawl players, just the stupid ones). Here are a few things that I don't want to hear, and why:

Brawl hasn't been out for that long yet! Give it some time! It took a while for all of the Melee techniques to be discovered!

This argument is one of the most overused ever. They forget that since launch (even before), Brawl had thousands of people playing and working towards finding new techniques and advancing the meta-game. Melee, did not. There was no Smashboards to help organize everything, and the number of smashers working to advance the metagame was very low.

This isn't Melee 2.0! You can't compare the two!

We're looking at the competitive nature of Brawl and Melee. For that reason, we must compare the two. This argument can be valid in other comparisons, however.

Stop hating on Brawl! Seriously stop that!

Not really a point whatsoever. I'm not picking on Brawl. I'm giving reasons as to why I don't like. Why should I stop? Provide me with actual reasons.

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In fact, I'm sick and tired of Nintendo's current trend. They're easier, shorter, and overall shallower - probably for some bullshit reason of catering to "new players" (my grandma). I don't get it. New players did fine with older Nintendo games, which weren't shallow and easy. Games like Wii music are absolute trash, and I feel that Nintendo truly is abandoning the fans that have been with them all along - the same fans that put them where they are today. Most of the current installations of Nintendo franchises have been subpar, save for Mario Kart, AC (although City Folk is rehash in its purest form), and Mario Galaxy. The wiimote itself would be alot better if it was a little more responsive.