Editorial: What Nintendo Did Wrong at E3 2012

Its been a week since E3, and for the most part the hype has settled. That being said, I feel its time to for me to give my honest opinion about E3 this year. Today, I’m going to start with Nintendo. You can ask the rest of the UGR staff, I am the biggest Nintendo fan boy at UGR. I love and adore just about every first party title they have ever done. Last year at E3, Nintendo failed to fully and clearly show the Wii U. Many were confused about whether or not the Wii U was even its own console, or just a Wii add-on. This year, Nintendo got a second chance to wow the world with its new system. Sadly, for the second year in a row, Nintendo failed to wow us with the Wii U.

The conference started with  pleasant news, with talk of Pikmin 3. However after that it tailed off into nothing. After declaring Nintendo’s “amazing” media support with Twitter,Youtube and Facebook, this joke of a conference continued on. With showings of Super Mario U. and Batman Arkham City : Armored Edition. Over the course of the show, more Wii u titles were shown including the awesome Zombi U. The conference had the least anti-climatic end to a conference I had ever seen with the unveiling of Nintendoland.

So what did Nintendo do wrong? Well for starters, why in the world did Nintendo even waste their precious conference time to tell us that they have a Youtube, Twitter, and a Facebook? Why was a game that has been out for months(Arkham City) given such a long demo? Why is it supposed to be one of the biggest titles at launch? Why did Nintendoland have such a long and unnecessary demo? Why was Nintendoland made to be such a big deal? The biggest problem of all, is where were all the surprises?Where were all the Nintendo All stars?

Allow me to further clarify what I mean by lack of surprises, Here is a list of everything Nintendo showed us at E3, with a fun fact next to it.

Stuff We Already Knew About:

Pikmin 3 – Talked about two years ago, last year, and before E3 this year.

Seriously, What is this!?!?

New Super Mario Bros. U – Demo’d last year, talked about earlier this year
LEGO City Undercover – Talked about last year
Batman: Arkham City – Came out last year
Darksiders II – Revealed last year
Mass Effect 3 – Came out earlier this year.
Tank! Tank! Tank! – Came out in 2009. Yes. Seriously. Three damn years ago.
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 – Came out last year in Japan
Trine 2: Director’s Cut – Came out last year
Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge – Revealed last year
Aliens: Colonial Marines – Revealed last year
ZombiU – Awesome game, best thing at Nintendo’s conference but was revealed the day before.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 – Revealed last year
Paper Mario: Sticker Star – Also revealed last year

New Stuff:

Scribblenauts: Unlimited- Not all that exciting
New Super Mario Bros. 2- Over saturation of Mario.
Wii Fit U- Honestly, who is excited about this..
NintendoLand- I honestly am at a loss for words over this game.
SiNG- Once again who honestly cares.

See what I mean? All I can ask Nintendo is where were the All-Stars? Where was Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, Kirby, Star Fox(Seriously how long do I have to wait for a new Star Fox game!), Fire Emblem, Advanced Wars, and the list goes on and on. Nintendo has this amazing stable of first party games that people want play and they are doing nothing with this stable of superstars. Even third-party support, which was supposed to be amazing on this system, was horrible.

The icing on the cake was that there was absolutely no mention of Price tag or launch date, which are important facts, considering that the system is launching in a few months. Nintendo stocks have been dropping since the conference and honestly, I’m not surprised. Nintendo did not do good enough this year. Microsoft and Sony did not do as well either, but they are not releasing a new console this year.

I love Nintendo with all my heart, and I want to see them come out on top in the video game industry, but there is no way I can hide behind fan-boyism  with this atrocity of a showing. I’m still going to buy a Wii U at launch because I know Nintendo will get their act together. They always do. I think the Wii U will go on to do great things, despite this poor showing. That being said, Non-specific Action Figure was the best thing Nintendo had to show at E3 and I hope we get one with the Wii u. Stay tuned for my next article, where I discuss Sony’s E3 showing.

The views and opinions in this article are that of Jerome Weiswasser, and do not reflect the entire views of the UGR Staff. Jerome can be reached on twitter @xG4M3R4LYf3x.

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Ubisoft believes in Wii U

Ubisoft is putting alot of faith in Nintendo, as they normally do. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot thinks that Nintendo will sell 5 million Wii U systems within the first 6 months of its launch. He also feels that by introducing their next-gen console first, Nintendo will atrract many customers looking for the newest hardware, while there is no competition from Microsoft and Sony.

“As soon as (consumers) see good quality products and good experiences that are coming that will bring the industry back to a huge growth, they come back and the share price goes up quickly.” said Guillemot.

Post by Jerome Weiswasser 

Kirby’s 20th Anniversary Details

A few weeks ago, Nintendo revealed that they will be releasing a compilation of kirby’s greatest games  in honor everybody’s pink ball of fluff reaching his 20 year anniversary. Now Nintendo has given us a launch window and a list of games that will be included in the compilation. The game, titled Kirby’s dream collection, will launch in September and feature the following games:

• Kirby’s Dream Land (Game Boy)
• Kirby’s Adventure (NES)
• Kirby’s Dream Land 2 (Game Boy)
• Kirby Super Star (SNES)
• Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (SNES)
• Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64)

I grew up on the N64, so Kirby 64 has a special place in my heart as my favorite Kirby game. That being said, this is a pretty good list of games. This would be a great last good Wii title to see the Wii off into the console graveyard.

Post by Jerome Weiswasser

Dragon’s Dogma Review

Open world RPGs are hit or miss in the gaming world but Dragon’s Dogma has hit the mark. While the game may not be a Dark Souls challenger like most would assume it does make a good competitor to Skyrim.

In Dragon’s Dogma you play as the Arisen, which is what you are called when a dragon is reborn and eats your heart. The story of the game is that, you are on a quest to take down the dragon who ate your heart and who is threatening to destroy the world. Over the entire story is pretty dry and falls victim to the vast open world, which was the clear focus of the game.

The gameplay is an action RPG. You choose which class you want to be after creating your character. Later on during the game you can change classes to another basic class or a more advance class for a small fee. As you level up you gain discipline points that you can use to gain new abilities to use in your fights. There is also a pawn system. A pawn is a character you gain at the beginning of the game that will fight along side you. When you get your own pawn you customize him or her and choose which class they are going to be. They also will gain discipline points to gain them new abilities or change classes. You can have up to two other pawns with you at all times making a total of three that will follow you throughout the world. The Rift is a place where you can go to get new pawns or retire current ones. The pawns are really intelligent and rarely will they ever leave you in a fight alone. Coming from someone who hates having AI companions in games I was deeply impressed with the pawn system and find myself going from store to store to try and find new armor or weapons for her.

The world is thoughtfully crafted and is believable as I run though canyons as bandits roll rocks down to try and ambush me. The enemies in the game are well designed and challenging at times too. Boss tier monsters are what you really need to worry about, if your not paying attention you might run into a ogre inside a dark cave you accidently found. At night enemies seem to become tougher and ones that are nocturnal make an appearance.

The health system of the game is rather annoying. As you battle you loose health (duh) however there also is a wound system that hinders how much health you can regain at a time. Healing items help take care of this most of the time but if you are out you can go to a close by inn to spend the night or day. The inns are also where you will need to be if you want to level up, manage items you store or change classes. Even though the wound system is there to make you think more strategically when you are in a major boss fight it does cause problems as some hits nearly kill you no matter how much health you have.

Every game has its technical issues or bugs and Dragon’s Dogma is no exception. Screen tearing is the biggest issue; it is really bad and sometimes breaks the immersion that the world gives. Shop owners will also take a while to appear. Even though I installed the game onto the hard drive these issues are still rampant and kill immersion.

           Quests in the games are rather vague and sometimes don’t even tell you where you should go or where to look. Some side quests are fun though and will end up helping you farther in as you play. This could be anything from helping a sorcerer get a spell book back, and later he helps in a boss fight or helping a shopkeeper open a shop. The main quests are in a specific spot but after a while it dose not make where the main quest line is making it hard to find or remember where to go. There is only one city in the game, which is kind of disappointing because of how big the map is, they could have added one or two more cities to add some diversity.

Overall the game is very well made and very addicting. The pawn system is fun and the over all world exploration is a gem. People who are nervous about purchasing this game shouldn’t be, it is an excellent game that any rpg savvy gamer should own and the experience is completely worth the discussion with friends. Long lasting appeal and a new game plus makes this game a 8/10.

Final Score 8/10

Post by Jeremy Kratka