You may have noticed that I haven’t uploaded any blogs lately. I’ll get part 6 of Game balance up soon, I’ve got it written out but I’m just too lazy to copy it to my computer. The main reason why I haven’t done anything is because I moved past week. After the moving itself you have to do a multitude of things: Putting together Ikea wardrobes, hanging lamps from the ceilings, etc. And of course, getting your internet to work. That took quite a while. Sadly.

Another reason is because I just got an Xbox 360. My father had gotten one some time ago, but then he realized he never used it, and gave it to me. Awesome.

However, he’d forgotten to give me the games he had as well. So I had to enjoy my 360 without any games. Luckily, it’s not too hard.
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Z-targeting was what helped the first 3D Zelda be a success

Innovation is a hard thing to come by. Are we really running out of ideas? Sure there are some original games out there, but how many Nazis do I have to kill, how many touchdowns do I have to score, and how many times do I have to rescue the princess? I’m not trying to say some of it isn’t not fun, I’ve just noticed it has become the same game each time. Whatever happened to good old innovation?

The transition from 2D to 3D on the Nintendo 64 in most cases was pure genius. You cannot deny how awesome it was to roam Princess Peach’s castle for the first time in all three dimensions, or Z-targetting your first enemy then striking him down with your sword. It was not just Nintendo who achieved this, Sony did it with their blockbuster Metal Gear Solid by breaking the fourth wall and laying the foundation for stealth games for years to come.

Newer attempts at innovation have been scarce (Portal), and some even failed (Lair, Wii Music). What happened? Are we really so money focused that developers have become lazy? This could possibly be to blame on the “casual” market, with games containing simple gameplay and user friendliness. A unique story can add to innovation, just look at Chrono Trigger. Unlike the million Final Fantasy spinoffs, the single Chrono Trigger game has been constantly praised for never aging, and that the story is what sets it apart.

I feel its time for developers to stop and think about what made gaming truly great: fun.

Man, those things creep me out

Microsoft recently released the “new Xbox experience” to every online Xbox. First off let’s look at the structure.

Pros

· Quicker browsing through easy scrolling

· New big display panels for each task, such as edit profile or play current disc

· RB, RT, LB, LT buttons utilized for maneuvering through the menus

· Friends channel makes it easier to find those suckers (keep your friends close and your enemies closer)

· *double dragon Xbox theme still awesome looking

Cons

• New layout includes spotlight channel and other little tweaks to spurt advertising right into your face from your TV screen
• Your Xbox themes will not rotate through their pictures when you go through the new Xbox channels, only when you select something such as the video library or marketplace, unlike before when it changed while scrolling through menus.
• Big gray surface obstructing half your Xbox theme anyway
• You have to stare at your Xbox avatar abomination when you go to edit your profile

Now first off, Mii’s. Oh wait what’s that? That’s not a Mii? ‘Course not, it’s an “Xbox avatar” designed to be more realistic. Ultimately what happened is, take the bastard love child of cartoonish human personas and uncanny valley humanoids and make it into an avatar system. You are FORCED (curse the day we gave console’s sentient minds) to make one at the start of your Xbox online update that contains this ‘new experience’. These avatars although customizable in hip clothing and bling (yes they have bling, diamond rings and a chain etc., oh god) lack customization in physical feature placement. Yea you can chisel your jaw line but you can’t even move your eyebrows to their proper position. Maybe I’m just a bit biased against these things since, well they ripped off Nintendo, and that all my so-called ‘colleagues’ share my view and agree with me, thus only reinforcing my negativity, but I stand strong on my position against these little critters. I only hope that Microsoft doesn’t start charging people to customize these things, the next thing I want to hear in life is: “Hey bro, I just spent 500 MS points on a new hat and jacket combo for my Xbox avatar!” The best thing about these things is that you can put sunglasses on them, then zoom in real close, take a picture, and now you have a nice gamerpic of sunglasses.

That’s really all there is to this whole ‘new experience’ thing. Hopefully Microsoft will release some real nice homerun updates eventually. So what do you think? Good, bad, or just plain unnecessary? I’m going to go with unnecessary for now.

Since we were talking about the new experience, let’s go back to something old for just a minute, gamer pictures. This topic has made me considerably annoyed for a while now. Not only will Microsoft not let you simply make your own by using a custom uploaded image thumbnail (except for those dumb Xbox avatar photos) but they also nickel and dime you for their gamer picture designs and a lot of them aren’t even that good (here’s a nice marketing idea, give a gamer picture free with each Xbox360 game at least, maybe people will even buy the games then for picture collectability…if somebody would actually do that).