Sunday, October 15, 2006
YO WHO'S SNAKE
Today was the last day of Digital Life New York so I went to the Jacob Javits Center hoping to score some Wii playtime and play whatever else was there.
I never got to touch the Wii.
:
There was usually a considerable crowd around the only display there, at Konami's booth - for Elebits. I wasn't too dishearted because it was... Konami's Elebits. It didn't look too interesting but it had its quirks. Apparently you move common household objects like roasted chickens and frying pans around to uncover and capture Pikmin-like "Elebits."
*SHRUG*
But I got to see the Wiimote up close and it is a pretty little thang. The DS Lite meets a remote, it's small and oh-so-DARLING. People seemed to be having fun though. Maybe I should've waited to play it...
I spent the most time with Metal Gear Portable Ops. The PSP kiosks themselves were lousy. There were only 4 and one of them was kaput while all the rest lacked their analog nubs. So I had to play by pushing around a metal/plastic protrusion. SUCH COMFORT.
Metal Gear itself was fun. It was standard deathmatch multiplayer mode, anyone familiar with Subsistence's online mode could dive in. Since I was only one of three other people playing I managed to dominate easily. One guy went "Yo, who's Snake?!" Why, it WAS I. Though I got to play as Ocelot and Eva as well. I got the most kills as Ocelot but I couldn't discern any special abilities between them. The controls were a standard, easy Metal Gear set-up, very simplified. You hold Circle then toggle through the D-pad to select weapons but there were no secondary items like cardboard boxes and magazines. The lack of a strafe was also irksome. Despite these setbacks I came back to play this the most. Its music also sounds like the 24 theme. I was most pleased.
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is what you'd expect from Castlevania at this point but DAMN is it pretty. And you have two characters at the same time! I couldn't figure out the dynamic between them with my limited playing time - the demo was just a short run-through of a level then a boss - but the depth potential is exciting. Definitely picking this up.
Next to the Konami booth was, conveniently, the Square Enix showspace with several Final Fantasy XII stations set up. Sorry to say, Gabe's and Tycho's criticism of simply watching the game play itself seems justified. Maybe it was because the difficulty was easy, or the perfect Gambits were chosen for the demo but all I did was simply walk from Malboro to Malboro and watched my characters do their stuff. When I put the controller down the game still played... itself. OH WELL I'M STILL GETTING IT LOL
I also won a LIMITED STAFF FF12 T-SHIRT ZOMG. The Square Enix guys there did this trivia thing and I was the fifth out of nine people to answer their dopey questions correctly.
Square Guy: "What... was the release date... of Final Fantasy VIII?!"
Me: *HAND SHOOTS UP, HE SEES ME, I ANSWER GRUFFLY* "September 9th, 1999!"
Then I waited on a line with the other winners (one was a little girl) to go in this small booth to collect my shirt. To our surprise, they sat the winners down and took ours picture. So if you see some greasy, gangly imp grinning like a Cheshire cat on Square's site anytime soon, that's me. OH WAIT EVERYONE THERE LOOKED LIKE THAT
Except me.
Soooooooooo yeah. Can't think of anything else notable... The Sega booth had Phantasy Star Universe there but only in boring single-player mode. The PS2 version was blurry and hurt my eyes. XBox 360 one, however, looked tres bien. They had the new Sonic but I didn't bother to wait. I really wanted to play Sonic Genesis for GBA there though...
Oh, and Sony had Resistance there on a big PS3 display but the lines were big and fat. So.
THERE YA HAVE IT.
Crazy stairs with the FF12 cast and logo on them.
