I have decided I want a black Wii U it looks slick! I really hope they launch in that color, if they do it's a day 1 ....

Played some more Arkham City.

I'm only 2 hours in, I fail to see how this got GOTY awards. (Sorry to anyone here who made it there personal GOTY, no offence intended).

It's a button masher insofar as combat is concerned, and the one great thing it has (and it is great) is identical to the first game and leaned on heavily -- (the swooping attack scenarios, picking off enemies one-by-one).

One thing that really pisses me off about Far Cry is that there's no quick save like there is in 99% of PC games. Its a checkpoint system only, and its very easy to die in this game. As a matter of fact, this game is much harder than any of the other FC games or Crysis games. Even with full body armor and health, it only takes a few shots (or arm swipes from ape men) to kill you. So you end up having to replay large areas over and over before you get lucky enough to survive.

Supposedly there's a mod that implements a quick save, but I can't be bothered to find it and install it.

The story and plot progression in this game is BAD.....I mean really bad. Much worse than any other game in the FC or Crysis series. Luckily, that's not the key feature of a FPS but still, its like its just thrown in there for the hell of it. Its impressive to see how much Crytek improved their craft between this game and Crysis in all facets in just 3 short years.

Like I said before, its basically a rough draft for what would become Crysis....its got the same open world feel to it, the exact same setting, the smooth controls and combat. Just not as polished.

aspro said:

Meaningless, but just so you know: ($308 USD)

"Amazon UK has slapped a £199 price tag on its Wii U product listing page.

The price is likely just an estimate as Nintendo is yet to formally confirm how much its new system will sell for. That said, it's an interesting figure in light of ShopTo's move to price the console at £280.

A disclaimer on ShopTo's page read "PLEASE NOTE: All information on this product page, including our price, is subject to change. Normal pre-order price promise does not apply to this product at this time. Price may change pending full details from Nintendo."

Note that EU pricing never correlates to American pricing in terms of exchange rates.  For example, a 160GB slim on amazon.co.uk is £189.99 ($293.46US), while on amazon.com is $247.41

edgecrusher said:

One thing that really pisses me off about Far Cry is ... its basically a rough draft for what would become Crysis....its got the same open world feel to it, the exact same setting, the smooth controls and combat. Just not as polished.

Again, that was my experience. It was a great showpiece, not a great game.

From that Iwata article Aspro posted, interesting stuff thanks.

"We decided to differentiate the Wii not with graphics but with motion control. We believed that motion control was unique and would create more attraction rather than trying to make the Wii HD. On the other hand, we had lost the third-party support when they were focussing on multi-platform titles."


Iwata is determined their new console will not suffer a similar fate. "In the case of the Wii U, we have decided to make it so that it is capable of doing whatever the other two consoles can do, so games are easily portable," says Iwata. "Even though the other machines are six years old, they have the advantage now because developers are capable of maximising the graphic capabilities, while with the new machine (Wii U) they will have to start from scratch to create the most capable graphics. So the Wii U has that room for improvement."


"So in terms of performance, we don't see any issues for third-parties to be willing to make their software available. As we expand the install-base of the Wii U, I see greater opportunities for the third-parties to be able to provide the Wii U with quality software titles. And as well as the third-party multi-platform titles, we will have publishers making exclusive Wii U titles."

It almost sounds like he made a machine that could port games from 6 year old machines? Shouldn't he have been more forward thinking than that? He does say that there is room for improvement etc.

It all sounds like a foolproof plan. However, there is the threat of new hardware from Sony and Microsoft coming along and creating the same problem. Iwata doesn't see this being the case. "My impression is that the things that happened with Wii v 360 or Wii v PS3 won't happen again," he says. "If they decide to increase the spec numbers, will the consumers be able to realise the difference enough so that they can understand it's much superior to today's machine? And also, if they beef up the processing power, that simply means much more work for software developers to take advantage of those spec numbers. So I have to ask the question if that type of differentiation really makes sense. But I think further arguments must wait until probably next year, when they have finalised and disclosed whatever they are thinking about for the next generation of consoles."

It all sounds like 2006 Iwata again.

Iwata on Wii U Power said:

Wii U's power relates to keeping an acceptable price, GamePad is costly to make


Of course, because we have designed a new hardware system, we are using new technology and we are using new GPUs.　But as we have to devote significant costs to the Wii U GamePad, if we were to apply the same level of enhancement that other console manufacturers shoot for to the processing power component, the Wii U would become extremely high in price, and it would not be affordable.　In other words, we think that the way that the various console manufacturers are allocating their budgets to the hardware is different from the way that we allocate our budget to the hardware. Ultimately, we’re looking to maintain a price point for the Wii U that is reasonable in comparison to the value to be offered.


There is also another differentiation point here. While existing platforms have engines that development teams have tuned and optimized for six to seven years after their respective launches, the Wii U is a new platform that has slightly different architecture and, since development teams have only just begun development on software for it, they are only at the halfway point to utilizing its full potential. Despite this fact, however, if you look at the game “Assassin’s Creed III,” which was recently announced or shown, you can’t see much difference when you compare it with games for other companies’ systems. I hope that helps you to understand a little bit better. - Satoru Iwata

Link

As I suspected. This is why it's going to be interesting to see what the other guys do in relation to added features, built in Kinect etc?

aspro said:

^Yup. UK and EU (and AU) for that matter always get to pay extra.

In this case I am sure it is placeholder anyway. I'm convinced even Nintendo doesn't know what they can charge at this point.

Amazon took down the price and release date, the date they had was for a July release so it was obviously a mistake and the price too because of amazons price promise, if people pre-ordered for £199 amazon would have to stick with it.

Foolz said:

Quicksaving is for wusses.

GG, why are you laughing at Wii level graphics?

Some of the pics look better because our forum sizes them according to our PC screen size. You have to see them full size to appreciate the hilarity.

Dragon Age Origins

COD MW OMG the soliders look like they are wearing nude suits

COD BLOPS

COD 2

Okay, top two stories so far today.

Trouble brewing at Retro Studios. Rocky development for Wii U project.

Some say this blog has been accurate in the past, others say it's dicey.

ERodgers said:

I have heard one thing about Retro Studios. Nintendo has been in panic mode over the studio for the last year, and it’s had a negative effect on Retro Studio’s current Wii U project. Retro’s Wii U project is far along in development, but it had a rocky development road throughout the process which forced Nintendo to fly a few employees from NST out to Austin, Texas to make sure Retro’s project stays on track and reaches completion. Major gaps in positions and staff has caused delays and frustrations throughout the development process.

It's a long article so check it out.

Also the author has been responding to comments about the story here

"Nintendo originally thought they could still get Retro Studios to do a Metroid Prime 4 even after all of those people left.



But Retro didn't want to do Metroid Prime 4 one year after all of those MP Trilogy designers/engineers/artists had left. "

Reading more it sounds like this is why we got DKC and this is why Team Ninja got to do Other M?

More worrying for me is this article:

Nintendo Has a Plan to Deal With Its Wii U Calibration Problem

If you have played Skyward sword or Red Steel 2 you will know about accelerometer drift and having to recenter. RS2 did it automatically whenever the IR was pointed at the screen. SS had you crudely and somewhat annoyingly having to point and reset the center because it used gyros for aiming instead of IR.

Well, is seems we have confirmation that the Wii U has an IR transceiver but not an IR camera so you cannot IR aim with it and this means you will have to manually recenter the damned thing like in skyward sword. It means first or third person shooters will not have perfectly reliable gyro aiming unless you recenter it every so often.

Kotaku said:

The most significant flaw I found with the otherwise-sturdy Wii U last week was the new screen controller's inability to "remember" its position vis a vis your TV. This proved to be a problem for games that required the GamePad to be aimed at the TV, since the GamePad's internal motion sensors would gradually lose track of where the TV had been. A simple button press on the controller would re-set its center point

Again it is a long article so check it out, Miyamoto is aware and is looking for ways around it, including more expensive tech.

However, I don't play those games like that. LOTRO for example, since it's an MMO, I can play it no issues @ 1600x900 with everything on High.

I don't bother with AA, though.