30 minutes in line and then I could have a 20 minutes session playing games and get the Nintenthingy in my hands.
Yeah yeah yeah
3D works. When it does, it’s pretty amazing.
Problems: eye view distance, ambient light are changing the 3D effect from not working at all to outstandingly “real in your face”. Of course you need to look at it straight, no angle are allowed: no spectator can watch around your shoulder if he or she doesn’t want to lose sight.
It worked much better with gameplay than with movies and trailers. I guess the brain is believing in it more when you are moving things around.
Two games who were clearly astounding in 3D: Metal Gear Solid and Nintendogs. It works perfectly with slow gameplay, not so much with fast action.
Overall, I’m not that impressed by the 3D because it doesn’t provide that much to the experience: doing a portable console with touch input was changing the game, doing a motion controlled console was changing the game, doing a portable console with pseudo-3D is nice and cool, but not game changing. For now.
But the 3DS is not just the cool 3D effect. For the rest I love it: the analog pad, new d-pad position is better IMO (big hands, cramps on my DS Lite), the L and R buttons have a better shape and are easier to press and overall I don’t know what hardware is in it but it seems capable of stuffs. Graphically it’s between the PSP and the Gamecube /Wii-ish I would say. The new retractable stylus is great. The sliders are shitty though. I want + – buttons. And sound is much better but we’re coming from far away.
So it’s going to work. People are going to love this little effect (especially while taking pictures), there’s the DS huge compatible library, hardcore gamers will enjoy Nintendo’s old school games, a couple of third parties will be able to do good games too and for the rest it will be showelware, like usual.
I wonder if they updated their gamedev tool chain with this new console because it was pretty damn awful with the DS (at least for the sound and music part).
Anyway.
Except the 3DS what struck me on this second day was that the Kinect Dance Central game and overall how all of the dance games available are enjoyed by people, a lot. It’s like geeks discovering that dance and body expression are fun! That’s cool.
Also, there were these obscure F2P MMOs from Nexon and others running on PCs. I was walking around and was always struck by the flowing of these. It’s not that they’re looking better than console games, but they’re running on high end computers and it’s so fluid it’s beautiful, attractive. It was the same at the IndieCade booth. That’s why I thought about Epic Mickey on better hardware than a Wii. I’m not crazy about having the best hardware possible but when you watch something running at more than 60fps, rock solid, it really catches the attention. I just don’t want it to be only that:
Wow wow wow