Tokyo Game Show - Day 2 Continued

[News] [Computer Gaming] [TGS]

Still at the net cafe-style terminal but magically the auto-correct has gone the way of the Gamecube. Huzzah! Now if only this seat was in any way ergonomically sound I'd be in blogging heaven.

The combination of long days on my feet, plus trundling very heavy luggage around, plus battling through crowds, plus these crazy Japanese mattresses that I swear are made mostly of brick, has worked a profound torture on my back. When I arrive in Perth I'm going to require the help of several nubile massage-assistants to pound it back into submission. Applications being taken now.

Here's some more stuff that I saw at TGS:

Too Many MMOGS - I do not like them on a train. I do not like them on a plane. I do not like Korean MMOG spam. I do not like it, Sam I Am. No, seriously, I have photos of seven, eight, nine banners for new MMOGs, all by the same company, all in a row, and all utterly generic. And there's multiple, multiple booths of that stuff going on. You may have heard tell of the forthcoming online gaming crash, but you won't really understand it until you see what's going on over here. I have a bag stuffed full of brochures for these horrible things, which I will proudly show to all those whom I encounter back in Australia. Some sort of ritual burning may be in order afterwards.

Immersion Technologies - It's not a game, it's a company, and what they're making is controllers. They're showing off some hacked XBox controllers where they've removed the dual rumble motors and replaced them with a single motor that does everything. It's got advantages in as much as it can spin up and spin down really fast, and it feels kind of cool. What's much more impressive, though, is some technology they're showing off that does force-feedback touchscreens. You press a button on the touchscreen, and it really feels force-feedback touchscreens. You press a button on the touchscreen, and it really feels like you've pressed a button, and it kicks back out when you release. It's one of those you-have-to-try-it things but I'd be strongly surprised if we don't see something like this in the next generation of DS in three or four years.

Real Fighting Championship - Another Cykan vehicle, this time a 2P fighting game specifically finessed to be played online on the PC. Very generic, with some really bland gameplay and graphics, but the net technology behind it seems solid, which is where a lot of other online fighters have gone wrong. If there's one genre that can't stand lag, this is it.

Tales of Etcetera - Namco has about five million ｎｅｗ entries in its Tales franchise on display. I can't say I've spent much time with any of them, because you really can't tell a lot about an RPG in five minutes, but they all look reasonably solid. It looks like if you've liked the other recent installments you'll like these. One you may not have heard of is Tales of Mobile, coming to NTT DoCoMo and presumably other such Japanese mobile carriers.

Trusty Bell - Another Namco RPG. This is one of the 50-whatever RPGs that the XBox 360 is allegedly going to have under its belt by the end of next year. It's got an anime aesthetic to it, but somehow it really makes use of the 360's graphical capabilities with cell-shading and so forth to make this title look really vibrant. Other than to say it looks good, though, you'll have to look elsewhere for meaningful gameplay details.

That's all for today. I'll start work on the Sunday post, now.