5/26/2010

Too much for motion control?

So the big rumor of the day is a very solid word of the 360's stab at motion control, Project Natal, coming in at seemingly steep $149 by itself, and in a bundle with the arcade unit for $299. The internet is already outraged, but of course most of the internet crowd wretches at motion control as it is and needs little reason to. Is $149 really that bad? You get one item that supports up to 4 people, add in a pack in game (almost a necessity these days) and it seems fair compared to Sony's rumored pricing for its move peripheral-around $100 for a couple of wands and some sort of undisclosed pack in (most likely their massive rip off of wii sports). I think the real big question at the end of the day isn't price, it's support. Accessories and add-ons have an extremely long history of not being very well supported. How many Playstation eye games are there? How many games support Wii-DS connectivity or Motion Plus? How many games use the Xbox live camera? Granted, both Sony and Microsoft seem to be putting a lot more weight behind these, but the end result may be the same anyways. Its too early to tell anything about any of this, but my guess is the public won't care about motion control in HD and the core gamers will just scoff at the technology anyways.

Duke Nukem lives again? At least in some form. Duke Nukem The Manhattan Project is confirmed to be in development for XBLA. I'm sure someone, somewhere cares, but aren't most of us just bored of the guy by now? I mean Serious Sam does a better job of the same act while completely ridiculing it at the same time. It's long past time for Duke to stop stealing catchphrases from much more awesome characters and just fade off into nothingness.

What's the highest rated game ever? Why it's Super Mario Galaxy 2 according to gamerankings.com, showing that when it comes to their top franchises, Nintendo does indeed know what the hell its doing and continues to give gamers legitimate reasons to own a Wii, even if that only amounts to a few select games a year. If only a majority of the companies developing for Wii took it as seriously instead of trying for a cheap cash in. My verdict? I'm only a few levels in, being distracted by other things, but it seems to retain the pure fun that comes with nearly every Mario title.

That's pretty much all I got for today, but I will try and post at least one more time in the week, in the meantime, here's your FREE GAME OF THE WEEK: Necronator

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