A few days ago, I switched back to a normal CRT wide screen television, and it occurred to me that the game I was trying to play, Battlefield: Bad Company, was unplayable online. Not because the people I played against were better, but because some things had become so vague that they limited my score. First of all, people that were far away, seemed to blur into the background (well, that happens…), and secondly my map was so cropped, that all the white lines on it blurred together, and the different marks (ammo, players, vehicles) were unrecognisable, and I’m really addicted to my map. Clearly, the map can’t be read without an HD television.

Another example is Dead Rising. The texts on the screen are so incredibly small, that you must put your face inside your television to read them… that is, without a HD television. Although the whole user interface seems unusable if you don’t use a HD television.

Gears of War 2, famous for it’s totally erroneous matchmaking system, also seems to be made for High Definition televisions. While collecting the various collectibles, it occurred to me that the texts of these collectibles are totally unreadable, even if you sit next to your TV. The numbers that appear when counting down before the match begins are way too small to see a difference between a 3 and a 6.

You could say that I can’t see it because my eyes are bad, or because I’m used to HD quality, but I don’t think that’s true. The Dead Rising incident even took place before I had a HD television, and more people seem to have trouble with it, so there’s only one option remaining: the game industry is focusing on HD televisions.

I think this is bad because of a few reasons. First of all, not everyone can afford a HD tv. Second of all, the HD option should be there because IF you are so lucky to have a HD tv, you can have better graphics, but you should be able to play every game on every working standard sized television. I don’t want to be forced to play on a large HD television. Next to that, the game industry is selling games that seem playable until you try them out. There’s no sort of warning that you need a HD television to be able to see everything, so some people pay for a game they can’t play without being irritated because they can’t read some text. It reduces your gaming experience, and that’s bad.

In other words: the game industry should stop producing games that contain texts or graphics that aren’t visible on a normal CRT television. And if they do, they should at least put a warning on the box that some parts of the game are unreadable when using a normal television so they stop deceiving their buyers.

9. Super Smash Brothers Brawl
This is just an example of one of the things that irritated me extremely about the Wii, the lack of real or good games in the months after the launch of the Wii. Before the launch, a few titles, including this one and Sadness, were hyped into heaven, but none of them were available at the launch. Not only that, they wouldn’t be in store after one the console’s release. Sadness is even considered as a hoax nowadays. In my opinion, there were no interesting releases (games like Zelda) in a period of a year after the release. Well, Wario Ware and some other mini game compilations and non-games weren’t bad, but I guess I prefer those on a DS, and they don’t have a long life as single player game.

8. Kirby’s Adventure
A little time ago, Nintendo made it possible to exchange Nintendo stars (stars you get in Europe when you purchase a Nintendo game) for Wii points. I used it to download Kirby’s Adventure. While finding out how I should hold my Wii remote, it occurred to me that the whole remote was made to play old NES games. This explained the weird place of the “1” and the “2” buttons, which are quite hard to press if you are holding the controller when you are playing Wii Sports or something like that. It also explains why Nintendo didn’t come with new games in the weeks after the launch, but DID release a lot of old games on the shopping channel. A conspiracy theory? Maybe… but it is a weird coincidence, and I do think that the controller is the proof for that.

7. Super Mario Galaxy
Maybe some people won’t agree, but I do think most games, not only those for the Wii, are made to be easy these days. I have cleared the story line of this game without a problem, practically without dying. It really became obvious with this game, because you can get to the final boss without playing even one of the harder levels, something which never happened to me before, even GTA San Andreas was harder. I do think that Nintendo is dumbing down its games on purpose, to attract an as large possible audience. Unfortunately it does destroy the experience for real gamers.

6. Zelda Twilight Princess
Without any doubt, one of the best games available on the Wii. Well, not only on the Wii, it’s also a GameCube game. My second favorite Wii game, Resident Evil 4, is also a port from the GameCube. I do think that these games, and Mario Galaxy, offer the best graphics available on the Wii. Well, if my first statement is true, and my second statement is also true, then the Wii offers GameCube graphics. Well, I don’t think that’s a problem, but those games offer the best graphics available on the Wii. So the other games offer graphics that are worse than GameCube graphics. This makes me a little bit confused, you simply can’t release a “next-gen” console with graphics that sometimes seem to equal N64 graphics. This is a crime if you do give people the impression that the Wii should be able to offer better graphics than the Game Cube.

5. Curve Ball
Curve Ball, you probably know it, it’s probably one of the most popular flash games around. In a state of total boredom I started my Wii, the Opera browser and eventually Curve Ball. I have a fine computer, so why am I playing Curve Ball on the Wii? It’s too ridiculous for words. The only explanation I can think of is that I was done with all the games I own for the Wii, and that nothing interesting came out in the mean time. So I played Curve Ball on the Wii, just to make use of it. I didn’t play on my Wii for about 3 months. I do want to know why the online functions of the Wii only seem to offer this quite useless browser, a weather channel, a poor maintained news channel and a shopping channel without demos. If there were some good online titles for the Wii, I probably would have played those instead of Curve Ball.

4. Wii Sports
One of the biggest delusions I experienced was packed with the Wii. It was probably supposed to show you how great the Wii Remote is, but it just showed the lack of possibilities. You can golf with only an uninteresting swish of your wrist and tennis without any effort. It also didn’t offer any interesting things like running through the field with tennis or baseball. You only need to make one move to bat, and after that it’s all scripted. It’s like pressing buttons, but in stead of moving your fingers, you move your whole arm. Well, the Wii Remote isn’t as useless as I put it, Zelda and Resident Evil 4 do make great use of the possibilities, but I do think that they can get more out of it.

3. Call of Duty 4
This game is probably one of the best shooters available. Well, available? It’s available on nearly every electrical device except the Wii. You can even download it on your mobile phone. Not having games like these available on your console can really destroy the popularity for your product. It looks like Nintendo scares away third party producers with the controls and the graphics it can offer. This results in a lack of good third party games for the Wii, an overload of games that scored 2/10 in my favorite game magazine, and just a few games for my Wii.

2. Metroid Prime 3
I hoped this game would feature an online multiplayer mode, strangely enough it didn’t. It seems that “Oops I did it again” is the only song that fits with Nintendo’s online policy. The Cube would get online functions, but in the end, only one or two games made use of it. The Nintendo DS offers online multiplayer, so there was hope. But unfortunately the Wii can only offer the same online possibilities as the DS, which are no match for the PS3 or the Xbox 360. You don’t have a useful friends list, instead you must enter friend codes. No chat, no voice chat, nothing. Besides that, there are practically no games that offer online multiplayer. Nintendo could and should have improved the online system. Besides all those things, the only really good game that features online possibilities is Super Smash Brothers Brawl… and that game is not available in Europe and Australia yet (while it has been released in Japan a whooping year ago, and 3 months ago in the U.S.A.).

1. Wii Fit
If you really look at the Wii closely, and if you have considered my criticism above, the Wii just isn’t a match for the PS3 or the Xbox 360. So why is it selling so well? Yes, because of the incredible amount of non-games, and Wii Fit really is a non-game in it’s most extreme form. In my opinion a console is made to play games and enjoy yourself, not to lose weight, So when I first heard about this game, it really made me angry. They can’t produce enough real games to keep the (hardcore)gamers among us satisfied for 12 months, and after that, they come with yet another non-game. Why? To let every fatty in the world buy a Wii. Commerce, commerce and yet again commerce.

So, Nintendo did really disappoint me, but that doesn’t mean that I hate the console. Games like Zelda Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4 and Mario Galaxy are great, but I hoped Nintendo would focus on games like these, and not on non-games. But all right, there’s still some time left before the next “next-gen” consoles comes out. With that, there’s still some hope that Nintendo motivates some (third party) producers to make real games.

Well im going to keep this one short bcuz im going off to Vienna and Italy with the Viotta youth orchestra this night.. so here we go

NEWS

The biggest news imo is about some wii games. First of all Nintendo has let us all know that Super Smash Brothers Brawl is in fact NOT playable at E3. This is quite shocking because it’s one of the 3 big uns to be released later this year. But something that’s quite superb about this title has been released too. Bowser will be present in the game and his super smash will be GIGA BOWSER, check the dojo for some pics of this gargantuan dude or check ign.com

Other news is the Umbrella chronicles for Wii will be very likely to have a co-op mode in which you can kill zombies together with a friend, something we’ve all be longing for… right?? well i like it.. The guys from CVG conclude this niceness from scans in which 2 crosshairs are shown..

Little plug in for meself… talking about Resident Evil, RE4 for wii is golden, GET IT

Game developer Codemaster held an election for the promo of the new game Overlord with the question who is the baddest man on earth, and guess what… IT’s GEORGE W. BUSH JR., well gz m8, u deserve it……..

fer the rest the usual scren leaks from halo 3 this week, and some new news of mgs4… wait did i just say MGS4?? I DID the news is that there will be a demo of MGS4 the 24th of JULY, so stay awake dudes and gals……….

MUST HAVE….

well my musthave list is quite the same as last week, or im too lazy to think a new one.. u choose,

Im going to prep meself for the trip to come… soonest update possible??? 19th of July.. if not then, then 14th of August….

cyall. Sand