Saturday, June 14, 2003
Not a bad day at all, for a change. Trekked out to Camden to play Nintendo's slate of games for 2003 (more on that in a minute). Man, what a freakshow Camden Town is. It's just slightly north of Central London and not too far from all the main parts of town, but it feels like a whole new world out there. A world full of people with exotic hairstyles and tattoos a-plenty. Not my sort of thing, if you couldn't tell before.
Even though they didn't quite bring everything they showed off at the big E3 convention last month in LA, there still was a decent selection to play at Nintendo's little event. And it was a fun and chilled-out event. I didn't have to cover it for anyone (everyone I work for wrote about these games last month), so I booked my timeslot for late on the second day to avoid all the over-eager fansite reporters. It's great to just go and play games without any angle or agenda and just play it for FUN. Don't get me wrong, it hasn't quite reached the stage where my enjoyment of gaming is lessened by the analytical side of my work, but it's good to not worry about rushing home on time to write a story up, or having to give a poor game a full and proper workout for the benefit of being fair in an article. It's also not the best atmosphere to play certain games in. Games with more complex control and an ongoing storyline -- like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, or the Metal Gear Solid remake -- can't be properly judged in an environment where you can only sample 5-10 minute snippets of the action, but yet the job almost requires it at times. I'd rather not play either game and wait until release, and quick play-time (curiousity got the better of me) pretty much confirmed that; I didn't enjoy my five minutes with either, but still plan to check out the final versions when they come out.
With that said though, you can easily sample the delights of other titles, and without needing to give every game equal and fair consideration I spent most of my time with F-Zero GX. Super-fast, looking incredible, and it controls like a dream. Viewtiful Joe was another that I spent an inordinate amount of time with. It's an old-fashioned beat-em-up with some wildly original and inventive touches (and a very distinctive look). I replayed the same stage at least four or five times and thoroughly enjoyed it. The other to look out for is Mario Kart: Double Dash. I think it still needs some work, but despite that it's still a total blast in multiplayer. Probably the best part is that you can link two GameCubes together for an 8-player session of Mario Kart. With two GameCubes and more than enough people at home in Hong Kong, I'm already looking forward to huge Mario Kart bashes in August!
Met up with Reshma for a drink after the show. I love how you find a nice, relatively quiet bar (as in you only have to speak a little louder than you do on a busy street) to have a chat in and they steadily increase the volume of the music... and increase it... and increase it... and within 45 minutes of walking in you're shouting to be heard. Is this a conspiracy to force me into exclusively meeting people at Starbucks?
Posted at 7:57 AM
