MrMaycock.com The blog of a nineteen year old university student

Another good day.

Well, almost all day.

Some bits were just plain hilarious!

The start of the day, the Core 4 mock, was a waste of time. I did worse than expected. Which sort of put an expected downer on my day. Following the Core 4 mock, we went to Bloomers & Tarts for the usual Tuesday sandwich. Which was nice, as usual. I spent a couple of hours in the area catching up with even more friends, which was also nice.

Come 12.30, and I start heading home. No. 1 was 5 minutes late, which was usual. The No. 33 to Norton Canes was on time, as usual. That's where the problems began. Mainly because the bus overheated (another reason why the current UK heatwave is failing, whih can be added to congested nose and bad sleep), and broke down outisde the Spar in Heath Hayes. Which amused me. Apart from the fact the bus was oh so hot, it was being stranded two minutes away from my house. And by stranded, I mean far too hot and exhausted to walk back. The No. 32 was around soon enough though, so I was home, relaxing.

Then I did nothing for four or so hours, until the E3 conferences of the afternoon.

As expected, Nintendo's was truly awful. For me, anyway. I don't care about Motion Plus (or Motion+, or however they're branding it), Golden Sun, DSi, Wii Sports Resort, or the Wii Vitality Sensor. I mean, seriously? No, bad Nintendo. The only thing announced that did interest me would have to be Super Mario Galaxy 2, but I'm planning to trade my Wii in soon anyway due to the 10 month lull in using it, and based on E3 there's nothing new coming in the next year that interests me enough. So, the Wii should cover Lips and Microsoft Points hopefully, and more.

Sony's conference, however, was in a completely different thing. Lots more interesting things that interested me. Uncharted 2 looked visually stunning, but I can't see how standard clothes could stop a helicopter mounted machine gun's bullets. But that's nitpicking. Anyway, other things that they showed was FFXIII, which looked visually stunning, nice to see more of it, very confusing with all the terminology being thrown around, along with the mad camera panning.

Favourite bit of Sony's conference was what I thought, and probably most people watching, was Jack Tretton showing FFvXIII gameplay, but announcing FFXIV was just immense! Don't think anyone expected that, but it was a good reveal. Even if FFXIII isn't out before they announced it, which I feel is a bit weird. Anyway, best game shown for me (as I care not for God of War, Metal Gear Solid, MAG (which I fail to see the point of, big woop about the 256 simultaneous players, it doesn't seem to add anything to gameplay, apart from the fact that you need to be pretty skilled in commanding 127 other team mates), or Trico or whatever the hell was happening in that) would have to be the latest game in the custom content, sorry, Play, Create, Share genre, ModNation Racers. It looks like a fun little game, with one mad custom race track creator. The way it was so fluid in its running was just simply amazing, and I can't wait to give it a go.

Sony's new hardware is something else that's a bit interesting. The worst kept secret of E3, the PSP Go, seems like a fabulous idea, but it just seems far too overpriced to be something I'd buy. The other thing they introduced didn't have a name, but I couldn't take it seriously when they said that you could cast fire and get a red, lit up ball. To be honest, it did look good, but I honestly don't care about motion control all that much. The way it was represented was very good, but when you can draw on a virtual screen as precise to 1mm, what's the point? (I was thinking that all the way through the Wii Sports Resort stuff as well) If it's that precise, why not just draw? Ah well.

I don't think it'll be as successful as the Wii's motion controls, or Project Natal. The reasons being that the Wii relies upon the motion controls, and Project Natal doesn't need two lit up wands to operate. Also, they'll probably be optional with few games needing them, so you know. They made for a good tech demo, anyway. I think Project Natal will be more successful as it does more, in my opinion. I see the facial recognition, voice recognition and full body motion tracking with nothing more than one USB peripheral just mad, and with lots of interesting possibilites. I mean, Milo, for god sake, the creepy boy that reacts to your emotion. It's weird, but amazing, and if that's where games are going, I really need to pass my A Levels. Here's hoping.

Anyway, in general, I felt Microsoft had the best press conference this year. The stage was sexy and exciting, they had Steven Spielberg, Hideo Kojima, and the Beatles on stage, and they showed more games that I was interested in (Halo: ODST, Halo: Reach, Modern Warfare 2, The Beatles Rock Band, Crackdown 2, Left 4 Dead 2, FFXIII) and announced lots more exciting functions to add to the dashboard (Last.fm, Facebook, Twitter, Sky, and of course, Project Natal). They also didn't blart out lots of statistics, marketing crap or NPD data like Sony and Nintendo did, which made for an enjoyable two hours of games and experiences.

Sony had an alright stage with an alright conference (I don't care how big the screen is, to be honest, I just want games and no showreels), and showed a few games I was interested in (ModNation Racers, FFXIII, FFXIV, Uncharted 2), and their unnamed motion tech was pretty awesome, though I see it a bit useless. But what do I know? Oh, they had Hideo Kojima too.

Nintendo was just one big pile of awful. Apparently, "Everyone's Game" which is a load of crap. Weird screens and no Zelda made me a bit disappointed. And they didn't have Kojima either. Or Ravi Drums. Ah well, maybe next year? Hah.

That's been a basic representation of my day, really. And with the rest of this week off school (study leave seems so much more interesting with me not actually going into school, I do have to say), I should get some revision done. Well, I need to get some revision done. I want to be helping to create mad games.

However, The Sims 3. That is all.