1778: Enough with the "Nintendo on Mobile" Nonsense

Another article about whether or not Nintendo should move into the lucrative but (largely) morally bankrupt world of mobile phone games came up today, this time from Forbes.

Thankfully, Forbes' Erik Kain actually has his head screwed on correctly, unlike the various analysts who have, over the last few years, said that Nintendo "should" go mobile owing to the decline of dedicated handheld gaming in favour of gaming on smart devices, and the general underperformance of the Wii U compared to both its peers and its predecessor the Wii.

Nintendo's in a very different position to where it was during the Wii and DS years, for sure, but the company is coming into the Christmas period in a strong position with regard to games. The Wii U in particular is in a much better position than it has been, with strong first-party titles like Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. (as well as Captain Toad Treasure Tracker soon) doubtless having places on many Christmas lists. The 3DS, meanwhile, is largely keeping to itself for the most part, but still has an enormous library of great games to draw from — not to mention backwards compatibility with the wealth of fantastic software available on DS.

Kain brings up an excellent point in his piece, which is something I've been saying for a while: Nintendo shouldn't move into mobile game development because the philosophy behind it is fundamentally different to the way Nintendo does things. And not, for my money, for the better; while excellent mobile games like The Room, 80 Days and the like exist, for every one of those there's a Candy Crush Saga, a Hay Day, a Clash of Clans: mindless tapping games designed not to be in any way fun, but instead to extract as much money out of their players as possible. And, worryingly, players are lapping these up. The aforementioned games all make obscene amounts of money each month — enough to be able to afford advertising campaigns that rival (and in many cases exceed) the presence of the most big-budget triple-A titles — and they're all a load of cack.

Nintendo, conversely, is all about the fun, and I've been reminded of this as I've played Super Smash Bros. and revisited Mario Kart 8 this week. Nintendo makes games by the old book: they're not trying to be movies, they're not trying to be spectacular, they're simply trying to be enjoyable fun that anyone can pick up and have a go with, but which those willing to put in a bit more time and effort can get even more out of. Every time I play a Nintendo game, it feels like that Christmas I got a Super Nintendo; they're games just made to be enjoyed and savoured for the joy of playing, nothing more. They have no desire to be "art" — though for sure there's artistry in both their aesthetic and top-quality mechanical design — nor any desire to say something about the human condition; they're just… you know, fun.

Moreover, they're games that are designed to gradually train players to get better and progress a little bit at a time, demonstrating their skill rather than how deep their pockets are. If you get stuck in a Nintendo game, it's up to you to get good, scrub; no paying to skip a difficult bit here.

Up until very recently, Nintendo games didn't even have downloadable add-on content; that's changed with Mario Kart, but even that demonstrates Nintendo's "players first" attitude. Rather than pre-purchasing the DLC costing as much as a new game as tends to happen with new triple-A games and their obnoxious "Season Passes" on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, Mario Kart's DLC costs £12 and clearly shows exactly what it is you're getting for your money and when. (8 new tracks and 4 new characters now; another 8 new tracks and 4 new characters in May of next year; alternatively, you can pay about £8 and get just the first half now.) Not only that, but when playing online, the player-base fragmentation issue that DLC creates is deftly taken care of by a simple on-screen button that asks whether or not you want to play with the new tracks included, or just those that came on the disc. Simple, effective.

I have not played a single mobile game for… probably well over a year now. Very little has appealed — though I do intend to give 80 Days a go at some point — and, moreover, the problems both Android and iOS have with discoverability have only continued to get worse and worse as time has gone on; the market is flooded with identikit crap from developers trying to make a quick bit of cash from reskinning existing games and cloning popular titles. There's the odd diamond in the rough — stuff like Monument Valley, Threes! and the aforementioned 80 Days — but it's very much in the minority and, frankly, even these great games are very rarely up to the standard of what you can get on 3DS and Vita, whether technically or in terms of gameplay.

Conversely, I take my 3DS and my Vita to work every day and play an hour of something like Senran Kagura Burst (3DS) or Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 (Vita) every lunchtime, and I have an absolute blast. I can enjoy a game without requiring an Internet connection, without having to pay up to progress, and without "social features" constantly bugging me to share my every move on Facebook and Twitter. I've said it before, I'll say it again: I'll continue to prefer dedicated handhelds for portable gaming for as long as companies like Sony and Nintendo continue to make them, and it will be a sad day for me when the only available portable gaming platforms are mobile phones and tablets. I hope that day never comes.

Now, maybe a Neptunia dungeon or two before sleep…

1776: SMAAASH

Not realising that Black Friday has apparently become A Thing over here, I went into town to pick up a copy of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U earlier. It took over half an hour of queueing in Game to pick up a copy, but at least I didn't get to the front of the line and find there were none left. (I didn't get a Gamecube controller adapter, though; stupid "preorders only" rule.)

Most of you reading this probably know what Super Smash Bros. is, but on the offchance you don't, it's become one of Nintendo's flagship series over the years thanks to it essentially being a disc full of Nintendo fangasms. It's sort of a fighting game — though nowhere near as technically demanding as more traditional fighting games — that stars a wide variety of characters either from Nintendo's own lineup or from games that have appeared on Nintendo consoles at some point or another, as well as one or two special guests.

I've been playing a bit of the new game this evening and like its predecessors, it appears to be a lot of fun, if somewhat overwhelming in terms of the sheer number of different things available to do. There's a straightforward Smash battle, Classic Mode, All-Star Mode, Events Mode, Stadium Mode, online and probably several others I've forgotten, each of which are subdivided into various other things and most of which can be played either solo or with friends. Some can be played cooperatively with a partner against the computer, others are purely competitive. The most extreme multiplayer offering the new game has is an utterly chaotic 8-player mode in which it's nigh-impossible to tell what the fuck is going on, but it's an enjoyable sort of nonsense nonetheless.

There are some interesting additions, too. The ability to create your own fighter using any of the Miis on your Wii U console makes for some entertaining possibilities, particularly since they're customisable with three different fighting styles, selectable (and unlockable) special moves, equipment, costumes and headgear. The Amiibo functionality, where you can use small figurines to communicate with the game via the Near-Field Communication panel on the Gamepad, is fun, too, and not quite what I expected; rather than your Amiibo containing a fighter than you personally use, it instead acts as more of a sort of virtual pet that you can feed equipment to (don't think too hard about how that works), customise the special moves of and gradually level up by allowing it to participate alongside you in battle. Because the figurine itself holds data, you can then take it to a friend's house and bring your Amiibo into their game, too, so they can face off against the fighter you've been training up to be an unstoppable killing machine.

I'm really happy to see slightly lesser-known games such as Xenoblade Chronicles getting headline character love, too. Xenoblade's protagonist Shulk is an enjoyable, interesting character to play as, and the Xenoblade stage is challenging and cool-looking. (Plus it features recurring villain Metal Face showing up to cause mischief throughout, which is a lot of fun.) It sure makes me pretty hungry to see the new Xenoblade game in action on Wii U, though…

Aside from that, the customisation of the game has never been better. You can tinker around with how frequently items appear, which music plays in which stage and how often and even switch levels to a stripped-down, simplified "Omega Mode" (essentially little more than a floating platform) for a true test of your skill without environmental hazards being a pain. There's even an online mode — "For Glory" — where you play without items on Omega stages, and I have a feeling this is where the true Super Smash Bros. legends will learn to shine.

It's unfortunate that none of my friends are around this weekend as I was hoping to have a good session of local multiplayer with them. Still, I shall console myself with the vast amount of other content in the game — and perhaps attempt to give some online friends a kicking — and smile as the Wii U once again shows that it has some of the most enjoyable, most interesting and most polished games in all of the "next" generation of console hardware.

1597: Mario Kart 8 is Fucking Great

(Hey, that rhymes. It's like it was meant to be.)

So, yes, Mario Kart 8 is, as the title says, fucking great. And it's a surprisingly complete-feeling package this time around, too; past installments of the series have typically not been anywhere near as interesting if you're sitting around by yourself, but the excellent online mode in Mario Kart 8 means that there's always some interesting, enjoyable competition to be had even if you don't have anyone to play with in the same room as you.

As ever, though, it's when you have people over to play that the game absolutely shines. I bought it primarily with the intention of this evening happening — my regular board gaming friends came over, we ate curry and then played Mario Kart 8 instead of something tabletop. And it was fab.

The thing that has always been good about multiplayer Mario Kart is also the thing that frustrates people the most — the fact it can all turn at a moment's notice. One minute you'll be happily driving along in first place, not a care in the world, and the next you'll be pelted by blue, red and green shells, knocked back into the middle of the pack as you friends whizz by you, giggling.

This is, of course, infuriating when it happens to you, but with the nicely tuned balance of Mario Kart you'll have the chance to get your revenge before very long. The further down the pack you are, the nastier the items you get are, so unless you were knocked out of the running moments from the finish line — which isn't beyond the realm of possibility — there's always a chance to claw your way back to a respectable position.

Ultimately, the nice thing is that it doesn't matter all that much because it's simply fun to play. The simple controls and well-tuned difficulty level mean that anyone can pick it up and have a go, while the myriad shortcuts and special techniques mean that those who want to take their game to the next level can do so. Just remember, though, getting out in front effectively paints a big target on your back, so don't be surprised when the dreaded blue shell comes a-knockin'.

I could tell that the game was well-received by my friends from the amount of foul language it was producing. I find it remarkable that Nintendo's family-friendly games provoke more bitching, swearing and cursing than pretty much any other game I know. Even our go-to multiplayer titles like Super Street Fighter IV and TrackMania don't make us yell and curse like we were during our Mario Kart session this evening, and the cursing grew in volume and intensity as we worked our way through the eight cups. Eventually, my friend James was reduced to a gibbering wreck, no longer using words and simply making what he apparently believed to be insulting noises, having previously passed through stuttering, peculiar insults ("W-wank yourself!") and some frankly unprintable utterances that would probably get certain quarters of the Internet angry at me (or James) were I to repost them here.

Anyway. That's that. I hope there will be more Mario Kart 8 in my future, because that was one hell of a lot of fun. Nintendo very much still has the magic.

1510: Hidden Ninpo

Been playing a bunch more Senran Kagura Burst over the last few days, and the more I play, the more I like it.

This is partly because of the interesting, well-told story that actually bothers to explore its characters in some degree of depth thanks to some lengthy visual novel sequences, but that's not what I wanted to talk about today. No, instead, today I wanted to talk a little about how what initially appears to be a simple, straightforward brawler grows more and more interesting to play as you progress.

Senran Kagura Burst gives you five playable characters on each of the two "sides" of the story, plus some secret characters, I believe — haven't unlocked them yet, but there's a conspicuous question mark on the character select screen. Initially, these characters all have their own distinct characteristics — from the Hanzou path, Asuka has speedy attacks, Ikaruga has a long reach, Yagyuu hits hard, Katsuragi fights without weapons and Hibari hits lots of times — but they all "handle" fairly similarly. In other words, at the outset of the game you can pretty much button mash and get some good results.

Thanks to an RPG-style levelling system, however, the characters evolve as you play them in several ways. At various level boundaries, they unlock new "arts", usually in the form of extending their usual combos, but as you play levels in one of two modes — Yang, which is "normal", for want of a better term, and Yin (or "Frantic"), which sees the girls stripping off all their clothes (and defense) in exchange for a massive damage boost — you build up power in your Yang and Yin stats. Separately from your experience level, you unlock new Yin and Yang abilities as these statistics build up, until eventually fighting in Yin and Yang are as different as… well, you know. Playing a level in Yang sees you chaining together massive combos and getting ridiculous hit counts — potentially well into the thousands if you're good at chaining knockouts together — while playing in Yin sees you steaming through, obliterating everything in your path. I finished the first boss level in the game in two seconds earlier thanks to a level 30 Asuka with a fully buffed up Yin stat.

The game doesn't start with these two "modes" feeling different, however; no, it takes some time until the differences start to take effect — initially the only difference is in what the girls are wearing as you fight. But as you gain levels and increase the Yin and Yang stats, more and more depth is gradually added to the game until you're playing something a lot more technical and interesting than what initially appeared to be a fun but fairly mindless button-basher.

This becomes particularly apparent as you work on several characters at once — the story often forces you to use specific characters the first time you take on a level, and so you'll get some experience with all of them while undoubtedly finding favourites. Again, initially, all the characters feel very similar outside of their obvious differences in weaponry, but again, over time, they start to become more and more distinct. Asuka, for example, becomes a whirling death machine able to hit lots of enemies at the same time with a spinning attack, then launch them all into the air. Katsuragi, meanwhile, actually changes significantly from her low-level incarnation; rather than being able to launch enemies simply by hammering the Fast Attack button and unleashing a combo, Katsuragi begins requiring Heavy Attacks to be in the mix in order to successfully launch them. This forces you to play Katsuragi noticeably differently from the other characters — and I'm sure the others are different again, and I'll come to discover their own quirks over time.

The pace at which all this happens is really good, too; you start getting additional techniques and new moves just as hammering "Y" repeatedly starts to get a little tiresome and you start wondering whether there's anything more to it. It's not long after that your rate of pressing the attack buttons slows down from the frantic pace it almost certainly begins at, and you start actually counting how many attacks you get in in order to use the moves you want to. In a funny way, it reminds me a bit of Bayonetta, which I still regard as the benchmark of 3D action games — there was never a moment in Bayonetta where I didn't feel in control of the character, and that, likewise, gradually grew in complexity (and, consequently, in how rewarding it was to play) over time. Bayonetta is probably a superior game with more variety than Senran Kagura, but to get a similar vibe from it is testament to the latter's satisfying brawling.

Anyway, if you've been hesitating over picking this up — perhaps you're an American holding out for a possible physical release? — then, well, I'd strongly advise you to grab a copy if you enjoy a good brawler. And then help me bug Xseed to bring the Vita game to the West, too.

1504: Life and Hometown

As promised (well, suggested) I booted up Senran Kagura Burst for the first time last night, and I've felt a strong urge to keep going back over the course of today. The reason? It's one hell of a lot of fun. Who'd have thought it?

The reason I like it so much is not, as you might conjecture, all the bouncing boobies (though I won't lie, the various members of the main cast all push my buttons in various different ways — why deny it?) but rather the fact it plays like a modern-day brawler. Streets of Rage at turbo speed, if you will; the only thing that's really missing to make it into a truly authentic arcade brawler is a cooperative two-player mode, which appears to be sadly lacking.

Still, this isn't a massive omission on a handheld game, and particularly not when there's seemingly so much to work your way through. There are two hefty stories to play through, each with five different playable characters, and when you've completed each level you can go back and replay it with any of the other characters in order to earn rankings and experience points for them. And then you can play it with each character in "Frenzy" mode, whereby they do 750% more damage but take considerably more damage on account of the fact that all their clothes have fallen off and they're fighting in their swimsuits. In other words, you can play each level up to ten times altogether — five for each character normally, then again with each of them in Frenzy mode — and have an enjoyable experience each time.

Like the classic brawlers of yore, Senran Kagura's controls are simple and straightforward, but can lead to satisfyingly ridiculous combos. Senran Kagura's main contributions to the ridiculousness are the "Aerial Rave" skill, whereby landing a combo on enemies makes a green circle appear, and tapping the A button at this point launches them into the air for further punishment, and the Hidden Ninja Art attacks, each of which are themed around an animal and cause varying amounts of disaster for the enemies around or in front of you depending on which one you unleash.

There's some lightweight RPG mechanics in there, too; completing levels earns you experience points, which levels the girls up, and new Hidden Ninja Arts become available every so often. Moreover, "Yin" and "Yang" bars build up depending on how many levels you've played in Normal or Frenzy mode, with various benefits (and potential shortcomings, particularly in the case of Yang) becoming available to you as these bars increase. It looks, then, as if the game will gradually grow in complexity as it progresses — though from the look of things, it will still remain pleasantly accessible.

I haven't got that far into the game's story yet — I've been having too much fun challenging the first few levels with all the characters — but so far the cast seems to be a loveable bunch, each with their own distinct personalities. Many of them are anime trope-tacular, of course, but I have no problem with this whatsoever; tropes become popular for a reason, after all — and I'm particularly intrigued to see how their personal stories unfold over the course of the game, as I know that those who particularly enjoy the series see the character development as a real highlight of the whole thing.

Further thoughts to follow, I'm sure; for now, I'm off to kick some Shinobi ass!

1376: Turnabout Weekend

I am glad this week is over. Really glad. It's not been a great one.

Granted, pretty much all of the "bad things" that have happened have actually happened to Andie rather than me — she's the one who got ill, then her phone broke, just to add insult to injury — but what with me being somewhat of the anxious persuasion, all this has had a bit of an effect on me too.

Still, pretty sure the worst of everything is over and done with now, which means we can hopefully enjoy a quiet, peaceful weekend and get back to some semblance of normality next week. Andie's not yet sure if she's going back to work next week or not, but that's up to her, not me, of course.

So what am I up to? Well, I spent a chunk of this evening playing Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory and finally cleared the enormous backlog of sidequests I'd built up, leading me to achieve a "perfect 40" rating for a chapter, which is what I was really after. Helpfully, chasing all these sidequests has equipped me with some powerful items and levelled my characters up to "comfortably overpowered" status, so the remainder of the story should be reasonably straightforward — though, of course, there will be plenty more sidequests to do along the way, too.

I also downloaded Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies (aka Ace Attorney 5) yesterday, and am already in love with it. Those who know me well will know that the Ace Attorney series is one of those few series that, like Neptunia, I will immediately purchase a new installment of without question and without reading reviews. I'm only partway into the game's first chapter so far, but it's already impressive stuff.

The DS versions of the Ace Attorney series were actually enhanced ports of Game Boy Advance games, and thus were rather technologically limited. It wasn't until brand new content was added in the fifth case of the first game, the fourth game in the main series and the Ace Attorney Investigations spinoff came out that we started to see some slight variations on the formula — better use of the touchscreen, for example, along with objects that could be examined in 3D.

Ace Attorney 5 is a bit of a milestone for the series, then, in that it's the first installment to be specifically built for the platform it's on rather than based on old code and assets. And it shows.

I was a little worried when I heard that Capcom was making the shift to 3D characters and environments — the 2D artwork of the original games was always charming and full of character, and I was concerned that the move to 3D would lose some of this. Thankfully, it hasn't; the 3D characters are cel-shaded and look convincingly like much better-animated versions of their 2D counterparts, with a few tweaks here and there. Phoenix Wright looks noticeably older, for example, but this makes sense — by this point, he's a veteran defense lawyer, not the frantically sweating rookie he was in the first game.

The 3D aspect also allows for more dramatic, cinematic presentation; occasionally, in the old games, the view would switch to an overview of the courtroom while the peanut gallery would mumble about something that had just been said. Now, rather than this being a static image, it's a dynamic pan across the courtroom that looks much cooler. It's a small touch, but it's neat.

There's anime sequences, too, to depict things that don't really work with just the usual visual novel-style narration. This also means that characters have a voice; I'm pretty sure Wright is voiced by the same guy who did Jude in Tales of Xillia, which will continue to prove distracting until I find out for sure.

In fact, let me research that right now.

………

Yes, he is. Here's proof. Well, that answers that. So long as Wright doesn't start coming out with things like "I wish we didn't have to fight, but we must!" I think we'll probably be all good.

Oh, yeah. You should buy Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. I'm sure there will be more enthusing about it in the very near future. Now I'm off to play Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies and flip the bird to this week. Mata ne.

1364: Pokey

I'm mildly bewildered by the fact everyone is losing their shit over the new Pokemon games for 3DS. Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge anyone their excitement and I'm sure they're very good, I just feel like I've never really "got" Pokemon.

This is strange, really, because the Pokemon games are effectively JRPGs which, as longtime readers will know, is my favourite genre of gaming. And yet despite a brief dalliance with Red back in the Game Boy Color days, I've felt absolutely no inclination whatsoever to return to the series. I'm sure it's changed a lot since Red — at least I hope so — but honestly, my fairly underwhelmed experience with the original installment in the series was enough to discourage me from checking it out again in the future.

My main reason for disliking Red back when I tried it was that it felt like a "JRPG for kids". This isn't necessarily in and of itself a bad thing, and it's probably actually a fairly accurate description what with the warning on the box informing players that "basic reading ability is required to enjoy this game". However, what this translated to for me was something that played like a JRPG, but which didn't really include many of the things about that genre of gaming that I liked.

Pokemon Red came out in the UK in 1999. I'd discovered JRPGs with Final Fantasy VII back in 1997, and it felt like a big step backwards. Obviously I'm aware that this isn't a particularly fair comparison, what with FFVII being on a CD-ROM based 32-bit machine and Red being on a cartridge-based 8-bit handheld. But even so, limited technical capabilities doesn't prevent you from doing good things with writing and characterisation, and Red just didn't offer that to me. I didn't care about what was happening in the world, I couldn't put myself in the shoes of the mute, personality-free protagonist and there were very few relatable characters scattered around the world. It felt like a game about the grind, and about collecting endless reams of things that you'd never use, rather than the kind of JRPG that I definitely do like: games where there's a cool story to follow and, oh, by the way, here's a bajillion other things to do in this world with these characters you like.

I don't know if the Pokemon series has changed since then, because I've never felt inclined to try another one after that. As I say above, I'd hope it has — surely the long-running anime has shown that people are hungry for some actual characters and story in among the monster-training gameplay — but I remain unconvinced at present. I am almost — almost — curious enough to pick up a copy for myself and see why everyone seems so excited about this latest version, but not enough to spend £35 on a new copy. After growing tired of Animal Crossing a lot more quickly than some other people I know, I'm hesitant to jump aboard another Nintendo hype train.

If, on the other hand, someone wanted to send me a copy so I could educate myself, I would certainly do my best to try and understand the new games' appeal. (Worth a try.)

1246: Eeeeee Three

It occurs to me that I don't think I've written my own personal thoughts on E3 and the stuff therein yet. Allow me to rectify that.

Let's start with the Xbox One. While it would be tempting to just write "HAHAHAHAHAHA" and leave it at that, Microsoft's strategy, if you can call it that, bears some examination.

The Xbox One was received very negatively when it was first announced, thanks to the reveal's focus on the box's TV aspect. Things didn't get much better when Microsoft revealed an FAQ document detailing the fact that yes, the things everyone had been fearing — the console needs to "phone home" once every 24 hours via the Internet; publishers may choose to restrict the resale and/or trading in of games if desired; you can "pause" Kinect but you can't turn it off — were all true.

The company's E3 presentation was reasonable, but didn't show anything that particularly blew me away. We had Call of Duty: Roman Wars, sorry, I mean Ryse: Son of Rome and a host of other stuff so uninspiring that I can't remember a goodly proportion of it. The few things that were genuinely interesting and outside the "norm" were glossed over; Below, a new title from Sworcery and that weird Might & Magic puzzle RPG that was actually really good developer Capybara was given a minute-long trailer with no explanation, for example.

However, as I wrote over on USgamer the other day, these press conferences aren't designed for people like me — they're designed for people who, for want of a better term, don't know any better. They're designed for the more casual gameplaying public and shareholders, in other words, and consequently need to show off the biggest, the best, the most exciting-looking. It's unfortunate that a significant proportion of the "core" gamer population is growing increasingly weary of the biggest, the best, the most exciting-looking, particularly as their favourite studios regularly suffer rounds of layoffs when, say, their five million-selling game "isn't performing to expectations" or some such nonsense.

All in all, I was left underwhelmed by Xbox One. I didn't see a single title that sold the system to me, and Microsoft's determination to make the platform even more closed off and irritating than it already is is just baffling. It's like they're looking at feedback and then doing the exact opposite. That can't be good business, surely.

—

As for the PS4, I was impressed. I can live without all the social nonsense, though I can see that being a bit of fun on occasion — so long as you can turn it off. The fact that Sony simply said "we're doing things the way we do now" and they got a round of applause says it all, really, though; it's not a case of people being "set in their ways", it's a case of people actively wanting to resist the suspiciously anti-consumer practices that Microsoft are trying to put in place.

Let me go off on a tangent to explain for a moment.

I like owning my games as physical copies, particularly on console. I feel less strongly about this on PC for a reason I haven't quite worked out, but given the option between getting a physical copy and a digital download on console, I will always, without fail, go for the disc.

The primary reason for this is that I want to always be able to play this game, even if, say, PSN no longer exists one day in the distant future. A secondary reason is that I enjoy displaying my collection the way a movie buff displays their DVDs, a music lover displays their CDs and/or records, and a book lover displays their books. There's a growing movement to "declutter" our lives from all this stuff we've collected over the years, and I really dislike it, because it encourages us to think of things as impermanent. While it can be a pain to store and move all this stuff, I know that if I got rid of any of it, I'd regret it. Sure, once I'm done with, say, Ar Tonelico Qoga it's unlikely that I'll go back to it in the immediate future, but what about five years down the line when I hear a snipped of EXEC_COSMOFLIPS and think I'd really like to relive Aoto's adventures?

I'm saying all this for a reason: PS4 fills me with more confidence than Microsoft does in this regard. Xbox One will have disc-based games, sure, but it's abundantly clear that Microsoft mean business on the whole "you are licensing this piece of software, you don't own it" thing that everyone ignores in EULAs these days. We still don't have a straight answer in place for them on what happens when Xbox Live goes down, or when you don't have Internet access, or when your account gets banned or hacked… or years into the future when the Xbox One is a "retro" console and Xbox Live doesn't exist in the same form, or perhaps at all. Can you still play your games? Or does the lack of authentication render them completely useless?

Video games are the only art form where I see this discussion happening, and we're drifting in the wrong direction. As modern games get more and more advanced, they become more and more worthy of preservation as genuine works of art. And yet with each passing console generation seemingly determined to get more and more restrictive and based around connectivity, it's a real concern to me that some of these titles will one day be lost forever.

Anyway. It remains to be seen whether Sony does anything stupid between now and the PS4 coming out — because this is Sony, let's not rule it out — but at present, I'm feeling much more confident about them than Microsoft.

—

As for Nintendo, well, they're Nintendo. Nintendo has always been happy bumbling along doing its own thing… and I'm absolutely fine with that. I have no need for them to try and compete with PS4 and Xbox One or try to become yet another Call of Duty machine. I have no issue with the third-party support that people were whingeing about all the way through the Wii's lifespan but which didn't hurt its profitability at all.

What Nintendo machines do are provide "pure games" — experiences which tend not to have any aspirations to be considered "art", but which provide excellent examples of simply entertaining and fun things to do. For this reason, I'm actually relatively excited to see things like Wii Party U, as Nintendo Land is a big favourite any time friends come over; having something with even more games to play together will be even better.

Anyway, I'm not sure if anyone "won" E3 for me, because I didn't really come away from the show thinking "I MUST BUY THIS GAME THE SECOND IT COMES OUT" with regard to anything, but it was certainly an interesting show. The coming console generation is going to be an intriguing one to watch, and I have a feeling that Microsoft is going to get its nose bloodied more than once in the process. Whether that will take them down completely or just relegate them to the position Sony spent most of this generation in remains to be seen, but it's going to be a hell of a fight to watch.

1244: New Leaf

I started playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf on 3DS today. I haven't played an Animal Crossing game since whatever the one on the DS was called, and I didn't really get very far into that one. It wasn't that I didn't like it, it's that it came out at a time when there was all manner of other stuff I wanted to play, and I didn't give it enough of a chance to get into it. Consequently, when it came to time to trade some stuff in — this was back when I still traded in games, something which I rarely do these days (though I still buy used games) — it was one of the first things to go.

Consequently, I'm still pretty much a complete newcomer to Animal Crossing and the way it does things. And I'm still somewhat confused. But in a kind of good way.

Most games you play these days take a very proactive approach to directing the player's enjoyment. "Go here," the game will say. "Do this." In the case of terrible, awful, shitty Facebook games, more often than not the game will literally prevent you from clicking on anything but the thing it wants you to click on.

Animal Crossing, meanwhile, takes the complete opposite approach. It drops you into a strange world — a small town populated by animals in which you are inexplicably the only human resident, and which you have somehow become the mayor of — and then pretty much tells you to just get on with it. There are characters wandering around who will give you a nudge in the direction of things to do, but for the most part, the game is all about figuring out what the fuck it is you're supposed to be doing.

And the answer isn't a simple one. There's a sense of structure given to the game by the ever-present loan-shark raccoon Tom Nook and his increasingly-unreasonable bills he keeps lumping you with game after game, but other than that it's entirely up to you to make your own fun. Will you cultivate a crop of profitable fruit trees? Will you spend your time catching bugs? Will you dig up fossils and try to fill the museum? Or will you primarily spend your time bumming around your friends' towns, stealing their fruit when they're not looking?

This latter part is where the 3DS version is infinitely superior to the DS version. Theoretically, the DS version featured Internet connectivity and the ability to do things with your friends, but when I was playing I didn't know anyone else, and as such this feature — which is, to be honest, a big part of the game's appeal — was completely useless. Contrast that with today, when I went over to my friend Jeff's town along with our mutual friend Cody, then we took a trip over to a tropical island, swam in the sea, harvested bananas and mangoes and marvelled at Cody's ability to catch the most enormous fish I've ever seen.

It's an utterly pointless experience at heart, but unlike many of those utterly pointless Facebook games out there which are only after your money, Animal Crossing's self-contained nature means that there's always a sense of gentle, good-natured humour about the experience — and, more importantly, no pressure on the player. It's an escapist experience for you to dip into for half an hour to an hour at a time, not something you play as your "big game". And yet even in those short, bite-sized sessions — ideal for handheld play — there's plenty of stuff to do, and enough variety to keep some people playing for hour after hour after hour after hour.

It remains to be seen how long I stick with it, but I'm interested to see how much more there is to the experience over time. Something must be there to keep people playing for upwards of a hundred hours; let's see if I can find it.

1199: Back... to the Mansion

I never played the first Luigi's Mansion, to my shame, but I understand it was a good time, if perhaps not quite up to the standard of some of Nintendo's other, more high-profile titles.

I have, however, been playing the second Luigi's Mansion game thanks to a copy generously provided to me by my brother for my birthday. Yes, it's the second 3DS-related post in as many days, but I actually want to talk a little more generally about Nintendo and how they do things rather than go into the specifics of the console and the game itself.

Luigi's Mansion 2 doesn't come with a manual. It comes with a pathetic little single sheet of paper that outlines the basic controls, plus all the other usual health and safety crap that Nintendo always bundle all their products with.

What struck me in the couple of levels of Luigi's Mansion 2 that I've played so far was this, though: it doesn't need a manual, because it is so immaculately and intuitively designed that even someone completely unfamiliar with the original game will be up and ghost hunting within seconds, and all without any real "tutorial". Okay, there are a few messages the first time you get items, but an awful lot of stuff isn't explicitly explained at all — it just makes perfect sense.

This is in direct opposition to the way that a lot of mobile and social games work — pretty much every mobile and social game out there begins with a long, tedious, badly-worded and unskippable tutorial that literally doesn't allow you to do anything but the thing it's telling you to do. No sense of exploration, no means of discovering things for yourself, no means of skipping the bullshit if you're already familiar with how to "Build Your Own Town!" and then spend the rest of your life tapping on things every time your phone lights up.

I found this interesting, because ostensibly a lot of Nintendo's games target a similar demographic to those who play mobile and social games. This isn't to say that they're dumbed down or "casual", I hasten to add — but their recognisable, consistent, family-friendly aesthetic and "pick up and play" nature makes them ideal for pretty much anyone to try for themselves and probably have a pretty good time with.

I think it's a difference in approach. Nintendo comes at it from a rather welcoming angle that is friendly to both experienced gamers who have been helping Mario out since the '80s, and newcomers who are coming to a Nintendo game for the first time on the 3DS. "Come on in," their games say. "We're going to have some fun. If you know what you're doing, go right ahead and enjoy yourself. If you're not sure what to do, though, don't worry — we'll help you out."

Compare and contrast with the way that, say, Zynga treats you when you start one of its games. "YOU!" the game seems to say. "You are STUPID. You are a WORTHLESS IDIOT who has NO IDEA how to play a fucking video game. Why else would you be playing one of OUR games? Let me walk you through everything EXTREMELY SLOWLY. No, I don't believe that you know how to play this game already. SHUT UP. You can start playing when I say so. Don't click there, click here. I said CLICK HERE. I'm going to wait here until you click here. No, I don't care if you want to make it full screen. I say click here, so you DAMN WELL BETTER CLICK HERE. Twat."

I'd never really noticed this strong distinction until recently, but by golly it is noticeable. And it makes the difference between me playing a Zynga game and feeling like I'm having my intelligence insulted at every turn, and playing a Nintendo game and wanting to show everyone how awesome it is.