This is the E3 2010 trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, an MMORPG that is coming out for the PC. As cinematic and blah blah blah as this is, the thing that really ruins it for me and the game and the Star Wars franchise more broadly is this whole Maoris* in space thing they’ve got going on.
I mean, really. Maoris. In space. I just can’t take that seriously.
* yes, I am aware that the plural of Maori is Maori, and not Maoris.
E3 kicks off in LA from Tuesday and so the blogs and youtube are going to be literally infested with tiny snippets of news about a great many things great and small to do with gaming and the ridiculous holy grail that is the desire to make gaming more of a normal family aspect.
The hardware announcements don’t usually mean a lot to me and this year will be no different. I’m far too self-conscious to get excited about Project Natal and too proud to take Sony’s Move lollipops seriously. If Microsoft announce a new slim 360, that doesn’t really help me with the 360 I already have and the other one that is meant to be arriving from Australia later this month (that’s a story for another post).
What does excite me are the games that’ll likely feature fairly strongly at E3 and of the many games likely to be mentioned, these are perhaps the ones that grab me more than others.
Why? Why won’t you make sense?
There’s a world within what looks like the husk shell of a planet with a really big rip in it? People are afraid of other people but they all look the same? Lots of soldiers with large guns that never need reloading and they miss whatever they aim at? Painfully sappy romance thrown in to drag this out forever and ever? There’s a black man with an afro surrounded by large-eyed Eurasians? The black man has a baby chocobo in his afro? What?
I’ve been playing you for 8hrs and, please allow me to enunciate slowly so you’ll understand me, IIIII… juuuuust… dooooon’t… uuuuunderstaaaaand… youuuuu.
Please make sense or I’m going to give up and play something else.
Red Dead Redemption by Rockstar Games.
Think GTA4 meets the Dollars Trilogy and you’re playing an amalgam of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Bask in nature’s magnificence before shooting it out of the sky. On horseback.
Hunt down wanted men and take out vicious gangs. On horseback.
Rescue fair damsels from scoundrels and old women from thieves. On horseback.
Roam the plains and swerve among the cactus. On horseback.
Oh, how I have roamed.
I’m not sure how far I am through the game but I’ve just opened up the map to the northern border with Mexico and instead of white people and black people and even a few asians, there’re just lots of sombreros, ponchos and low-slung dresses.
I you have an XBOX360 or a PS3, you need to buy this game so we posse up on multiplayer and own the last frontier of the Wild West.
PS: this is what happens when the doctor says no drinking and no exerting oneself over a normally indulgent weekend.
Fallout New Vegas is the follow-up to 2008’s Fallout 3 and I really am quite genuinely excited about this game’s release in what the Americans ‘helpfully’ describe as Fall 2010.
From what I’ve seen of screenshots and concept art, they’ve retained the better elements of Fallout 3 while also coming up with a better system for interacting with companions and I think we can now customise our weapons. I’m not sure on that last. All I know is I saw multiple shots of the same essential weapon but each was subtly different, whether by scope or by clip or something else entirely.
My interest is sufficiently piqued.
I must play this game.
Right. So, Saturday. Felt absolutely rubbish after the night before. We’re talking curled up into a ball kinda nauseous. And yet! And yet we still managed to crawl out into the overcast outside world to market with the farmers. Bought some chicken and pistachio terrine (so good), beetroot, sweetcorn and other assorted goods for events I’ll cover under Day Six.
The afternoon was all N64-ported Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. To be honest, I was still too miserable a state to play but I did help in my own way (rapid-fire walkthroughs) while Josh played instead. The game is incredibly dated (it was registered back in 2000) and the graphics really rather laughable (clipping aplenty), but it was still fun to watch.
The late afternoon was opera in the park with the MSO. It was the last of a four concert series at the Sidney Myer Bowl (I haven’t been there since Daft Punk a few years back) and the song choice seemed rather festive with Au Fond Du Temple Saint from Bizet’s Les Pecheurs Des Perles (The Pearl Fishers) a particular favourite of mine. That said, we got there when the opening act, the Melbourne Youth Orchestra, were performing a particularly Disney-esque waltz. In the break between the MYO and the MSO it started to rain and our resolve abandoned us for the tram-ride out to Carlton to drink beer with Ned and Luke and others.
Was fun although they’d already had enough to be well past us on the alcohol stakes so we soon said our goodbyes and headed off to Palm for birthday drinks with Josh and others. What I saw of the rooftop bar seemed pleasant enough and the beer was pretty drinkable. We then excused ourselves while the others went on to see Amanda Lepore.
I remember eating when we got back to the flat but not a lot more.
Suffice to say I’ve swiftly become a cheap drunk. Shameful.
Fallout 3 was my favourite game of last year. The open sandbox environment, the RPG elements and the visceral joy of shooting something in slow-motion. Just magnificent.
A friend of mine, now resident in Denmark, has been replaying Fallout 3 and drawn out a number of insightful posts on the game. It does get a bit gamer geek here and there but they do by and large raise interesting questions about the games we play.
Well, that I play.
The last few weeks have seen me otherwise preoccupied with:
All in all, it’s been a mixed bag that has kept me away from here. I’d apologise but that has an air of the irrelevant about it, does it not?
